On the final day before Summer Recess, Laura spoke in the annual Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment Debate to highlight some of her constituency campaigns.
Laura thanked Oxfordshire County Council, West Berkshire Council and Thames Travel for their assistance with her successful campaign for a new bus route connecting Newbury, Harwell and Didcot, which she raised in this debate two years ago. And took the opportunity to raise her next infrastructure campaign, a bridge over the level crossing, or at least some part of the adjacent railway line, in Thatcham.
Laura also mentioned her campaign to reduce the time children spend on the waiting list for autism and ADHD diagnoses to a 12 month maximum wait. Referring to recent meeting with the Chief Executive of Berkshire Healthcare Trust, Laura said:
"In 2021, the Berkshire West CAMHS service received an additional £1.6 million to reduce the waiting times. As a result of that, they were able over time to recruit 27 more healthcare professionals. They set themselves a firm target of seeing all children seeking an autism diagnosis in two years by March of this year, and they're currently 96% of the way to meeting it. They only have a handful of cases that are longer than that. However, they tell me in the most recent phone call I've had that the 12-month target remains a challenge because of a 84% increase in the number of children who are being referred for autism diagnoses...
But their present approach is to triage the children with the highest needs so that they don't wait any longer than a year but I am determined to drive down overall waiting times to one year for all of those families and I will be continuing my campaign and looking for assistance from ministers as to how we can we can achieve that."
Laura ended her speech by raising the performance of Thames Water on water quality. She spoke about her letter to Ofwat on 25 May, in which she suggested that "if any water company is fined for illegal discharges, it should be mandated that it does not pay bonuses to senior managers or dividends to shareholders, just as for example, bankers would lose their bonus for breaking the law."
