I HAVE been working very closely with the Chancellor as the preparations for next week’s budget intensify – both ensuring that representations for colleagues are heard and making my own observations around the need to continue to support increased expenditure on adult social care.

As I have written in numerous letters and emails over recent weeks, pressures on social care provision have a significant impact on the NHS and replicating best practice so that the two services dovetail as efficiently as possible must form an essential part of any plan for the future of our NHS.

This Friday, I have a busy day of constituency engagements, including taking the opportunity to meet with English Heritage and hear about their plans for Stonehenge. I have heard from quite a few constituents anxious about the pace of change at the visitor centre site and I look forward to putting those concerns to EH.

I also hope to have a useful conversation about air pollution in the city and what can be done to reduce it and relieve the pockets of the community most at risk.

I will end the day speaking to residents in Harnham before settling down for the night in the Cathedral Cloisters, taking part in my eighth sleep out in support of Alabare.

As well as doing a great job helping people in Salisbury, I was pleased to welcome them to Parliament last week where the launch of their Homes not Streets report illustrated how deeply they are thinking about the practical needs of veterans across the county.

I know from my postbag that, like me, hundreds of my constituents back my colleague Bob Blackman’s Homelessness Reduction Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament.

Although the scheduling of my own Private Members Bill has prevented me from being present at every stage of its progress, I believe that it will provide significant support to those who are about to or have already been made homeless.

The Bill will place a new duty on councils to support those who are homeless and the Government will provide councils with £61 million to help them discharge the new responsibilities and I look forward to it becoming law.