Happy New Year. I am so grateful to all who have worked and served over the festive period, often sacrificing precious family time to keep people safe and well.
Throughout the season we have seen charities reaching out, joined by others with kindness towards others delivering parcels, protecting those in need and bringing joy to those alone.
Through kindness, neighbours have reached out, just as they did 10 years ago as we have recanted our memories of the Boxing Day floods of 2015. Our city, marked out by extraordinary kindness from people wanting to help others.
Now as we start a new year, reset our dials, our focus and our purpose, it is an important opportunity to set the culture and how we spend our time. In politics, we often think of sharp elbows and negative discourse, but if our starting place is to serve with kindness, to reach out and meet the needs of others, then how and what we prioritise changes.
I believe that politics needs to be more honest, more accountable and more engaged with the real experiences that people face day by day. Often the Westminster bubble feels divorced from the challenges people face on the ground. It can feel out of touch or fails to hear the voices and concerns of our communities.
This is why I have been calling for radical devolution of resources and decisions, so we can reform the places where we live with the lived experiences of people within our communities. It is why I have been calling for more engagement and listening spaces so everyone can have a stake in their future: to address needs and priorities, and to meet hopes and aspirations.
Westminster is often slow and clunky while the ambition of local services is often strangulated and restrained by the overreach of state, and importantly restricted funding.
As I look to 2026, having joined the bereaved families in the announcement of the public inquiry into local mental health services, after years of campaigning and leading the delegation of MPs to meet with Ministers to secure the inquiry, I want to ensure that we see radical reform to support the mental wellbeing of children, young people and adults.
With Government’s SEND reforms expected in the coming months, I will follow up the report I submitted to the review, formed by local voices, to ensure that we get good outcomes for families who have struggled for far too long. I have always worked on ensuring children have the best start in life, and will focus on the first 1001 critical days, in pregnancy and for the first two years of life.
This year marks 125 years since the publication of Seebohm Rowntree’s first encyclopaedic report on poverty in York ‘Poverty, A Study of Town Life’ highlighting how 28% of York’s population lived in poverty in 1901. This year I will be building on my work to cut poverty and inequality. Today 17.9% of children are growing up in poverty in York after a decade of rising levels of poverty. I will be working with statutory agencies, academics, charities and communities, to press Government to move faster to turn the tide and draw on the Rowntree’s work, then and now, to provide the socioeconomic opportunities that give dignity to all.
Having listened to residents, seeing the reversing of cuts to Winter Fuel Payments, the scrapping of the Two Child Limit and stopping £5bn cuts to Personal Independents Payments to disabled people, I will continue to draw on evidence and your own experiences to fight for you and our city; it is why I am in politics. What this period has shown me is the extraordinary kindness of others as they have felt valued, seen and that their lives matter too.
It is now my mission to see a kinder and more compassionate approach to politics. Politics more often seeks to divide than unite, to tear down rather than lift up. It is vital it changes. Change to show kindness, compassion and care in every policy, stretching from the kindness of this season, throughout the year as it infuses policies, the culture of politics and all we do, in serving our nation, city and community. My very best wishes to you all for a Happy New Year.
This column was published by the Press on 1 January, 2026