I hope I can be forgiven for being a little nostalgic this week. Wednesday June 18th – Waterloo Day – was the 33rd Anniversary of my election to the House. By October, God willing, I will have spent a third of a century, and well over half my life, in Parliament representing a large proportion of my present constituency for all that time – and the rest for 29 years.

I have seen many changes in the way we conduct our business in Parliament, few of them for the better. From a Parliamentary perspective the most fascinating years were those from 1974 to 1979 when a government with a wafer-thin majority, and sometimes no majority at all, had to fight for every vote and Prime Ministers really listened to what Parliamentarians said. Not that it was a good time for the country. The period which culminated in the Winter of Discontent was probably the low point in our post-war history. The achievements of Mrs Thatcher in reducing the power of the Unions, getting rid of nationalisation, and giving us a sense of pride in our country again, were monumental. But we paid a price for them. Possessed of huge majorities from 1983 Mrs Thatcher treated Parliament with respect but she did not have to bother too much about what her critics said and there was, inevitably, a tendency to arrogance as a result. But that was as nothing compared with the contempt with which the present Prime Minister, with his even more enormous majority, treats the House of Commons. Nothing better illustrated that attitude than his extraordinary reshuffle last week.

As I look back my thoughts are not just of Parliament but of the constituency. There is no greater privilege than to represent part of the United Kingdom at Westminster. And Staffordshire, and South Staffordshire in particular, is a very special part and it has never been under greater threat than it is at the moment. Close to the conurbation and many miles from the equally, but differently, beautiful north of the county, South Staffordshire is vulnerable to urban pressures. Motorways slice through it and its genuinely rural charms are very vulnerable. That is why we rightly resist every attempt to encroach upon it.

At the moment, in the south of the constituency, we face a greater threat than ever before. The old Second World War airfield at Halfpenny Green, now known as Wolverhampton Business Airport, is in the heart of idyllic countryside, close to the Shropshire border. Its owners have the extraordinary notion that it would make the ideal site for a major international airport, flying hundreds of thousands, and then millions, of passengers on cheap charter flights to the sun of southern Europe every year. The price we would have to pay for their cheap holidays would be the destruction of our countryside and in my thirty-three years I have never known my constituents so united or so incensed. I have had to have special forms printed and I have taken on special staff to deal with the deluge of correspondence – over six thousand letters to date. People come in their hundreds to public meetings. They will be out in force again this weekend. It is a battle we cannot afford to lose.