AT the end of last week, I spent time at Three Swans Surgery and was grateful for the opportunity to sit in on a weekly case review conference and listen to local GPs.

This experience reinforced my view that the major challenge we face in pimary care is the need for community and social care to align with GPs to provide the smoothest possible transition between different elements of patient care. At Three Swans we have some very experienced GPs working hard to make this a reality.

Across the city, I attended Saturday’s opening of the new Tanday Pharmacy at Fisherton House Surgery, with its stateof- the-art robot system, not to be found elsewhere in Wiltshire.

It is part of a fantastic new facility next to the new surgery.

Perdeep Tanday and his family are to be congratulated for their hard work in building this facility which will serve many local patients for years to come.

Back in Westminster on Tuesday this week it was a pleasure to attend the launch of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Food Poverty inquiry at Lambeth Palace.

I have been privileged to accept an invitation to be part of the core team that will study the causes of food poverty and the lessons to be learned from the experiences of food bank operators and their clients.

It is important that we get to the deeper reasons why some people struggle to feed their families and honestly scrutinise where personal responsibility meets system-led issues – for example, the fair and efficient operation of benefits sanctions.

I look forward to working with the Trussell Trust locally to produce a submission to the enquiry that reflects their considerable insights across the country.

Also this week I met with the culture minister Ed Vaizey to discuss the roll-out of rural broadband. Wiltshire Council has put a lot of investment into improving connectivity at a difficult time and it is vital that the next phase recognises, preserves and builds on those efforts.

Among this Friday’s engagements, I look forward to dropping into St Mark’s Junior’s new school shop.