The new Parliamentary year has opened with a whirlwind of issues to chew over.

It's five years now since I left the Conservative front bench, having been the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland for a record short 9 days. My offence? I said in a Paxman interview on Newsnight that the West Lothian Question – over Scottish MPs voting on English matters - and the Barnet Formula which uses English taxes to subsidise Scotland, and the whole way in which Scottish devolution is working, needed sorting out. I was perhaps wrong to say it so bluntly at the time; but it is now Conservative Party policy. And the fact that 60% of voters in England (by comparison with only 40% in Scotland) would like to give the Scots their independence, perhaps further justifies my concerns over the way in which the Scottish Parliament has affected the people of England and threatens the Union. Alex Salmond and David Cameron seem set on a possible constitutional crisis over the resulting referendum. I shall remind the PM of our discussions at the time!

Our constitution, and/or economic well-being is further threatened by the horrific slow train-crash which is the death of the Euro. I remain firmly of the view that the resulting chaos in the EU will give us a chance fundamentally to redesign the European project towards being simply a trading agreement amongst free and independent Nation states. And while we are on the subject of the Constitution, I shall be opposing any moves towards further reform of the House of Lords. It's a funny old body, but it does a jolly good job of keeping the Commons in check – as it demonstrated this week with changes to the benefits bill, especially the loss of Child benefits to middle-earning families, about which I am very worried. Well done, your Lordships. Your Noble House must be left just as it is – it does a jolly good job.

The Government are to press ahead with HS2, which seems to me to be an expensive answer to a problem which does not exist. It risks wrecking a magnificent part of our fast-diminishing countryside, and I shall be opposing it when it comes to Parliament. I am similarly very unhappy about the prospect of large-scale housing development in and around Chippenham and Swindon; and am opposed to out-of-town supermarket proposals for Malmesbury, which would risk further ruining the High Street. I spoke in the debate on Tuesday on the Mary Portas proposals, and further hope that our changes to the planning system will not make unwanted development in the countryside any easier. I shall oppose it if it does.

What a refreshing – liberating – feeling it is to be able to approach the new Parliamentary year and all of these and so many other challenges unfettered by the search for office, nor any need to appease the whips. I thoroughly enjoy being able to speak up openly and robustly; to say what I really think and to seek to influence Government by doing so. It's a bit like being a free-booting buccaneer whose one and only concern is to try to do what I believe that the people of North Wiltshire would want me to do. And their views on such things as Scotland, HS2, planning and constitutional meddling are pretty clear. I'm sure you'll let me know if not.