After months of delay, Philip Dunne MP and I were at last able to bring the issues of water quality and the dire state of the River Wye to the floor of the House of Commons for a debate last Thursday.

At a time when political debate is dominated by public concern over pollution and other threats to the environment, few things are more important than the protection of our rivers and the ecosystems, livelihoods and businesses they support.

Last month, the Government published its response to the report about the state of England’s rivers from the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) of the House of Commons chaired by the great Philip Dunne, MP for Ludlow.

As this column went to press, it seemed likely that NMITE, our own Herefordshire university project, would be mentioned in the White Paper this week on the Government’s flagship policy of Levelling Up across the UK. And it was.

With a population of 190,000 and an area of 837 square miles, Herefordshire is small in numbers but large in size. Herefordians know that it is a heaven on earth, of course, but the truth is that somehow we have never quite been able to get this message out to the wider world. Instead Herefordshire has been regarded as the UK's best-kept secret.

Gazette readers will need no reminder of how important the River Wye is to the identity not just of Ross-on-Wye – the clue is in the name – but to the whole region. As I highlighted recently in the House of Commons, this is a priceless national asset which we must do everything we can to protect and enhance in the face of serious phosphate and nitrate pollution.

Readers of the Ross Gazette will need no reminding of my passion about the importance of cleaning up the river Wye. The past two weeks have been important to this project on two fronts.

One of my earliest actions as a new Member of Parliament was to convene a major public meeting at the Three Counties Hotel in July 2010 on the vital local topic of fast broadband.

In this week of commemoration for the victims of 9/11, in the wake of the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and in the aftermath of a pandemic, it is a delight to write about something that is full not of sorrow but of joy.