Welcome to my report on what I got up to in November. In Parliament, we had the end of one session and the start of another – the last before the General Election. As with any new term, our's got off to a busy start and the reason why this is coming out in December is that mine was particularly busy!
On Monday this week, I wound up the debate on the first bill to be debated in the new Parliamentary session – the Financial Services Bill. This makes various changes to the remit of the Financial Services Authority and tackles some longstanding issues around consumer protection. This meant I had to spend time on Sunday mugging up on the bill and preparing for another debate on Tuesday on Europe. So apologies for the delay in sending this out.
The picture is of me with children at Ranville's Junior School who quizzed me about my job and my thoughts about school.

One thing that does happen at the start of a new parliamentary year is the ballot for private members bills. Twenty MPs are selected by a ballot to use parliamentary time to try to change the law. Mine was the sixteenth of the twenty names drawn in the ballot. Of course, most of the changes made to laws are proposed by the Government and the chances of my bill getting through are really slim.
I now need to decide the topic of my bill. There are two things I can’t do – scrap or introduce new taxes or create a new requirement to spend taxpayers’ money. Do you have any ideas about a new law I can put forward. Please e-mail me at mail@markhoban.com to let me know
 

As well as my usual round of constituency visits, I went to the path labs at the Queen Alexandra Hospital as part of National Pathology Week. I was fascinated by the work that they do. It is one of the hidden areas of medicine. For most of us our contact with the health service is with our GP or a visit to the hospital, we don’t often get the chance to see what goes on behind the scenes. The team at the labs analyse and investigate blood and all sorts of tissues and their work helps identify diseases and conditions and decide the best type of treatment. I was really impressed by what I saw there.