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James Gray's Blog

James Gray's column from the Wiltshire Gazette & Herald.

Referendum Bill

The Summer Recess is over and Parliament is back on Monday, with a huge and important agenda. The economy remains teetering on the edge; very necessary cuts and tax rises loom large; fundamental reforms of our NHS, benefits system, planning laws are in progress;  the war in Afghanistan as bloody as ever; the appalling tragedy of the flooding in Pakistan which risks further destabilising that least stable of nuclear states.

With all of that on the agenda, guess what we are discussing on the first day back? Whether or not to spend £80 million on a referendum about changing the voting system! If the outcome of such a referendum was ‘Yes’ our voting system in the UK would change from the tried and tested ‘First Past the Post system’, to the ‘Alternative Vote system’ whose main feature is that it would benefit smaller parties. In my view that would spell the end of the strong majority governments we have always enjoyed in the UK, since PR would very probably guarantee coalitions of one sort or another for all time to come. That prospect may well be very attractive to the minority parties; but would it necessarily deliver the best possible government?

My party and I are therefore committed to campaigning for a NO vote in the referendum on AV, and it was interesting to hear Nick Clegg say the other day that he had an open mind on the subject, or some such. (And it was he who previously attacked the Alternative Voting system as being the worst possible of all outcomes.) However, this means that we are all faced with a very difficult decision on our first day back. Virtually all of my Conservative colleagues, and I suspect most Labour ones too are wholly opposed to proportional representation. And in my thirty years or so of canvassing on doorsteps, virtually no-one has ever raised the voting system with me. It’s not an issue which features on most ordinary people’s radar screens. So given that we are totally opposed to it, surely we should also be totally opposed to the waste of time and money inherent in holding a referendum on the subject? That is very much what my heart tells me.

However my head – and I suspect this is probably the view of most of my constituents - tells me that such a referendum was an important, possibly central, part of the Coalition Agreement to which my Party signed up; and honour perhaps dictates that we should therefore seek to deliver it for our LibDem partners in Government.  There is plainly a risk that if the referendum were not to happen it might be the death of the Coalition, since it would remove the rag to cover Mr Clegg’s nakedness at what will doubtless be a stroppy LibDem Conference next month. Might that not spell the end of the Coalition with all of the advantages it has brought? After all, it has delivered effectively a Conservative Government, enabling David Cameron to carry out 90% of our manifesto.  And it was of course the best possible way of playing the cards dealt to us by the electorate.

So on balance I am planning to bite my tongue on the issue.  At later stages, I will plan to vote in favour of amendments which will first change the date proposed for the referendum, which has been cynically chosen to be of most benefit to the ‘Yes’ Campaign, and second which will introduce a threshold (perhaps 40% of the electorate) below which  the referendum would not be won.

I fear that it is one of those occasions on which the overall good may be more important than individual views. My constituents’ views on the matter would be very welcome – via my website, jamesgray.org

Back To Work

There’s nowhere I like better than Wiltshire, and no room I like better than my study – surrounded by my books and pictures and memorabilia of one sort or another. Yet the advent of emails and BlackBerries make one’s office no longer the sanctuary of peace and quiet in which to think and write it would once have been. Email traffic in particular is virtually out of control. On a busy day I receive up to 1000, each of which has to be at very least glanced at. Now many of them, it is true, are easily deletable junk of one sort or another. But too quick a finger on the delete button risks obliterating some important constituency email for all time. And they are habit forming in a fixatious sort of way. When I am at home, I simply cannot resist nipping in to my office just to check on the incomings. And the BlackBerry has a worrying habit of vibrating away all day, through the evening, and all too often in the middle of the night as well. So a few days truly away from it all – like the 5 days I have just had in Spain – are an essential element to recharging the batteries.

Apart from the tidal waves of paper work, the Summer Recess is a good time for  getting out and about round the constituency, not least to bring oneself up to date on what people locally are thinking about the great issues and decisions which will face us in a couple of weeks when the House is back. Continuing sad Repatriations of fallen servicemen through Wootton Bassett inevitably colour my approach to the two defence debates we will be having later this month; several meetings about RAF Lyneham and its future, as well as a very pleasant dinner with the Station Commander and his wife help to inform the continuous lobbying during the Strategic Defence Review which will be concluded by October, and which is so vitally important for so many people in this area; meetings with Business West and individual businesses influence our thoughts about how to avoid the oft-touted ’double-dip recession.’ Then there are the ‘routine constituency duties’ which I so much enjoy: surgeries in Calne and Wootton Bassett one day, and  Cricklade and Malmesbury the next were busier than usual; judging Wootton Bassett in Bloom; opening the Marden Court Fete in Calne, a charity dinner in Wootton Bassett, business lunch in Brinkworth, a farewell dinner for my superb departing Secretary Rosemary Fisher who will be sorely missed, coffee with the excellent MS Society in Wootton Bassett, and a meeting with the Bassett Town Clerk, a look in to the Calne Area Board,  a constituents’ wedding – all thoroughly enjoyable and approached with a renewed vigour after a few days away.

