This will have a two-pronged effect in keeping young people safe but also acting as a deterrent to those who callously target children." "The Supply of Drugs to Children Under 16 (Aggravated Offence) Bill, or ‘Leah’s Law’, intends to change the law to make clear that any person under the age of 16 cannot consent to taking illegal substances. Mr Hollinrake told this newsletter: "We have a special duty to protect children and to ensure those who bring them harm, feel the full force of the law. Now three years on, Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake will this afternoon propose a new law which would make selling drugs to under-16s a different offence, carrying a longer jail term. The drugs were supplied by Connor Kirkwood, then 17, from Dishforth, and handed to her by another boy, Mitchell Southern, who were later jailed. The family of 15-year-old Leah Heyes saw their world fall apart in May 2019 when she died after taking the Class A drug MDMA with a group of friends in a car park in Northallerton, North Yorkshire. Leah Heyes's mother Kerry Roberts is trying to change the law to make it a specific criminal offence to supply drugs to children under 16 (Image: Kerry Roberts) He told the Commons yesterday : "It is an absolute tinderbox up there at the moment." Ben McCarthy of the National Trust pointed to a fire on Marsden Moor in West Yorkshire in 2019, "when we surveyed the site after the flames had been extinguished, we saw lots of burnt-out reptiles and amphibians, burnt-out nests.”Īnd Colne Valley MP Jason McCartney called for more awareness raising about barbecues and fires on moorland being illegal. Out in the rural parts of the region, experts are worried about the possibility of major wildfires tearing through the countryside. And bin workers in the East Riding of Yorkshire started work an hour early as one claimed they were not being supported. In Middlesbrough, transport organised by the council to get children with special educational needs and disabilities to school was cancelled in the heat. Grant Shapps spoke to BBC Breakfast about the heatwave (Image: Lisa Walsh)Īnd he told BBC Breakfast: “We’ve seen a considerable amount of travel disruption, we’re probably going to see the hottest day ever in the UK recorded today and infrastructure, much of it built in Victorian times, just wasn’t built to withstand this type of temperature – and it will be many years before we can replace infrastructure with the kind of infrastructure that could, because the temperatures are so extreme.”Īnyone heading out with young children would be well-advised to avoid playgrounds, as BBC pictures show the temperature on a children’s slide in Manchester reaching almost 72C or 161F in the sun, while the surface paving under nearby swings reaches 56.6C or almost 134F. In Greater Manchester services on Bury Metrolink were suspended due to the heatwave and roads in Stockport turned to sticky black goo.Īsked this morning if the transport system can cope with the weather, senior Tory Mr Shapps said: “The simple answer at the moment is no." He urged people to “apply common sense” if they were planning to go out. In the North East, Metro operators Nexus revealed that overhead wires had sagged due to the high temperatures yesterday, meaning services were suspended between South Gosforth and Tynemouth. In Emley Moor, near Huddersfield, temperatures dipped only as low as 25.9C, compared with the previous minimum of 23.9C in 1990.Īnd with day two of the heatwave set to see the mercury rise up to 40C and even past it in parts of our region, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps conceded the UK’s transport network cannot cope with the extreme heat. If (like your Northern Agenda author) you're feeling a bit groggy this lunchtime due to lack of sleep, you won't be surprised to know that last night was the warmest ever recorded by the Met Office. You can receive the Northern Agenda newsletter direct to your inbox every week day by signing up right here. Keep up to date with all the big politics stories in the North with the daily Northern Agenda newsletter.
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