SOMETIMES you can be too clever for your own good. After a vote in the House of Commons last Tuesday, I took a short-cut from the Chamber towards my office via a little-known staircase which leads from the Prime Minister’s Office to Speaker’s Court down below. I was probably trespassing, and it’s a route I had not used before and must have been unfamiliar with the carpeted staircase.

Towards the bottom, I found myself on the floor with a leg at an awkward angle. There was no-one around (thankfully not even the PM), so I hauled myself to my feet, stepped outside the heavy oak door, and promptly fell over again, my knee giving out beneath me. The doorkeepers and police helped enormously, and Eventually I got my wheelchair laden self back to Wiltshire, thence to RUH in Bath, where the fantastic surgeons successfully operated on my ruptured ligaments. Serves me jolly well right.

Anyhow, it means that I am currently in a leg brace and hobbling around on crutches for 6-8 weeks whilst I recuperate. Luckily, I have a fully functioning office at my home in Wiltshire, so I will be keeping up to date with emails and so on, and will be heading up to Parliament if I possibly can for all the main debates and votes. And my brilliant staff will be just as busy as usual and So any false news that this was actually a clever ploy by the Whips to keep me away from the voting lobbies are fanciful. The whips are actually the most helpful of HR experts, and not usually the ogres they are sometimes portrayed as. I should be fully back in order by Christmas, so please forgive me in the meanwhile if I am less ‘around’ than I normally am.

I have had a flurry of letters in the last few days praising the NHS to the rafters, and asking me to suggest to the Chancellor that he should increase taxes in the Budget to pay for it. I totally agree that the NHS is the most wonderful of organisations. Truly the jewel in the British Crown, and providing some of the very best healthcare in the world free of charge to all. We are incredibly lucky locally with RUH, GWH, and first-class GPs like my own Dr Popli in Yatton Keynell. The NHS must be funded properly, and I will be speaking from experience over the next few weeks.

Yet I have some doubts about whether or not a first-class NHS can necessarily be best achieved simply by raising taxes. By how much, I wonder? And who is to pay them? This year only, or more and more taxation with every year to come? I am sure that we would all say, ‘a few hundred a year extra would be worth it.’ But why do we think that would be the right figure? The NHS must be properly funded and run, but I am just not convinced that a tokenistic tax increase, which might make us all feel better in ourselves, would necessarily be the magic wand which some people seem to think it would be.

So as I give myself over to the (highly capable) NHS in RUH, you can be certain that I will fight every corner in Government for it. And for now, I crave your forgiveness if I am less active in Parliament or around North Wiltshire than usual.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.