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Post Scandal Reforms

The last few weeks have marked a low point in the long history of the “Mother of Parliaments,” and all Parliamentarians and those associated with us must take some personal responsibility for not spotting the abuses and putting them right long before now. That applies even to those of us (and I hope I am right in counting myself amongst them) who, despite ridiculous and sensationalist press reports to the contrary, have done absolutely nothing wrong. I have always claimed for my rent, Council Tax, utilities and associated costs, all of which has taken up the vast bulk of the Second Housing Allowance, which means that I have never claimed for furniture, gardening, nor any of the other things of which some of my colleagues are accused. And since I have always rented my Constituency base, I have never benefited from any increase in the housing market, nor had any capital gain on which to pay tax.

I nonetheless shoulder my own share of responsibility for the low esteem into which Parliament has now fallen in the eyes of the electorate, and entirely agree with David Cameron’s approach of:-  1. Saying ‘sorry’ and correcting the current abuses, 2. Asking Sir Christopher Kelly to come up with a fair, transparent and sustainable system of allowances which would allow MPs of all financial backgrounds to carry out their work and duties, and 3. Setting about the long task of rebuilding trust in our Parliament and political system.

My feeling is that we are beginning to near the end of Phase 1. I was glad to offer all my constituents the opportunity to come along to my surgeries in Corsham, Wootton Bassett and Malmesbury last Saturday and to quiz me on any aspect of all of this, personal and national. Only six people did, and I think and hope that I was able to satisfy most of them. The Channel 4 news team who travelled with me also concluded their report that evening that at least I had nothing to worry about personally in all these matters. People seem to me to be getting bored with some of the Telegraph’s coverage, which has by now made the point and triggered off the tidal wave of reform which is needed. Much further coverage risks ignoring the huge issues facing us all – North Korean nuclear tests, Afghanistan, Global recession, unemployment on the increase, health and education and transport. These are the real issues to which our media must now refocus their attention.

I also very much welcome this opportunity of having a look at the way our Parliamentary system will work in the future. I think of:- the whipping system; how many MPs we need to run the country; what an MP’s job should be in Parliament and in the Constituency; our relationship with the EU; how to curb the over mighty PM and executive; what to do about the devolved parliaments and assemblies and their relationship with the UK; How to rebalance the rights of the people of England (the famous old “West Lothian Question”); how to make Parliament more responsive to the people; what to do about the House of Lords? These and a host of other ‘constitutional’ questions need addressing, and this just may be our opportunity to do so. Let us try to find a way in which recent scandals can be turned to the good of future generations, by bequeathing them what has always been, and what can again be if we grasp this opportunity, the finest Parliament and political system in the world.

MPs' Expenses

MPs' Expenses

Future historians will mark the last week or so as one of the lowest points in the 1000 years history of the Mother of Parliaments. A combination of slack rules, poor auditing and a few MPs ready to take financial advantage of both has brought the reputation of the House, of MPs and of politics in general into the gutter.

David Cameron was quite right to say that the first thing we must do is accept the natural public fury over it all, square up to it,  apologise, pay back any overpaid sums, and where there has been real abuse, pay the penalty with sackings or loss of the whip. Second, we must immediately put in place rules to make sure that similar things cannot happen again. David has done that. And third we must painstakingly rebuild the public’s trust and support for our Parliamentary democracy.

Speaking personally, I have used my Parliamentary allowances for 12 years now to rent my constituency home, pay my council tax, utilities and a few similar minor items. I rent a primary residence in London in my sole name for a similar overall cost entirely at my own expense.  I have not bought and sold houses on allowances, nor have I bought any furniture, nor used my allowances for any extraneous purpose whatsoever. In addition to that, I get travel to and from Westminster; I pay my staff’s salaries, including my partner on a part time basis as I have openly declared, and stationery, postage and other office costs. I use the Communications Allowance to print and publish my regular Wiltshire Voice Newspapers and to pay for my website, www.jamesgray.org. And that really is it.

I was very angry with newspaper reports that I had used my allowances to pay for Remembrance Sunday wreaths, which I have not. (Although I have had an overwhelming reaction from constituents that actually since the wreaths are ‘official’ they would actually have preferred if they HAD been paid for from official funds!) I was also furious with the disgraceful lies that I had taken photographs of a dying soldier on a recent trip to Afghanistan. I can only imagine that some malicious individual concocted that story to try to divert attention away from the expenses scandals. The Press Complaints Commission is currently examining those press reports.

But in our natural reactions to all of this, there are two things we must try to avoid doing. First, we must avoid over-reacting in such a way that it makes it impossible for ordinary people to become MPs. That’s how it used to be. You could only afford to stand for Parliament if you had a substantial private income. I would hate to think that the 30 year old working class lad from –let’s say – Liverpool would be put off trying to make Britain a better place either because of the poor reputation of Parliament or because of over-stringent reforms to the expenses system. He and his three small children need somewhere to live in both Liverpool and in London. And we must make sure that he can.

And second, I hope that eventually people will accept that not ALL politics and politicians are tarred with the same brush. In particular, as we face elections for the new Wiltshire Council on 4^th June, there is really no reason why our excellent candidates should be met with hostility on the doorsteps. Please just try to remember: It’s not their fault!

