I’m not one of Parliament’s regular foreign travellers but last Wednesday, due to bad diary planning, my carbon footprint expanded alarmingly. I woke up in Prague - an even more lovely city than Reading - as part of a Home Affairs Committee delegation ready to meet with the Czech parliamentarians and voluntary organisations concerned with the trafficking of young women and drugs across Europe. The Czech Republic hold the EU presidency and it is impossible not to admire the progress that has been made in this country since the Iron Curtain came down. However, they are on the major drug smuggling routes from Afghanistan as well as being both a source and a destination country for sex trade trafficking. I was incredibly impressed with the work of the Czech organisations and charities in seeking to help and support women who wish to escape the clutches of the pimps and gang bosses who are profiting from their enslavement and exploitation. However, I was less impressed with the lack of joined-up working by the police forces across Europe - something that I’m sure will be reflected in our final Committee report into Human Trafficking.

We flew back into Heathrow at around 8pm and I promptly drove up to Luton to be ready to fly out again to Poland as part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s visits to the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This was something I really wanted to do - particularly as many students and teachers from the Reading area were booked on the trip along with my colleagues Richard Benyon and Ann Snelgrove - the MPs for Newbury and Swindon South. Obviously it would have been easier to simply travel from Prague to Poland but an essential part of the visit was to spend time with the young people and to be part of the briefings by the organisers on the plane over there.

When we arrived we were shown around the camp’s barracks and crematoria, and saw the registration documents of inmates, piles of hair, shoes, clothes and other items seized by the Nazis. We were then taken the short distance to Birkenau where a memorial and candle-lighting service was held to remember the 6 million Jews, and the Roma, gay, disabled, black people, and other victims of the Nazis killed in the Holocaust. In spite of having now seen it first hand, it’s still difficult to take in the full extent of the industrialised nature of the horrific slaughter that was the Holocaust. These events may have taken place over 60 years ago but as our society bears witness; we need to continue to teach the lessons of the Holocaust to the younger generations in order to fight bigotry and hatred today. I have nothing but contempt for politicians and organisations who seek to achieve power by fanning the flames of racial prejudice and demeaning minority communities. Only by teaching young people of the dangers of racial hatred can we counter the doctrine of those who preach hate not hope.

On Friday I was up again in the House of Commons to support the Private Member’s Bill on Fuel Poverty, but sadly despite 172 colleagues signing the Early Day Motion, there were less than the hundred needed to force a closure motion to allow for a second reading vote on this much needed measure. It really is something of a joke the way that good ideas can simply be talked out by a handful of committed opponents, whether on the Government benches or from the Opposition. I had a similar problem the week before with a handful of Conservative dinosaurs who were blocking the entirely sensible plans to allow members of the UK Youth Parliament hold their annual debate in the Commons Chamber during the summer recess. Fortunately on this occasion the forces of progress prevailed.