My blog post of 12^th April 1956! attracted a rather wider audience than my posts are usually accustomed to reaching. As a consequence, I’ve had quite a large email correspondence on the back of it. Most controversial is the figure I quoted stating that the average person born in 1956 will have consumed some £300,000 more in benefits that they will have paid in taxes.
I’ve had manyfrom that age cohort complain that they’ve ‘never taken a penny’ and demand to know how the figure is calculated.

The calculation appeared in a paper produced by the Resolution Foundation:  An intergenerational audit for the UK (2023):
In Annex 1 – “Analysis of net lifetime benefits from the welfare state” , (Chart) 6 –“Net lifetime benefits from the welfare state, by year of birth” They gave an estimate of between £290,000 and £310,000. As stated in their notes below the chart, they included the following net lifetime benefits: State pension; NHS spending; Education spending; other public service consumption; and cash benefits.
Minus taxes paid: Income tax; National Insurance; VAT and other indirect taxes.
All the figures are discounted to present value and expressed in 2023 prices and, averaged across the entire 1956 birth cohort.

Such a mathematical illustration will invariably include a spread with many well above, and also well below the mean.
What I thought was healthy about the response was that people clearly did not want be seen as being part of a cohort that was not self-reliant, and which consumed more benefits from the state than they paid for in taxation. I take this to mean we are a bit embarrassed about being dependent, that there is still a residual pride about not living ‘on the parish’.
Halleluiah! I had begun to fear that we had become shameless, seeing state benefits as an entitlement, and that we were inured to dependency.
If there remains at least some a concept of a ‘moral peril’ with regard to welfare dependency, then we have a prospect of recovery from it.

20 years ago I pleaded in Parliament against a Forestry Commission decision not to renew a tenancy near Holmsley, where it planned to sell the land. The result was the eviction of two households, the destruction of a renowned wildfowl reserve and the termination of a successful small business. Below, I have printed an extract from the parliamentary debate. I ended it with a rhetorical flourish, predicting the demolition of the properties and their replacement with palace fit for footballers’ wives. I was wrong. Walking my dog, I passed the site yesterday. There is no palace. Where there were two cottages and a magnificent landscape there is now a wasteland.  Literally a wasteland, because remains of the demolition carried out well over a decade ago, have attracted fly- tippers into the very heart of the New Forest.
See it for yourself at Grid 221010 or what3words  ///ringers.shifters.written
This devastation resulted from a decision by the Forestry Commission, I believe that Forestry England should now take responsibility to address it.

Hansard 24^th July 2006 Column 713
“…I now come to a more pressing and imminent concern, and that is the disposal by the Forestry Commission of Holmsley lodge and Shrike cottage, together with 13 magnificent acres at the heart of the New Forest…. The current tenants have been told that they need to leave by January 2007… They have a business, they have nowhere to go and that they have been in those properties for 40 years….

As to the impracticality of those properties as family homes, tell that to the Landers, who have raised a family of five in Holmsley lodge, and to the Mays, who have raised a family of four in Shrike cottage. The irony is that those properties were previously not ‘practical family homes’: Shrike cottage had no kitchen, a leaking roof, rotten window frames and one open fireplace to heat the entire cottage, but that property has been transformed, as has Holmsley lodge, by the existing tenants. Perhaps this has contributed to such a gem being disposed of on the open market, rather than being secured for the long-term interests of the New Forest.

The Landers and the Mays have installed a vermin-proof fence around all 13 acres of magnificent landscape. They have built up a wild fowl business of national and international renown. It currently contains some 1,000 birds, many of which are endangered species….

At the beginning of the 20th century, the New Forest was much more than the heathland and woodland that it now comprises. It was a great national estate, which included farms, mansions, shops and businesses all under the Crown Estate. The Forestry Commission sold off many of those assets, until it was checked, partly by the Illingworth report in the mid-1980s. The question is whether that process has started again—I ask the Minister to consider his Mandate, the fundamental principle of which is the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of the New Forest. Over the best part of the past half century, the Mays and the Landers and their wildfowl have become part of that cultural and natural heritage. The millionaires or footballers’ wives to whom these properties will be sold are unlikely to do so

I’ve received several emails expressing concern about the mass prayer in Trafalgar Square involving Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London on 16th March. My colleague, Nick Timothy MP, called it an ‘act of domination’. The Prime Minister demanded that Kemi Badenoch sack Mr Timothy and Nigel Farage then weighed in, demanding a ban on all mass religious observance.
I replied to the emails saying that I believe in freedom of worship.

