With great reluctance I recently stepped down from my posts as a governor of St John’s Academy in Marlborough and the Wellington Academy in Tidworth.

Although I loved every moment of my involvement, particularly as the staff and governors steered the schools through the Academy process, I no longer felt that I could add value in the role with the pressure piling onto my diary before the election.

However, as I wrote last week, my passion for education is in no way diminished and it was heartening this week to visit Zouch Primary school in Tidworth and hear from Julie Tridgell, the new headteacher, about the abundance of improvements and plans for the future.

Like many schools locally, Zouch has many children from military families which can bring challenges, like rapid turnover of pupils as families move to new postings, or support needed for children whose parents are serving overseas. One of the first things I did when I was elected was to successfully campaign to get an additional pupil premium reserved for children of military families to bring more money to these schools. During my visit, we discussed how to link the school more closely to the engineering excellence of the REME regiments in Tidworth.

And the topic of superb British engineering cropped up again this week – this time in a freezing cold and windswept plaza outside the O2 Arena. Along with Vince Cable I officially launched four trials across Britain of new driverless vehicle technology.

The government has invested almost £20 million into these trials and is working with local authorities, car manufacturers, technology companies and the insurance industry to see both what works on British roads and, crucially, how this technology can be rolled out safely.

I was able to see the range of vehicles and technology that is being used and was delighted that much of it is British-made. The idea of driverless vehicles can sound a bit like sci-fi pie in the sky but the technology has the potential to transform road safety, as more than 90 per cent of accidents are down to human error, improve public transport, make road usage much more efficient and create thousands of skilled jobs in the UK automotive sector.

With every major car company investing in this area, I was proud to deliver the message that Britain is open for the driverless vehicle business.