In this column last week, referring to Matt Hancock’s affair, I made a passing reference to ‘the Tempter’. A surprising number of email correspondents have asked me to have the courage name and shame the individual in question! I’m afraid that they have got quite the wrong end of the stick. Indeed, I’m shocked that anyone would not be certain as to what I was referring to . Have we become so forgetful of scripture?
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist, steadfast in the faith”
1 Peter 5: 8 

That’s who I meant.

Sarah Vine wrote sensitively in a national newspaper about the difficulties faced by political marriages following the coverage of Matt Hancock’s affair, only for the announcement of the end of her own marriage to Michael Gove to follow shortly thereafter.
All the true circumstances that lead to divorce will only ever be known by the couples involved, and it is always dangerous to draw general conclusions. I am not sure that the marriages of politicians are more prone to end in divorce than they are in any other profession. Clearly however, physical separation doesn’t help. If you have to be in Westminster and order your affairs so that your spouse is at a distance in your constituency home, then an additional stress has been placed on the relationship, and additional opportunities for the Tempter.
When I was selected to be the Conservative Candidate to fight New Forest West before the 1997 election, a member of the selection committee told me that they had chosen my wife too: We were considered to be a team (such processes are now considered beyond the pale and candidates cannot even say if they have spouses, let alone be accompanied by them to interviews and selection hustings).
Equally, when I arrived at Westminster I was advised by professional staff at the Commons to employ my wife as a member of my staff as such an arrangement would ensure that she was involved in my work as part of the team, so acting as a powerful corrective to any sense of isolation, and even possibly temptation.
After the expenses scandal of 2009 the newly created Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority announced that it was minded to end the practice of allowing MPs to employ their wives. Following a public consultation they changed course and accepted that the practice had significant advantages. Unfortunately, they changed their mind again a few years later, since when new Members have been unable employ their spouses.

Some 15 years ago I recall the telephone ringing one Friday evening as I was rushing to get out in time to attend a voluntary organisation’s Summer barbeque in Ringwood. On the line was a well-known journalist from a Sunday newspaper telephoning to warn me that they were going to publish a story about an affair I’d been having and that– when I’d sought to end it- my lover, in an act of vengeance, had leaked embarrassing emails.
It was with some relief that I was able to say that whilst I had on a number of occasions met the woman that he had named, also that I was confident that I had always done so accompanied by a member of my staff (my wife!).
The story never appeared. Alas, the emails however, filled many column inches. Though embarrassing, mercifully they were of a political, rather than a sexual nature.
As to how the emails had leaked, it wasn’t a jilted lover: I had left myself logged into a computer in the library, then I had gone out to take a phone call without logging-off.
I think they call it ‘user error’. 

One of the pressing issues that will face Sajid Javid as the new Secretary of State for Health is how to reform social care.
Bluntly, the problem is that there is insufficient provision because we don’t spend enough on it.  That much is generally agreed. The key question on which a consensus has yet to be reached is how are we going to pay for the much greater sums that we will need to spend. 

I sat on the legislative standing committee which introduced the distinction between healthcare, provided free at the point of use by the NHS, and social care which is means-tested. This distinction is not always sustainable, especially where patients with dementia together with a number of complex medical conditions are concerned. The assessment procedures to deal with these cases and to provide ‘Continuing NHS Care’ -where all the cost are met by the NHS- leave much to be desired, they are applied differently giving rise to a postcode lottery and to a perception of unfairness.

That sense of unfairness however, is much wider:  People who have been lucky, wise, hard-working and successful in building up their savings will find that have to pay the full cost of their care. Whilst, those who have been impecunious or just much less fortunate, will have their social care paid for at the expense of taxpayers.
That perception of unfairness is an inevitable consequence of any system reliant on means-testing. We just live with it across other aspects of our welfare state; Where, for example, access to Universal Credit is denied to those who have significant savings, even though they have lost their income.
The only way to avoid this perception of unfairness is to remove any individual responsibly entirely by making free provision universal.

Universal benefits, irrespective of income and assets, come at an enormous cost to taxpayers, with all the consequences that higher taxation has for reduced incentives, investment and productivity.
It comes down to this simple question in the end: do we want to nationalise another aspect of our collective life by simply expecting the state to provide it? 

