MY ROLE as MP is not just a matter of ensuring additional public money comes to the Valleys and Vale. It also includes shaping legislation to help local people.  (Recently I helped to secure £5million for an energy training centre in Berkeley, and I have made sure more resources are available for flood defences.
The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill is a case in point. My regular visits to local businesses and meetings with business people  brings to my attention issues requiring resolution, often through legislation. The culmination of these processes is, in part, seen in the measures in the bill.
Several examples serve to make this point. The disconnect between the outputs of the education sector and the requirements of the business world has been an underlying cause of the skills shortage in many business sectors in the Valleys and Vale. To resolve this, the bill will introduce measures to help track students from education into employment – a key demand emerging from a seminar hosted by Renishaw, a local large employer.
Many pub landlords will welcome the plans to introduce a Statutory Code of Practice to govern the relationship between pub-owning companies and tied tenants. This has been a vexed issue for many of our pubsso I am delighted an early pledge to solve the problem will be honoured.
The question of disqualification of directors has often emerged as a source of concern for customers and the wider business community. My surgery has often handled situations, essentially avoidable with the right amount of transparency. and appropriate mechanisms for compensation for creditors. Insolvency procedures, too, will be modernised.
 helping to avoiding some of the pitfalls experienced by some local firms.
At any meeting of business people, it is not long before regulations are discussed. Further steps will also be taken to reduce the regulatory burden including the creation of a statutory definition of small and micro businesses.
All in all, this is about freeing up local business to be competitive and prosperous.
. but it also includes shaping legislation to help local people.so that there is total clarity about the scope of regulations.