GORDON HENDERSON MP

Louise and I left Halfway at 6.30 am to drive up to Westminster. When Parliament is sitting I like to leave an hour earlier so that I am in my office my 7 am, however, during recess 8 am, or thereabouts, is fine. Today the traffic was particularly heavy and we didn’t arrive until just before 8.30am. We usually like to get a good solid breakfast inside before the start of the working day, but the Terrace cafeteria kitchens are being refurbished and we were limited to bacon sandwiches or cereals. Better than nothing, but I missed my eggs on toast!

I delivered my full post bag to the office only to discover a similar amount of correspondence waiting for me to look at. Today both Carol and Lottie were in the office so I took my mail down to the members’ library (my favourite place in the whole House!) and worked on it until 10.30 am when a text from my office reminded me that I was due to be at the gate to Downing Street by 10.45 am.

I reached Downing Street on time where I met a constituent, Harry Farrow, who has spent the last 16 months collecting signatures on a petition calling for people over 60 to be given free rail travel, in the same way that they are entitled to free bus travel.

I have been supporting Harry since he started his campaign, providing him with stamps and getting his literature printed for him. Harry was accompanied by Mike Whiting, who is his Kent County Councillor, one of Harry’s friends and Jill Hurst, who is a reporter on one of our local newspapers.

After escorting my guests through security, we were able to knock on the door of No 10 and hand over the petition to one of the resident security guards. I think Harry was a bit disappointed not to be able to deliver the petition to the Prime Minister personally! More on this visit is available in the News section of my website.

After helping Harry present his petition, I took the group back to Parliament where, after having them issued with security badges, I took them on a tour of the House of Lords and the Commons. Unfortunately, I ran out of time and had to get my secretary, Carol, to finish off the tour whilst I dashed off to a meeting in Portcullis House.

My meeting was with Tricia Rogers from Kainos Community, a charity which operates in three prisons providing a one-to-one contact programme with inmates which has seen a dramatic reduction in the incidence of re-offending in those prisoners who take part in the programme.

My interest in Kainos Community is because one of the prisons involved in the programme is Swaleside, which is part of the Sheppey Prison Cluster in my own constituency. I strongly believe that one of the most important roles of prisons is to try to reduce re-offending rates, through education and counselling.

I will be working with Kainos to try to encourage ministers to provide more support to the scheme. It makes good economic sense.

My meeting with Tricia Rogers lasted half an hour and just as we finished, Carol turned up with my guests. I had originally planned to take them to lunch in the Terrace cafeteria, but because of the refurbishment work decided it was best to grab sandwiches from the Despatch Box at Portcullis House.

After saying goodbye to my guests I managed to spend some time in my office signing correspondence before my next meeting which was with a young lady from Canterbury called Helena Barber, who was representing both the Kent Youth Council and the UK Youth Parliament. Helena is lobbying Kent MPs to support the UKYP campaign for the lowering of the voting age to 16 years of age.

Unfortunately, as I explained to Helena, this is something that I simply cannot support, because I do not believe that the majority of 16 year olds have sufficient life experience to make decisions that are crucial to the well being of our nation. However, I think it is right that young people should get more involved in politics and Helena and I had a very constructive conversation about how young people could increase the influence of the KYC and UKYP.