Politicians often refer to the ‘scandal’ of elderly patients having to sell their homes to meet the costs of residential care. Of course, we’d all much prefer to leave our assets to the next generation, but equally, I was always taught to save up for a ‘rainy day’. Well, when you need social care, isn’t that the rainy day?

I do not believe that we need to commission another great review of the options. The last such review developed a workable solution (and which Parliament legislated to implement): Sir Andrew Dilnot proposed a cap on the amount that anyone would be required to spend on social care if they had the means to do so. Beyond that cap the taxpayer would meet the costs. He suggested a cap of £75,000. Clearly, the lower the cap the greater the burden that will be borne by taxpayers.
The advantage of a cap however, is that it gives the insurance industry the certainty of a maximum liability which will enable the development of affordable financial products to protect those customers who want to safeguard their assets and savings for the next generation.

The Dilnot proposal is a means of getting more funding into social care on the basis of a ‘mixed economy’, whilst going some way to addressing the unfairness of a means tested system. But we must not hide from the reality that it comes at a greater cost to the public purse which  inevitably will require either higher taxes or less expenditure on other aspects of government provision, and we need to be open and honest about recognising that.

Months ago, in this column I pointed out that the successful virus variants become more transmissible by being less virulent. Clearly, by sending your hosts to bed, to hospital, or even to their deaths, there will be fewer opportunities to spread than if you keep them up and about mixing with others.
Despite the alarming graphs and charts, presented -as ever- without proper context, the success of the delta or Indian variant has become our dominant variant based on exactly this strategy.
According to the NHS’s own data hospital cases have risen significantly since 27 May, but comparatively very few of these  patients are actually occupying hospital beds. So, the rest probably pitched up at A&E -presumably because they couldn’t get an appointment with their GP – before being sent home.
For days however, establishment voices have been demanding an extension of restrictions to prevent even the smallest increase in hospital admissions so that the NHS can get on, uninterrupted, dealing with all the backlogs of other illnesses and conditions that have built up over the last 18 months. So it has come to this: enterprises are to be restricted, to remain closed, basic freedoms and social interactions remain banned, all as a means of managing NHS waiting lists.
Is England just an NHS served by a nation, rather than a nation served by an NHS?
By this logic there is no chance of the restrictions being lifted as we approach the flu season this autumn. Indeed, a number of the Government’s Scientific advisors have been sounding-off that we will have to abide by their dystopian distancing and masking regulations forever!
By rolling over and implementing their latest advice, the Government has transformed the victory of the vaccination campaign in to the defeat of their road map to the lifting of the restrictions.

But if you thought you were ok because your wedding can now go ahead with more than 30 guests…  before you celebrate, read the small print; only where the venue can accommodate higher numbers including the full distancing requirements. How cruel to raise hopes, only to dash them.

I never believed that the Government’s response to the epidemic was proportionate: it had no right to the freedoms it took from us; now it continues to withhold them despite the emergency having passed, accordingly it has set the most disastrous precedent for the future of liberty in England.

‘You made the bed and now you must sleep in it’
That is, in effect, the attitude of the EU to the difficulties we are now having with the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol which regulates trade between UK trade and Northern Ireland.
Well, yes, when I voted for the agreement, which included the protocol, my eyes were open and I was alive to its limitations.
 So, why on earth did I vote for it?

The European Research Group, of which I am a long-standing member,  together with the assistance of other organisations and experts in the field, put a major effort into a comprehensive report setting out how a completely seamless border could work between Northern Ireland and the Republic without intrusive physical infrastructure and checks. The principal limitation would have been the time it would have taken to implement. So it would have required an extended grace period of a year or so.
Nevertheless it was the obvious answer and infinitely preferable to the NI Protocol which establishes a border between mainland UK and Northern Ireland.

The difficulty was that the ‘pass had already been sold’ before Boris became PM and was in a position to do anything realistic about it.
We were in a race against time to get an agreement before the end of January 2020; we were without a parliamentary majority; and with Parliament refusing to dissolve and put the question to the country.
The danger was that we were not going to be able to leave the EU at all. When the outcome  of the election finally did settle the matter in December 2019, there simply was no time to go back and unwind the negotiations that had already established substantial parts of the then, as yet, unfinished deal.
We had either to live within its limitations or countenance a no-deal Brexit.

