THIS month featured party conference season and I headed up to Manchester for my eighth party gathering.

It was the largest conference ever and a record number of people made the journey up with me from the Devizes Constituency.

Along with the big set-piece speeches there was a bewildering array of other events and this year was enlivened by some protesters who chanted and sang – and then threw objects, spat copiously and hurled four-letter abuse at delegates. As I ran the gauntlet of grubby nose-ringed rent-a-mob “activists” (stopping to chat to a couple of pleasant people protesting about train services), I mused that it felt like the last hysterical days of an ideological movement that knows its time is up.

Locally, I have kept up campaigning on delivery of superfast Broadband which has finally made it to the exchanges of my own village in the Pewsey Vale. I am pleased that the programme is on schedule and that plans are now moving ahead for Phase 2 which will take Superfast Broadband to 95 per cent of premises across the County by March 2017.

More information including a useful postcode checker is at wiltshireonline.org.

I am continuing to work with Wiltshire Council and ministers to secure the necessary funding to reach the final five per cent of premises.