This week has been a culmination of a lot of hard work by the team.

We held Barrow & Furness’ first Climate Summit in The Forum in Barrow on Thursday, with speakers from Furness College, BAE, Cumbria University, Stagecoach, Cut the Wrap, the Lake District National Park, Cumbria Action for Sustainability and Cumbria Wildlife Trust. John Bird, the founder of the Big Issue, ended the event with a call on everyone to commit to long-term thinking.

Having those people in the room - being so generous with their thoughts and time - really clarified the challenge we have ahead of us as we head into COP26. I’m visiting Glasgow for COP26 and I’ll be taking a clear message from Furness to the COP President, Alok Sharma MP.

On that same day, I visited Furness Academy to see the amazing work that they have done ahead of UK Parliament Week in November. The students have put together frankly amazing draft laws - on issues from period poverty to banning single use plastics, putting solar panels on new homes, to tidying up their community.

On our away day we discussed opening up our weekly surgeries more. After a year of doing them by Zoom, we’re back to face-to-face. But we talked about holding more open forums and appointment-free surgeries in public venues, rather than in my office on Cavendish Street. Only an hour later the news came through that Sir David Amess, the MP for Southend, had been stabbed during a surgery and died.

I can’t say that I knew David well. But I can say that he was a very kind man who always had a smile and an offer of help for those of us ‘newbies’ who looked a bit lost. His death is absolutely heartbreaking and I find myself walking a little heavier than I did this morning. I hope and pray that we can learn from this tragedy.

For me that means retaining surgeries - one of the most important parts of an MP’s job - and continuing to hold open forums, like the climate summit we just held in Barrow, or the events we have planned across schools in support of Parliament Week.