What we do all day...

One of the questions that MPs are frequently asked is what they do all day (!), given that we are patently not all sitting in the House of Commons all day long. My activities today give some clue to that.

The day started with a breakfast meeting to discuss 'smart meters'. These are the devices that will eventually be fitted to all our homes that will give us as consumers much more information about the electricity and gas that we consume, and which also have the potential to facilitate the selling of power that we generate in the home back to the National Grid. In principle these look like a very good thing, but replacing approaching 50 million meters will cost around £5 billion, so there are big issues about who pays and how the technology is 'rolled out'. The meeting was a very useful event with MPs and peers from all parties and industry experts and consumer bodies.

After this I returned to my office to check on the overnight e-mails before attending a meeting of the Lib Dem 'Shadow Cabinet' where we discuss our strategy in Parliament. I had to leave that meeting earlier to go on to the morning sitting of the 'Standing Committee' on the Energy Bill. This is the process which involves line-by-line scrutiny of new legislation, together with consideration of amendments that we and the other opposition parties table. Simply being in committee will occupy about five and a half hours today, to say nothing of the hours spent getting briefed on what are often very technical issues and drafting potential amendments to the legislation. In addition to this morning's session, the three hour afternoon session will take place whilst debate is going on in the House of Commons on other issues - which is part of the answer to the question - 'where are you and what do you do all day'.

At the end of most days I am in my office signing and amending letters that have been drafted for me to constituents and others, and likewise dealing with a huge volume of e-mails. At the moment we routinely finish after 10pm, and I walk back to my flat, catch up on the football results and head for bed!