As I approach, at a somewhat uncertain pace, the end of my time in Parliament, I am more than ever conscious of the people on whom I have relied to help me with my work in West Dorset over the past, many years.

High on this list come the Citizens Advice Bureau, one of which I happened to be visiting on Friday.

The bureau play much more of a part in the life of our community than is often realised. Their combination of expertise, incisiveness and dogged persistence has helped and continues to help many of our fellow citizens to negotiate with bureaucracies and big businesses that would otherwise prove too daunting. Their skilled professionals, working alongside numerous, talented volunteers, can often penetrate the mysteries of complicated cases and distinguish what should have happened from what has actually happened in those cases.

Of course, the prime (and intended) beneficiaries are the unfortunate citizens who would otherwise have been faced with unfair or incorrect decisions made by ostensibly implacable and apparently faceless bureaucracies. By cutting through to

the frequently overworked and usually well intentioned individuals within those bureaucracies, and by presenting them with clearly reasoned and well organised expositions of the rules and facts, the CAB bring about, on a daily basis, little miracles that transform lives.

But the secondary beneficiary of this remarkable, and too often unknown work is the local MP.

Over and over again, it has been the patient work of a CAB that has enabled me to obtain from some government department or agency a sensible result for a constituent that it would otherwise have been quite impossible or much more difficult to secure.

So, as I wave a gradual goodbye, it is accompanied by heartfelt thanks.