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They Work For You

When Constituents come up to Parliament for a tour, they are often amazed by the sheer variety of the work which goes on there. The impression gained from the Parliament Channel is variously that we spend all our time shouting at each other, (which in reality is largely restricted to the half hour of high drama known as Prime Minister's Question Time on a Wednesday lunchtime), or that we are in fact never there at all since the Chamber looks so empty at most other times!

The fact of the matter is that the 5000 people who work in the 2000 or so rooms in Parliament are pretty frenetically busy from week's end to week's end in a wide variety of activities all designed to hold the Government to account (oral questions, Opposition Day Debates, Westminster Hall debates), to help (or to hinder) the making of new legislation (debates in the main Chamber, or in the 40 or so committee rooms), to monitor the actions of Government departments (the Select Committees), and of course to answer constituent's questions and issues (largely in one's own office dealing with the many hundreds of letters, emails and telephone calls each week).

For example, in the two weeks or so since Parliament returned from the Christmas Recess, I have asked oral questions of the Secretary of State for Defence about military inquests, of the Secretary for Defra about air quality targets and the third Heathrow runway, of the Secretary for Culture about why the Government's Heritage Bill has been dropped, and why they are not planning to ban cigarette vending machines from Labour Clubs: 1 spoke for 15 minutes or so in a debate on Iraq (which involves perhaps six hours waiting your turn on the green leather benches); I spoke at some length in a Westminster hall debate on agriculture in the South West, although trying to focus more on global starvation and food security; I spoke in the Second Reading of the Coroners' Bill on military inquests, data protection and especially on how to protect our youngsters from wicked suicide websites; and I spoke in a debate on Military Personnel particularly raising a number of concerns from the many military people in this area; I attended three sessions of my Select Committee monitoring the Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs; I voted perhaps a dozen or so times, tabled perhaps thirty Written Parliamentary Questions, which are a very good way of winkling out useful information from the Government; written to ministers on behalf of constituents perhaps 30 or 40 times, quite apart from a myriad of quasi-social and other engagements, quite a busy time in the constituency and vast quantities of paper an administration. (Pace the gentleman who tells me he will never vote for me again because I failed to answer his email within 24 hours.)

There's rather a good website called theyworkforyou.com which enables you to be alerted every time an MP says or does something in Parliament. One friend complains that it’s blocking up his in-box, and so could I please consider doing rather less. I have to admit the first couple of weeks have been a bit frenetic. (four speeches, six oral questions in about 9 days is perhaps a bit much) and I will no doubt ease off, especially if there are fewer of my particular interests coming up in Parliament. But I have always been of the view that my job is to be in Parliament saying things on behalf of the people of North Wiltshire, and they would not thank me if I sat on my hands or twiddled my thumbs. Anyhow, if you fire 1000 arrows in the air, there's just a chance that a few of them will strike their mark. So I just hope that one or two of mine might have. 

International Affairs

So Parliament’s back in session. And what a first week back we have had! It was heavily dominated by Defence and Foreign Affairs matters. I asked a question of the Secretary of State for defence on Monday about our excellent, but retiring Coroner in Wiltshire, David Masters, who has done such outstanding and expert work on inquests into the deaths of our servicemen overseas. The rule is that it’s the local coroner in the County to which the bodies are first returned that carries out the inquest, which for the last eighteen months or so has been via RAF Lyneham.

Tuesday saw a statement on the heart-rending events in Gaza. As I write there seems at last to be some hope of a cease-fire, which must be resolutely observed by both sides. The International community must now act swiftly to prevent any further smuggling of weapons into Gaza, and then seek to find a way to re-start the peace process, which we all hope will lead to two stable States peacefully co-existing within internationally recognised borders.

On Wednesday I took part in a debate on Iraq – a war to which I was opposed as being questionable to say the least under international law- while nonetheless accepting that Iraq, and I think the Middle East as a whole is probably better as a result of the removal of the vile dictator, Saddam. I tried to warn the Government, however, that it would be foolish as we leave Iraq somehow or other to spin that the war and its aftermath was a great success, which it quite demonstrably was not; or that somehow or another we can now breathe a sigh of relief and forget all about it. Now is the time when the real work starts through diplomatic and commercial channels to help rebuild a stable, economically viable democracy. Drinks that evening with the Israeli Ambassador, and dinner with the French Military Attaché rounded off a thoroughly international day.

By Thursday, before a passionate debate on Gaza, attention switched to more domestic affairs, with the Government’s announcement that they were to allow the third Runway at Heathrow, and that they would do so without allowing a full vote on the matter on the floor of the House of Commons. If they won’t allow proper Parliamentary democracy at home, how can we hope to promote it overseas? – a point which the enraged MP for Hayes and Harlington sought to make effectively if reprehensibly by removing that symbol of the authority of the Commons, the Mace, from its resting place on the Table, and depositing it on one of the green leather benches.

Friday saw me undergoing a 2 hour grilling from students at Malmesbury School on Fair Trade, Globalisation and the like – more demanding, and in many ways percipient than some of the supposedly more heavyweight discussions on similar subjects during the week in Parliament. That was followed by a flying visit by Shadow Chancellor George Osborne to Chippenham Town Hall to hear first hand from businesses about the effects of the current economic disaster, which to a degree at least owes its origins to International Affairs.

I suppose that the reality is that Globalisation means that more or less everything which affects us – the weather, economy, wars, politics, diplomacy, religion, are to a greater or lesser degree governed by International influences. Politics, diplomacy and International economics are increasingly intertwined.

