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Into Tibet

Have you seen Brad Pitt’s film Seven Years in Tibet and felt outrage as the murdering Chinese invade the mountain kingdom, killing thousands and driving the boy Dalai Llama into exile; or read of the suppression and destruction of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries during the Chinese Cultural Revolution; or been outraged by the suppression of discontented monks in the run-up to last year’s Olympics? Well I felt all of those things, and as a result, when the Parliamentary All Party Group for China announced that they were seeking a senior delegation to go into Tibet for the first time since the Olympics to see what was really happening there, I jumped at the chance, and spent last week there and in China.

Alongside ex-Liberal leader Lord (David) Steel, cross-bench peer Lord (David) Alton and a Labour MP, we journeyed by train from Xining in mid-China over the 5000 metre high mountains to Lhasa, thankfully not needing the oxygen masks which many of the other passengers were gasping into. While wondering at the sheer engineering skill of it, and the billions of pounds the Chinese had poured into it, all of us felt a slight queasiness as to exactly why they had done so? Was this some form of neo-Colonialism? Or were there militaristic reasons behind it?

What we found in Tibet was a former tiny theocratic and feudal country transformed into a modern Chinese way of life. GDP per head has rocketed, infrastructure improvements everywhere, new schools and universities, life expectancy even for the poorest farmers, many of whom have been rehoused, having more than doubled. Of course we felt some sentimental nostalgia for the old secret mountain kingdom which Younghusband might have found a hundred years ago. But there is no doubt about it, the way of life for the actual people is massively better under China than it could possibly be in some kind of independent nation state Tibet.

We were of course deeply concerned about reported human rights abuses – as we are across China. We pressed the Chinese hard on reports of a large number of monks who had disappeared after last March’s riots, of a local official who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the minor offence of communicating with the outside world, and of two people sentenced to death for opposing the Chinese. It is vital that we keep the pressure up on China on these and on the 19 cases which the Foreign Office say they are actively pursuing. Similarly we pressed the Chinese hard on the status of the Dalai Llama, and how it might be that he could be allowed to return to Llasa after his 50 years in exile, at very least as the spiritual head of the country’s Buddhists. So we by no means blindly accepted some of the - at times pretty crass - propaganda which our Chinese hosts tried to feed us.

But overall, I have to admit that Chinese sovereignty over Tibet is very much in the best interests of the ordinary people of that lovely country, and the Chinese are going to great lengths to preserve their heritage and give them religious freedom. So I will not in the future be flirting with Brad Pitt type sentimentality by calling for a “Free Tibet.” Not only is that wildly impracticable, but it is also against the best interests of the people, and in reality it actually interferes with our ability to argue for Human Rights and for the safe return of the Dalai Llama.

Housing Affordability

Lloyds Bank have sent me a revealing set of statistics about North Wilshire. Our population of 108,000(which will need two MPs to look after it after the next Election) enjoys average earnings of £34,000 (compared to £31,000 nationally), 39% of which is spent on our mortgages (31% nationally). We have average savings of £7454, (£7800 nationally, and someone else must have my share!). The average house price is £216k, (£190k in the South West, £174k nationally), which is 6.2 times average earnings, compared to 4.7, and they fell by only 6% over the last 12 months, compared to 17% nationally.  Our unemployment rate is 2.7%, compared to 4.1%, and 63% of our students got A-C grade GCSEs (62% nationally).

In other words we are relatively well off, but have larger mortgages and as a result lower savings than elsewhere; we live in comfortable modern houses, which we can only just afford, are reasonably well employed, and our children enjoy some of the best education available anywhere. But there are exceptions to that. There are very real pockets of deprivation and poverty, and the statistics show that we may be in danger of pricing ourselves out of the very environment which we all so very much value. Ours is a way of life and of prosperity which is the envy of much of Britain today, and most certainly of vast swathes of the rest of the World, many of whom live in poverty and squalor of a kind which is hard for us even to imagine. But while battling to keep it that way, we must also have concern about how to keep it all affordable.

Of course my first instinct as your MP is to do everything possible to preserve that enviable way of life. Most of my constituents live in comfortable modern houses, mainly with nice gardens and a garage down a quiet cul-de-sac in an estate on the outskirts of our pleasant Wiltshire market towns. We value the neighbouring countryside, and are outraged if anyone should suggest building houses which are remarkably similar to the very ones we live in, and are determined to preserve the beauty and tranquillity of our villages and countryside. Now I have always viewed that as one of my top political priorities, consistently campaigning hard, for example, against the westwards expansion of Swindon which would otherwise threaten to engulf Wootton Bassett, the Lydiards, Purton and Cricklade. It would be easy to allow Chippenham to sprawl northwards towards Junction 17, to encourage large “executive-style” housing in most of our more desirable villages and to permit lucrative “garden grabbing” developments. I will always be wholly opposed to any such thing.

But the Lloyds Bank figures for home ownership and price, together with other statistics for homelessness and plenty of anecdotal evidence with regard to our own sons and daughters unable to afford houses in their own towns and villages must give us pause for thought. We are particularly short of affordable housing – for rent and purchase – for local people. So we must be neither NIMBY (Not In MY Back Yard) nor BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.) Our area must be economically vibrant, not preserved in aspic, and house prices to own and rent must be affordable by ordinary people. Sustainable Development must be the watchword, so that next year’s Lloyds bank statistics do not show that this area has become even less affordable.

