I was honoured to speak at the Dekoloniale Berlin Africa Conference last Friday, a decolonial counter-version of the 1884/5 Berlin Africa Conference. 140 years after European nations carved up Africa, we came together to call on European leaders to make reparations. We reflected on the violence inflicted on the continent and global diaspora by decisions made at this conference and the wholesale programme of reparative justice needed to address their lasting damage. A key starting point for reparations is for former colonial powers to have an honest reckoning with their history. Events like these are an important corrective.

Every year Equal Pay Day marks the day when women stop earning relative to men. This year, it came two days earlier than in 2023: a sign that the annual gender pay gap has increased for the first time since 2014. With the gender pay gap widening in the last year, the government must keep working to ensure women are paid the same as men for the same work. I’m glad that the government is taking steps to close the gender pay gap through the Employment Rights Bill: strengthening flexible working rights, banning exploitative zero hours contracts, giving employees day one rights at work, extending redundancy and unfair dismissal protections.

The Passenger Rail Services (Public Ownership) Bill cleared its final stage in Parliament this week. I was pleased to support this legislation, which is a crucial step towards taking our railways back into public hands and ending the rip off of privatisation. Once the act receives Royal Assent, it will mean that train operating companies can be taken back into public ownership when existing franchises expire. This will enable the government to ensure more of the money we spend on train travel is recycled back into the system we all rely on to improve services and keep fares down.

On Monday, I attended the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists report launch on the shocking scale of waiting lists in gynaecology. In the UK more than 750,000 women are currently on an NHS waiting list for gynaecology services, with 600,000 in England alone. If all the women waiting stood shoulder to shoulder, the line would stretch from London to Exeter.

I met with the Or Foundation, a US-Ghanaian organisation based out of Accra, to hear about their important work combating waste colonialism. The UK is the largest exporter of used clothes to Ghana and a large number of the garments that we ship are ultimately unsaleable. Ghana’s limited waste infrastructure means that these cast-offs are becoming an environmental hazard, piling up on beaches and ending up in Ghanaian waters, affecting marine life and the health of the oceans. The driving cause of this issue is fast fashion: the overproduction of poorly made, plastic containing garments.