The Prime Minister gave his clearest commitment yet to repealing the ban on hunting and promised a vote within months in Parliament.

David Cameron, who visited Cheltenham and Swindon yesterday, said while there were "more important things" than hunting to deal with, he reaffirmed his opposition to a ban that became a totem of Labour's 13 years in power.

In a message to the thousands of hunt supporters across the West who campaigned for pro-hunt MPs at last May's General Election, Mr Cameron pledged that a vote on the issue would happen "in the months to come".

The issue has cooled within Westminster, but pressure is still strong among the grass roots in the countryside for a repeal of the hated ban, particularly as prosecutions of hunts in the West, a region with the most anti-hunt monitors operating, continue.

Mr Cameron said: "The promise was made that the House of Commons will have an opportunity to vote on repeal and we will have that vote.

"There are more important things for us to deal with but it is important that we keep to that promise. Everyone knows that the Hunting Act isn't working, it is a bad piece of legislation and I repeat my commitment that when the vote happens in the months to come, I will be voting for repealing the legislation."

His tour of the West began at the communications base at GCHQ in Cheltenham and ended with him joking about Italian President Silvio Berlusconi with workers at Swindon's Honda factory. At GCHQ, Mr Cameron was briefed on the issue of cyber security amid growing concern at the threat of cyber attacks on the critical national infrastructure.

Last week, at the Munich Security Conference, Foreign Secretary William Hague disclosed that the Foreign Office IT system had recently been targeted by a hostile state intelligence agency. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "This is a big and important issue."

But at the Honda factory in Swindon, Mr Cameron was much more relaxed, thanking workers for making his "beautiful" car – a Honda CRV.

He revealed his sole complaint about the job of Prime Minister was that he was forbidden to drive his own car, and that his Swindon-built Honda now merely sat outside Downing Street with him merely "looking lovingly" at it. Mr Cameron was upbeat about Britain's manufacturing leading the nation out of recession, and said Swindon's economy was well-placed to lead that recovery, as he was grilled on a variety of topics by around 100 Honda workers.

Concerned workers said they feared that cheap cars from the growing economies of China and India would threaten their jobs, but Mr Cameron said he was confident that Britain could grow its exports to those countries as their economies grew.

Mr Cameron joked about the things he had learned in the 10 months in the job. He said he'd learned that "when a civil servant says: 'Yes, Prime Minister', it often meant 'no'.

"I've learnt if the Queen asks you to a party, you say yes. And if the Italian President asks you to a party, it's probably safer to say no," he joked.

Rival party leaders Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are heading West today.

Mr Miliband, on his first high-profile visit since becoming Labour leader, will be in Bristol for a public event called New Politics, Fresh Ideas and an intriguing visit to AgustaWestland in the Lib Dem heartland of Yeovil.

Ahead of his visit, he told the Daily Press: "I am really looking forward to meeting the workforce at AgustaWestland – one of the companies that we should all be proud of."

Meanwhile, Mr Clegg is in Bath for a question and answer session, and will also be visiting Taunton. He said: "I'm really looking forward to getting out and about and talking to people."