And the Summer Recess is a time to do some writing and thinking too. In the first week back, I am hoping to take part in debates on illegal gypsy encampments, the Alternative Vote referendum and the Armed Forces as well as hosting a debate about food security, and in the second week I hope to speak in a debate on the way in which Parliament votes to go to war; all of that quite aside from the routine business of questions and interventions, and my role as a member of the Speakers Panel of Chairmen. A very wise old bird once told me that being an MP was simple: “All you have to do is make certain that every single thing you say, and every single thing you do, is outstandingly good.” All of which takes a bit of time and thought!

Summer Recess

It is easy to misunderstand (and to knock) Parliament’s long Summer Recess, especially when, as in previous years, it was effectively mid-July to mid-October. In  (possible over-) reaction to that, we are back at school for two weeks in September this year before breaking up again for the party conference season, which seems to me to be neither one thing nor t’other. I would rather get holidays, constituency work and conferences out of the way, and then reconvene properly for the Autumn session. I have just been appointed to Parliament’s Procedure Committee who will be considering sitting hours and recesses amongst other things.

I also suspect that we need to explain the Parliamentary year better to the voters. The incredible intensity of the work while we are sitting demands decent holidays, especially for MPs with young children, who may only rarely see their parents during the Parliamentary term.  I had a couple of days in Scotland last week with my mother, and am taking six days in Spain for some sun and sangria. And just normal Wiltshire life is a welcome relief from London. We do need time and space to read and to think and to write a bit. ( I am planning a couple of major speeches in September and hope to wade through the ‘reading pile’) Then it is indeed a good time to get out and about in the constituency, and I have a fairly busy diary one way or another; the Party Conference is a tedious necessity; and a bit of travelling to other Parliaments, to visit our troops, or see overseas governments has a great deal to recommend it.

But there is another point here which those slightly self-conscious critics of Parliamentary recesses tend to miss, which is this: is the excellence of our governance necessarily in direct proportion to the length of our Parliamentary sittings? Is it really the case that the more Parliament sits the better Britain will be? I have to say that I rather take the opposite view. I like to think of myself as a bit of a libertarian. I dislike laws, regulations, bossiness. The last Government took the view that whatever the problem was it could easily be mended by a new law. We Tories by and large take the opposite view – the smaller the state can be the better it is. Abolish rules and regulations, sweep away quangoes; repeal as many acts as you can. I rather look forward to the Queen’s speech which reads “My Government will bring in no new legislation. Meanwhile, my husband and I…..”

So as I head for Madrid for a few days, switching off my Blackberry and avoiding Internet cafés like the plague, and as I take a week off from these scribblings, just think on this: Quite leaving aside the perfectly natural inclination to want to see our MPs working as hard as possible, is the Britain we see around us really a worse place during August while the House is in Recess than for the rest of they year? Is the news better or worse? Do you feel happier and more relaxed with us away on our hols, or would you rather see a blizzard of laws, rules and interference coming your way? If your answer is as I suspect it must be, then perhaps in future years, you will encourage longer Recesses rather than upbraiding us for taking them?? Just a thought……

More Breakneck Than Brokeback

More Breakneck than Brokeback

It’s been a long and relentless Parliamentary term by any standards, and we were all glad to get away from Parliament for a bit of R and R and some quality constituency time. The General Election means that Christmas was the last decent break, and what a six months it’s been since then.

Mr Brown’s Labour Government, which now seems such a distant memory, was truly broken backed. So was the old Parliament. Tired, sleazy, unhappy. All of that was only a few months ago, but it seems like another era. What a transformation there has been since. The youthful, energetic, sparkling PM and his lookalike Deputy, the fresh-thinking Administration, a host of new boys and girls as MPs, some fundamental changes in the way Parliament itself works; the expenses scandal a distant memory, and an absolute deluge of changes to the way we are governed. Just think what has happened since May 7^th.

