On Monday and Tuesday we had late-night votes, firstly on our proposals to take money lying dormant in old bank accounts and use it to build more youth facilities in the constituency and secondly on how we strengthen the law to provide a framework for trade unions to be able to expel members engaging in activities in direct contravention of their rules. Both important debates to be had, but the fact they took place late at night meant that even before attention turned late on Tuesday night to the American presidential elections, people were a little bleary eyed.

However, by late on Tuesday it became clear the focus was shifting to the other side of the Atlantic with many MPs wearing badges and T-shirts for their favourite candidates as they trooped through the voting lobbies. I suspect there were quite a few fashionable election night parties taking place in the early hours of Wednesday but not for your MP, unfortunately, due to the need to prepare for a big speech I had to give in the chamber of the House of Commons on Wednesday plus the inevitability of being woken at 6 a.m. by children whatever I have been doing the night before.

Like most of the world however, I was delighted to wake up on Wednesday to Barak Obama's victory. He's an incredible speaker and if his leadership skills and commitment to social justice are anything as good as his oratorical skills we're in for a great few years. When I logged onto my computer in the morning I found e-mails from people I know in America who had spent time canvassing for Obama in the last few days and were amazed at how young people, who had previously had no interest in politics, were motivated to take time off work to knock on doors to remind his supporters to go out and vote. It all feels very empowering.

My debate down in parliament on Wednesday was entitled "welfare and work". I was expecting a fairly low turnout because there were no votes and many people were involved in campaigning for the by-election up in Fife but in the end we had a decent turnout and the debate lasted four and a half hours. We had some of the normal political banter but one thing people did agree on was that it was more important than ever in an economic downturn to make efforts to move more people closer to being able to work.

The mistake made by the previous Tory administration was to shunt people onto invalidity benefit in order to make the unemployment figures look better. They were then effectively lost in the system. Our response is the opposite – we want more people who can work to go onto Jobseekers Allowance so that they can take advantage of the training and support that is provided. At the moment there are still around 600,000 vacancies in the economy so plenty of opportunities for people up and down the country. As the economic situation deteriorates, the role of the hardworking staff in the Jobcentre plus network becomes even more crucial to provide people with the support that they need and I'm glad that we now have this service located right at the heart of Burnley.

Last week in the constituency I formally launched a new domiciliary care service, part of the Bluebird company, that seeks to raise standards of how people are cared for in their own homes. Today I'll be in Tesco awarding equipment to pupils who collected vouchers under their "computers for schools" initiative. Perhaps see you there.