Here's the latest Argus column by Newport East MS John Griffiths:

I WANT to start by congratulating Fatma Nur Aksoy who was last week elected as the new Welsh Youth Parliament member for Newport East.

I was pleased to be invited by Fatma and her family to a small celebration event at the Riverfront to mark this achievement.

From chatting to her I know she will be an excellent advocate for young people in our constituency. Whether it be on issues such as the environment, health or community cohesion, I know these are all issues she is very committed to and I look forward to supporting her in this work.

This is the second session of the youth parliament after it was established in 2018. Fatma, is a year 11 student at St Julians and takes over from Charley Oliver-Holland, who also did a great job and was our first ever representative for the area.

The creation of the youth parliament is an initiative that I have always been very supportive of. Because we hold joint sessions in the Senedd, it gives our young people a real voice and a proper mechanism to create change across Wales.

I said at my own election back in May that I wanted our young people to have the ability to shape and inform the national debate in Wales - I am proud that our youth parliament does this.

Moving on, I just want to give a quick update on the situation around Covid-19. In the last two weeks we have had the emergence of the Omicron variant which was recently found in South Africa and has quickly spread to other parts of the world, including here in the UK.

The drive now is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible with their booster jabs. At the time of writing this 874,483 people have had their booster dose – and the programme is being expanded to all 18 to 39-year-olds across Wales, in line with the most up to date JCVI advice.

As our scientists and health professionals have said, the more people we get vaccinated now, the greater chance we have in minimising the impact of this new variant.

If you have any questions about the booster rollout, please don’t hesitate to contact me and my team, either on e-mail at john.griffiths@senedd.wales or call 01633 222302.

Finally I just want to end by saying well done to Councillor Gavin Horton on being elected in the Victoria by-election last Thursday. He ran an excellent campaign and the result with more than 60 per cent of the vote is a strong reflection of all that work.