It was clear however, that with goodwill and a pragmatic approach the Protocol could be made to work satisfactorily. What has become clear, is that the necessary goodwill is absent and a dogmatic approach is being taken either to cut Northern Ireland off from UK exports or to tie us indefinitely to EU regulations.

The alternatives now are that we accept the isolation of the Province, or we accept indefinite continued observance of EU rules, or that we revoke the protocol and face down the EU fury and sanctions.
Of course, there is always the remote possibility that peace and love may break out, seeing the Protocol sensibly and proportionately implemented.

My post of 22 May on Scotland’s future has prompted a considerable correspondence.

Several constituents have emailed to say that the Union of the two nations was by mutual agreement and therefore, a dissolution of that union should also be by mutual consent: if the Scots are to have a (further) referendum on the question; so should the other members of the Union.
There is a logic to this position but there is no appreciation of the political realities. Were a majority of voters in Scotland to demonstrate their preference to leave the Union, it would be an affront to democracy and the principle of ‘self-determination’ if they were to be held captive by an overall majority voters in the other parts of the Union.

Others have written to state that the future of nations should not be determined by slender majorities and that such profound constitutional changes need to be based on an overwhelming majority, perhaps with as many as two thirds voting for change.
The horse has already bolted on that one: first, the last Scottish referendum was settled on the basis of simple majority; Second we had a referendum in 2016 which profoundly changed the constitutional future of the UK on the basis of a simple and slender majority. It would be very difficult to justify moving the goal posts now.
It is true that the First Scottish referendum to set up an assembly in Edinburgh, held in 1979, was based on a requirement not only to secure a majority in favour, but also to secure the support of not less than 50% of registered voters (in effect apathy and indifference counting against the proposition). In the event ‘yes’ did secure a majority but with a turn-out of only 64% ‘Yes’ only accounted for 33% of registered voters, so the proposition fell.
The political reality is that such ‘gerrymandering’ just doesn’t settle the question. On the contrary, it gives rise to the belief that ‘we was robbed’.  
Imagine how ‘Leave’ voters would have felt in 2016 if, having won against the odds, they were denied victory by some questionable threshold.

The most significant correspondence that I have received however, has come from Scottish people who now live in the New Forest and who are outraged that the future of their nation should be considered without including them in the franchise, (whilst English voters residing in Scotland will get a vote on it).
The 2014 Scottish referendum was held on a local government franchise which included EU nationals and was expanded to include over sixteen-year-olds. I recall the anger of so many  elderly Scots who were born in Scotland and spent so much of their lives there, at being excluded from the decision, because they were now living in the New Forest.
Given that we allow UK voters who move overseas to continue to vote by post in the constituencies in which they last resided for 15 years after leaving UK -and indeed, there are proposals to allow them to continue to do so for life- the demand for Scottish ‘exiles’ to have a say seems a not unreasonable one.
As we do not have any legal concept with which to distinguish Scottish citizens from the rest of us, other than purely on where one currently resides, establishing a Scottish franchise beyond Scotland’s borders will be a significant administrative overhead.
But, hey, as the 2014 referendum was to settle the question “for a generation”, we have plenty of time to sort out the franchise for the next one.

Questions…Questions

There are 3 types of parliamentary question an MP can put to ministers. First an ‘urgent question which, if granted by the Speaker (the matter being entirely at his discretion), will bring a minister to the Commons that day to make a statement in answer to it.

Second, an oral question: each department of state answers oral questions in the Commons on a monthly rota, but questions are drawn by ballot, and even if successful, yours might not be reached in the time available. If called, you get a supplementary question which, to be in order, must be pertinent to the substantive question that was granted. Oral questions are really for the purpose of making a political point rather than genuinely seeking information.
A written question however, is not subject to ballot and you can -within reason- even specify the date for answer (although that answer might just be ‘it has not been possible to answer the question within the time available’…then you wait). Written questions may not present information; they may not make an argument; they may not be pejorative; they may not seek an opinion; they have to be factual questions within the minister’s competence and the answer to which cannot be had from any other public source.

