Parliament may have finished last Tuesday – but that doesn’t mean MPs stop working. No danger of that. But it is certainly true that the last two days of the Parliamentary session had an end of term feel about them – for some of us, it has been a long-hard slog of, first, campaigning, then a General Election Campaign which is of a whole different magnitude, and then straight into the deep end of being an MP. That’s not a complaint – just an example of how for the last 12 months, life has been one long campaign.

The last Monday of Parliament may have had an end-of-term feel, but for the Transport Select Committee which I sit on, it was also our ‘opening’ session where we had the chance to cross-examine our new Secretary of State for Transport Philip Hammond. These ‘grillings’ are a good chance to try to understand how the minister is considering issues covering his entire department. Even in the two hours we had him for, we could barely skim the surface. Our chairman, Liverpool MP Louise Ellman, takes the lead in the questioning, and if one of the Committee members wants to leap in, we have to catch her eye. Louise did a good job of keeping everything moving along, and giving everyone a chance to have their say.

I focused my interventions on putting down markers for a continued policy debate. In particular, I wanted to consider how best to improve job prospects in the Northern economy by improving transport. So I asked about some of the policy work that had been done, and I also asked about which section of the High Speed Rail line he considered most ‘transformative’ in economic terms. Logically, this is the section that will run north of Birmingham, yet it is also the section that won’t be built till last. I also put a marker down about the funding of the concessionary bus grant, asking whether he thought the current system was working adequately. His reply that the Government are switching from lower-tier to upper-tier authorities as the prime funders is a welcome step, but we still need to address a fairer funding mechanism that reflects the needs towns which have a high visitor influx. I also asked about the future of Trust Ports – a question for which the shipping newspaper Lloyd’s List named me their ‘parliamentary hero of the day’. I’m not quite sure either the question or the response merited such an accolade!

I also managed to appear in Alasdair Stewart’s blog, unwittingly, when he saw me in ITV’s studios:

“Inside I meet Paul Maynard, the new Tory MP for Blackpool North. They make a wonderful, tooth-cracking confection there but he was on hand for the Granada show not mine. He has cerebral palsy and I am a patron of Scope, the relevant charity. I quietly thrill to the fact that this brave and able man not only won Blackpool N but brings the experience and potential of triumph of CP into the House. I hope he thrives and trust DC sees the merit of making my hope a reality.” (http://blog.itv.com/news/author/alastairstewart/)

Hope that’s not a Kiss of Death!

I had plenty more meetings still in the diary last week, as we were expecting Parliament to run through until the Thursday, so although Parliament rose on the Tuesday, I hung around a couple more days tying up loose ends.

Friday was the usual mix of constituency surgeries – some worthwhile progress being made at the moment with a few individuals, frustration in other cases – and meetings. I spent the morning at BAE Systems in Warton – a major local employer – not just on a tour but also having some quite detailed discussions about export markets, and met with the union representatives also. If a key theme emerged, it was the importance of maintaining the skills base on the Fylde. If orders don’t come in, whether from the UK or abroad, then the skills base diminishes, and our sovereign capability as a nation is lost, since you can’t just create it again out of thin air.

The transport theme fed through to this week as I spent an hour meeting with the Poulton & Wyre Railway Society who are seeking to reopen the line to Fleetwood for passenger and freight services. They are very close to turning their dream into reality, and have a serious, business-minded approach which does them credit, and they have my full support. We discussed how changes to bodies like the NWDA will affect what they do, and we agreed to keep in touch with me helping out wherever I can.

I also had a ‘lively’ meeting with some of the mothers from Blackpool Tiggers, which caters for autistic children on the Fylde Coast. The difficulties so many of them have to go through, and the traumas, have to be heard to be believed. Autism is a complex condition, little understood by many, and not fully understood even by the experts. I’ve already spoken a bit in Parliament about the condition, and I will keep on doing so.

So what is the upshot of my first few weeks in Parliament? A lot done, a lot to do. But oh, wasn’t that the Labour Party’s slogan at the 2005 election? Oops.