The absence was due to the arrival of our baby son, George, at Burnley General at the beginning of the year, a brother for Lizzie.

Now he is a blond-haired, blue-eyed smiling and gurgling four-month old it is time to get back to the day job. Thank you to everyone who sent cards and messages, and also for your patience while I inevitably focused on family for a while.

But that is not to say it has been a quiet time on the work front. Throughout, I have been in constant touch with my constituency office to ensure the issues raised with us are resolved in a satisfactory way, even if I am not there in person.

As well as taking up individual cases, the main event of the last few months has probably been our campaigns to ensure local people are fully represented in the consultation on the future of our post offices.

We have sent out thousands of questionnaires in the affected areas and worked with local councillors and activists to organise petitions which I have then passed to the senior post office management.

I am encouraged by the possibility we may be able to keep some of the services in the affected areas by making them available in other ways: for example, by mobile and outreach services.

The response to our campaign was greatest in Hapton where I have been assured by a conversation at a very senior level in the Post Office, that the village will be considered for an outreach service so people do not have to travel all the way to Padiham or elsewhere. I will do my very best, working with local people, to make sure we get the best possible service there and indeed across the borough.

Down in Westminster, my ministerial responsibilities at the Treasury were temporarily shared out to the other ministers while I was away, but they will all be landing back on my doorstep next week when I return full time after the bank holiday.

First up will be the passage of the Finance Bill through its committee stages of Parliament, which will take up the bulk of my time. After that I will be moving onto a great piece of legislation we are trying to get through that will ensure money lying forgotten in dormant bank accounts can be used to build and improve youth facilities up and down the country.

In the constituency last Friday, my first engagement was to formally open the new premises of a great little Burnley business, QHS Solutions, which is a health and safety consultancy and has just moved into Queens Park Lodge, off Ormerod Road. It is good to see local entrepreneurs doing well.

I then held two surgeries over the weekend – one in Hapton village and the other in my usual venue of the Open Hands Centre, at the bottom of Colne Road. After that, it being the weekend before the elections, I spent a lot of time banging on doors in support of my council colleagues and candidates.

My nearly three-year-old daughter got her first taste of campaigning on Sunday, and turned out to be a bit of a natural – although it has to be said that that could be something to do with the infinite supply of political stickers to festoon her mother with and the opportunity to ring a lot of doorbells rather than anything else.