He said his immediate priority was to help people manage their finances at a time when global events were pushing up food and fuel prices. He announced a new fund to purchase properties that were unsold to make them available for social housing and also to expand the number of first-time buyers helped to purchase property through shared equity schemes.

This comes on top of the announcement that all basic rate taxpayers would receive a boost of £120, not just to meet the promise to compensate those who had lost out from the abolition of the 10p rate, but also to help all middle income people at a difficult time in Burnley as well as nationally.

He also announced that people would have more control over local issues such as planning and policing. And there would be a constitution for the National Health Service, so that patients could understand the minimum standards they could expect for access to healthcare and details of care.

For working people, proposals will be brought forward to enable every worker to get the right to request time off to train. In addition, there are discussions taking place to extend the right to request flexible working to parents of older children. And, subject to agreement between employers and trade unions and providing there was sufficient progress at a European level, there would also be legislation for the fair treatment of agency workers in the UK.

He also promised a new Education Bill to ensure that no school is under-performing by 2011 and that parents would get more power to monitor their children's progress.

The Prime Minister's statement also contained work for me, with two specific commitments in my area of ministerial responsibility at the Treasury. The first was a commitment to legislate for a new savings scheme that would encourage the least well off to save for a rainy day, helped by matched contributions from the Government. The second is a reaffirming of our intention to bring forward legislation that will strengthen our banking system in the wake of the instability we have seen in recent months.

My first week back at my day job at the Treasury since returning from maternity leave has been busy but fun. I've been part of the team taking the Finance Bill through its committee stages of Parliament, as well as appearing in front of MPs to discuss the progress of, among other things, Child Trust Funds, which give a financial asset to all children born since 2002.

In the constituency in the past week I have enjoyed visiting two of our successful local companies: HML on Shuttleworth Mead, which provides backroom financial services for some of our mainstream banks and building societies; and Dexter Paints, in Trafalgar Street, where staff showed me with some pride the new bio-diesel facility that turns unwanted cooking oils into fuel.

But I have to say the highlight of last Friday was probably the trip I made to the Clarets Trust Beer Festival at Turf Moor where I had sponsored one of the local ales. We enjoyed sampling the best of our local breweries and I'd like to congratulate all those involved with organising the event.