The Budget was the most dramatic and fundamental for a generation laying out the tough medicine we will all have to take if we are to avoid financial catastrophe for a generation to come; Andrew Lansley has laid out a massive change in the way the NHS is run and the way it is funded – sweeping away layers of useless bureaucracy; The Academies Bill which has finished its passage through the House means a wholly new approach to education; Eric Pickles has sparked a revolution in local government and communities, sweeping away Mr Prescott’s (Sorry: Lord Prescott’s) unloved Regional structures and a dazzling array of useless quangoes, and returning planning and housing to local people and their local representatives; that cull of quangoes was matched in other departments, Caroline Spelman at Defra, for example, scrapping, from memory, some 34 useless organisations. David Cameron himself has been tireless – hugely successful visits most recently to the US (and how good it was to hear President Obama actually name Wootton Bassett as an example of all that was best about the British spirit) and India; but also getting to grips with National Security in various ways, and at last mapping out an escape route from Afghanistan. It is so good to think that within five years we will be able to leave with our heads held high, having secured an honourable and decent long-term future for that troubled country.

There are tough times ahead, especially with regard to taxation and cuts in public spending. No honeymoon lasts for ever. And nor should it. If all a Government is interested in is popularity, then there’s a good chance that they will either do nothing, or do all the wrong things. If we need a truly strong and decisive Government, as we do at the moment, and as we did so memorably in 1979, then the truth is that much of what they will have to do will be unpopular. So it will be tin hats on for a rough ride to come starting with the Comprehensive Spending Review in October. But for now, let us just give thanks for a brilliant start and huge hope for the future as a result.

During A Lively Discussion With Sixth Fomers

During a lively discussion with sixth-formers at that outstandingly good school, John Bentley in Calne they – perfectly fairly- picked me up on a few off-hand remarks I had made in discussion with them when they visited  Parliament recently. “When you were seeking an example of a ridiculous piece of legislation to explain the legislative process, why did you pick ‘a bill to covert John Bentley into a zoo’, they asked. ‘Is that because you subliminally think JB is a bit of a zoo?’ Er no. Quite the contrary. But the fact that they picked up on that passing remark so acutely is a lesson in itself.

Politicians are so often accused of either ‘not answering the question’ or even lying and in their answers. That may be true of some, but my fault is the opposite – I speak very straightforwardly and honestly, which by definition results in my getting into difficulties on some occasions. Almost inevitably, half of my constituents will think one thing, the other half the opposite. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. All you can hope is that over the 5 year life of a Parliament, your voters will  overall think you have spoken sense and done the right thing, even if they have disagreed on particular matters.

But there’s another problem. The advent of 24/7 media, coupled with what our predecessors would have thought of as an intrusive public interest in every passing remark of anyone in the public eye means that any remark, anywhere, any time, risks finding itself on the front pages. Did David Davies really mean to call the Coalition ‘Brokeback’? Would the PM’s rather misguided remark about Britain being the minor partner in 1940, ignoring the fact that the USA had not by that stage even entered the war have been noticed before the invention of satellite TV? Even Nick Clegg’s unfortunate remark about the ‘illegal’ war in Iraq, might well have gone unnoticed before Parliament was televised, and who would have known about Crispin Blunt’s slapping down over plays and parties in prisons? Would Rory Stewart’s misunderstood remark about his constituents holding their trousers up with string have been anything more than a local irritation? Self-preservation under these circumstances demands ever greater carefulness in what one says in public or private, no doubt leading to the accusation of evasiveness or dissembling.

You can watch every word I say in parliament (even when as a Chairman of a Committee or Westminster hall debate all I say is ‘Order,Order’) by logging on to ‘theyworkforyou.com.’ Any passing slip of the tongue will be on your computer in your front room within seconds of saying it. Political careers increasingly depend not on intellectual ability, but on the ability to avoid saying anything the least bit noteworthy. Well, I fear the end result of that would be a bunch of faceless clones, and I am glad to report that your MP does not easily fit into that mould.

So I shall go on telling you exactly how I see it in straightforward terms. Sometimes I will be right, sometimes wrong. Sometimes you will agree with me, sometimes perhaps violently disagree. Martin Luther’s ‘Here I stand, I can do none other’ might not be a recipe for political success. It might not make one popular, but I hope that overall it will lead you to think of me at least as being open, honest, down to earth and straightforward. What you see is what you get. Thank you, John Bentley.

The More You Spend

“The more you spend, the better it is,” seems to be how some people think. Their reaction to the spending cuts and efficiency savings that are beginning to be announced in detail is that: ‘It must be bad. Labour spent more on x y and z, and therefore spending less must be by definition a retrograde step.’ I smell old-style socialism and profligacy somewhere here.

