Author Archives: Roger Williams MP

Roger Williams MP writes…Protecting children from second-hand smoke

By Roger Williams MP | Thu 21st November 2013 - 12:59 pm

Too many children in the UK are still being regularly exposed to high concentrations of second-hand smoke in cars. This exposure can have detrimental effects on children’s health due to their smaller lungs and less developed immune systems. The Royal College of Physicians published a report collating all available evidence on second-hand smoke to show how it affects children’s health. They found that there were 300,000 GP visits by children every year, there were 165,000 new episodes of disease and 9,500 admissions to hospital every year in the UK because of passive smoke.

In 2007, legislation to ban smoking in public …

Time for urgent action to reverse bee decline

By Roger Williams MP | Wed 26th June 2013 - 4:48 pm

The ‘minister for bees’ must announce an urgent plan to save Britain’s most precious pollinating insects

Bees are in decline. 47 of our wild bumble and solitary bees are listed as threatened, we’ve lost some bee species already and according to the British Beekeepers’ Association, last winter was the worst on record for the loss of honey bee colonies, with more than one-third not surviving hibernation.

Their decline is worrying – especially the wild varieties that don’t live in managed hives – they are one of our most valuable pollinating insects. Scientists at the University of Reading recently estimated that were …

Posted in News | Tagged agriculture and bees | 8 Comments

Roger Williams MP writes…Why I’m backing Tim Yeo’s Energy Bill amendments – and urging my colleagues to join me

By Roger Williams MP | Thu 21st March 2013 - 5:12 pm

It’s hard to believe, but more than a year has passed since Ed Davey stepped into Chris Huhne’s shoes at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Ed has spent much of that time fighting George Osborne and the Treasury to ensure that the Energy Bill – a once-in-a-generation opportunity to direct £110bn of investment towards a clean energy future – achieves its stated aims: cut carbon, secure our electricity supply, and rein in household fuel bills.

These are the aims of Liberal Democrats everywhere, and credit must be given to Ed for the vigour with he has pursued

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged ed davey and energy bill | 11 Comments

Roger Williams MP on World Environment Day

By Roger Williams MP | Fri 5th June 2009 - 7:25 pm

This years World Environment Day should provide the perfect launching pad for the Liberal Democrat’s vision for a sustainable and environmentally sound future. For a party like the Liberal Democrats who profess that there is a green thread running through all of its policies. World Environment Day 2009 and its theme of Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change should be used as a medium through which worldwide awareness of the environment should be stimulated and political attention should be re-focused on the issue of the environment.

Climate Change is the great challenge facing the whole of the humankind. People need leadership to guide them into a sustainable future. Human nature often means that people focus on the short term and disregard what sacrifices need to be made for the long term. For instance people who in principal are all for conservation and support the fight against Climate Change, when faced with every day decisions such as the use of plastic bags and recycling choose the easiest and most convenient option. We need to make and enforce those hard decisions for them.

The Liberal Democrat Party has been at the forefront of the fight against Climate Change with Nick Clegg proposing the Green road out of recession in December.

That put forward such initiatives as a five year programme to insulate every school and hospital, funding insulation and energy efficiency for a million homes, with a £1,000 subsidy for a million more and building 40,000 extra zero-carbon social houses