LAST week the first House of Commons session of the Labour government came to an end when Parliament was prorogued.

Prorogation is a strange event. Men in tights and black gloves, speaking in Norman French, carry sticks between the Houses of Lords and Commons. And some in London think us Cornish are a bit odd! But the ceremony marked the end of one of the busiest Parliamentary sessions for a generation.

Over 50 Bills passed, way too many to list here, so I’ll just pick out my top six. Firstly, the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act. This will see all the private rail companies pass back into public ownership in an orderly transition. Rail is yet another example of failed privatisation and the government is putting an end to it. For us, we’re expecting GWR to come back into public ownership later this year.

Next was the Great British Energy Act which brought to life a publicly owned energy company that is already in the process of transforming the UK’s renewable energy sector and ensuring that we break our reliance on fossil fuels, as we transition to a cleaner, greener, cheaper future.

Next up was the Renters Rights Act which brings to an end the nasty Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions that many in Camborne, Redruth and Hayle have suffered. It also includes giving renters more rights over keeping pets and requires landlords to give at least four months notice to end a tenancy. Perhaps my favourite was the Removal of Two Child Limit Act, which is expected to lift 450,000 children out of poverty, including over 10,000 Cornish children. The cap brought in by the Conservatives was a total failure.

The analysis shows quite categorically that it did not limit the number of children in a household. All it did was penalise children born into larger families through no fault of their own. Many poverty organisations have been saying for years that removing the cap would be the single most significant poverty-lifting act and this Labour Government has done it.

Then there was the Employment Rights Act which banned unwanted zero-hours contracts to give working families more stability, changed the qualifying period for unfair dismissal and scrapped ‘fire and rehire’ practices. Finally, there’s the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act.

Free breakfast clubs in every school, free school meals to 500,000 more children, the cost of school uniforms capped, stronger protections for teacher pay, and the biggest piece of child protection legislation in a generation, protecting all children including those in care and care-leavers too. And it should never be forgotten that both the Conservatives and Reform tried to wreck this Bill in the House of Commons.

So that’s six of the best but there were dozens more, although you may have been forgiven for missing them thanks to a hopelessly biased national media. Thankfully our local media is much more balanced. So onwards to the next Parliamentary session which begins on May 13. The work of transforming the country has only just begun.