Speaker Dr Kieran Mullan MP

Dr Kieran Mullan MP visits Bexhill Rotary Club

This week we were happy to welcome our local MP Dr Kieran Mullan along to our meeting at the Cooden Beach Hotel. We were fortunate to be able to keep our date with Dr Mullan as his busy schedule could easily disrupted his plans.

We first met with Dr Kieran Mullan when he visited our stall at the Bexhill Christmas Tree Lights on event in December last year, it was there that he agreed to make a visit to our club and it was a pleasure to welcome him along.

Kieran had agreed to talk basically about his career and how he became to be our MP. Born in Birmingham, to a family with parents in the Police and Nursing, Kieran became very familiar with the concept of service being a part of work and dealing with other peoples problems as just part of life.

So Kieran decided to train in medicine and become a doctor. During his medical training he began to be aware that just fixing one medical problem doesn't solve the root issues surrounding ill health. He gave specific examples of how this lesson repeated itself throughout his medical training.

On completing training, Kieran had the opportunity to join The Patients Association charity www.patientsassociation.org.uk and be part of the campaign for setting Quality of Care standards in the NHS, at that time there was a huge political emphasis on reducing waiting lists and many patients and families found difficult experiences with the NHS.

From this involvement with campaigning Kieran felt that he wanted a political career and sought to enter parliament as a Conservative MP. After failing in 2015 and 2017 general elections he was successful in winning the Crew and Nantwich seat in 2019. His experience in parliament was shaped by the Covid epidemic, with Parliament locked out, a lot of the debates and voting took place over virtual meeting platforms. During this time Kieran responded to the call for qualified medical staff to come back and help the NHS through this crisis.

At the 2024 general election Kieran found his seat had been reorganized by the Boundaries Commission so he was obliged to find a new location and he was selected as Conservative candidate for Bexhill & Battle constituency after the resignation of our previous MP Hugh Merriman. He was successful with a small 3000 vote majority.

Since becoming MP for our area Kieran has given a lot of time learning and meeting with the organizations and people who are involved with the development and issues we face in our area. We face an enormous change in our local government arrangements with the advent of the Sussex unitary authority and the disbandment of the East Sussex county and the Rother district. Keiran is already talking collectively with the Parish Council leaders of the area to campaign for more local powers to deal with the issues arising that would not be resolved quickly by the new unitary authority.

Kieran is also involved with the Leveling Up “Town Board”, discussing water pollution issues with Ofwat and our water suppliers and campaigning for exploiting Deep Geo-thermal resources that exist in our region.

Throughout his talk and the following questions Kieran showed a clear grasp of his new domain and its people, with a population of 70,000 or so voters and each voter having several personal issues, Kieran recognizes that not all problems can be resolved, but as a back bench opposition member he has time to listen and help.

Rotary is not a political organization, we respect the fact that everyone is entitled to their own views, but we were happy to thank Kieran for his talk and response to questions and wish him every success in his role as our MP.