GERAINT DAVIES MP
WELSH LABOUR & CO-OPERATIVE MP MAKING A DIFFERENCE FOR SWANSEA WEST O Abertawe ac yn gweithio dros Abertawe
Jay, 10, Townhill School (Christmas Card Winner)
DEC 2021 REPORT Report Inside
MPs CALL FOR HALT TO BRITA INCINERATOR EXPANSION PL
This month I led a new Parliamentary Report calling for the reversal of the Gove strategy, featured in the Guardian and the Independent.
As Chair of the APPG, I was please to publish a new report to protect the public from ultrafine particulates and to avoid a growing contribution to carbon emissions from moratorium on new large-scale incineration plants and taxes to reduce burning and i
Air pollution already kills 64,000 people across the UK each year, so government plan ation capacity by allowing the construction of 50 new waste incinerators by 2030, inc should be immediately halted as it will give rise to a significant growth in ultrafine pa dangerous to human health.
The protection and improvement of air quality must become a central strategy to com prove human health nationally and globally. We must apply the precautionary principl urban locations so that the cumulative health risks of ultrafine particulates to dense po
Diolch @Plaid_Cymru for joining @welshlabour government in r from free school meals in primary schools & 2-year-olds childcar the housing crisis, supporting family farms & accelerating to #Ne
TREE PLANTING STRATEGY ‘IN FL AFTER DRAX POWER STATIO
This article featured in the Independent, says “Ministers have been accused of lac on woodlands, as one government department spends six times more on a timberanother spends on tree planting. On the EFRA committee, Geraint quizzed Lord Go viding greater subsidies to Drax than for tree planting, told The Independent that as climate summit, the UK “should hold its head in shame”.
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VIGIL HELD FOR 27 REFUGEES Geraint Davies MP this month joined a candle-lit vigil for the 27 people who sadly passed trying to cross the English Channel. Refugee and human rights campaigners met to hold the candle-lit vigil in Swansea, were Geraint addressed the gathering to call out the UK Government’s policies against refugees and speak on the devastating loss of life. The International Organisation for Migration said the disaster was the biggest loss of life in the Channel since data started being collected in 2014. Geraint said: “Solidarity in Swansea to remember 27 lost lives drowned in bid to escape persecution. On a cold night our City of Sanctuary offers a warm welcome to refugees. “Swansea and Wales must remain beacons of hope offering a hand of friendship. We remember in sorrow those who are lost and offer a warm Welsh welcome to others escaping from danger.”
Action Plan to tackle Spiking in drinks & with needles in Swansea
This month, I met with South Wales Police, Swansea Council, Swansea University Students Union and Swansea Bay University Health Board to take forward an action plan surrounding spiking in Swansea following a public meeting when several students provided emotional testimony of incidences that had happened to them over the last few months. The meeting included representatives from Swansea University Students Union who have first-hand knowledge of the growing incidents of spiking by drink and needle in Swansea. There have been claims of lack of evidence across the UK and from this meeting I was able to confirm from many examples of bruises from needle pricks reported by dozens of students to the Swansea University welfare officer. This underlines how important it is to confront this issue as a top priority.
Put simply, those who go out with the intention of spiking someone with poison in order to render them unconscious in a view of assaulting them or stealing from them should be viewed as a significant criminal act and we need to spend more resources finding the perpetrators. I am keen that CCTV footage is examined where victims can identify a time frame in which they believe they were spiked. In addition to increased and improved CCTV we need to pursue the holding of databases for a longer time frame, and this could be actioned as clubs need to ask for Identification on entry and in recent times due to track and trace, phone number are also taken. This strategy would provide a clear message to the perpetrators and reassurance to the victims, those now too concerned to enjoy a night out and those who may have lost some confidence in the Police. It is hugely important that this issue is taken seriously by all of the agencies involved and I appreciate the limited resources and pressures upon these agencies, however, it is important that anyone with a will to spike someone knows that it is unacceptable and that their actions will have consequences.
In the meeting we discussed a checklist for best practice for clubs, including high definition CTTV in low light, searching bags and coats on the door for contraband including needles, facilities for testing drinks and urine more widely available and rapid response from the Police. I also believe uniformed officers should occasionally be present in clubs to show a presence and deter any perpetrators. Obviously, clubs should be providing a safe environment and those venues with the best system to provide this environment would become the most popular and therefore more profitable. I am keen for Swansea to lead the way on the best practice when it comes to club safety and I hope that this can be echoed across the UK. I am taking these issues to Parliament and will follow up with South Wales Police, Swansea Council, Swansea University Students Union and Swansea Bay University Health Board. I am grateful to the attendees of the meeting for taking this matter seriously. I have also spoken to the Police Commissioner, Alun Michael and will follow up to ensure action is taken. Together with the Council, Police, Health Board and students I hope we can make changes so that anyone who wishes to enjoy a night out can, without the fear of spiking.”