Our Lord instructed his followers to pray in secret rather that to do it in public, but that was to differ explicitly from the Pharisees who prayed in public in order to demonstrate their piety: showing off to everyone else. I conclude that it is fine to pray in public with proper motives.

When, in 2012 the High Court  ruled in favour of an objecting Bideford town councillor who had complained that prayers at the commencement of council meetings were ultra-vires, within 48 hours government legislation overturned the ruling and restored the status quo ante, so they could continue to pray at council meetings.
The first official daily business in Parliament, is prayers -even though we don’t admit the public.

I understand the concern that mass religious observance can make people uncomfortable. It might indeed, be interpreted as a demonstration of power, even – were the numbers to warrant it – an act of domination. Though having spoken to a participant at Trafalgar Sq. I was assured that the intent was quite the opposite, it was simply to show that there was nothing out of the ordinary or sinister about Muslim worship.

Even were it a demonstration, I believe in freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate. And if demonstrations make us uncomfortable, that is the price we pay for having our freedom of expression.
 Mr Farage’s demand that mass religious worship be banned would an outrageous intrusion by the State into our liberty. We really must get beyond demanding a ban on anything, just because we just don’t like it.
Personally, I don’t much care for street preachers, they can be loud, intrusive, and often, quite wacky. In my estimate, they are not an effective means of evangelising (St Francis said that we should preach the Gospel always, but rarely resort to words!).  Nevertheless, our freedom would be much diminished were such preachers to be outlawed.
 We are, however, already way too far down that road: there are examples of officious police harassment, seeking to censor what street preachers may say.
We even have laws that prohibit silent prayer within 100 meters of an abortion clinic. A woman, arrested for praying silently, despite the clinic being closed at the time, was asked by the arresting officer, what it was she was praying about!
 We really are on the cusp of implementing aspects of George Orwell’s dystopian vision 1984.

Mr Farage’s knee-jerk response to ban public religious observance is a denial of the rights of people of every religion and none.
If you don’t like acts of public religious observance , the answer is simple: don’t go to one.

 In February last year, shortly after the election of President Trump, when David Lammy -then our Foreign Secretary- was busy ingratiating himself with the new regime. I reminded him in the Commons of all the dreadful things he had said about Trump in the past.  I asked him if, when it became apparent that his earlier assessment of Trump was the accurate one, he would follow the example of the martyred Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and plunge first into the flames, the hand with which he signed his recantation.

 My assessment of the renewed assault on Iran is somewhat conflicted by my experience of having served in the Army in Iraq in 2003, and all that followed. But here are some prejudices on which I arrive at any  judgement.
First, I am not impressed by the suggestion that the military action is unlawful given the blood that is on the hands of the Iranian regime through its sponsorship of international terrorism, the massacres of its own people, and its determination to acquire nuclear weapons with ballistic missile capability.
Second, I believe in the lasting wisdom of Churchill expressed in his 1946 Fulton speech: the need to stick closely to the USA; this is an enduring principle and should not be lightly set aside, even when a US administration behaves unpredictably.
The USA is our principal ally, on whose support we have come to depend for our own national security.
Our initial and continued unwillingness to give our full support will have consequences, particularly so, given the caprice of the President. I fear for the consequences our inaction may have for the future defence of Ukraine and other areas of our national interest.
Our involvement was inevitable and so it has proved: our sovereign territory has been attacked, as have our allies. Attacks that have closed the Straits of Hormuz touch our vital economic interests.

