Last week was the final week before the parliamentary recess with most of Westminster focused on the three by-elections taking place on Thursday.

I was only in Westminster until Wednesday, as I was helping in the Selby contest on Thursday. This was a historic result for the Labour Party – overturning a Tory majority of more than 20000 and I want to congratulate my new colleague Keir Mather MP on what was a stunning victory. Sadly, our candidate Danny Beales just missed out on taking Uxbridge for Labour, but with less than 500 votes in it I’m confident he will take the seat at the next General Election.

Overall, the results were terrible for the Conservatives. Decimated in Selby and in Somerton & Frome, they only clung to Uxbridge because of hyper-local factors. It’s clear that voters are now actively seeking an alternative to the Conservatives and the next election – and next Labour Government – can’t come soon enough.

There was a bit of an end of term feel about Parliament last week, but I had one of my busier weeks as I was again hosting a Westminster Hall debate. This was a 90-minute debate on the cost of living for private renters. Evidence shows that low-income private renters have been worst hit by the cost-of-living crisis and I wanted to highlight this alongside the constant delays to the long-awaited Renters Reform Bill, which will help to alleviate some of the problems.

It was an excellent debate, and I was grateful to the many Labour colleagues who came along to speak. I also want to thank Shelter, Generation Rent, Priced Out and Crisis who helped with background information and amplified the debate on social media. It’s an important topic that I will keep pressing on.

Linked to this, after PMQs on Wednesday, I went to a protest organised by Shelter on scrapping Section 21 no-fault evictions. It was great to talk some more to Shelter’s team about the experience of private renters in the current climate. I was also able to sign up to their campaign to bring forward the Renters Reform Bill – the mechanism to finally scrap the S21 eviction notice.

In a week in which our constituency hosted an Ashes Test – less said about the rain the better given I had tickets for the weekend days – I thought it was important that I attended the All Party Parliamentary Group for Cricket’s session on the English Cricket Board’s recent report on discrimination in cricket. The report is damning and I questioned the ECB on what they will do moving forward, to open up cricket to be more inclusive. I’m proud to represent Old Trafford, but doing so means we should have so many of our young people locally playing the game. That’s not the case at present and I want to work with ECB to change that. It may sound niche but barriers to sport impact on wider health and wellbeing and it’s critical that we address these issues now they are known and understood.

Friday was a lovely day in the constituency with a couple of visits to local schools. I was delighted to visit Longford Park School – a school I’ve not been to before – to meet with the Head and tour the school. I was able to have a brief chat with every class, including the Year 2’s who though I was the King! After this I went on to drop in at Kings Road Primary where the Year 5 children have been learning about rivers. They wanted to talk to me about the disgraceful level of sewage discharges into our local waterways and showed a tremendous breadth of knowledge about the issue. I have agreed to write to both the Minister and United Utilities on their behalf and will share the responses I receive with the children directly.

Over the next six weeks, I will be based in the constituency, so I won’t be writing a blog on my parliamentary activity. But please do keep an eye on my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages to catch up with my work here in the constituency. It will be nice to have a few consecutive weeks sleeping in my own bed. I’ll take some leave in August too, before heading back down to Parliament for what will be a busy period in the run up to the King’s Speech in November.

In the meantime, have a fabulous summer!