I joined students protesting against spiking outside clubs in Wind Street
COOPERATIVE MUSIC COULD BRING FAIRNESS FOR ARTISTS Geraint Davies’ Commons speech on music copyright: “Mr Deputy Speaker, being from the land of song, as I am, I am sure that you would have enjoyed the reception last night that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) hosted with musicians. We heard the beautiful voice of Sarah Angel and many up-and-coming and existing artists and musicians were there. Being from Swansea, I know many up-and-coming artists there too. The important point that is coming across is that although some of them have been successful in the past, they look to the future with fear. “The up-and-coming ones are saying, “Hold on, if I get 1 million streams, I’ll get £100—but what about the cost of my travel, the studio or having lunch? Maybe there’ll be musicians with me, or maybe I’ll co-produce or co-write a song, so I’ll get just half that, but I still have to pay those costs. It doesn’t work.” We have just gone through an appalling pandemic, so people in the music industry who are atomised freelancers and self-employed have not been able to enjoy the fruits of live gigs. Instead, they have depended on the meagre crumbs off the table of the industry to survive with great difficulty. “We have heard about Spotify and other platforms such as Apple, Amazon and Google, and how marvellous it is that we can carry the world’s music in our pockets. That is true, but most people probably consume the equivalent of only 12 albums a year on their Spotify account and just play their favourite music again and again. If those had been 12 CD sales instead, the artists would have got much more. We are in a situation where, although we have great scope for choice, that choice is not exercised. It is important that artists get their fair share to nourish them for the future. The point I was making is that the share that is given to up-and-coming musicians is not enough. The right hon. Gentleman may claim that 1 million streams is not very much, but I would very much enjoy a small fraction of that for this speech anywhere it was shown. It is a lot for a musician to break through that million mark. I appreciate that, in the global marketplace, there are stars who break through into the billions, but that is not the point. The point is that we in Britain should be nurturing our young people to come forward as composers,
artists, performers and song writers. If they are going to have the facility to invest in their own skills, equipment and song writing, and if we are to have a situation where we have a broad diversity of people and the future music industry is not completely reliant on people with rich parents, we need to give due reward on streaming to those people who will create the joy and music of the future. There are new opportunities—TikTok, YouTube and so on—that did not exist in the past for people to express themselves; it is not the case that someone cannot possibly achieve everything without a label and therefore they need this immense amount of money. As was briefly mentioned, the managing director of Universal does not pay British tax, but in addition, the way the finances are managed is such that some artists are paid in dollars and the Exchequer here does not see the fruits of British production, which we should enjoy as well as the artist having their due rewards. The fact is that music is integral to Britain’s identity here and abroad, whether we go back to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Annie Lennox or look at what we have now in Adele, One Direction or whatever. The point has been made already about the hundreds of thousands of people in the industry and its importance for the export and tourism markets. I think we are duty bound to feed the people who are the creative engines of that success, and not to allow it to be sapped away through blood-sucking multinational corporations that hide the tax and keep the revenue and exercise market abuse and dominance in an atomised market of well-meaning people who, in their younger years, often sign contracts without the privilege of a huge legal team behind them to give them cover, so if they are fortunate in being successful, they find they are ripped off by these big labels and then are unable to go back and look at that contract again. Many of those contracts, of course, contain non-disclosure agreements, so we do not really know what is happening. In a nutshell, we are talking about an industry of a collective of people who provide joy, happiness and exhilaration for the globe as well as Britain, and they have done so particularly during the pandemic, which has been so valuable for people’s mental health. It is important that those artists also have remuneration into the future; they should be able to plan for their retirement. The Musicians Union is a cooperative and I will be working with Cooperatives UK to help provide a cooperative streaming platform and record label so artists & songwriters can get a fair income from listeners instead of it being creamed off by offshore oligopolies. We must nurture our country’s up-and-coming and existing people in this great music industry of ours, hold our head up high and get back to the global No. 1 in the charts.
VACCINE PASSES NEEDED IN ENGLAND, SAYS GERAINT In Parliament I pressed Health Secretary Sajid David to press forward with vaccine passes saying “In the United Kingdom, there are 45,000 infections a day. In Japan, there are just 200 infections a day, because people in Japan understand that they do not have the right to put other people at avoidable risk. Will the Secretary of State consider extending what he is saying to introduce vaccine passes and testing at pubs, because I for one would want to avoid pubs where I can be infected by someone who is not vaccinated. Secondly, will he look to introduce masks into school rooms for older children? Let us get to grips with this.”
Geraint supporting Cafe Janet in Swansea Market ahead of Small Business Saturday, with some lovely pancakes
CONTACT ME / CYSYLLTU A MI 32 Walter Road, Swansea, SA1 5NW (01792) 4759432
info@geraintdavies.org.uk @GeraintDaviesMP