All that said, was warfare wise when negotiations were still proceeding?
The action has, as yet untold consequences in terms of the enduring effect on the world economy and the incalculable effect on the stability of Iran and its impact on the region.
The answer to the question depends on an assessment of the proximity of Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Did the USA and Israel believe that Iran was so close that it required immediate action, and so all the terrible potential consequences would be the lesser of two evils.
I’m doubtful that such an assessment was made. Indeed, the president told us last June that his action then had set Iran’s capability back by years. Furthermore, the US Director of National Intelligence told the US Congress that Iran had made no efforts to try and rebuild its uranium enrichment capability since last summer’s bombing.

The plans and thought of US Central Command are not available to us. But the President’s running commentary is continuous. It is full of contradictions. It appears that events have taken him by surprise and that there never was much of a plan. He chops and changes.

The economic consequences of all this will be very painful and lasting. Whether anything will have been gained by it, it is too soon to tell.

As warfare raged in Gaza over the last 18 months, and now extending to the whole region, a number of MPs, have continued to focus at what has been going on in the other larger occupied Palestinian territory on the West Bank of the River Jordan.
Occupied by Israel since the June 1967 Six-Day War, it remains the territory that would form the basis of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This ‘two-state solution’ has been the goal of European and US policy for decades in our attempts to bring a lasting peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

When I was the minister responsible for our policy in the West Bank I had the most frustrating dealings with the Israeli authorities over a whole series of issues: illegal Israeli settlements; the destruction of schools and infrastructure funded by UK taxpayers; Israeli settler violence against Palestinians; detention of Palestinian children; martial law and restrictions on Palestinian movement; collective punishments …and  plenty more. On one occasion, when I raised these issues with the Israeli Deputy-Prime Minister and Chief Negotiator, he denounced me and stormed out of our meeting.

Of course, with justification, Israelis respond that the restrictions placed on the Palestinian population are a direct consequence of Palestinian terrorism to which Israel has been subjected.
The current government of Israel is determined to prevent the possibility of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. A glance at the map of expanding illegal Israeli settlement clearly demonstrates that the contiguous and economically viable territory available to a Palestinian state is fast diminishing. Last week I asked the Government how long remains, before a Palestinian State becomes a geographic impossibility.
This was the Minister’s response
“I thank the right hon. Member and my predecessor for that important question. We have pointed to a whole range of areas of concern in relation to the viability of a Palestinian state. One that has not received mention so far in our exchanges, but which is vital, is the E1 development. The British Government are deeply concerned by the speed with which the Israeli Government are proceeding with a project that we completely oppose. It is clearly designed to try to split two parts of a contiguous Palestinian territory. We oppose it, and we will continue to do so.”

Our opposition, however, won’t count for a bean. The E1 project is racing ahead and is part of a deliberate strategy to remove the possibility of a Palestinian State altogether. Indeed, there is now an expectation by many informed commentators, that Israel will take advantage of US protection in the UN Security Council, to veto any hostile resolutions, cemented by their allied military action in Iran, and proceed to full annexation of the West Bank.

Given the extent of the Trump administration’s commitment and support for Netanyahu’s government in Israel, I am pessimistic about the prospect of preventing annexation.
If the possibility of two-state settlement is off the table, we cannot go on flogging a dead horse. We need to start planning for what will be plan B, and the policy we will need to pursue in order to secure it.
If the Palestinians are to be denied their own state, then it is essential that they have equal civil rights within Israel.

Is the House is falling down?
No, not quite: nothing is ever as bad a first reported, but there is a significant backlog of important maintenance issues.
I am referring, of course, to the reappearance at Westminster of the Restoration and Renewal project, which is back on the agenda yet again. I say that, because we have seen it off at least twice in my time. We’ve sacked numerous consultants and consultancies and sent them packing with their monstrous and extortionate plans.
But they are back with another collection of totally inappropriate options, set out in a glossy one-hundred and twenty-five pages, fit for the best coffee table. They just can’t seem to get the message.

The Palace of Westminster, which accommodates both Houses of Parliament, is contemporaneous with its neighbour Westminster Abbey, together they are getting on for 1000- years-old. The Palace, however, has burnt down several times in the course of history, so much so, that the only surviving bit of the original is Westminster Hall. The rest of what you now see was rebuilt between the eighteen forties and sixties, following the last great fire. Subsequently the Commons chamber and one or two other parts had to be restored once more, after being bombed in the second World war.

