Nicola Martin
Nicola re-joined the Evangelical Alliance in August 2021 as the Westminster public policy officer. She previously interned in the Scottish office in 2018 before spending a couple of years working within Scottish politics and for a faith-based homelessness charity. Being a Glasgow girl, Nicola is adjusting to life south of the border and enjoys spending her time exploring new places, taking lots of photographs and meeting new people.
Briefing: Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill
22 July 2022The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, first introduced to parliament in May, is the government’s attempt to convert plans set out in the levelling up white paper into legislation. The bill was created with the purpose of “driving local growth, empowering local leaders to regenerate their areas, and ensuring everyone can share in the United Kingdom’s success”, according to the Queen’s speech. The bill was given its first reading in the House of Commons on 11 May 2022, its second reading took…
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The hidden persecution of Christian women and girls
31 May 2022Recently, Open Doors published a parliamentary report exploring the impact that gender has on the persecution of Christians across the world. The report noted that Christian women and girls experience a greater breadth of persecution than their male counterparts because the persecution that they face is based on both their faith and their gender.
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Misogyny in the spotlight: how can Christians respond?
28 April 2022Since Sunday it has been encouraging to see the cross-party condemnation of the news article about Angela Rayner, including from the prime minister himself. However, the issue goes much deeper than this one incident. At the heart of the problem is the way that media outlets all too often portray women in a problematic way and too many read these portrayals without question. Newspapers and magazines are full of remarks about the bodies of women in roles of public leadership. Women’s bodies are…
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VAWG series: Will the church be change-makers?
29 March 2022For those suffering abuse at the hands of their partner or ex-partner, accessing support is very rarely easy. For many, the struggle in getting support is not because there is none available to them, but because abusive relationships are complex and often hard to leave. Women suffering abuse for varying reasons can find it very difficult to speak out. But for some, the struggle lies in the fact that there is very little support available to them through the usual routes. In particular, women…
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7 crucial "levelling up missions" the church needs to know about
23 February 2022At the beginning of February, the UK government published their 332-page white paper on levelling up, detailing the regional inequalities that exist throughout the UK and the policies that they are putting in place in attempt to eradicate these. The main feature of the paper is 12 missions, crossing different policy areas, which are set to be fulfilled by 2030. This briefing has been written with the intention of helping our members to understand these missions and the policy programmes…
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Why should Christians care about the government's plan to "Level Up"?
7 February 2022At its core, levelling up is intended to be a solution to the prominent problem of regional inequality. The Office for National Statistics found that in 2018, household income in the east of England was about five per cent higher than the UK average, and productivity was about five per cent lower. Meanwhile, the opposite was true in the north-west and north-east of England where productivity was higher than income. Now with the added challenge of pandemic recovery, the task of levelling up the…
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How we can support Christians in Afghanistan, where faith is costliest?
26 January 2022Last week Open Doors published their annual report of the top 50 countries where Christians experience persecution based on their faith. As a country where religious freedom is virtually non-existent, North Korea has sat at the top of the World Watch List for the past 20 years. However, following the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan in August of last year, and the subsequent takeover of the Taliban within the country, Afghanistan is now considered to be an even more deadly country…
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Briefing: Nationality and Borders Bill
25 October 2021There has been no better time for policymakers to examine our asylum system and to implement much-needed changes that uphold the dignity of those in need of refuge. Perhaps then it should be celebrated that there is a bill currently going through parliament which, in the words of our home secretary, will “fix this broken system”? But, the Nationality and Borders Bill appears to do quite the opposite – with the potential for asylum seekers to be discriminated against and put in further danger.
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