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Minute Particulars

Many people watch PMQs on a Wednesday, and believe that they have seen Parliament at work. They seem astonished when I tell them that we are there at least Monday to Thursday, often 12/15 hours a day, 30 or so committee rooms in use all day long, 5000 people working in the Palace, a good few hundred letters, emails and phone calls coming and going on a daily basis to each MP. It’s a positive hubbub of activity providing all sorts of campaigning opportunities.

That’s particularly the case when an MP is pursuing myriad different causes, which seems to be the case in my Parliamentary life at the moment. Post Office closures, hospital bed cuts, flooding, overstretch and underfunding for the military, RAF Lyneham, multiple sclerosis nurses, fair funding for leisure centres, Afghanistan, Bovine TB, Capital Gains Tax on entrepreneurial businesses, Child Support Agency and social housing amongst other things are all on my current agenda,  and there are a host of Parliamentary opportunities to advance each of those causes.

This last week, for example, I tabled Written Parliamentary Questions, (which have to be replied to by ministers within three days) on an array of military matters arising from my recent visit to Afganistan, on reoffending by a burglar wrongly released from Broadmoor, on the shooting competitions in the Olympics, and on Defra bureaucracy amongst other things; I asked Oral Parliamentary Questions on the computer systems used by the CSA, on the justification for the war in Afganistan and on university education for sons and daughters of Gurka soldiers; I signed umpteen early day Motions; I spoke in a debate on the re-rating of National Insurance Contributions and thresholds and I spoke after two dinners; I participated in Select Committee hearings on Veterinary Surgeons; I cross-examined Hilary Benn over Global warming and what the citizen can do to help, especially with regard to grants for energy efficiency; for constituents I conducted two tours of Parliament and one of No 10 Downing Street on which we were joined by the Prime Minister for 15 minutes or so; I voted a dozen or two times, had half a dozen or so press interviews, and made perhaps 5 press releases over the week. Assorted lunches, dinners, drinks, meetings on top of that, and two late night sittings and you have a pretty well-filled week.

So PMQs is to Parliamentary life rather as the sending-off is to the football match – a little bit of diversionary excitement which is not even typical of the generality of the match. (If you follow the analogy!) The truth is that with occasional exceptions, the vast bulk of one’s Parliamentary efforts are not necessarily connected with the great events of the day – although there are a fair few of them around at the moment. For most of the time we should be well content with changing a few little things around the edges which may nonetheless be of huge and disproportionate importance in peoples’ lives.

After all, if the world can be just a little better as a result of what one has done with one’s voice and one’s pen, then one should be well satisfied. As Blake said, “He who would do good in society must do it in minute particulars.”

Sharia Law

It is hard for any layman to know whether or not the Archbishop of Canterbury was right or wrong about whether there might be a role for Sharia Law to play in - or alongside - the English legal system, or whether his comments were just miscommunicated. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is rumoured to be considering “Sharia Bonds” - which would allow the British Government to borrow funds from rich Middle East sources without breaking Sharia Law. He may come to regret that flirtation, although after the botched nationalisation of Northern Rock, and assorted other financial and economic incompetences, his days as Chancellor may anyhow be numbered.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan our boys are fighting for their lives (ill-equipped as they are because of defence cuts from this very same Chancellor)  to protect us from Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Osama Bin Laden’s respect for the Koran and his hatred of the decadent West will be the dominant influence of the first half of the twenty-first century, unless we can find a modus vivendi with the hundreds of millions of law-abiding family-loving Muslims around the World, and of course very importantly here in the UK. Home-grown terrorism, albeit with close links to Pakistan as we saw for example on 7/7, is one of the most terrifying and immediate threats to our peace and prosperity.

Now to a degree the Archbishop and the Chancellor, and certainly all of those trendy sociologists who constantly promote “multiculturalism”, seem to me to be playing with fire. The lessons we should learn from the Southern States of the USA, from Apartheid, from our own inner cities, is that if people are kept “apart”, “segregated”, then they become more and more estranged, different, isolated. Surely “When in Rome do as the Romans do.”  For the first few years of my life I lived in a heavily Pakistani populated area of Glasgow. Their Glasgow accents were as broad as any, and they were wholly integrated in every way with the local area, while they still honoured the identity and religion and culture.

I very much appreciated the speech which my friend Arju Miah made when he brought his family and friends to Parliament for a dinner a few years ago. “ We are British first, Bangladeshi second” he proudly proclaimed. He runs the excellent Taj Mahal restaurant in Chippenham, takes a keen interest in Bangladesh, and his wife wears traditional dress. But they are British. And proud of it too; and immensely proud of the MBE which Her Majesty the Queen recently awarded to him for his services to the Bangladeshi Community. And that is how it should be. Let us rejoice in cultural diversity. (I may be persuaded to wear my kilt if I can still fit into it on Burns Night.) But let us all remember that first and foremost we are British, that we accept and respect British Laws, the Christian Religion, the English language, our British Way of Life.

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