The Speakership

The Party Conference Season, which is almost as sure a sign of the turning of the year as the browning of the leaves on the trees, is with us again, although whether many ordinary people are all that fussed about it is another matter. In days of yore – especially before the invention of mass 24 hour media – the Conference was not only a welcome weekend break in an autumnal seaside resort. It was also the occasion on which great decisions were taken by the Party faithful on policy and weighty matters of State. No longer. For both Labour and the Conservatives, Conference is primarily about television – about getting the message over to the voter. That will be especially true this year in what will be the last conference before the General Election. Only the Liberals still insist on embarrassing their own Leadership and the Parliamentary Party by allowing the worthy activists gathered in the windy and semi-deserted hall to pass more and more dopey and unachievable motions.

UKIP’s Conference last week was notable not because of the economy-shattering motions they will have passed about leaving the EU, but because their very able and charismatic leader Nigel Farage announced his intention to resign as Party Leader to concentrate on standing against Mr Speaker Bercow in Buckingham at the General Election, which well and truly throws a few cats amongst a few pigeons. The old – although unwritten – constitutional convention is that the Speaker remains an MP, working for his constituents, but that because he has left Party politics for ever and to allow him to rise above the party political hubbub in the Commons, the main parties never challenge him in his constituency. He is returned unopposed. Well that convention seems to have been overturned by Mr Farage. Never since that Wiltshire MP Sir Thomas Hungerford (whose descendents still live in Corsham) became Speaker in 1377 has a Speaker been challenged in that way. Mr Bercow – who had strong support from the Labour Party during his election, if slightly more muted from his own side – may have a fight on his hands.

My own view is that –like it or lump it – democracy must be supreme. The House of Commons elected John Bercow to be Speaker, and now we must rally behind him in that role. He must be impartial and be ready to stand up for the rights and privileges of the House of Commons as a whole. In these troublous times he must in particular be ready to do everything necessary to sort out whatever may be wrong with the House of  Commons, and then to be pro-active in re-establishing the respect which is so necessary if our deliberations and decisions are to be take seriously by the electorate. If he is to be able to do all of that he should not have to engage in party political campaigning in order to retain his seat. I am speaking to the Buckingham Conservative Association’s dinner shortly, and shall say so.

It took us the best part of 1000 years to establish our great constitution, which has always been the envy of the world, and which has ensured generally fair and equitable government, whichever party may be in power. That unwritten constitution has been mucked around with in a number of very damaging ways over the last ten years or so, and the lowered respect for Parliament is a direct result of it. We must not further undermine it by forcing the Speaker into this ignominious position of fighting for his seat and asking for votes. The end result can only be a further diminishing of the status and the authority of that ancient and vitally important office.

Regionalism

If, as a politician, you do not like democracy; if you find the transparency aspects of it uncomfortable; if you dislike the notion that you might lose your job every five years; if you cannot understand why the whole electorate does not share your supreme confidence in yourself; if you suffer from all of that, there are two possible solutions.

The first has been tried by dictators since Roman times, (although I have to admit that the Roman Empire survived remarkably well) all dictators have failed, both to give their people a decent way of life, and for themselves. They may have amassed power or riches, but nearly all have died a sorry death. Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam, Mugabe; the Mongol and the Soviet Empires amongst so many others believed that it was they who knew best and that therefore it was perfectly all right to enforce their brilliant solutions to public evils on an ignorant public who would have been too foolish to vote in the correct way had they been allowed that privilege. Dictatorship is pretty discredited across the world today.

But the second way of avoiding true democracy is alive and well and living in Britain today. This method involves creating a muddle, a mess, obscurity about who does what to whom, and how you can prevent them doing it. The EU has scooped up much of the work previously done in Westminster. And it’s not the Parliament (which is at least elected, albeit using such an obscure and peculiar voting system that no-one truly knows who their MEP is); it’s the unelected and vast bureaucracy under the EU Commission. Then there’s the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments (Megrahi’s repatriation to Libya? “Not my fault – some bloke in Edinburgh done it.”) Then there is the sheer and unnecessary complexity of Government departments themselves. The NHS is a good example. Complain to the Secretary of State about some problem with a local hospital, only to have the letter forwarded to the PCT, who blame the managers of the hospital who say their resources are insufficient and blame the Government, who blame the PCT ….. Then there is the vast array of quangoes, many of whose decisions will have a very important effect on our everyday lives without there being any very clear line of accountability. We estimate that they spend £64 billion a year, which is about half of the total NHS budget, and 68 of their chief executives are paid more than the Prime Minister.

All of this anti-democratic muddle is worsened by the Government’s love affair with regionalism. I am off to Exeter to take part in something called the South West Regional Grand Committee. No-one quite seems to know what it is nor what it does, but MPs from the area are required to be there. Then there’s the South West Region Select Committee (which my Party are boycotting); there’s the South West Assembly, the South West Regional Development Agency and a host of other equally useless and mysterious organisations. Each of them has a pyramid of committees all reporting to each other and culminating in their annual conference and grand dinner. But who are they? What do they do? Who do they answer to? Your guess is as good as mine, and I am glad to say that the Conservative Party are committed to sweeping away vast swathes of it– including regionalism-  and returning power to the good old traditional County Councils.

Warts and all, at least people will know who is doing what, and who they can vote out at the next election if they don’t like it!

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