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Gun Crime & Warfare

Guns and weapons in general have been at the forefront of our minds in the last few days. The alarming increase in gun crime, especially apparently amongst the young, and the tragic death of 11 year old Rhys Jones shocked us all. The Sunday papers were full of pundits with assorted pet recipes to deal with it. Mr Brown promised a “tough crack down on gun crime, legislation if necessary,” and the Home Secretary announced some kind of “gun amnesty zone” which would allow them to be handed in without criminal prosecution. Both proposals reek of gimmicks designed to catch tomorrow’s headline rather than a real determination to deal with the upsurge in violent crime. Mr Brown may not have spotted it, but murder is already a crime, as is the ownership of illegal weapons. We don’t need more laws, Mr Brown, we don’t need gimmicks, Madam Home Secretary. We’ve had plenty of both over the last ten years from your Government. What we need is safer streets.

Now while David Cameron is quite right in saying that the only real long term way to do that is by “ mending our broken society, ” with Government, churches, local government, ethnic minority groups and a host of other organisations all having  a role to play in it, I personally have always in addition favoured much tougher penalties for the possession of illegal weapons. A mandatory ten years hard labour for the possession of an illegal handgun, with no possibility of early release would deter all but the most determined of criminals!

Despite being a native of Dunblane, I used my Maiden Speech in Parliament ten years ago to speak out against the knee-jerk banning of all handguns in the aftermath of the terrible shooting there. I did so for two reasons. First, I knew that it would have no effect whatsoever on the 3 million illegally held handguns in the UK. They were illegal and unlicensed before the Act came in. All it did was to make possession of perfectly legitimate handguns – for example held by those engaging in the Olympic sport of handgun shooting – a criminal offence.  And second, by giving Government and society the feeling that “something had been done” in the aftermath of the terrible Dunblane shootings, it meant that the things that really ought to have been done were perhaps overlooked. Illegal handguns and their everyday use has increased exponentially since that Act was passed in 1997, demonstrating its ineffectiveness.

Pacifists would similarly argue that the accidental killing of the three young private soldiers by a 500 lb American bomb in Afghanistan demonstrates the wickedness of war, and justifies our immediate withdrawal from Theatres of War wherever they may be around the Globe. But that might often be to allow far greater evils – in this case the blossoming of international terrorism. Pacifism is simplistic and misguided. I would argue the opposite – that our boys are doing a magnificent and wholly necessary job in Afghanistan , and that they must be given the correct resources and weapons necessary to carry it out properly. That these young private soldiers’ deaths could have been avoided had they been supplied with the proper equipment is horrifying beyond words.

So in mourning with the relatives of the victims of gun crime in the UK, and of our war dead, let us avoid the easy solutions which might give us personal satisfaction that “we are doing something about it,” and concentrate our efforts and intelligence on finding the real solutions which will make our streets – and the wider world – a safer place in which to live.

Unity and Loyalty

Politicians are often accused of “never answering a straight question with a straight answer.” And there may sometimes be some truth in it. Nonetheless, I think that my worst enemy would agree (or might well level the accusation) that on the spectrum which runs from dissembling dishonesty through to outspoken straightforwardness, I personally am much closer to the latter than the former. I have always taken the view that it is important that my constituents should know clearly what my views are and why I have arrived at them, even if I know that they individually disagree with me. You can’t please all the people all the time.

Now the problem with being as straightforward as I try to be, is that there are always some who will resent the fact that you are not agreeing with them. “He’s arrogant,” they will say, “never listens to us,” (by which they actually mean “does not agree with me.”) That applies even – perhaps particularly – within a political party. There are members of the Conservative Party locally who don’t agree with me on a number of subjects:  Europe, on which I am a sceptic, abortion, to which I am opposed, foxhunting which I have sought to save. Inevitably there may be others who do not particularly like me on a personal level, and there may be others who think they or their friends or relations would do a better job as MP than I do. Well, I would just gently remind them that I was elected to Parliament not by the Conservative Association, but by the electorate as a whole, and Parliamentary democracy is not some kind of Big Brother competition. As Edmund Burke said to the electorate of Bristol as long ago as 1774: “You choose a member indeed, but when you have chosen him, he is not a Member of Bristol, but a Member of Parliament.” – a view echoed by Churchill when he said that “An MP’s first duty is to the honour and safety of Great Britain as a whole, his second duty is to his constituents, and only in third place stands his duty to his Party Organisation.”

