The truth is that there are a great many close friendships across the floor of the House, and a great deal of mutual admiration, despite some very fundamental differences of opinion. For example, Tony Benn was one of the nicest and kindest men you could meet. He was a terrific speaker and a man of real commitment. I would rank him ( and that other left-wing firebrand, Tam Dalyell) as one of the people who I  have most respected in all of my time in Parliament. After all, we all come to Parliament in the hope that we can make life slightly better in one way or another for the people of our constituencies and the wider world. Our only difference is over how we set about achieving that.

In that context, I have a great deal of admiration for Clare Short. She is openly critical not only of her Party and PM’s stance over Iraq (although she could have been swifter in resigning from the Cabinet in 2003 at the time of the invasion), but is also straightforward in voicing her views about the way in which Tony Blair has undermined the best traditions of Parliamentary democracy. She argues that the size of his majority has made Labour arrogant, and error-prone; she has tired of being rebuked by the Chief Whip for expressing these views; and she sees the contribution she can make during the balance of her Parliamentary career in boldly speaking up in the way she has done. Full marks, I’d say, and I wish her well as an independent MP. Many of us wish that on some occasions we could be free of the constraints of the party whips!

Having said that, and speaking as I do as a by and large obedient loyalist, I have crossed swords with the whips over Iraq, and over the way in which the Scottish Parliament affects the people of England, and I am not ashamed of having done so. At a less dramatic level, one of the very good things about being on the backbenches is that I have the time and the freedom as well as the inclination to speak up non-stop in Parliament on behalf of my constituents. In the last week or so, for example, I have spoken or decisively acted on behalf of local people on issues as diverse as :- the NHS and hospitals locally, the NICE decision on altzheimers drugs, the global battle against aids, the operation of the Student Loans Company, the plight of riding schools, veterinary medicines, our defence capabilities, local transport matters at a dinner with Chippenham based Fleet Support Group, water issues with Thames, and a variety of others.

I have always taken the view that when I die (which I hope, God willing, may not be for a number of years yet), I will be more than content if they write on my tombstone that greatest of all accolades for a politician: “He was a good Constituency MP.”

But he was also expressing a view which is now probably the view of all except for a small band of Blairite loyalists, who are more concerned about avoiding upsetting President Bush than they are about peace in the world, or about the wellbeing of our troops. And that view is that we were duped over the reasons for going into Iraq; that contrary to all assurances on the matter there was absolutely no long-term plan about what we should do after we got there, and that quite frankly our continuing presence in Iraq is now becoming the problem rather than the solution to it. The argument that if we left now we would leave a power vacuum and internal chaos is a powerful one; and our aim of creating a stable Iraqi democracy a laudable one. But there comes a time when we have to admit that the risks of pulling out will always be there; and frankly the likelihood now of creating a stable democracy really rather remote.

So I am now increasingly of the view that we should leave that troubled country as soon as we reasonably can, and that we could then concentrate all of our forces on winning the war in Afganistan, losing which would be a catastrophe for British interests. So I applaud the courage of General Dannett, and I hope, but doubt, that the Prime Minister will listen to him. Mr Blair’s legacy- and a pretty sorry one at that - will be Iraq.

My keen involvement in defence matters, which dominated the first week back at parliament nonetheless left time to ask Parliamentary questions on English Heritage and various sites in Corsham; on the Student Loans Company on behalf of a Chippenham constituent, and to make a rather curtailed speech during the Opposition day debate on the Health Service, highlighting the dire straits which we face locally, with Malmesbury Hospital in the process of demolition, and up to seven Community Hospitals across the county facing the axe.

Its good to be back in the new Parliamentary session and once again to experience that heady mixture and contrast between great and grave matters of state, and the equally important but often quite different needs and problems of the constituency.

But it doesn’t take a genius to know that there is so much wrong as well. Clients in my weekly surgeries tell horrific tales of long waits for highly desirable if not necessarily urgent surgery; of A and E patients kept on trollies; of administrative shambles second to none; of superbugs, beds and hospitals closing, illness and even on occasion perhaps earlier than necessary deaths caused by delays and inefficiencies. Our once great health service is in a major crisis and it looks set to get worse, not better.

Locally, we should not be fooled by the apparent six month delay in the closures and cuts in our hospitals which the departure of the unloved Chief Executive of the Primary Care Trust seems to have brought about. How tragic it is to see the barriers up as they demolish Malmesbury Hospital; to know of ward closures and cuts in services in Chippenham Hospital, and to hear of 60 beds and 300 redundancies in the Royal United Hospital in Bath and similar cuts in the Great Western Hospital in Swindon. But I still have a horrible feeling that we have not yet seen the worst. The new Wiltshire-wide PCT will have to return to the charge if they are to conform to Gordon Brown’s demands that they “pay off their deficit.” The old Avon Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Strategic Health Authority had an annual deficit of £42million plus an accumulated debt which it has to repay. The Avon Ambulance Service is short of £1million a year, the Mental Healthcare Trust of close to £3million.  

But hang on a minute! What are these “debts” and “shortfalls”? The reality is that they are monies owed not to the bank, but to the Government. In other words, they are not shortfalls at all. They come from chronic underfunding by that selfsame Government. We in Wiltshire get roughly £1000 per person per year to spend on healthcare. That compares with the average for England of £1300, and close to £2000 per head in Labour strongholds in places like London and the North of England, including –surprise, surprise- places like the Prime Minister’s own constituency of Sedgefield.

And not only that. But we are also required by this bureaucratic and centralist Government to spend our scarce resources on a myriad changes, reorganisations , “initiatives”, on targets and reporting rather than on front-line healthcare.  The NHS has been reorganised from top to toe something like seven times since 1997, each of those reorganisations costing a fortune, especially in IT and redundancies. Here in Wiltshire, quite apart from the vastly expensive and now apparently dumped consultation process, “Pathways for Change”, it may not altogether surprise you to hear of the £4million they have spent over the last year or two on management consultants, and that 9 out of the 30 or so top executives in our PCT are paid over £100,000.

That’s where our taxes are going. And that’s why we are facing cuts and closures across the board. We demand Fair Funding and an end to bureaucratic waste and extravagance.