Three Stark Images

As Parliament returns after what seems to me to have been too long a Christmas Recess – too long by a week, especially at a time like this – three stark images are firmly planted in my mind.

There have first of all been two or three of those wonderfully touching “Repatriation” ceremonies in Wootton Bassett at which the town stands still and in mourning for two minutes as the hearses bearing our war dead pause on their tragic journeys. It’s the people of the town- and of neighbouring towns and villages – just paying their respects to men younger than many of our own children who have given their lives in pursuit of the orders they have been so well trained to obey. There is no bitterness amongst the crowds, just a great sadness at the loss of these promising young lives. But as those of us who attend as many of these moving occasions as we possibly can meet each other, there is an almost unspoken question hanging in the air: “What’s it all for? And how many more times must we come here?” There’s a debate on Iraq in Parliament on Wednesday in which I hope to take part, and at least some of these questions will be aired then, and at Thursday’s debate on Armed Forces Personnel.

The second stark image in my mind is of the reportedly hundreds of innocent children and civilians killed in Gaza. What political agenda can possibly justify such needless slaughter? I have great sympathy with the Israeli cause. Hamas rockets have rained down on Israeli territory for months, and Hamas and Iran standing behind them are openly committed to the obliteration of the Israeli State. What Nation would not retaliate in self-defence under these circumstances? And Hamas are allegedly – and brutally cynically – hiding their rocket bases in schools and hospitals. Nonetheless the particular geography and circumstances of Gaza has meant horrendous slaughter in the process, and any sane person must wonder how on earth it can all be justified. Is it really proportionate? The Foreign Secretary promises us a Statement on the first day back.

And leaving aside the terribly worrying international situation (and never forgetting India and Pakistan who may well be heading for war), the third image which is firmly in my mind is of the closures of shops on our High Streets. My surgery in Chippenham on Saturday looked out at rows of shops boarded up. Several small business men spoke to me there and later in Corsham about how an absence of credit from the banks and a sharp decline in retail sales risked putting them out of business. It seems plain to me that the vast sums of money poured into the banks, the semi-nationalisation of several of them, the ridiculous 2.5% cut in VAT at vast cost to the taxpayer, and now the Prime Minister’s half-baked ideas of creating 100,000 jobs (how, may I ask, and what would they mean anyhow by comparison with 5 million true unemployed), and some kind of daft internship scheme simply haven’t worked. Our economy is spiralling out of control, and Mr Brown is apparently incapable of doing anything worthwhile to stop it.

These are challenging times indeed, and I return to Parliament enthused with a determination to add my voice to those calling for statesmanship, decisiveness and leadership from our Government.

After Eights

The Editor of the Washington Post was said many years ago to have rung round The White House, and the old Soviet and the British Embassies in DC to ask what each would like for Christmas. The President said that he would like World peace through a US-style Liberal democracy; the Soviet said he would like world domination through Trotskyite revolution. And when he was asked what he would like for Christmas, the British Ambassador is said to have replied “I think that a box of After Eights would be very pleasant, thank you very much.”

The Christmas to New Year papers are full of analysis of the last tumultuous year which has seen Gordon Brown go from near-terminal unpopularity to apparently “Saving the World” as he claimed so memorably in the last Prime Minister’s Questions. That upswing in popularity, which is already looking to have been pretty temporary, apparently came about because of International grandstanding as he tried to avoid the worst economic collapse for generations which is at least partly of his own making. The economic gloom worsens by the day, and who cannot be facing the New Year without a feeling of dire apprehension on the pit of their stomach? Where will it all lead, indeed? I would like to see a General Election quickly to give some kind of hope of a new start at least in the UK, but fear that Mr Brown is likely to hang on to power for as long as he possibly can- probably until May 2010, hoping against hope that “something will turn up” to save his bacon. I wish Mr Obama well, but would not want his job in these times for all the tea in China.

Most worrying of all of the economic indicators seems to me to be that China, which we all had hoped would be the economic power-house which would save the world, is in worse shape than the rest of us.  The huge capsize vessels which take 125,000 tonnes of coal and iron ore per voyage into China to feed its expansion were trading at $ 250,000 a day last Summer, but are now being chartered at $4000 a day. China is in total collapse, and I shudder to think what social ills may come from it. Great Nations in economic collapse historically have often become internationally aggressive to try to stave off internal political collapse.

Our involvement in Iraq may thankfully be nearing its end, but all of the indications are that we are ever more enmired in Afghanistan.  The outrage in Mumbai may mean a real possibility of an imminent Indo/Pak war, or possibly bankruptcy and civil war within Pakistan, some elements of the establishment siding with Jihadist forces in the North. The world will watch with baited breath, bearing in mind that Pakistan and India both have nuclear weapons. Meanwhile we are appalled to see what looks like some of the worst blood-shed for years in Gaza, marking the end of any hope of a lasting ceasefire in the Middle East. All of that combines into a toxic mess, one side product of which is likely to be sharply increased terrorist attacks in both UK and US. Zimbabwe, the Congo, Burma. The world’s in a horrible mess even without the Global economic collapse which can only make the poverty, hunger, unrest worse.

And the concerns of more peaceful times – like Global warming, whose threat is as real as ever – has disappeared under the tsunami of world political and economic crises. Perhaps a nice box of After Eights may indeed be all we have to cheer us.

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