MPs travelled back to Parliament last week for the annual September sitting, although the Government seems to have very little legislation for us to debate or vote on. Talk in Westminster has therefore centred around two main issues.

Firstly, there was a vote on the hated Bedroom Tax on Friday, after a Private Member’s Bill on affordable housing was put on the agenda.

I made the effort to travel back to London to attend, as the Bedroom Tax is something that affects many of my constituents and has become symbolic of this Governments ill-conceived benefit reforms.

The second thing dominating discussions has been the dreadful situation in the Middle East. The barbaric murders of two American journalists by ‘Islamic State’ shocked us all. It is harrowing that British Citizens appear to be involved with such an inhuman organisation. Their actions should horrify and repulse anyone who believes in decency and humanity.

Targeting journalists trying to report on a conflict is both cowardly and morally indefensible, as is the treatment of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world in northern Iraq, who were forced to flee to the mountains to escape being murdered.

We must do more to investigate what causes radicalisation and what we can do to prevent people going to fight with IS. But that must not mean that aspersions are cast on innocent, law-abiding Muslims, the vast majority of whom are as repulsed as the rest of us by what they see in the news. Remember, just like Al Qaeda, most of the people IS kill are Muslims who bravely refuse to conform to the warped ideology of violent extremists. We should reject those who want to spread hatred towards Muslims here in Britain – after all, isn’t spreading hatred and mistrust and dividing our communities exactly what groups like IS want to happen?

Of course, the common factor in all these areas of conflict is not race or religion but violence, persecution and human suffering – whether that be in Iraq, Syria, Israel or Palestine. So my hope for the NATO Leaders meeting in Newport is that they can work together to help the international community lead us towards a more just and peaceful future.

After all, wherever I’ve worked to help resolve conflicts, whether it’s in Northern Ireland or further afield, what the decent majority of people want above all for them and their families is the ability to lead a normal life, free from the threat of conflict, death or persecution. Our duty as the international community is to leave no stone unturned, until the day that the people of the Middle East - Muslim, Jewish, Christian or secular, Israeli or Palestinian, Kurdish, Iraqi or Syrian - can live their lives free from that fear.