I hope you all had a great Christmas.

As ever the Farron family decamped over the border into Lancashire to my father-in-law’s house to meet up with my wife’s family for the big day itself and I'm rather enjoying a few days away from the coal face. The past few months have been a bit full on.

As I am sure you are aware Parliament has been a rather distracted trying to reach some agreement over how we are going to leave the EU. I have tried to keep away from that a bit and focus on my real job which is, I believe, to represent my constituents and work to ensure you get the quality of services you deserve from this Government. Not an easy task at the best of times but even harder when all ministers seem to care about is fighting with each other and positioning themselves ready for a leadership contest if one is ever to come along.

I just have to keep battling on.

Over the past couple of weeks I have lead a parliamentary debate on the problems caused by second home ownership in South Cumbria, presented a petition to parliament signed by 2,500 of you condemning the fact that only 75p per child is spent on preventative mental health care for young children in Cumbria, asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to halve business rates paid by shops.

And that is just the London end of things.

Back home I have met with the Environment Agency to discuss whether it is really necessary to cut down nearly 700 trees in Kendal as part of their flood relief plans. To say nothing of meeting with constituents every week at my surgeries to find out what issues they have and try to sort them.

The point I am trying to make is I really cannot see how all these ministers, and indeed quite a few MPs, can actually find the time to do the job they are paid to do if they allow themselves to get caught up in plotting and scheming. Or spend hours hanging around College Green outside the Houses of Parliament hoping to be interviewed on television about their views on Mrs May’s deal or whatever.

Who is actually dealing with the needs of their constituents? There must be at least as many problems to be sorted in their parts of the country as there are in South Lakeland. Around here one in seven children in our part of the world are living in poverty and foodbank usage here is rising by 16% over the past year. These MPs must be facing similar challenges. Surely solving these problems is more important than seeing themselves on television?

That said I am taking a few days off between Christmas and the New Year. But I will be back at it on January 2, focusing on your not my issues.

I hope you have a brilliant break and I wish all the very best for 2019.