I have, for example, been deluged by emails from constituents objecting very strenuously to the Secretary of State for Culture’s passing comment that he hoped it might be possible to cut the BBC’s licence fee in future years. In this digital age, when most of us can easily receive 100 channels on radio and TV, £145 per household for the BBC may be harder and harder to justify. Do we necessarily get better programmes at £145 than we would at £100 for example? (And incidentally do their executives and presenters really need such astronomical salaries?)

Michael Gove has been busy cutting through the bureaucracy associated with the Building Schools for the Future programme and pushing ahead with the radical and exciting Academies Bill; in both ways making sure that the money is actually spent where it should be - in educating our children rather than the bureaucracy surrounding it. Andrew Lansley has announced a radical shake-up of the NHS, with funds going direct to GPs, and a consequent abolition of Primary Care Trusts and Regional Health Authorities. Once again, getting the money through to where it actually counts in improving our healthcare standards. After all, no-one can deny that Labour spent record amounts of money on the Health Service over thirteen years, but no-one I have met claims that it is proportionately better as a result! There may well be cuts on the way in defence, local government, the environment and elsewhere. They should not necessarily be decried. Let’s have a look at Quality, not just Quantity.

Something of a similar argument applies to the Wiltshire Council’s announcement of a shake-up in our leisure centres. They are being realistic that maintaining the 13 leisure centres earmarked for closure or transfer at an annual cost of £93 million is simply unrealistic, and in the long run may well result in even more closures. Instead they are to give the Lime Kiln Centre in Wootton Bassett, amongst others, the right to run itself. The Council will hand it over in good shape to a Community group who will then have to use their energies and imagination to make it into an ongoing concern in exactly the way that community groups have done so successfully in both Calne and Cricklade. Again, more spending is not necessarily better. It is often HOW you spend the money which counts, rather than HOW MUCH you spend.

Even domestically, do you really think that those who spend the most money on their home are necessarily the happiest. By no means. My father used to pray “for enough of this World’s goods, but not too much.” Profligacy, waste and spending are not necessarily the hallmarks of success. Modesty and prudence sometimes have a great deal to recommend them.  

Defence Week

It has been a bit of a military week for me, but then representing a military area such as this, I feel no shame about that.

Despite jumping energetically up and down in Defence Questions on Monday, I failed to “catch the Speaker’s eye”, but that was more than compensated for by the rest of the week’s activities.  I attended the RAF Benevolent Association Battle of Britain Anniversary on Tuesday and was pleased to table a Parliamentary Motion commemorating that brilliant British Battle.  I am proud that Wing Commander Peter Olver DFC who was a distinguished Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain lives today with his wife Daphne in Nettleton.

At drinks with the Secretary for Defence, Liam Fox, on Tuesday night, he confirmed that without necessarily giving us undue hope, RAF Lyneham is indeed being considered under the current Strategic Defence Review.  At breakfast with the Chief of the Air Staff the following morning I had to remind him of that fact.  I managed to get a question in to the Prime Minister on Wednesday lunch time asking for his support in the regeneration of Lyneham if the Hercules fleet eventually moves to Brize Norton in his constituency. I cross examined the Minister responsible for the Reserve Forces in a meeting that afternoon before hosting a Parliamentary reception for the Royal British Legion at which much mention of Wootton Bassett was made, about which I was able to tell the people of that wonderful town at another sad repatriation the following day.  Dinner that evening was in the Great Hall of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea with General Sir David Richards, the Chief of the General Staff who we hear now is to be promoted to Chief of the Defence Staff.

It is of course hard to say how much influence these various meetings will have over defence policy, how likely they are to improve things for our service people nor whether or not they will help save Lyneham.  I often think that politics and Parliament are rather like a big bowl of soup. All kinds of ingredients go in the top end – media, speeches, meetings, - with law and administration being the final brew.  The quality of the ingredients is of course crucial to the quality of the final product but it may be hard to work out a direct cause and effect link.  In other words rushing around raising defence matters especially on behalf to the constituency as I was able to do this week will, I hope, have a beneficial effect for the many of thousands of service people I have the honour to represent.

Education Good Job Well Done

How fortunate we are in this area, that despite the lowest central Government funding for education of any of the English Counties, we nonetheless have such fine schools, dedicated teachers and high achieving students.

I try to visit schools as often as I can. In recent months I have been to see Malmesbury Primary and Comprehensive schools, visited Springfields School and St Mary’s in Calne and showed students from John Bentley around Parliament, spoke at the Wootton Bassett Comprehensive Sixth Form Prize Giving, campaigned with Longleaze Primary against the closure of its Special Learning Centre, helped judge the Model United Nations Competition, and this weekend spoke to students at Bradon Forest in Purton and to several primary schools taking part in the Youth Parliament.

