I want to wish family, friends, neighbours, constituents and our entire community in St Helens North a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – Nollaig Shona agus Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Duit.

I hope, like me, you are able to spend some time with loved ones enjoying each other’s company and this special time of year.

Thank you to those working and volunteering over the festive period, particularly in our hospitals and vaccination centres at this difficult time. We are hugely grateful for everything you are doing.

Throughout the last year, local people came together again in a spirit of kindness, generosity and solidarity that sums up our community so brilliantly.

In the Christmas card he sent to me, our good family friend Michael McCreesh quoted from Tennyson’s The Foresters: “Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.’”

Take care of yourselves and each other as we all look forward to better days ahead.