Read my latest Sunderland Echo column below or find it on the Sunderland Echo website.
The last week has been dominated by the news of the London terror attack last week.
As people went about their daily lives – with tourists taking in the sights of London and Parliament voting on the Pensions Schemes Bill – terror befell the capital and the world watched as Parliament entered lockdown.
Thankfully due to the amazing reactions of our police and security personnel, Parliament was quickly secured and the terrorist was swiftly dealt with.
But sadly, in the moments before that happened, we saw many innocent people injured, some resulting in deaths, including that of Pc Keith Palmer, who bravely and selflessly defended our democracy and the many thousands of people who call Parliament their workplace, including myself and my team.
The gratitude towards our emergency services, from the police to NHS staff, could never be expressed enough, for their duty of running towards the danger whilst telling everyone else to go the opposite way, and of course to my parliamentary colleague, Tobias Ellwood, MP, who did all he could to save the life of Pc Keith Palmer, as did Tony Davis, the local boxing coach from Low Fell, who is now living in Darlington, who was one of the first on the scene, again running into possible danger to help.
Many words of reassurance have been said since last Wednesday, and in the days and weeks ahead, our emotions will run high and people will be understandably anxious about what this all means. I want to echo the words of many others, and say: we must never let terror win.
It will be hard, but we must continue with life as normal. Not as a way to forget what has happened, but as a display of defiance against such evil acts. We must maintain our resolve to uphold our freedoms and not give in to those who wish to destroy our way of life.
That is why the day after the attack took place, myself and my team were back to work early that morning doing the jobs that we were there to do and standing strong against the adversity of the day before.
And in the days following, I continued to meet with constituents and honoured all appointments in my diary, prepared for speeches in the Chamber for this week on various topics, from rare genetic diseases to local HIV services, and responded to constituent’s correspondence – as I do every day.
Primarily our thoughts must be with those affected by this horrific attack, especially Pc Keith Palmer’s family. But we must continue on as we always do; because not doing so, will let the terrorists win and we can never let that happen.