We are very fortunate in our catchment area, in the dedication and professionalism of our outstanding teachers, in our school buildings, many of which have been renewed or rebuilt in recent years, and we can be proud that overall we provide a high level of education. Yet tough times lie ahead. The last Government made a mess of the funding for Further Education colleges, so that plans to rebuild and restructure Wiltshire College have had to be shelved, with unfortunate cuts in ‘outreach’ services in some of our towns as well; it seems unlikely that there will be much (if any) capital spending on schools nationally for years ahead because of the economic shambles this government has inherited; and it seems likely that our working funding will be further cut.

Now the truth is that no cuts in education are welcome. Of course they are not. Yet at times like these it is important that we are certain that not a penny is misspent. I know that the excellent new Unitary Council in Wiltshire has this at the very top of its priority list. And I have every confidence that they will manage through it. Their commitment must be to ensure that frontline teaching is as little affected as it possibly can be with savings being found from elsewhere in central administration or capital spending rather than books and teachers. They can be certain that for my part I will do all I can together with the other Wiltshire MPs to argue our case with central Government. Wiltshire is already pretty hard done by and must not suffer unduly from the hard times to come.

But in the meantime, as we come to the end of this very successful academic year, let us just take a moment to thank and congratulate all of the very many dedicated (and too often unsung) professionals who make our outstanding Wiltshire education possible – heads, teachers, teaching assistants and staff in our schools of every kind. You do a brilliant job, and can look forward to the summer holidays with a sense of satisfaction at a good job well done.

Budget and World Cup

Black disappointment- even despair - over England’s 4-1 defeat by Germany, is in inverse proportion to the general satisfaction over what ought to have been the least popular Budget for generations. General dislike of Fabio Capello is countered by massive personal support both for George Osborne, and post-G20 World Statesman David Cameron. All of this, of course, is quite different to Harold Wilson’s election defeat in 1970, which was at least partly attributed to our World Cup ejection. So what has changed?

The Budget and its delivery were in stark contrast to all of those delivered by Gordon Brown in a variety of ways. It was absolutely straight. There was no spinning or expectation management. It was all announced in the actual speech, unlike previous years where it was extensively “trailed” in the Sunday papers, and where the real detail was hidden in the small print, the speech itself being more of a photo opportunity than anything else. All of that has gone. (Thank goodness).

This time the Chancellor told us straightforwardly how bad it all is, and what pain we are going to have to endure to put it right. And we loved it. VAT at 20%? ‘Bring it on!’ CGT up? ‘Well it’s not as bad as we feared.’ 25% cuts in all government departments except health? ‘No problem,’ we seemed to be saying. Tough it may be, but it seemed to us all to be fair. We have overspent like it was going out of fashion and now we were all jointly and severally going to have to pay for our overindulgence. It’s like the belt-tightening diet in the post-Christmas period! I hope that that spirit of self-denying austerity continues when the inevitable cuts in public spending actually start biting over the next twelve months!

The masterful handling of the Budget by George Osborne was matched by David Cameron’s statesmanship. From the time of his statement over the coalition, and then his very deft handling of its negotiation; his refreshingly honest apology over the Bloody Sunday shootings after the Saville Report; his hands-on visit to Afghanistan, his respectful welcome to the EU Summit, and now his masterful appearance at both G-8 and G-20, David Cameron has given the people a very real feeling that at last we have a Prime Minister of real international standing and respect. There’s a feeling developing - rare in recent years - that we can actually be proud of ourselves as a Nation. We are starting to do the right things, and the world is beginning to look on with some admiration. What a refreshing feeling that is.

So maybe the FA and Mr Capello have something to learn from our Government, whose popularity has soared as our footballers grossly overpaid popularity has slumped.

Predicting The Future

What do the following have in common:- Fabio Capello, George Osborne, The Chief  Druid, HM the Queen, The Secretary of the England Lawn Tennis Association and the organisers of the very many outdoor events I am looking forward to attending around the constituency next weekend?

Monday morning questions fill the mind: will we beat Slovenia, and if not what future for Fabio? Will George do enough to stop the country going to rack and ruin, yet be sufficiently restrained to avoid a ‘double dip’ recession? Will Wimbledon, the Summer Solstice, Glastonbury and the Buckingham Palace Garden Party all be washed out by torrential rain as is the great English tradition? Or will they be unseasonably sunny? 