A better future for Lyneham

A better future for Lyneham

The final confirmation from the Minister of Defence that the RAF are to leave Lyneham by December 2012 comes as a bitter blow to the –perhaps 10000 – people in the area who owe their livelihoods or their allegiances to the base. After 70 or so years service to the Nation, the base’s closure will be a sad day indeed for local people, and for the many RAF personnel who have come to love it. It will be a sad day for the people of Wootton Bassett who have played such a significant role in recent years, not least during the sad repatriations of our fallen servicemen. (And how bitterly I resent the foolish story in one Sunday newspaper that I somehow or another do not support our servicemen or the Royal British Legion. Nothing could be further from the truth.) And it will, in my view be a sad day for the RAF, who are now going to have to cram all of their transport assets – passengers, freight and fuel tankers - into one small base with only one runway with consequent strategic risks and tactical difficulties. I suppose I will have to accept the MOD accountants’ arguments that we will save money by amalgamating two bases into one so that we can spend more on our front-line troops, which I am sure that we will all welcome. (Although I do wonder why the same argument did not win the day with regard to co-locating all of the helicopter fleet?!)

But now we must look to the future. I am planning to re-convene the Lyneham Strategic Planning Group which I chaired shortly after the original announcement that the Hercules fleet was to leave. I will aim to get together all of the various agencies and bodies who will have a role to play in safeguarding the future of the area. Collectively our first job will have to be to decide what we want to see at Lyneham. My own preference would always be for the military first and foremost, and I was interested to hear that there are still some 15,000 troops in Germany looking for a permanent UK home. There are plenty of talks about bringing two or three separately housed regiments together on one base; and there’s always the possibility of a change of Government in the near future, who may of course take a different view to the present one.

Failing that, I would have thought that some high quality employment on the brown land on the site, perhaps a bit of housing, especially low cost housing for local people, and perhaps a bit of agriculture or leisure for the greenfield bits will be an appropriate mix. I am firmly opposed to the ideas of regional airports, new towns, massive industrial complexes, prisons, asylum seekers camps or the like. We must grasp the opportunity to ensure that whatever is on that site 20 years from now is proportionate and appropriate to the nature and character of the area. Let us not sacrifice the quality of life we all enjoy around here in an over-reaction to the closure of the base. The 750 civilian employees plus the many hundreds whose jobs provide support and services to the base will, I hope be able to find alternative employment – at least assuming that the current economic gloom has lifted by then. Life and the environment in and around the village can be made better than it is now if we all pull together in the right direction.

So let us all try to look on this sad news of the RAF’s departure as an opportunity for re-generation and improvement of the whole area. Let us not allow the abandoned base to slump into disuse. Let us work together for a better future for Lyneham.

Rebuked at PMQs

A letter to the Editor of the Gazette last week upbraids me for being ticked off by Mr Speaker for being too noisy during Prime Minister’s Questions. Well, I’m afraid that the fact is that noise at PMQs – especially from the Opposition benches - is all part of the theatre, and the particular day when Mr and Mrs Short were in the Gallery, I just happened to be sitting at Michael Martin’s left ear. He and I had a laugh about it afterwards! Mr Short’s certainly right – PMQs may well not be the best possible role model for our school children; but then nor is Gordon Brown the best possible role model for our head teachers!

My guess is that the vast bulk of the people of North Wiltshire would have been shouting with me if they could – outraged by the Budget, Damian McBride’s smears, The Home Secretary’s expenses, the economy in collapse, debt round our ears, Iraq and Afghanistan and so much else. Mr Brown seems to have gone from bad to worse this last week with his ridiculous mishandling of the Ghurkha question, and his laughable U-Tube then U-Turn over MPs expenses. The Cabinet seems to be in open warfare, the Prime Minister to have wholly lost his authority to run our country. Under those circumstances, I’m afraid that I feel no shame at a little bit of shouting at the man responsible. (As well in quieter debates of a good deal of wholly rational discussion.)

It would be wrong for me to enter into Mr Brown and Labour’s private grief. But there is one aspect of it all which worries me greatly – and which reminds me very strongly of the closing stages of John Major’s Government in 1996/7 – namely that more and more decisions on a wide variety of (sometimes insignificant) issues are taken not on their merits, not on what will be best for the country, but on how it might help to hold the Labour Party together. The 50 pence tax rate in the Budget, the (unsuccessful) shilly-shallying over the Ghurkhas; the planned smears against Top Conservatives; the U-Tube expenses announcement followed by its recantation; these and so many other things smell of party political opportunism more than anything else.

And what’s even more worrying is that it is cack-handed and ineffectual opportunism. After all if he was using his political wiles successfully to try to get through his policies, we might forgive him. But the awful truth is that it’s the political shenanigans themselves which are his undoing. Presumably Alistair Darling wanted to try his best to right the economy; Jackie Smith to do the right things by the Ghurkhas; we all want to find a way of sorting out the misuse of the Second Housing Allowance payments. It might well be that some of us would have agreed with the substance of some or all of those announcements were it not for the aggressively party political way he approached them, and were it not for the shambolic incompetence of his delivery of them. What a way to run a whelk stall!

So I’m sorry, Mr and Mrs Short. If you didn’t like the fact that I shouted at Mr Brown. I fear there comes a time when even the most even tempered of people like me reaches the end of our tolerance with a Government like this one. I promise to find other ways to be a better role model for our young people, and all I would suggest is that if you don’t like the rough and tumble of PMQs, which incidentally is the envy of other Parliaments and Oppositions around the world, then you should make judicious use of the “off” switch on your television for that 30 minutes every week!

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