So, given my opposition to lockdown and the threat posed by the Indian variant to the lifting of all restrictions on 21 June, I put down the following question on 14 May: 

“To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish statistics on the (a) number of infections, (b) deaths and (c) hospital admissions by each covid-19 variant of concern”
On 25^th May I got the following quite astounding answer 

“Data for hospitalisations and deaths is not currently available in the format requested.” 

I would have thought that this data is essential for any informed decision about removing the final stage of lockdown.
On 24^th May My Colleague Dr Julian Lewis MP tried with 

“To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to release to the media, on a daily basis, the numbers of people hospitalised with covid-19 who are (a) vaccinated and (b) unvaccinated against the virus.”
on 28^th May he got no further with the following answer
“The data requested is not currently held centrally in the format requested.”
Incredible!
If not, then why on earth not? 

Dr Lewis has now put down the following question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the answer of 28 May to question 6161 on the vaccination status of people hospitalised with the Indian variant of covid-19, for what reason such essential data are not held centrally in the format requested; in what format, if any, those data are held centrally; and if he will make it his policy, without further delay, to (a) gather centrally and (b) subsequently release to the media, on a daily basis, the numbers of people hospitalised with the Indian variant of covid-19 who are (i) vaccinated with (A) one and (B) both doses, and (ii) unvaccinated against the virus.” 

I can’t wait to read the answer!

I’ve been receiving a steady stream emails from constituents incensed by press reports that the government intends to assuage the thirst for independence in Scotland through ever more generous spending there. Rather more worrying from my point of view, is the government’s  ambition to spend so much more throughout the UK: there will be consequences for inflation and interest rates.
Let’s, for the present however, stick with the Scottish question.

The Scotland Act 1998 reserves the constitutional status of Scotland to the exclusive jurisdiction of Parliament at Westminster. Accordingly, the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence was held with the consent of Westminster. The agreement to hold it was made on the clear understanding by all parties that it was to settle the question for a generation.
The precipitate demand for a further plebiscite is advanced by the argument that the whole nature of the question is now changed by Brexit, notwithstanding a majority of Scotland’s votes being for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.
I do not accept this as a ‘game-changer’: any Scot voting on independence in 2014 would have factored into their decision the uncertainty of what might happen in the 2016 referendum on the EU, after all, the issue was highlighted throughout the independence referendum campaign.

Following its re-election this month, the Scottish Government has made it clear that it will legislate to hold a second referendum on independence. The Prime Minister has made it equally clear that Westminster will not grant the powers to allow such a referendum to lawfully proceed.
Consequently, the matter will come before the courts. The judges will look to interpret the Scotland Act 1998 which reserves the question of independence to Westminster: end of story?
I rather doubt it.
The Scottish Government will frame its referendum question to give the Judges sufficient wriggle room to thwart Westminster. A straight referendum question on independence would fall foul of the 1998 Act, but how about a question asking voters to approve their Government in Edinburgh entering into negotiations with Westminster on the terms by which a future separation might be had.
How would the Supreme Court justices respond to that?
I fear that we need to prepare actively and urgently for another independence referendum.

There are a number of English Nationalists who are inclined to say ‘good riddance’. I profoundly disagree. Scotland’s departure from the Union will have an enormous impact on the other member nations.
The cornerstone of our nuclear deterrent is built on deep water access through the Firth of Clyde.
The Scottish Government’s very different appetite for immigration and for re-joining the EU would necessitate a hard border between us which would make our current difficulties with the Northern Ireland Protocol look like a picnic. The economic damage would rebound on both of our economies.
Given that the UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would have ceased to exist, the question would undoubtedly arise as to whether we, as the remnant, should retain the UK’s permanent seat at the UN Security Council. We would be much diminished.

We need to develop a winning strategy, but I’m far from convinced that spending more money is it.

As one might expect, I’ve been reading the analyses and commentaries on the local election results.
By reading, I mean exactly that, reading can be done in your own time and at your own pace. Listening or watching the wall-to-wall coverage however, is just too intrusive, so much noise, I’ve never been able to understand how anyone can put up with it. Yet constituents often ask me if I watched so and so on Marr?
Watch politics on TV and on a Sunday morning!
First, I have better things to do. Second, I don’t want to go mad.

