The opportunities and challenges facing Furness have been the main focus of my time in Westminster this week.

On Tuesday, during Health and Social Care Questions, I raised the challenges of accessing an NHS dentist following the planned closure of BUPA in Barrow and ‘My Dentist’ in Dalton, not to mention those gone and going in Millom and Grange-over-Sands.

I was pleased to secure a meeting with the Health Minister, and will look forward to discussing the issue with him in detail.

In advance of that, however, on Thursday came the unusual opportunity actually to participate in a debate on Reforms to NHS Dentistry, to talk about the real challenges dentists experience in rural areas like ours, and what Government needs to do to address them.

Later, we voted on another issue close to all our hearts, namely the quality of water in our local area.

The plan is all about forcing water companies to invest in water infrastructure now in order to stop sewage discharges, increasing regulation and targets, and introducing more robust enforcement.

Not before time, this will include unlimited fines on water companies that release sewage into our waterways.

These are strong measures to protect our communities and environment, and I was extremely glad to have the opportunity to vote for them.

It was also great to host the Spirit Energy team and Lord Inglewood, Chair of Cumbria LEP, and his colleagues in Parliament on Wednesday to talk about their plans for the Morecambe Bay Net Zero Cluster.

This genuinely exciting opportunity hinges on repurposing the gas fields under the Bay, (managed from Barrow), to sequester carbon.

The facility offers permanent storage in vast empty caverns for up to a gigaton of carbon dioxide – equivalent to 3 years of the UK’s CO₂.

That could then be used to create blue hydrogen for heating our homes and for the batteries of the future, when linked to our burgeoning offshore wind fields.

Given the importance of this project to the local area, it was good to see most of my Cumbrian MP colleagues at the event, and we and others locally are all working together to get Spirit Energy’s bid over the line.

I was also delighted to take Ged and Dave from The Well to Number 10 to celebrate their role as Community Champions and to thank them for all that they do for folk in Barrow, Cumbria, North Lancashire and beyond.

It is an amazing organisation that helps those who suffer from addiction, provides them with a community and gets them back on their feet again. 

They also provide huge value to the wider community in terms of volunteering. They are advocates for putting lived experience at the heart of policymaking in Westminster, and I was very glad to use this platform to further that battle.

Back home late on Thursday, and it was also great to get on with constituency work – visiting Specsavers to hear about how they are helping diagnose conditions in both hearing and eyesight that arrest dementia, meeting constituents, and stopping in at Printfest in Ulverston on Saturday, enjoying that and the fringe.

I was also fortunate enough to be given a tour around by Esther and Lorraine, who were very eager to show me the fantastic artwork from Furness schools – much of which wouldn’t have looked amiss in the main hall!

I hope that you all enjoy the bank holiday, and as this is the last column I will write before the Barrow Town Council election, and the Hindpool by-election, I will gently remind you... no matter who you vote for, please do vote!