The iconic building, a World Heritage site, is the result of an open architectural competition which was won by Sir Charles Barry, who subcontracted much of the design to Augustus Pugin, a prolific church builder, who was steeped in the Oxford Movement. The result is a magnificent and deeply spiritual building that, in its public spaces, resembles an Orthodox cathedral.

Like any building of that age and magnificence it requires continual maintenance. A backlog has built up. This is partially due the changed parliamentary calendar. Although Parliament is sitting for the same number of days as it always did, we’ve broken them up into so many ‘mini-breaks’ and we no longer have the mid-July to mid-October recess, when the workmen had the place to themselves. Now we come back bang in the middle, completely cramping their style.
Consequently, restoration has required us to work in a building-site continuously for the last few years.  It is inconvenient but we can get by. Indeed, Big Ben has been completely restored already, as have many other parts.
The problem is not ‘Restoration’, we are doing that.
The problem is ‘Renewal’: Instead of just preserving Pugin and Barry’s work for future generations. There is a  determination to modernise it with glass and steel. They want it to carbon neutral,  to be 100% ‘accessible’ and inclusive. They want new interpretive spaces, they want to rip-out and refurnish.
To achieve all this they’d have us move out for 8 to 15 years whilst they spend as much as £40 Billion on their new creation.
We all know how that ends: long overdue, and vastly over-budget. And they’ll wreck it.

The sensible alternative is just to restore the magnificent building that we already have, and on a budget that we can afford.

 William Hague has written about Chagos in to-day’s edition of The Times, recalling that, as Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs in 2014, he launched a feasibility study examining the possibility of resettling displaced Chagossians back on islands within the archipelago. (There being no prospect of a return to Diego Garcia itself, on account of resistance to such a prospect by the United States, which operates the airbase there).
I was the Minister for International Development at the time, and I was involved in those discussions.

Given the shameful treatment of the Chagossians back in the early nineteen seventies, when they were forcibly removed from their homeland, and resettled in Mauritius, The Seychelles, and Crawley, my sympathies lay with their return. Nevertheless, I was reluctant to open up another remote island settlement for which we would have responsibility. I felt that our hands were full enough already with the needs of Tristan da Cunha, St Helena, and Pitcairn, whose requirements placed a disproportionate burden on the DFID budget. There were also ‘safeguarding’ issues for women and children. (At one stage the Foreign Office was badgering me to spend £1 Million to build a new prison on Pitcairn to house its only prisoner, a prolific sex offender).

My colleague, James Duddridge, was despatched to the Chagos archipelago on a fact-finding mission. I recall that he returned with a very bleak report, including that he was unable to even get ashore on most of the islands because the vegetation was so impenetrable.
We concluded that the endeavour was simply not feasible due to the expense involved. Instead, we came up with an education and healthcare package to address the needs of the dispossessed and disadvantaged Chagossians where they were then currently settled.

Two things have changed. First, the facts on the ground: A group of Chagossians have, very recently, made it back on to one of the islands. Second, the huge cost of the Government’s plan to cede sovereignty to Mauritius and lease back Diego Garcia -some £34 Billion,  puts the  comparatively  modest cost of resettlement, which we rejected as too expensive in 2014, into a completely different light.

The fear within the Foreign Office, and which was shared by President Biden’s US administration, is that the non-binding ruling of the International Court in 2019 -that the UK should cede sovereignty to Mauritius,  may at some stage be followed by binding litigation, which might make the future of the vital US airbase uncertain . This fear, together with a measure of ‘woke’ guilt for a colonial past, is what has driven the Government’s desire for a treaty with Mauritius.
On the other hand,  international lawyers and commentators insist that the danger is imagined and that there is no prospect of a successful challenge to the future of the airbase.

What would put any question beyond doubt however, would be to resettle Chagossians in the archipelago and to give them the right of self-determination: a fundamental principle that would trump any other claim from Mauritius of anywhere else.
It’s worth considering.

