What a day! A privilege, if a little surreal, to give my maiden speech in the House of Lords yesterday, with my family watching on. Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way.

Off to meet and hopefully recruit some prisoners today at HMP Stoke Heath.

All dogs who come to our office are now given the official job title of “director of entertainment”. Last week we averaged 6 dogs a day, and while they can’t answer the phones and do the accounts, they do add to our culture of fun and kindness.

Update on our recruitment so far this year. We are now up to 12% of our new starters joining us from prison. Thanks to all our area teams for your support, and for giving so many great colleagues a second chance.

Many thanks to our brilliant barbershop colleagues Aaron and Lake for helping with a charity head shave day for the Tickled Pink Campaign that supports breast cancer awareness.

This is Janet, our Director of Happiness. Every company should have this role if they can, focussing on helping colleagues overcome problems, and ensuring all the benefits we have are best in class. By focussing on happy colleagues, we hope we get happy customers!

This may look like a photo of a “normal” conference. It was far from it…the room was full of business and prison leaders working to get more ex offenders into work. With over 90 Employment Advisory Boards in place we’re on the way to getting a third of prison leavers in to work.

18 months ago I set up the 1st prison Employment Advisory Board (EAB).Now all 92 release prisons in England and Wales have EAB’s,led by inspirational Chairs who help develop long term cultures of employment in the system,and get people jobs on release. Thanks for believing in me!