I began my day meeting with Simon Letchford, the new acting Borough Commander for the Metropolitan Police in Newham. We had a useful conversation about how we can strive to make Newham a safer place by tackling anti-social behaviour.

Afterwards, I travelled to the Docklands Campus of the University of East London where I was joined by Cllr Revd Quintin Peppiat and Acting Vice Chancellor Professor Susan Price to open their new Children’s Garden, an early years centre which is based there. I am told that the Children’s Garden at UEL has one of the best Ofsted ratings of any nursery in London and last year it was rated as outstanding so congratulations must be passed to all of those who work there! The garden itself was created with the help of students from UEL’s Architecture programmes and will be a great addition to the nursery!

I then met with representatives from the Global Poverty Project – an organisation borne out of the 8 Millennium Development Goals. We discussed how we can continue in our efforts to help end extreme poverty. The Global Poverty Project have made a 90 minute feature slideshow which communicates the challenges and extreme poverty as well as challenging the viewer to think about how this issue can be tackled. One thing is clear - as a developed nation we must continue to help those much less fortunate than ourselves.

Later that day I visited Avenue Primary School in Manor Park where I met with some of the pupils and staff and was given a tour of their new school building. I ended the day by traveling to Norwich where I attended an event to talk about the relationship between Christian faith and politics.