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Floods & Honours

Parliament’s last week before the long Summer Recess was hectic, with ministers and backbenchers alike trying to wrap things up. The week was dominated by flooding and by Cash for Honours.

I visited residents in Westbury Park in Wootton Bassett on Saturday, many of whose houses had been flooded, because of the inadequacy of the flood reservoir near their houses, but exacerbated by an apparent failure by Network Rail to keep a culvert under the railway open. Residents, who rallied round in a truly neighbourly way to help move the belongings of those who were flooded are now concerned that outline planning has been given for fourteen new houses in that very flood reservoir. Quite leaving aside the unfortunate people who might buy those houses, it would presumably worsen the risk of flooding of the existing properties. I take the matter up with the Council, Environment Agency and Ministers, and raise it during Hilary Benn’s Statement on the floods on Monday in The House. Having seen the misery of the flooded houses in Wootton Bassett I truly feel for all of those in Gloucestershire and elsewhere, some of whom are flooded, and without water or electricity. Quite aside from who is to blame, or how we can avoid it all happening again, it is an unprecedented human disaster.

I am glad that the CPS have decided not to prosecute anyone over allegations about Cash for Honours. Despite any short term political advantage which might have come from Mr Blair in the dock, it would overall have further damaged respect for politics and for Parliament, which I believe to be amongst the cleanest in the World. (Leaving aside George Galloway!) But questions do have to be asked about the police investigation, and why it went on for so long, and about exactly how and why certain people are nominated for peerages. I am very much opposed to an elected House of Lords because of the effect it would have on the direct democratic answerability of the House of Commons; but I really do nonetheless feel that the days when a peerage and a role in our legislative process should be handed out as a bauble in return for donations, or other favours or services  should be well gone by now. The House of Lords should be a working place, not “an honour”, with knighthoods, CBEs and so on reserved for the Honours System. Equally, I am deeply uneasy about some of these very large donations or loans to political parties, but at the same time wholly opposed to State funding of political parties. In the aftermath of the non-scandal, the whole question will have to be re-examined, and some kind of middle way reached.

I am looking forward to a long busy summer in the Constituency, punctuated only by a day a week in London, a week’s holiday in Cornwall, a week with the troops in Afganistan and a visit to the Party Conference in Blackpool. Its been a busy and momentous term, and most of us – of all political parties - are looking forward to just a little “R and R.”

Renewal

There’s a sort of end of term feeling around politics at the moment. The major reshuffle on the Government side has meant that new ministers are keeping their heads down reading into their new briefs. The Tory reshuffle saw lots of new blood coming in, with some very talented people being promoted, which is very welcome. I spent some time campaigning in the Ealing Southall by-election, caused by the sad death of my friend Piara Khabra, who was the last MP to have served in the Second World War – with the Indian Rifles. I’d be surprised if there is anything other than a Labour win there, or in the Blair by-election in Sedgefield also this Thursday. But the Conservative and Liberal shares of the vote will be the important thing to watch out for. Boris Johnson has meanwhile confirmed that he will try to become the Conservative candidate in the London Mayoral election, which will mean some fun and fireworks if nothing else. I am very glad that there are still characters like Boris around in our otherwise conventional political scene.

For myself, I spent the weekend moving into a new house, which is just a few hundred yards outside the Constituency – near Melksham. Both of my predecessors – Richard Needham and Daniel Awdry were similarly just a mile or two outside . There may be some advantages in it. In Parliament, I am very glad to have my jobs on David Cameron’s Policy Group on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security, whose report is imminent, as a delegate to the Council of Europe and Western European Union, as a member of the Defra Select Committee and Chairman of two or three Parliamentary Committees- the Army and MS groups amongst other things. And despite what a rather spiteful letter in the Gazette Letters to the Editor last week said, I am rather glad to stay a humble backbencher, at least  meanwhile, which apart from anything else means that I can be a full-time Constituency MP. Rather like my Father who enjoyed being a Parish Minister far more than all of the various committees and bodies he sat on in the Church of Scotland centrally, I have always preferred my constituency work to anything I do in Parliament. And of course  I was very glad to have Sir Philip Mawer, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards’ clearance over the allegations that I had misused my Parliamentary allowances, and now look forward to spending the summer rebuilding old friendships, and working hard in the constituency.

All of these things pale into insignificance by the newspaper headline which tells us that casualty rates in Afghanistan- at 10% - are fast approaching those of the Second World War (11%) I am looking forward to a brief visit to the troops in Helmand Province over the Recess. How awful it must be for parents to know that their child has a one in ten chance of being wounded or killed. How brave these people are – many of them from this area. And how uncomplaining as they go off to do our bidding in the nastiest and most hazardous of circumstances. The little political battles we concern ourselves with at home should never be allowed to obscure the great debt we owe to the people we despatch to do our political will overseas. We should all salute them.

