IT was to Birmingham this week for the Conservative Party Conference and once again I was struck by the amount and quality of regeneration going on in Britain’s second city. The huge and iconic New Street station is almost complete and is a brilliant building (sadly once a train geek always a train geek and it was my first port of call) and all around the conference centre new buildings and housing are going up at a dizzying speed.

The sense of confidence in the city is palpable and will be boosted by the Midlands Engine devolution deal that was announced this week. The conference was hugely well-attended and featured the new PM and Chancellor demonstrating once again that their sober and calm judgement is exactly what is needed to lead the country as we enter into the real detail of Brexit negotiations.

Of course the timing and detail of this process were top of the agenda but there were other important announcements to celebrate including welcome new measures to control immigration; funding to bump up by 25 per cent the number of government funding medical training places in England and new measures that mean that students who receive NHS funding for their training will now be expected to work in the NHS for a minimum of four years. This is a fair call given that it costs almost £250,000 to train a doctor using our taxpayer-funded NHS and that in other professions, such as the armed forces, graduates whose higher education was largely funded by tax payers have to commit to staying in the service for a period afterwards.

For our local and national armed forces I was delighted to hear that the government will put an end to the vexatious and damaging legal claims that arise from applying European Human Rights judgements to conduct in the battlefield.

It is scandalous that soldiers have been subjected to vexatious legal claims second guessing their judgement and that, since 2004, the MoD has spent more than £100 million on Iraq-related investigations, inquiries and compensation – money that should be spent on our troops not lawyers.

I also welcomed the extension of the Forces’ Help to Buy scheme that helps military personnel get onto the property ladder by enabling them to borrow a deposit of up to half of their annual salary, which was due to end in April 2017 but, with 20 per cent of service personnel considering using the scheme, we are extending it by a year to allow more personnel to benefit.

For more detail on all the conference announcements please do visit my website at claireperry.org.uk.