Budget

I have learned much as an MP. The importance of listening to all sides of a discussion, to be wary of emotional argument, to seek facts amidst the rhetoric, to empathise even if you do not agree and, when it comes to budgets, to understand that they cannot change the world overnight.

There can be few Chancellors who have faced as daunting an economic outlook as George Osborne. The UK pitches and yaws on a sea of global woe that heaves higher than perhaps anyone alive has ever before witnessed.

The Euro Zone crisis, the global slowdown, the hobbled banks, the price of world energy and, yes, the debts the last lot left behind, provide headwinds that would see many a ship slip beneath the briney.

But this budget will help. The £2,000 reduction in employers National Insurance will be a huge fillip to businesses, especially our vital SMEs.

Larger company tax rates will be reduced by 2015 to 20% (compared with Germany 29% and France 31%) and this will drive further foreign investment and jobs.

For families, from 2015, the government will pay 20% of a working family's childcare bills — up to £2,400 per child.

I was also delighted by the scrapping of the Beer Duty Escalator (which was pushing up the price of beer and hitting our vital local pubs) and a further freeze in petrol duty that will save the average motorist £170 a year.

At the broader economic level the figures show that we have now reduced our deficit by a third since we came to office. There is a long way to go and no budget, however brilliant, could release us from our problems in a single bound. But our country is on the right track and we must stick to the course.