That’s why I was very glad that in a secret ballot of the members of the North Wiltshire Conservative Association held last January, I won the support of the members as their candidate for the next General Election by a majority of roughly 15%– substantially more than most MPs enjoy in a General Election. (400 votes against 300 compared to the 192 who now apparently have signed a petition calling for a Special General Meeting to reopen the issue.) I am grateful for the trust and support of the comfortable majority, and would just say to the declining minority who lost that very public fight that if they respect and believe in democracy, they should now take a lesson from the excellent Chippenham motto, which most political parties would benefit from respecting: “Unity and Loyalty.”

In three elections now, the people have elected me as their MP, 27,000 people voting for me in 2005, when I increased my majority for the second time. And from the reaction which I get out and about round the Constituency, they seem modestly pleased with what I do for them and for the area. So to the relatively small number of people who for their own good reasons are not necessarily paid-up members of the Gray Fan Club, I’d just say nonetheless: “Lets leave it at that. Lets respect the democratic system and work together towards the greater goals and the bigger battles which possibly within weeks, if the pundits are to be believed, will be facing us all”.

Sell in May and Go Away

“Sell in May and Go Away” is an old City of London adage, which turns out to be wise advice almost every year. The current turmoil in the World’s financial markets has been little noticed, but there will be a few sore heads in dealing rooms wishing they had heeded it. And none of us can as yet quantify what effect it will have on savings, interest rates, pensions, life assurances and the rest. There’s only one prediction I will make:  if there is an economic downturn or worse on the way, then one person who will take no blame whatsoever for it will be the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the last ten years, Gordon Brown. “World economic downturn, all part of the cycle etc etc.” You watch, our Gordon won’t be in the firing line.

With the big bongs of Big Ben temporarily silenced for maintenance, the Palace of Westminster virtually inaccessible through scaffolding, Ministers and MPs on holiday, although noticeably this year more in England than exotic new Labour villas overseas, there really ought to be a feeling of the dog-day doldrums around the political world. Yet with Labour in an apparently commanding lead in the polls, all of the talk in the papers is still of an early General Election. We can expect a continuing flurry of eye-catching “initiatives” from the Brown administration in a continuing effort to distance themselves from the previous ten years, culminating in a triumphalist Labour Party Conference in September. My own guess is that that will be a launch-pad for a Spring election rather than an October one, but watch this space.

I strongly support our great Constitution, which results in one Party being elected to power on a clear manifesto, and then having the right to go to the country in a General Election at a time when they feel they need a new mandate from the people, or in other words at a time calculated to best suit themselves. The alternative would be fixed-term Parliaments which would mean that no matter how bad a Government was, nor how slender their House of Commons majority, there would be no way of removing them from power. So First Past the Post elections and a variable time between them seem to me to be perfectly sound principles. But nonetheless, I just can’t help feel that if a Prime Minister were to call a General Election when he still enjoys a big majority in the House, when there is no real clamour for it, when he has still by no means fulfilled his Manifesto commitments from the previous election, then it would be widely perceived by the people as some kind of personal ego-trip, causing widespread and unnecessary disruption in life, and of course costing a lot of money. History demonstrates that Prime Ministers who call “unnecessary” elections are punished for it in the polls. All of which leads me to guess that ‘Prudent’  Mr Brown, who has waited for 17 years to become Prime Minster may be tempted by his current lead in the polls, but in the event will back off a surprise snap election. If he does not, we must all be ready to show him what we think of it.

The Glasgow bombers, the terrible flooding, now Foot and Mouth, the economy in trouble. who knows what the next crisis will be to hit the Brown Government? And who knows what the electoral consequences will be for him? So one person who must be smugly self-satisfied that he “Sold in May and Went Away,” is his predecessor, Mr Blair.

Summer Recess

“Twelve Week Holiday For MPs Shock Horror” is the tabloid headline which is trotted out at this time of the year with monotonous regularity. Of course I can understand why some people think that way. Parliament rose last Thursday, and we won’t be sitting again until October 10^th, that’s true. But a twelve week holiday it ain’t.

I have been in North Wiltshire since the House rose, and amongst other engagements have found myself actively involved in the local aspects of the two recent national crises. I visited several properties which had been flooded, in Wootton Bassett and Grittenham and spoke on the phone to those worst affected in Kellaways and East Tytherton. Then  along with Baroness Young, the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency I visited the sites in Gloucester and Tewkesbury which took the brunt of the recent floods. On another occasion I visited Malmesbury Farmer’s Market in support of our hard pressed farmers who are now just holding their breath over the Foot and Mouth outbreak in Surrey. Jonathan Shaw, the Defra Minister has been keeping me up to date by telephone, for which I give the Department full marks, although if the source of the outbreak really is from a Government laboratory, then without doubt heads will have to roll. Incidentally, I pressed Jonathan Shaw hard on the subject of the road transport laid on to take the carcasses of the slaughtered cows in Surrey which are being transported to Somerset for incineration. Local farmers need to be sure that as the lorries go down the M4 that they are totally airtight.

