Yesterday was the last day of filming for The Tower Block of Commons series for Channel 4.

Tower Block of Commons has been one of the most interesting projects I have been involved with since I became an MP and the production crew at Love Productions for Channel 4 were a tremendous group of people to work with.
 
It is incredibly hard for an MP to work with the media in any of its forms. The media can manipulate and distort so much, and they very often do when it comes to MPs.
 
This project was incredibly important for me as it literally opened one door after another and let me step into the lives of people with whom I would never otherwise meet; people who, as a result of a target driven culture, languish at the bottom of society. Forgotten people, people who provide no political brownie points for any politician but who are possibly the most costly within society to support in all ways one can imagine.
 
It is with these people that repairing the broken society should begin.
 
It was a little sad saying goodbye to the crew yesterday. I was never left alone during the filming and at one point, the cameraman even slept next to me on the floor as it was the only comfortable floor to sleep on, if that makes sense! When you spend that long in the company of a small group of people you get to know them. You chat about their families and lots of stuff that isn’t anything to do with work, and so saying goodbye was a bit like closing a book half way through. I will only ever know their stories up to a certain point. But more importantly for me, I trusted them all. I had to or it would never have worked and that was a huge and difficult thing too.
 
And so for a name check: to Cal, the series producer, who must be the best in the business, I say this because I heard so many of the crew commenting on how much they liked to work with her, because she was the director/producer they could learn the most from. To Micha, Alex, Miles, Dave, Jamie and Andy, it was a great pleasure to have worked with you all. I think we all learnt a great deal during our time walking in other peoples shoes.
 
I will find out one day soon when the series is going out!
 
I can’t actually comment on any of the people in the series yet, or anything we did, because obviously that would be telling :0