Friends meet local MP
Cotteridge Quakers met with Al Carns, Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, and the minister of Veterans and People in the Ministry of Defence
Cotteridge Quakers and St Francis Church hosted an evening with their new MP last month, about the environment and energy.
Al Carns, Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, and the minister of Veterans and People in the Ministry of Defence, also visited the former warden’s bungalow to see the work being done to make it ready to welcome an Afghan refugee family under the UK government resettlement scheme. ‘The MP said he would like to meet the family when they moved in,’ Cotteridge Quaker Chris Martin told the Friend. Al Carns was also given an overview of sustainability and insulation improvements made to the bungalow and Meeting house.
The evening at Cotteridge Meeting House on 31 January was a ‘Listening Panel’ event, with the agenda discussed and agreed with the MP’s constituency office beforehand. This included three other contributions. ‘First, Richard Wharton, vicar of St Francis Church, explained how his church’s eco-work was one of the church’s Five Marks of Mission,’ said Chris Martin. Mary Locke, a councillor, also spoke about ‘the situation that residents in Stirchley faced, when they had to decide between keeping warm and having food’.
Chris Martin also spoke about the amount of wasted heat due to poorly-insulated houses in Birmingham, and about work completed at Cotteridge Meeting House to improve its energy efficiency. ‘In response, Al Carns emphasised that he was a government minister and set out the government’s position on how the energy generation and distribution industries would be transformed to become based on renewable energy,’ said Chris. ‘He stressed the need for energy security, as well as the limits to the availability of minerals that many of the new technologies depend on.’
A ‘lively’ Q&A session followed, with around fifty attenders. This included questions on the third runway at Heathrow; oil and gas drilling licenses in the North Sea; and the state of housing in Birmingham. Chris said: ‘It’s difficult to capture in a few words the feelings of energy and concern that were present in the full room. In my view, the value of the evening was in building relationships with Al Carns and his team.’
