LAST week, I was proud to deliver my maiden speech in Parliament as the first Conservative MP to represent the Leigh constituency, and I wanted to use it as an opportunity to celebrate the town’s fantastic history and champion the key issues you care about.

One of the issues many of you contact me about most is getting Leigh reconnected to the national rail network, which is why I continued our fight for a station at both Kenyon Junction and Golborne.

Of course, I also had to take the chance to shine a light on the history of Kenyon Junction, the first railway junction in the world.

Now, you won’t be surprised to hear that I used my speech as opportunity to again raise your concerns about the Golborne Spur of HS2, which not only affects many of my constituents, but also my own family.

I firmly believe this section of HS2 should be scrapped, and in my first few months, I have put this view to the Transport Minister and will soon be meeting with the HS2 Minister, Andrew Stephenson.

I also hear far too many residents complain about the amount of greenfield sites being destroyed, with housing developments being built in their place. Unfortunately, many people feel their concerns have fallen on deaf ears at Wigan Council but in my maiden speech, I made clear in on the historic green benches of Parliament that greenfield development is not welcome in Leigh.

Thankfully, the Chancellor had already heard these calls, announcing a new £12.2bn multi-year settlement in his budget to help deliver more affordable homes across the country, which he specified should be built on brownfield land first.

The work however doesn’t stop there, so I’m urging Wigan Council to deliver the affordable housing that people want with this new funding, such as starter homes and bungalows, rather than blocks of flats.

Moving on to another part of my speech, as some of you may know, my campaign slogan during the general election was “Get Brexit Done and Fix Our Town”.

One of the ways we can help fix our town is by supporting local businesses, which is why I took this speech as an opportunity to welcome the Chancellor’s freeze on beer, wine and spirit duties, only the second time in the last 20 years all alcohol duties have been frozen.

Firms with a rateable value of £51,000 or less will also been exempt from business rates, a massive boost for many local businesses. Measures like these from the Government will only support high streets like Leigh’s and help revive them.

Improving our public transport services, building on brownfield land first and regenerating our town centre are just some of the ways we can improve our area and are issues that I will continue to champion as your MP in the coming months.