Prime Minister's Questions

Prime Ministers’ Questions are a bit like London buses - you wait for ages, and then they all come along in a rush. Week by week, each MP puts his name into an electronic hat, the computer conducts a “shuffle,” and the top 10 or so get to ask the PM a question the following week. 40 sitting weeks, so 400 out of the 650 MPs a year, or roughly two thirds. On average, each MP should get one PMQ every 16 months or so. I’ve had three in the last month, and I am not a good enough mathematician to work out the probability of that happening!

Week 1 I asked Tony Blair about Iraq, Week 2 about the European Constitution, and finally last Wednesday I asked Mr Brown why it was that Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Defence has become only a part-timer since he is now also Secretary of State for Scotland. Presumably either Scotland, or Defence, or most likely both, will lose out. I would like to think that all three topics were current, important and matters which the people of North Wiltshire would like to know more, although it will not surprise them to hear that the answers I received were less than illuminating! But at all events, I was playing my part in “holding the Government to account” as is the duty of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. 

I have to admit that I am in two minds about the usefulness of PMQs. Its an exciting bear-pit, the highlight of the Parliamentary week, and the envy of, for example, the US House of Representatives, who would give their eye teeth to have such a session. But I sometimes think that its very bear-pit nature, together with the chronic avoidance by successive PMs of giving a straight answer to a straight question may well play quite a big part in the decline in respect for Parliament and for politics which we have seen in recent years.

Mr Blair denied that he was giving away more powers to Europe, but the subsequent Treaty, and the comment on it from European leaders made it absolutely plain that that is exactly what he is doing. We are demanding a referendum on it, which I have little doubt that Mr Brown will refuse, not least because he knows for sure that he would lose it. And how can it be that at a time like this – with more troops deployed on active service overseas, and with the world in a military crisis, the Secretary of State for Defence, who should be working 20 hours a day on defence matters can possibly also become the man at Westminster in charge of Scottish affairs? Mr Brown seemed oblivious to that obvious fact.

And on Iraq the week before, Mr Blair tried to argue that our continued presence there is both necessary and popular with the Iraqis, neither of which theses is believable. The reality of Iraq and of Afganistan came home to me again on Friday, when I joined the Mayor and Townspeople of Wootton Bassett who now regularly stand to attention at the War Memorial to pay their repects to the cortege of dead servicemen repatriated to RAF Lyneham as it passes down Wootton Bassett High Street. I take my hat off to these people who, week in week out, unnoticed by the wider world, do their bit to pay their respects to those who have fallen for their country. Week after week the coffins are flown into Lyneham. How much longer can it go on?

Moonrakers

That all powerful, all-knowing group of people, the House of Commons Secretaries, to whom so many constituents owe so much, are of the view that life becomes exciting around the Full Moon. This Full Moon is one of those occasions.

Tony Blair enjoyed his standing ovation, and Gordon Brown used the occasion to spin the story that his was a new Government in the hope that no-one would spot that he had been Number Two in the Government for the last ten years, and to spin another story that he was tired of spin and sleaze and would stamp it out. I had Question number 8 to him yesterday – my third Prime Minister’s Question in four weeks – but at the time of writing have not yet decided what I will ask him. Catastrophe was averted by defusing two London bombs, and the third in Glasgow apparently not working, but Parliament was nonetheless sealed off in a major security blitz.  I always surprise visiting constituents to the Palace by telling them how much danger they are in when they come with me onto the Terrace! We can only defeat terrorism by taking reasonable precautions, but otherwise by simply ignoring their murderous threats and getting on with life as usual.

Perhaps the same approach should be adopted with some elements of the press, who instead of reporting the fact that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir Philip Mawer this week exonerated me from any improper behaviour with regard to the use of my Commons expenses, chose instead to focus on a small overpayment which I had made, and which I have now been happy to repay. You can’t win sometimes, but it is good to have my name cleared in that way.

In the midst of all of that, a hard weekend’s work in the Constituency seemed like a good way to get away from it all! A wonderful special Assembly at Monkton Park School in Chippenham celebrated the three awards the school has recently achieved; after which I was glad to spend an hour with the lip-reading class in Chippenham College discussing how we can stop them being charged for these essential life skills classes. Then it was off to Wootton Bassett to join the Mayor, Royal British Legion and townspeople as they paid tribute to the latest military coffins being repatriated from Iraq and Afganistan, as they now do on the all-too frequent occasions. That made me miss the CLA Committee meeting in Corsham, but I was in good time for a reception in Hullavington that evening. I took Saturday off, read the lesson at the Alzheimer’s Association annual service in Chippenham’s St Andrews church on Sunday afternoon and helped launch the Hop-On Hop-Off bus service from Wootton Bassett to the Great Western Hospital on Monday morning.

I thoroughly enjoy the constituency side of my work, and this weekend was no exception I feel as if it brings sanity back to an otherwise insane world. The Full Moon doesn’t seem to affect North Wiltshire’s Moonrakers!

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