And despite the hoards of pundits trying to answer those questions – football reporters, economists, weather forecasters, armchair observers and the old bore down the pub; the fact of the matter is that none of us knows. Do you remember how the Queen is reported to have met a group of economists and bankers during the banking crisis, and stunned them all by asking “Why did none of you lot predict what was going to happen?” Or Macmillan, on being asked what was the greatest political influence of the day replying: “Events, dear boy, events.”

By the time you read this on Thursday, many of these questions will have been answered. The media will be minutely analysing George Osborne’s first and Britain’s most crucial Budget for decades. Is it all pain, or is there some element of ‘expectation management’ going on, so that we will all breathe a sigh of relief when it turns out to be less painful than we all feared? And has he taken account of all possible events in the future in his long-term forecasts? The overall strategy behind this – and all –Budgets is simple. You have to balance the books. If you haven’t got the money coming in, then you can’t spend it. The tough bit is working out how to relatively painlessly maximise the amount coming in; and imaginatively use the amount going out to bring growth back into the economy.

I have to admit to greater confidence in George and Dave to do that than I had in Alistair and Gordon (where’s he gone, incidentally?). And I say that not just because I’m a Tory. The reality is that we Conservatives can make a virtue out of a tough budget – tax rises and spending cuts – so long as that brings with it real hope of a sound economy in the medium to long term. Labour could only ever make a virtue out of keeping spending up. That’s why the cycle of Labour tax and spend and true Tory prudence re-occurs so very often in at least our post-war history.

So let’s hope that the sun shines on the revellers at Stonehenge, that the Glastonbury mud-larks are disappointed, and that the tennis problem is heat stroke rather than trench foot. Let’s hope that a decisive victory against Slovenia will mark a turn in England’s fortunes. And let’s hope that prudent George gets it just right, and that five years from now we’ll all be thanking him for his tough but necessary measures.

Political Rollercoaster

Political and Parliamentary life is a bit of a rollercoaster at the best of times.

On Monday last week I was very much buoyed by my election as Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Armed Forces. This new group brings together the former individual services and is designed to promote the interests of Army, Navy, RAF and Royal Marines to parliamentarians. Wearing that hat, it was my honour to welcome to Parliament 120 soldiers from 11 Light Brigade who have recently returned from Afghanistan and to thank them for all that they have done. It is a magnificent and uplifting sight to see a Guards Band and 120 desert combat clad soldiers marching though Parliament’s Carriage Gates and coming to a halt outside the 1000 year old Great North Door of Westminster Hall. These men and women were sent to Afghanistan by Parliament, and it is right that it was Parliament welcoming them home – and remembering the very many of their comrades who will never return.

My nomination as Chairman of the Defra Select Committee on Tuesday, by contrast, came to naught as a very able woman MP was elected in my place. One door closes and another opens! On Wednesday I was glad to ‘catch the Speaker’s eye’, and to ask the Prime Minister a question about Wootton Bassett and the Repatriation Ceremonies. I pointed out that the town seeks no kind of recognition nor honour for doing what they do, but asked whether nonetheless it might be appropriate to remember these solemn and moving events by re-positioning the handsome Camp Bastion war memorial in the High Street as a permanent record. It would also be a place of pilgrimage for the families of the fallen, so many of whom gain succour and comfort from Wootton Bassett. I attended a repatriation on Thursday, and opinion up and down the High Street on my initiative was largely very supportive, although some people felt that the Bastion Memorial would be more appropriately repositioned at the Royal British Legion Arboretum at Alrewas in Lichfield. These are early days, and I am more than ready to listen to opinion on the subject.  

The pace of change in Parliament and Government is so fast as to be hard to keep up with. Every Department of State is making announcements, some of which will have far-reaching consequences. The Strategic Defence Review is of great importance in this area, as is the abolition of Regional Planning bodies and the Regional Development Agency, and the consequent scrapping of Regional Spatial Strategies – the Central Government document which would have meant thousands of unwanted houses and many questionable travellers encampments being built in this area. Spending cuts and the Budget loom, presaged by cuts on Wiltshire Council’s Budget and the policing grant. These cuts are- and will be - painful. But they are an inevitable consequence of the economic shambles which we have inherited. The new Government simply has to balance the books.

A political and personal rollercoaster indeed.

Cumbria

The appalling tragedy of the shootings in Cumbria last week brought back some personal memories of 15 years ago when another madman, Thomas Hamilton, desecrated my own home town of Dunblane in Perthshire by the ghastly shootings in the school gym. My younger brother had attended Dunblane Primary School and my Father who was Minister in Dunblane Cathedral had been School Chaplain. In a strange way I remember being almost glad that he had died some years before the shootings, as it would have broken his heart. My Mother who was much involved with Cruse Bereavement Care helped with counselling the families of the children. So perhaps you’d have expected me to be in the forefront of those calling for an outright ban on all handguns.

