It has been such a pleasure to get back to my constituency this week and focus on two crucial local matters; preserving and improving train links and delivering better local healthcare services.

I headed first to Swindon to meet the managing director of First Great Western, which has the local train franchise, where we discussed how to secure funding so that the Great Bedwyn electrification could begin in 2016, reviewed current service patterns for Bedwyn and Pewsey and identified infrastructure improvement needed at the stations.

The FGW team made it quite clear that they see the need to maintain good train services locally – and this is based on sound business sense given the large and growing passenger numbers from both stations. Given that their operating period is now likely to last until late 2015, we can expect current services to broadly continue – although tweaks can always be made – for example in the meeting we asked about reducing the connection delay at Newbury for Bedwyn passengers taking the 7.56am and we were assured that this would be considered. We also discussed once again the whole issue of car parking at Bedwyn as well as the need for ticket machines, better platform access and bike parking, and I am planning to hold a forum with Wiltshire Council, local residents, passenger and transport groups and others to sort out an action plan.

I then headed back to Devizes to meet the GP-led commissioning group responsible for local healthcare services where I was joined by councillors Sue and Peter Evans. We discussed the recent problems with 111 services and reviewed their progress in analysing neighborhood health needs, including minor injuries services and the need for a Devizes primary care centre. As promised, I will arrange my annual public healthcare meetings across the constituency and look forward to discussing developments at these.

Finally, thanks to all who have expressed support for the great progress we are making in improving online child protection, as well as dismay over my “Twitter trolls”. I find the level of abuse online very disturbing and, of course, in the offline world, sending these sorts of communications is a malicious act that falls foul of the law.

While we try to get the communications platforms to do more to improve facilities for reporting and stopping online abuse, I take comfort in imagining online assailants as the neon-haired, troll dolls we impaled on pencils at school. They exhibit about the same level of intelligence.