I have to say the summer recess can’t come quickly enough as far as I’m concerned as the pace of the work here in Westminster shows no sign of abating. In the past few weeks I have been trying juggle my work as a member of the Marine Bill Committee with sittings of the Home Affairs Committee and the meetings of the new Select Committee on Parliamentary Reform, to which I was recently elected. All of this has been on top of an intensive campaign for the election of the new Speaker, and our successful campaign to achieve settlement rights for the Gurkhas.

By way of a distraction, I also got dragged into the row over the decision of the House of Commons authorities to prevent the Scouts from lobbying their MPs in Westminster Hall on the spurious grounds that “they were not old enough to vote”.

Along with Tory MP Julian Brazier, and Labour’s Stephen Pound, I sent a joint letter to the Commons Speaker John Bercow asking him to intervene and overturn the decision.

Once again the House of Commons was in danger of demonstrating what a deeply conservative and out of touch institution it is capable of being. On the one hand we have an excellent Parliamentary Education Unit which actively encourages the engagement of schools and young people. However yet another arm of this arcane bureaucracy appears to be doing all it can to slam the door in the face of the young people from the Scouting movement who simply want to press their case with their Members of Parliament. Luckily, our new reforming Speaker joined us in recognising that it is important that all constituents - irrespective of their age - have the opportunity to lobby their MP, and ordered the authorities to allow them access.

One Thursday the House was gripped by the phonetapping scandal which concerned the alleged actions of journalists at the News of the World under the editorship of David Cameron’s press secretary, Andy Coulson. Although the Tory leader has said that he was “relaxed” about the revelations, there are many of us in Parliament and the country who feel that the systematic phone hacking of politicians, celebrities, and private individuals is nothing to be relaxed about. Several Commons Committees have already indicated that they will be investigating this matter along with the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Information Commissioner. There is still a long way for this murky story to run, however much the Tories may wish it to go away.