On the contrary. I used my Maiden Speech in Parliament in July 1997, to argue that a total ban on Olympic handguns would not only be totally ineffective in preventing another Dunblane; it might even be worse than that, since by giving politicians a false sense that they were ‘doing something’ about it, it actually may have absolved them from taking truly effective action against gun crime. For the fact of the matter is that there are an estimated 3 million illegal handguns in the UK today, and the level of guncrime in the UK has risen exponentially since that ‘politically correct’ ban on all legally held handguns in the aftermath of Dunblane. In other words, it was a classic kneejerk reaction which may well have had the opposite effect to the one intended.

Now it is perfectly true that Derrick Bird used a fully licensed shotgun and ‘22 rifle in the appalling outrage in Cumbria. But let us suppose that in a desperate attempt to be ‘seen to be doing something’ it became well nigh impossible to hold legal firearms of that sort., would that really prevent another Cumbria occurring? I think not. It would prevent farmers doing their jobs; it would interfere with perfectly legitimate shooting sports, but it would do nothing to prevent another Dunblane, or Cumbria, or Hungerford.

West Cumbria will take a very long time to recover. Perhaps it never will. The scars are still pretty raw in Dunblane. And I can understand those well-meaning people who will try to help the bereaved by calling for a change in gun ownership laws. But the truth is that it will be the churches, schools, community groups, counsellors who will start to heal the wounds of West Cumbria. And any kind of self-righteous attempt to limit legitimate gun ownership and usage might in the end be counter-productive.

So we grieve for the people of West Cumbria as a whole, and especially for the friends and family of those killed. But we should not confuse that grief and sympathy with politically-motivated calls for a change to gun laws.

David Laws

Do you remember “Jaws”? “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water….” We all hoped that the General Election would draw a line under ‘Expenses-gate’ and let us all get back to running the country. No such luck. Now we have another ministerial scalp hanging on the Daily Telegraph’s trophies belt.

I have to admit that I am in two minds about David Laws’ resignation and the turmoil it caused. He quite plainly should not have been claiming for rental payments which he was paying out to his (undeclared) gay partner. That is clearly in breach of the rules, and he has paid for it with his job and reputation. And he and some of his colleagues must be bitterly regretting the rather self-righteous way they claimed for themselves some kind of monopoly of virtue in the expenses scandal? “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Nonetheless, had David Laws simply admitted that he was gay and living with his partner, he could perfectly legitimately have claimed the same amount or more against the cost of his London house. He was without doubt one of the most able and talented of the Coalition Cabinet, and was tasked with that most urgent of jobs – finding ways to balance the nation’s books. The coalition will be a poorer place without him. So is it really right that one man’s shyness about openly declaring his homosexuality should deprive the Government in that way, and at least potentially make it more difficult to get out of the financial mess the last government left behind?

Now the media tells us that Danny Alexander used a perfectly legal Capital Gains Tax loophole to avoid paying tax when he sold his London house. It’s embarrassing that his Party called this practice “morally unacceptable,” and it’s awkward that he is the man tasked with increasing CGT on the rest of us. But is there not a sniff somewhere here of the Witches of Eastwick? You remember how a sort of mass hysteria set in, merely accusing someone of being a witch was enough to convict them, and many innocent women were burned at the stake.

The Daily Telegraph performed an essential function in exposing a number of MPs who were without doubt on the fiddle, and I welcome the new regime which has been brought in to make sure it never happens again. (Ignoring for the moment the fact that the cost of that regime is many times larger than the total reclaimed from the recalcitrant MPs!) But I really do feel that the time may have come to move on, draw a line under this matter, and allow those elected by us to get on with their real jobs of governing, and of holding the government to account?

It seems to me that enough is now enough.

Queen's Speech

Parliament’s felt rather like an eerie netherworld for the last couple of weeks. The Great and the Good of the Conservative and Liberal Parties have been up to their necks in negotiations, press conferences, forming of governments, trips to Scotland, France, Germany. It is ‘all go’ at the top. And at the other end of the scale there are 300 or so new boys and girls trying to find their way around the Commons and understand what is going on. One or two of them are desperate to be ‘young thrusters’, doing interviews, volunteering for jobs, rushing around looking important in the foolish belief that they can ‘make their name’ in the first few weeks.(They’d be well advised to realise that politics is a long old game.) The sensible ones are reasonably confidently swearing their oaths, trying to find an office, beginning to understand parliamentary procedures; a tiny handful look completely lost as they desperately struggle to find the coffee machines.

