So much of my correspondence begins with a statement that the point of view being expressed, is universally held. “Mr Swayne, everyone I speak to agrees with me…”.
I think the universal truth is really that we tend to mix with people like ourselves, who tend to think like us, and therefore largely agree with us. Either that, or they are just too polite to disagree.

I am no different. Almost everyone I speak to appears to agree with me that our response to Covid19 has been a disastrous overreaction.
It a hard thing to say when so many people have died of the disease, many of whom were relatively young and with no other health problems. Nevertheless for the vast majority of us the experience of catching the disease is mild to imperceptible. Yet our disproportionate response has been to close down our economy with devastating consequences for employment and incomes, with all the health problems -both mental and physical- that will flow from their diminution.
 We have prioritised our healthcare system to the enormous disadvantage of anyone suffering from conditions other than Covid19, which will cause much suffering and many deaths.
And we have devastated education by closing schools.
To cap it all, we have sacrificed our liberty to the extent that we are now told whom, when and where me may meet, marry, worship, or whatever. And even what we must wear.

All this might be bearable (though personally I doubt it) given the prospect that it is only to be short-lived. The announcement yesterday however, poured cold water on any such notion. There was a deeply chilling note in the Chief Scientist’s observation that we may have reached the limit of possibilities with respect to easing of restrictions.
We appear to be at the mercy of these scientists. And our only prospect of relief is scientific advance in the form of a vaccine or a cure, neither of which is guaranteed.

Yet the science which has imprisoned us is controversial. There is another point of view and course of action: whilst taking care to protect those who are particularly vulnerable, to allow the natural process of ‘herd immunity’  to build up amongst the rest of us so that the virus has much less opportunity to spread.

I said almost  everyone I speak to agrees with me. Well, I’m not stupid: I know they tell me what I want to hear; they email me because they’ve already heard that I agree with them.
Nevertheless, there is clearly a difference of opinion amongst scientists and amongst the public in general.

So, the key question for me as an elected representative -in what is supposed to be a democracy -is this: why is there so little debate in Parliament about the measures that have been forced upon us and the science that justifies them?
On occasions I have found myself as almost a lone voice in opposition to the Government’s chosen course of action.
Most shocking of all, I have never had the opportunity to legislate: I have neither voted for nor against any of the laws that now govern and constrain our social intercourse and which the police have the power to enforce.
The Government simply rules by decree, without argument or challenge in Parliament.
It does so using powers granted to it in the Public Health Act 1984.
I have said it before, but it bears repetition: how prescient George Orwell was in his choice of that year in naming his dystopian novel.

I was delighted to be given an earful by my dentist when I got into his chair last week. He told me that dental practices should never have closed during the lockdown; that dentists were skilled clinicians, used to working with PPE and quite capable of managing the risks of virus transmission.
I say I was delighted to receive his rebuke, because when I said exactly all that in the House of Commons I received a volume of vituperative correspondence telling me I was a complete ignoramus who clearly knew nothing about dentistry.

Hey ho.

In the interviews and correspondence that followed my protest at the Government’s decision to require the wearing of face-coverings, a comparison has often been made with the requirement to wear a seatbelt in motor vehicles.
People say that it is for our own good, and for the good of others, yet we require it on penalty of a fine, so “what’s the difference they ask”, inferring that I wear my seatbelt by fixed habit and without complaint. 

The difference is fundamental and I am surprised that it has been missed by so many. I recall the introduction of compulsory seat belts. The requirement was preceded by a public debate, a publicity campaign fronted by Jimmy Saville (remember “clunk, Click, every trip”), and -most important of all- debates and votes in Parliament with the full scrutiny of primary legislation going through its three stages in both houses.
There were opponents who felt that this was a step too far, with the state telling us what was good for us and them making us do it. The counter argument being, if it really is good for us, let us choose to do it for ourselves. 

The opponents of compulsory seat belts accepted their defeat pretty gracefully and those who end up getting fined for not wearing one, are overwhelmingly not acting in defiance, they simply forget.
The acceptance rests on consent. Those who lost the Parliamentary battle against compulsory seat belts were given every opportunity to put their case in a democratic process.
The same is true of government generally, after a general election those of us who voted for losing parties consent to be governed by our opponents because it was a democratic process in which we participated. 

Being required to wear a face covering -however, good it might be for us and others, and that is arguable- is nevertheless, a pretty fundamental intrusion into our personal liberty. What makes it so utterly different from seat belts, is that there was no debate in Parliament, the arguments were never heard, we were given no opportunity to put our case: there was no vote
The government simply issued the order using powers granted to it back in 1984. 

Governing by directive is very convenient for ministers and will become a habit if not checked. 