Other varied constituency engagements included a skittles match in the Constitutional Club in Chippenham; observation, from afar I am glad to say, of the mud bath at the WOMAD Festival at Charlton Park. (Well done them, perhaps, and each to his own, but I’m just glad from observing some of the rather bedraggled revellers down Malmesbury High St that I didn’t have to go myself!); a coffee meeting with a young man very concerned at the negative popular image of today’s youths; lunch with my Constituency Chairman; attendance at the Conservative Party Area Council, followed by a dinner in Salisbury; two afternoons judging Wootton Bassett in Bloom; a reception for councillors near Lyneham; a sombre moment witnessing a military cortege; helping the Mayor open a new shop in Bassett; surgeries in Chippenham and Corsham, and assorted other local engagements.

Now, you may say, none of that is terribly national in its importance. And I would straight away plead guilty to any such accusation. I have always felt that simply attending a variety of events locally, living here, and being as much as I can a part of the local community is an important prerequisite to being a good constituency MP- by which I mean some one well qualified, and sufficiently well informed about the way of life and the problems locally to be able to speak up for them in Parliament. Incidentally, I relish my present status as a backbencher- an honourable estate at any time, and one which enables me to devote the bulk of my energies to local matters.

But there’s another reason why I am in no way ashamed of the length of the Summer Recess. I am of the view that in this country today we have vastly too much law, regulation, government interference in our lives and general bossiness. So maybe, just maybe sending the MPs back to their constituencies to immerse themselves in local life in that way may also result in rather less of it!

Summer

Parliament’s risen for the long Summer Recess (not ‘holiday’ as some people imagine), after a hectic last week or so, packed with announcements and general ‘tidying up.’ This Parliamentary Term has stretched on interminably, perhaps because of Mr Blair’s long good-bye, perhaps because of the agonising worsening of events in Iraq and Afganistan, perhaps because of the incessant rain and now the ghastly flooding and its aftermath.

I have visited and been in touch with homes flooded in Kellaways, in Grittenham and Wootton Bassett; and on Wednesday Lady Young, the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency showed a few of us some of the devastation in Gloucester and Tewksbury. There are a great many questions to be asked – about the adequacy of drains and culverts, about our readiness for similar floods in the future, about the Government’s housing strategy which means acres more of impermeable concrete and seems to allow the building of more homes in areas liable to flood; and about whether this is a product of Global Warming, or just a cyclically bad English summer? As a member of the Defra Select Committee I hope to be asking some of those questions.

As part of David Cameron’s Security at Home and Abroad Policy Group, I helped Dame Pauline Neville-Jones and Lord (Tom) King launch the results of a year’s hard work entitled “An Unquiet World.” It’s a document packed with ideas and policies about foreign affairs, defence and national and international security matters. It has some particularly good stuff about the army and the ever increasing tasks which we are giving it without increasing the resources to do them. Iraq is of course a disaster, but I am also becoming ever more concerned about Afganistan which I am visiting in September and which is becoming a bloodbath. The weekly vigil at Wootton Bassett War Memorial to pay tribute to the returning fallen, at which the Mayor was this week joined by a group of soldiers, is as poignant a ceremony as I have experienced. Week after week it goes on. How much longer can we bear it?

The last week also saw the Government’s announcement that they are to allow Wiltshire’s bid for unitary status, and so the ending of North Wilts District Council to go ahead. I have always accepted that there are some arguments in favour of less politics and bureaucracy and the simplification of layers of Government; but I remain concerned that this will mean increasingly remote local government, and that anyhow this particular bid does not have the general support of “stakeholders.” I will be watching developments with interest, and would above all simply hope that whatever transition now happens that it is smooth and without acrimony, and that all of the people involved never forget that the end result must be better local services and cheaper council tax.

Overshadowing the whole of the end of term events was the lurking thought that we might not be back for the new term. There is a great deal of talk around about an October General Election. Mr Brown seems to have achieved a significant bounce in the polls, which few people think he will be able to maintain. If he secured a 9% lead over the Tories which some of the polls are currently suggesting, he would be returned to power with an increased majority. It must be tempting for him to use the Labour Party Conference as a launchpad for a snap election. I slightly tend to the view that Spring is more likely, but we Tories are nonetheless on an immediate war footing and we will be ready –nationally and locally - for Mr Brown whenever he calls it.

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