What a wonderful Christmas we’ve enjoyed here in Taunton and Wellington!

Thank you to the children who participated in my Christmas card competition. Now that the days have started getting lighter again, I’m already looking forward to reaching out in the summer to children at special schools who would like to take part in my 2025 Christmas Card competition.

Joining the superb Salamanca Band and Bugles and the Amici Choir for Christmas with the Rifles at the Minster was impressive. As the aisles resounded to blasts from the buglers, it was an important moment to thank all our armed and emergency services on duty throughout the festive period.

It was also good to get murmurs of support in the House on the last sitting day of Parliament for thanks to all those in Taunton and Wellington who have been caring for others this Christmas.

Festive fetes and shows have done our schools and local groups proud. ‘Pinocchio’ at the Brewhouse was a triumph and it was great to be at Wordsworth Drive to watch a 2-1 victory for Taunton Town over Hungerford to round off the Christmas season locally - up the Peacocks and well done to Nick Grimes, player of the match.

It’s been quite a year. July brought a seismic change to British politics. The Lib Dems put social care and the NHS at the top of our priorities for our country as I have for Taunton and Wellington.

Volunteers across our area showed just how effective a community can be in making change happen when we work together for a common goal. I am as honoured and humbled to become, as a result, your MP today as I was on General Election day. I still have to stop and pinch myself when I pause for a moment in the vaulted hallways of Westminster as your representative.

I and my fellow MPs in Parliament, the biggest Liberal Parliamentary Party for over 100 years are beginning to make our impact.

Devoting our first day of debating time to carers delivered on our election promise, and it ensured the government finally agreed to stop penalising carers, after the scandal of its own overpayments mistakes.

Leading the opposition to the new government’s cuts to Winter Fuel Payments for the poorest pensioners and against taxing the smallest family farms has been a big part of my work in recent months; it was good to welcome many local farmers to Westminster and have their support to oppose it.

Small businesses too are struggling to cope with Labour’s National Insurance and business rates hike, and here they include our excellent independent schools where parents are additionally being hit with VAT, many of whom can ill afford it.

The Labour government is wrong to penalise the little guy when we have laid out very clearly how reversing the Conservatives’ massive tax cut given to bankers in 2018 could bring in £4.2 billion all on its own. Why do big banks, energy companies, social media, and online retail giants always seem to get away scot-free?

Reflecting on the past year and the challenges our country faces, the new government

seems too often to be hitting the wrong target and where it’s got the right target - for

example, to re-establish economic stability and get growth back after decades of

Conservative chaos and mismanagement - progress is disappointing.

Every reason therefore to redouble our campaigns in 2025 for that new maternity and

paediatric unit which Musgrove Park Hospital sorely needs, to get Wellington Station moving forward again and bring more investment into Taunton and Wellington.

As well as doing as much as I can for the thousands who have written to me for help, these will be my top three New Year resolutions as I wish you all a very happy and successful 2025.

And to begin the year, don't forget to buy your tickets for our towns’ two pantos this month - ‘Beauty and the Beast’ from the Wayfarers at the Brewhouse and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, Wellington Pantomime Group’s 50th-anniversary production at the Wellesley - see you there!