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Scarcely a day goes by without Members of Parliament being lobbied about some issue or other. It might be about hunting with dogs, genetically modified foods, saving local pharmacies from competition from large supermarket chains, availability of vitamin supplements or against the installation of some unsightly telephone mast. These are just a few of the subjects that my constituents have raised with me over the last month or so.

Lobbying can take several forms. There are the postcard campaigns, petitions and individual letters, requests to sign or sponsor Early Day Motions in the House of Commons and on occasions there are mass lobbies of Parliament itself where groups turn up in force and put questions directly to Mps from across the whole country.

Last Saturday saw a lobby with a difference when the Trade Justice Campaign launched a 24-hour programme of activities aimed at highlighting the plight of the poorer nations and to press the British government to take a strong stance to re-cast the worlds' trading rules in favour of the developing countries at the forthcoming World Trade Organisation summit at Cancun in Mexico. My modest constituency office was full of the nicest people I could hope to meet all asking me to do something with which I wholeheartedly agreed - if only this was always the case! Richard Canning, Reverend Denis

smith and his wife Priscilla, Jo Day and all their other colleagues from the Reading Trade Justice Group were part of a national lobby of MP's not at Parliament but at our constituency surgeries. As it happened I had already written to Tony Blair and Patricia Hewttt in support of the objectives of the Trade Justice Movement which is a coalition founded by Christian Aid, including charities, development and environmental agencies, churches and many voluntary organisations.

The current levels of protectionism in favour of the richest countries are nothing short of a global scandal. They spend over 350 billion dollars a year propping up their own agricultural sectors at the expense of the developing world. The appalling European Common Agricultural Policy costs E.U citizens 45 billion Euros which is the equivalent of paying $2 a day for every cow in Europe when 1.2 billion people in the world live on half that amount. I have always believed that massive inequalities between rich and poor are not only morally wrong but create a dangerous and unstable world. If trade was made fairer and tariffs lifted against the developing nations then the numbers of people living in poverty would reduce by 300 million in the next ten years.

Monday saw another type of lobby as hunting supporters sought to persuade MPs to vote against the long promised ban on fox-hunting by hanging several thousand pairs of ladies knickers around Parliament Square. It was an interesting if futile tactic and I am delighted that an overwhelming majority of my colleagues from all parties ignored the underwear, rejected attempts to license or regulate hunting with dogs and voted for an end to this obscene and barbaric activity. The Hunting Bill will now be sent off to their Lordships before the Parliamentary recess with a firm commitment from the government to use the Parliament Act to ensure that this time, the will of the majority of the population as expressed in yet another free vote in the House of Commons is not frustrated by the un-elected House of Lords.