It was a pleasure to meet the EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels as part of my select committee work.
The sense I get is that our negotiating team is held in high regard and that there is a willingness in the EU to strike a sensible deal that will be of benefit to the EU and UK. You wouldn’t believe any of this though if you swallowed the lines being peddled by our downbeat national press, some of which gloats on the possibility of the negotiations failing. Here’s to them being deeply disappointed.
I’ve been particularly been busy with national TV and radio studios over the least few days talking about healthcare mostly but also defence, Brexit, Northern Ireland and my good friend Boris Johnson who has, to his credit, been talking about the NHS and how to fund it properly.
Locally, I’ve been talking to people about the A350. It seems to me that the planets on this are beginning to align since government has some real money for economically important routes and for bypassing congested town centres. We can’t countenance any increase in transit traffic along the A350, particularly heavy traffic, without dealing with the appalling congestion, noise, vibration and air pollution that affects my constituents in the middle of the town. An eastern bypass is right out since we comprehensively dealt with that a decade, ago but a western solution linking local light industrial and commercial hubs is looking much more likely than it did a few weeks ago.
I have had a chat about this with the roads minister Jesse Norman and with the Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and spoken with councillors and other influential players. I’d be interested in readers’ views on this issue of crucial importance to Westbury and surrounding villages.