Even before the decision requiring face coverings to be worn in shops, I was receiving a few emails in favour of such a move, but a much larger number demanding that there be no such compulsion.
Nevertheless, I am never persuaded that counting emails adds up to a representative sample. On the contrary, the opinion polling has been showing a clear lead for compulsory masks.
But I know that I spoke for  many when opposed this policy in the House of Commons. I was the only dissenter when the announcement was made, and it is important that the significant minority opinion have its voice heard in Parliament.

The subsequent reaction demonstrates that I have tapped into a well of outrage: of some 360 emails I received in the 72 hours following my intervention, twenty were in support of the stance that I took to every one against. Again, I do not pretend that this is a representative sample, but clearly a very significant number of people are angry about being compelled to wear a face covering.

Quite a few of the emails were from clinicians who split evenly between those supporting the policy and those opposing it. Some arguing that masks were a danger to health. I am not qualified to intrude on that dispute. What I can confidently say however, is that scientific opinion remains divided.
(I understand that no studies have been done on Covid-19 and masks, and we rely instead on studies based on flu, which are inconclusive).

I possess a mask and I wear it, as required, on the train. Personally, I have no objection to people being strongly encouraged to wear masks, but clearly many people object to being forced to do so, as do I.
As I see it,  the difficulty is that, having implemented this policy now -when the disease is in abeyance (we have a deficit of deaths: fewer people are dying than the long-term average for this time of year), and we are easing all the other restrictions that have been imposed, how are we ever going to find the circumstance in which we can remove the requirement.
When he was asked this in the Commons, the Secretary of State said we’d have to think about it later.
We have discovered that it’s easy enough to impose restrictions but much more difficult to lift them, re-opening schools being an obvious example

I believe that this policy on masks was a decision taken with the laudable objective of getting the economy moving. Many of our more wary citizens have yet to be tempted back on to our high streets where their footfall and consumption is desperately needed to revive economic activity. The calculation is that they will feel more comfortable and safer if they, and everyone else, is masked.
I hope the Government has made the right call, and that it doesn’t have the opposite effect -which was certainly the concern expressed to me by a number of prominent local retailers.

I’ve said before in this column, that in the age of the internet retail has to have ‘a better offer’: it needs to be a pleasant social experience if it is to compete with the convenience of the internet.
I don’t believe that masks will help, but now that the decision has been made, I really hope that I am wrong about that.

The Self-Employment Income Support Scheme is one of the most generous COVID-19 support schemes in the world, but I have received complaints from constituents who do not qualify.

Individuals, including members of partnerships, were eligible if they had submitted their Income Tax Self-Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19, continued to trade, and had been adversely affected by COVID-19.

 Around 95 per cent of those with more than half their income from self-employment in 2018-19 may have been eligible for this scheme. It pays a taxable grant worth 80 per cent of the average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering three months’ worth of profits, and capped at £7,500 in total.

Alternatively, those who paid themselves a salary through their own company, were eligible for the ‘furlough’ Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, available to employers, including owner-managers, and individuals paying themselves a salary through a PAYE scheme.

The main complaint I ‘ve been getting is that those people who pay themselves a dividend from their company rather than a wage, are not covered.

The difficulty is that incomes from dividends aren’t wages, they are a return on investment, and are taxed differently because of that.
Even setting aside this difference of principle, under current reporting mechanisms, it is not possible for HM Revenue and Customs to distinguish between dividends derived from an individual’s own company and dividends from other shares that they possess.

 
The Government did consider providing a new system for those who pay themselves through dividends, but this is much more complex. The information required by the other support schemes, is already held by HM Revenue and Customs.
A dividend scheme would require owner-managers to make a claim and submit information that HM Revenue and Customs could not efficiently or consistently verify to ensure payments were made to eligible companies, for eligible activity.
Some of my correspondents suggested that that a ‘pay now, but clawback later’ approach could have been taken, but that  would have required manual and highly resource-intensive procedures to ensure compliance, and there would still be a high risk that incorrect or fraudulent payments could not be recovered.

The proper recourse for those who do not qualify for the schemes is to fall back on Universal Credit, which has performed incredibly well, in paying out on time for a surge of millions of new applicants.

The difficulty is that you cannot qualify for Universal Credit it if you have savings of more than £16,000, and this is where the perceived unfairness lies. None of the Covid-19 schemes are subject to a savings threshold, so I can quite understand the disappointment of those who’ve worked so hard, but don’t qualify, and are now having to live off their savings, whilst others are receiving help.

