FOR me, the past two weeks in Parliament have been dominated by two big issues.

The first was the Government’s plan to extend Sunday trading which was defeated by a majority of 31 thanks to an excellent campaign waged by Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union.

More Sunday trading doesn’t put extra money in anyone’s pocket or let us spend more but it does put more and more pressure on shopworkers and their families, and harms small shops.

Protections against having to work on a Sunday have proved useless as new people move into retail. If you’re not willing to work on a Sunday, you don’t get the job.

No one has ever died because big stores weren’t open for long enough on Sunday and I feel that the pressures on people to work longer, more unsocial hours should be resisted.

The other issue I’ve been working on is the first report of the new select committee on petitions, which I chair.

We decided to do an inquiry into a petition calling for more to be spent on research into brain tumours. Surprisingly, brain tumours are responsible for the deaths of more children and adults under 40 than any other cancer.

We have tried to make our report different from many select committee reports and have deliberately included stories from members of the public because we wanted to show the real, human impact of this terrible scourge.

During our enquiry we were humbled by the people who shared their experiences with us.

They did not seek to blame anyone but simply wanted some good to come out of personal tragedy.

We were also incredibly impressed by the experts who gave evidence, scientists and clinicians who have devoted their professional lives to this difficult and neglected area of medicine.

We have made a number of recommendations which we hope that the Government will accept but we know that the individuals and charities involved may have a long fight to get the investment needed to make progress.

The whole experience put many of our petty worries into perspective and we hope that we have done what the committee was set up to do and given the public a voice.