What do MPs do? That is the question I get asked most often when I visit schools across the constituency.

It is something that I love to do as it is so refreshing to get out of the office and into classrooms decorated with art and full of bouncy little ones who are brimming with energy even late on a Friday.

I always have the utmost admiration for teachers and classroom assistants who work so hard to channel all the fizzing enthusiasm in the classroom into learning.

I try to explain a little about life in the House of Commons and to illustrate the heart of what we do – the process of law making – with a real-life voting scenario. In my school talks we come up with a law upon which to noisily vote: recent proposals were the banning of vegetables from meals and making school attendance voluntary.

Parents will be relieved to know that despite the active canvassing of a few revolutionaries in the classroom, both motions were defeated. Here in Westminster this week it is the turn of the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill and the Recall of MPs Bill to be featured in the limelight.

If we have a light parliamentary calendar (meaning we can get back to our constituencies and catch up with all the urgent projects there) then the papers are full of grumbles about lazy MPs, zombie Parliaments and the like. But is this how it should be? Every law means more restrictions, more costs to enforce, more of the dreaded red tape. As a counterbalance to this, there is a slow but steady change happening at the heart of this government.

Starting with the red tape challenge where people were asked for their suggestions as to what could be axed or improved, moving through the ‘one in, two out’ new rule for any new regulation aiming for the statue book, and via a sunset clause that means outdated bits of regulation don’t hang around for ever, there are now lots of small but useful changes that make a dent in the red tape mountain.

Some of things I have announced recently, like no longer needing to faff about buying and displaying a tax disc, the increase in speed limits and combined weight limit for tractors (after careful consideration and a full consultation) so they can make fewer journeys when getting in the harvest and hold up fewer queues of frustrated motorists, are the result of this focus on cutting red tape, and there are many more to come.