This week marked Holocaust Memorial Day, a moment of profound reflection and remembrance. Ahead of this important day, I signed the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Book of Commitment, reaffirming my promise to remember the victims of the Holocaust and to help ensure its lessons are never forgotten. I was also honoured to attend Mr Speaker’s Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Parliament, listening to the moving testimony of Mala Tribich MBE who told how she and her brother were the only members of her family to survive the Holocaust, following her imprisonment in Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen camps. Holocaust Memorial Day, held on 27 January, marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
It is a day to honour the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered during the Holocaust, to pay tribute to the extraordinary survivors who continue to educate young people today, and to remember the many others who suffered persecution under the Nazi regime. As the number of survivors becomes fewer and frailer, the responsibility to remember and to pass on the lessons of the Holocaust falls increasingly on all of us and on the next generation. At a time when antisemitism and hatred are once again on the rise, remembrance must also be a time to reflect on the human cost of hatred and a call to stand up against prejudice in all its forms.
Also in Parliament this week, the Government announced a £1.5 billion investment to support arts, museums, libraries and heritage buildings across England. This significant funding will help protect cherished local institutions, tackle long-overdue repairs, and ensure that culture remains accessible to everyone. Our area has such rich history and heritage, much of which needs safeguarding for future generations, and this funding could be instrumental in helping to do just that. I will be following the development of this announcement closely to make sure our local area benefits wherever possible.
Closer to home, my team and I were pleased to mark an important milestone, with more than £1.5 million successfully recovered for local residents through constituency casework. This includes underpaid or missing benefit entitlements, compensation payments, refunds from organisations, and other money owed. It is wrong that so many people are not receiving money to which they are entitled, and as your local representative I will always do everything I can to put that right.