I’ve twice used this column previously to sound-off about the Government’s disastrous policy of giving away the British Indian Ocean Territories to Mauritius, only to spend £ billions to lease them back so that the principal Island, Diego Garcia, can continue to host a US airbase which vital to our security.
They are ashamed of our history and they hate Britain
&
Chagossian Rights

The Government’s Bill to enact its Treaty with Mauritius is currently in the Lords, having already secured its passage unamended in the Commons.
Donald Trump has blown both hot and cold about the arrangement. I am still hopeful that he will scotch the whole endeavour. Nevertheless, the way the Government has gone about the process, by first forcing a Bill through Parliament will, if it persists, compromise Parliamentary sovereignty and waste parliamentary time.

In 1966 the Labour government made an agreement with the USA regarding Diego Garcia and registered that agreement with the United Nations as an international treaty (UN 8737). Article 1 of that treaty provides that Diego Garcia and the rest of the archipelago “shall remain under UK sovereignty”. A clear and binding undertaking that the UK will maintain its sovereignty so that the USA can continue to enjoy the rights granted to it in the agreement, namely operating the airbase.
Article 11 of the treaty states that this arrangement will last until 2036.

The UK has however, already signed a treaty with Mauritius to transfer our sovereignty over Diego Garcia and the Archipelago over to Mauritius.
To do so lawfully, it must first secure an agreement with USA to amend Article 1 of the 1966 treaty, which will require the agreement of President Trump. It is unclear as to whether such agreement will now be had. I certainly hope it won’t be.

The logical way to have proceeded would have been first to have secured agreement from the USA to amend the 1966 treaty, and only then then to proceed to reach an agreement with Mauritius. What the Government is now doing is to try and force through Parliament a Bill that  renounces UK sovereignty over the territories without actually transferring it to Mauritius (because that still requires USA agreement, which has yet to be secured). In effect the sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territories is being placed into limbo.
Even worse, this is an affront to Parliament’s own sovereignty because we will have passed into law an Act of Parliament, which will require the consent of a foreign head of state, President Trump, before it can take effect.

Even if the Government gets its way (and, fingers crossed, it won’t), it couldn’t have made a greater hash of it.

Every year I have had the same email conversation with a small number constituents when they receive their Council Tax bills. They are ‘weekenders’ with a second home in the New Forest, whose main property is in London. They complain that their bill for their more modest Forest property is very much higher than the charge for their rather grander address in London.
I point out that the one in the Forest is, in effect, generating a subsidy for the other in London.
The reality is that shire counties get a poor deal. Government grant funding towards local authority expenditure favours large metropolitan boroughs at the expense of rural England.
The consequence is that rural counties will have to raise a greater proportion of their expenditure from local Council Tax. This is reason why a modest property in the Forest may attract a higher Council Tax than a bigger property in Greater London.

I am afraid that this discrepancy is about to get worse.
The Government published its Local Government Settlement at the beginning of the week and, though I voted against it on Wednesday, it is now a ‘done deal’.
The Government has been tampering with the formula that is used to distribute grant funding between local authorities. It has largely removed the element of the formula that compensates for ‘rurality’.
Delivering services in a rural area with sparse populations over greater distances costs more. It takes longer, it involves more vehicles, it may require more depots. The Rural Services Delivery Grant existed to address these extra cost pressures, but the Government has abolished it. It has only retained an element of ‘rurality’ compensation in the provision of social care for the elderly.
If that cost pressure exists in social care, then surely it also exists in school transport, waste collection, and also for everything else that the councils provide in rural England.
 As a consequence urban councils will receive 32% more from the Government than rural areas like Hampshire, and that difference will be reflected in our council tax

Another significant change to the formula that there is reduced reliance on population size and more reliance placed on ‘deprivation’. Nevertheless, research undertaken by the Government in 2018 suggested that deprivation “was not a major cost driver for the services included in the Foundation Formula”. The same research found that population was overwhelmingly the most important factor in driving the size of the variation in costs.
This change will have implications for us, as we are considered amongst the least deprived. Despite our relatively elderly population, the money is going to be heading north.

And I remember the Prime Minister telling us that Council Tax would go up by “not a penny” under his plans, just as we were also promised that there would be no tax increases for ‘working people’