It has been very busy in parliament over the last two weeks with some progress on issues I have been able to raise about Furness.

First of all I was pleased that the health secretary has launched a new plan to cut the number of child deaths in our hospitals, an issue we are sadly all too familiar with here in Furness.

He specifically mentioned Furness campaigners as important in persuading the government to act on this issue and backed my calls for recognition of these brave Furness families within the brand new maternity unit at Furness General Hospital. Staff have done so well in turning things around and I am excited that the community will soon be able to come together to celebrate the new unit.

I was also able to raise the ongoing uncertainty over the future of GSK at Ulverston with the business secretary as he launched the government’s new industrial strategy. Life sciences is supposed to be a key sector for the government so they should make protecting this world class biopharmaceutical site an absolute priority. The minister has agreed to meet with the taskforce that I set up immediately after the GSK announcement and I hope he will agree to lend government support to the work of the taskforce so we can secure the long term future of the plant.

One of the immediate steps they could take to help would be to fast-track improvements to the Furness line which is in a terrible state and is causing misery to passengers and holding the economy back. I raised this issue with the transport secretary yesterday after he completely omitted Cumbria from his new rail strategy. I will keep pushing for action alongside other Cumbrian MPs and other local stakeholders.

As I write this column I am preparing for a debate and a vote on the pension injustice inflicted by this government on hundreds of Furness women born in the 1950s. Local WASPI women have been campaigning hard on this issue and have been disgracefully ignored by the government. If the government continue to ignore parliament and fail to vote on this issue then it will be a further insult to the many thousands of women across Britain who have been robbed of the pension they have worked hard for.

The chancellor failed to mention the WASPI issue in his meagre budget last week and I raised the issue in my own speech in the debate. The budget as a whole was a huge disappointment for Furness. There was nothing to deal with the squeeze families are feeling in their finances due to rising prices in the shops, nothing for schools, and nothing for our infrastructure here in Cumbria that is in urgent need of investment. Worryingly there was also not a single word about defence, despite the warnings about the crunch in the equipment budget and the way our military is being starved of cash.

The relatively modest injection of cash for the NHS was trumpeted as a solution to the winter crisis when it was a fraction of what NHS bosses said they needed and will not even be able to be spent before the cold snap hits our hospitals. Talking about this budget as if it is transformative when it is nothing of the kind will only increase public distrust in the political process. We need genuine ambition and new ideas, but this government have shown they can offer neither.

Finally, I am looking forward to our meeting in Ulverston this evening to take stock of the damage Furness took in last week’s flooding and how agencies were able to respond. Although Furness largely escaped the worst of the havoc inflicted elsewhere in the county, our vulnerability to being cut off was again shown when the Furness line went down and a crash blocked the A590.

We need more support to mitigate what can be disastrous, tragic consequences of our transport arteries being severed. Tonight will be a good chance for people to come along and have their say on that and here from the experts who have worked so hard to get things back on track.