At least half the people in North Wiltshire live in towns – roughly 12,000 each in Calne and Royal Wootton Bassett, 4,000 each in Purton and Cricklade, 4,500 in Malmesbury and 3,500 in Box. This makes a total of about 40,000 or so in the main towns in my constituency, and a similar number in villages and the countryside.

Yet the landscape and rural way of life is of great importance. We live here because we like the semi-rural, market town, villagey sort of atmosphere. If we wanted to live in Swindon or Bristol or Reading we could easily do so. For that reason, I have always thought it one of my duties to try to keep this area as pleasant a place to live in for the future as it has been in the past. Life must move on, however, we must keep the local economy as vibrant as it is, and provide decent homes for local people.

Planning plays an important part in this. In the absence of the Core Strategy, opportunistic developers are rushing forward with applications which would otherwise be unacceptable in the hope of squeezing them through before the new regime (and relying on the Planning Inspector’s view that we need 5,000 more houses in Wiltshire than the council were proposing).

We must remain vigilant in opposition to them (as I was with those seeking a Tesco and 350 houses outside Royal Wootton Bassett when I saw them last week). Solar farms are springing up all over the place too, which both makes the landscape look urban/suburban and diverts fields away from food production which should be their real function. I strenuously oppose those which would affect others’ lives (like the one at Foxham recently withdrawn in the face of local opposition), and am hesitant about all of them.

Farmers are the guardians of our landscape, and must be thanked and respected for the work which they do. Things have been a little better economically; but this year and last have brought huge weather challenges, the consequences of which will be felt in farming for years to come. Who will forget the despair in a farmer’s face as he looks at his 50-acre field of winter wheat flooded and ruined?

This week I was glad to go out to visit a team of Scouts learning hedgelaying near Chippenham under the guidance of The Conservation Volunteers.

The week was topped off with a visit to the Cricklade WI, where we had a candle-lit meeting owing to a power cut and a very pleasant meet of the Avon Vale Hunt.