Now, having read the commentaries and analyses, they might be right, but they might not. It is, after all merely the opinion of the commentators, and very little science lies behind it. I rather doubt that those who write so much about what voters want, or why they vote in the way that they do, have ever knocked on many doors and engaged with the voters about it.
I have, and it isn’t easy. First of all, it’s quite difficult to find anyone at home irrespective of the time of day that you call -within reason.  You can cover a whole street and have just one or two short conversations. I say short, because most people have busy lives with plenty of other things to be getting on with.
The notion that one might speak to a sufficient number of people to be able to come up with a statistically significant sample of opinion is just fanciful.
Often, when you really do encounter a voter on their doorstep, the reason they give for their voting intention just doesn’t fit with any of the prevailing political ‘weather’ or events, frequently it’s just the random caprice of an individual decision.  Imposing a credible political narrative on it is equally fanciful.
So instead, increasingly we rely on the science of polling -quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (focus groups). The problem is that sample is often self-selecting and the participants are led by the nose through a template of questions that impose an order on their opinions that, in reality, just isn’t there.

So, what are the lessons to be drawn from the articles by the pundits that I’ve been reading in the papers and online?
Broadly, they conclude that, after this set of local results following on from the 2019 general election, Labour -as we know it- is finished.
Now I’ve heard that before many times over the last 40 years. I’ve heard it said about Labour, Conservatives, and Liberal Democrats. At some stage such a prediction may turn out to be right, but not yet. They were wrong then and my hunch is that they’re wrong now.

What has changed in the last 40 years, from my own experience, is the dramatic reduction in party allegiance. When I first started knocking on doors most people appeared to be committed to one of the two major parties and the election would be settled by the movement of relatively small numbers of ‘swing’ voters.  This has changed: Overwhelmingly, when you do encounter someone on the doorstep, they don’t know who they will vote for and say they will decide later: more than half the voters now have no residual party allegiance and are open to persuasion. That’s why elections are more volatile with much bigger swings between the parties than we used to experience.

I certainly wouldn’t write any political party off.

I didn’t get out much over the last few months, so It is good to get back into the swing of routine commitments – visiting enterprises and organisations in and around my parliamentary constituency.
I confess to being surprised and even mildly irritated however, when a request to visit a commercial premises, to discuss a problem the proprietor was encountering, was accompanied by an instruction to have a Covid test prior to my arrival.
On reflection, my irritation was misplaced. My host, after all, was merely following government guidance. Ministers have told us that notwithstanding the success of the vaccination programme, “reclaiming our lost freedoms and getting back to normal hinges on us all getting tested regularly”
Indeed, starting from the 9^th April provision was made for each of us to take lateral flow tests twice weekly.
I wonder how many readers of this column have done so, or intend to.
It certainly doesn’t sound much like a return to normal life to me.

Actually, I think it’s plain bonkers.
In England there are 56.3 million of us, with each of us testing twice per week that’s 104 tests annually, 6 billion for all of us put together. The tests come in at £5 each, which amounts to £30 billion per year.
Is this a sensible way to spend such a vast sum of money, (instead we might increase England’s NHS budget by fully 40%)?
 
And another thing…I’ve already raised my concerns about the accuracy of tests in Parliament.
The lateral flow test gives false positives at a rate of only 0.3% – only 3 in every 10,000 tests. Nevertheless, were we all to obey the guidance to test ourselves twice per week, then  34,000 of us would end up having to isolate ourselves every week to no purpose, then multiply that by the numbers in the household who will then have to do likewise.
Very quickly the appetite for testing will diminish, if indeed it is ever first established, as people fear the consequent inconvenience of a false positive result. After all, the one thing most of us learnt at school is that, if you fear that you may not like the answer…then don’t ask the question

Why on earth are we behaving as if the vaccination programme is not the success that it clearly is?
Could it be that we already ordered and paid for the tests before the vaccination success was evident, and that the Government feel’s obliged not to waste them, and to waste our time instead.