Meanwhile, we older hands who have been pipped at the post for ministerial jobs by our 37 Lib Dem colleagues are rather standing on the touchlines observing it all with bemused puzzlement. We strongly support the Coalition, and wholly accept that under the circumstances it’s the only thing David Cameron could have done. And we are overall favourable to the package of measures which the negotiators have bashed out.

Yet did we really fight an election - especially in an area like this where the Lib Dems are the main challengers - only to see many of the policies of our political opponents so enthusiastically espoused by our own side? Did people really vote for me in order to see CGT on their investments trebled, or a 55% majority required for a Dissolution of Parliament? Do I really want to see the rules of the Conservative 1922 Committee (the Tory Trades Union for backbenchers) changed to allow Ministers to have a decisive influence? These and several other issues are giving we Tory backbenchers a few frissons of discomfort. We will see how things pan out over the next few weeks.

One area where we can all be universally enthusiastic is over the £6 billion of savings so far announced by Lib Dem David Laws. There is an enormous amount of fat and wastage in the public sector which we can reasonably painlessly slice away. Subsequent cuts of Surgeon Laws’ scalpel may well be less painless. But necessary surgery they will be nonetheless, especially if we are indeed to be a tax-cutting government. (Which I for one support almost more than anything else.)

Tuesday saw the superb flummery of the State Opening of Parliament, The Queen and all her horses, obscure gents in magnificent uniforms carrying out long-forgotten duties (including my elder brother, Charles, who as Marshall of the Diplomatic Corps gets to wear a fantastic uniform complete with knee breeches and plumed hat to fulfil his duties of ushering around overseas ambassadors.) The Queen’s Speech promises an action packed Parliamentary 18 months. So now the really hard work of making it all happen starts. Exciting times indeed.

In Coalition

In Coalition

Those of us who are more used to the rough and tumble of party politics must now be ready to bite our tongues, seek cooperation and mutual understanding, put the Country above Party politics, seek to run the Nation by consensus and such like truisms. And in that new-found spirit of “hugging a Liberal,” may I start by welcoming Chippenham’s MP, Duncan Hames to these columns. I shall greatly look forward to reading his contributions. And in expressing my confidence that he will doubtless be a hard-working local MP, and declaring my readiness to work alongside him in the many issues which we will have in common over the years, it would be wrong if I did anything other than make clear my regrets that the Conservatives, and my friend Wilfred Emmanuel- Jones failed to win the seat by a whisker. Wilfred worked tirelessly and selflessly for some four years, but it is a sad reality of political life that there can be but one winner.

The Coalition has set about its difficult work with alacrity and vigour. Our first and top priority must be to deal with the economic shambles we have inherited from Labour, in particular by immediately setting about dealing with the deficit. What a brilliant appointment to make Lib Dem David Laws Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and therefore responsible for the cuts and pain which are without doubt about to descend upon us. I do not envy him his task. George Osborne is quite rightly setting about working out just how indebted we are, and then putting in place a robust no-nonsense plan to get it sorted out. Only then can we truly hope for better times ahead.

Meanwhile each of the spending departments are beginning their difficult work of putting right so much that is wrong with Britain. Locally, apart from the economy, I will be watching very carefully to see how Liam Fox sets about the Strategic Defence Review, and in particular what plans he will have for Lyneham; I will be scrutinising Eric Pickles’ plans to do away with the Regional Spatial Strategy which has forced so many unwanted houses, and unneeded gypsy encampments on North Wiltshire, I will be pressing for fairer funding for Wiltshire Council and for health and education locally, although with the nation’s finances in such a dire state, I am not holding my breath; and I will continue to campaign for better times for farming, better transport links and so much else.

One of the great advantages of being on the backbenches (alongside 20 or so of my colleagues, who having laboured as Shadow Ministers all these years now find their government posts filled with Lib Dems), is that I am free to be as questioning of this government on behalf of local people as I was of the last one. And I pledge to keep up my various battles, irrespective of who may be in power. There is no such thing as a “humble back-bencher,” and nor am I yet ready to succumb to being a ‘veteran Tory,’ a ‘knight of the shires’, a ‘Conservative Grandee’, nor even a ‘maverick backbencher’, all of them being soubriquets so often attached to my colleagues. But I do have it in me to make myself jolly difficult on behalf of North Wiltshire and all its people.

We must all work hard to make the coalition work. It is very exciting in so many ways, and at all events, the only possible outcome given the Parliamentary arithmetic. But it will not stop me either from remaining a “true Conservative”, nor from fighting whatever battles I have to in the future.

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