New Bassetlaw MP vows to repay the faith of voters

It was a great honour to have been elected and I realise that a lot of people have put their faith in me, many voting Conservative for the first time and I want to repay that faith by doing my very best for our community.

I want to reassure all those who didn’t vote for me that I will work for the benefit of everybody in Bassetlaw.

I want to work in partnership with our local councils and unleash Bassetlaw’s potential.

Managing about two hours of sleep after the election, I found myself being bombarded with media requests and did nearly 30 interviews in the space of a couple of days.

Then, after acquiring the services of my wife and three year old son to help me pack my suitcase, it was off to Retford at 5am on Monday to get the train down to London to start my new job.

It really was a surreal experience for me and the 108 new MPs and I started the induction day in Westminster being given a large bag with a brown name tag on

My colleague from Bishop Auckland joked that she felt ‘like Paddington Bear’ and most of us likened it to starting secondary school again - getting lost in a big building, not knowing where we should be and trying to introduce ourselves to other newbies.

After the pleasantries, it wasn’t long before we got down to business, being officially sworn in and meeting the Speaker of the House.

Following that was the Queen’s Speech and then the next day we finally managed to vote through the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement (which still has several stages to go yet).

My wife received several packages on Christmas Eve and I’m still in the doghouse for having to explain to her that these were not her presents, but were simply my redirected mail for the last few day.

In terms of plans for the future, I hope to have my constituency office up and running as soon as possible (if you saw a strange man in Worksop town centre peering into empty shop windows, it was probably me) and I will be releasing dates of surgeries across the constituency.

I am also in the process of hiring staff, so thank you to everybody for their patience so far.