Should the savings threshold have been raised, or suspended, during the pandemic?
It sounds easy, but it raises questions about hundreds of thousands of applicants denied Universal Credit because of their savings before Covid-19 even came along.
Does the very existence of a savings threshold discourage thrift by penalising the thrifty when they run in to hard times?
But then you wouldn’t want to see millionaires claiming Universal Credit even if they had lost their job.
Equally, one of the reasons that we save is for “a rainy day” as my Granny used to say. And isn’t losing your income that rainy day?

Nothing is simple, and nothing will ever be 100% fair

Earlier in the week I was lobbied by 30 or so constituents seeking more action on climate change.

Their principal request was for local empowerment so that communities could lead initiatives themselves. I agree. Of course, there is an agenda that Government must lead from the centre, but there is so much that can be done locally.
Our New Forest Communities are active in tackling the scourge of pollution, from litter picks, to recycling initiatives across the area,  to mass tree plantings on community land. This volunteering spirit reminds me of what we tried to foster a decade ago through the ‘Big Society’ which sought to give “communities and local government the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want.”
It is a force that we need to harness in order to drive forward change.
A good example of initiatives that we should be pursuing is in the Local Electricity Bill which is currently in Parliament. This will allow electricity to be generated locally and sold direct to households in the community. It is not only positive environmentally to harness energy locally but in an increasingly uncertain world it is also prudent in terms of energy security.

Making those households much more energy efficient is the natural partner to renewable electricity supply. The statutory requirements for The Future Homes Standard to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 75-80% don’t kick-in until 2025. I’d prefer it to be much sooner, but there is a cost involved, and we have yet to address how that cost is to be divided between the developer, the purchaser, and the taxpayer.

Inevitably the group raised the issue of litter and plastic pollution. I am all too familiar with it and I’ve used this column on before to draw attention to it. I am frustrated that, having concluded a consultation last year on a bottle recycling scheme, the Government has decided to proceed with yet another one next year before we see it implemented. Nevertheless, there has been some success with a 90% reduction in single use plastic bags. Again, I’ve used this column to point to the example of Rwanda where plastic bags are banned entirely -and they are doing just fine.
I also believe there is far more scope for regulation to reduce the obscene amount of packaging. I am glad that progress has been made on banning micro-plastics in cosmetics and the ban on plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds takes effect in October.
From  2022 products will be taxed that do not contain 30 per cent recycled materials.
I was happy to report that the leading campaigner on this agenda, Rebecca Pow, the MP for Taunton Dene, has been promoted to be the minister with responsibility for this brief.

There was a clear preference expressed by the group for more cycle-friendly transport policy. As a cyclist myself, I am glad that this has been part of the Government’s strategy: we can expect more cycle lanes when  the Prime Minister (himself a keen cyclist) announces a new cycling and walking strategy later this Summer.

We all agreed with each other that the move to electric vehicles required a transformation in the charging points available. Equally, we should congratulate local services like MoreBus: Their electric X3 from Salisbury to Bournemouth via Ringwood and Fordingbridge generates fewer emissions than my push lawnmower.

It was a useful and positive exchange, and it is essential that we keep it that way: I’ve come across far too much defeatism on climate change. It is not beyond our wit to reverse the damage that we’ve done to the planet, and to enjoy a better quality of life. The UK was the first developed country to impose legislative targets to reduce our emissions, since when we’ve met those targets and reduced emissions dramatically. There is plenty more for the Government to do, for local communities to do, and for each and every one of us to do.

When he announced reductions in the Coronavirus lock-down measures last week, I asked the PM , that even when there are flare-ups in the disease, if he would resist the temptation to return to ‘collective punishment’.

Interestingly enough, in the USA  the infection rate has continued to surge ahead, nevertheless their death rate peaked in April and has fallen dramatically ever since.
So, is the virus becoming less virulent?
Or, is more testing just identifying more cases?
Or is the disease being treated more effectively?
Certainly, the adoption our own UK breakthrough with Dexamethasone will lead to an even lower death rate.

At any rate, if lock-down was our original concept of a ‘cure’ for the disease, we now have to seriously ask ourselves whether this ‘cure’ is now doing more damage to not just our economic welfare , but also to our physical and mental health than the disease itself.

The reductions announced on Wednesday are welcome, but as I pointed out the PM at his previous statement on 16^th June, there will be no economic recovery until we can jettison unnatural social distancing altogether. Of course, a yard is much easier to cope with than 2 meters but many drinkers will bridle at having to give their name and contact details to order a pint of beer.
Masking-up and standing in line is not what I consider to be retail therapy. Retail has to have an ‘offer’. We’ve all discovered that you can make purchases cheaper and more conveniently online. So, if we are to save our high streets, shopping will have to return to being a superior social experience, otherwise why would we bother making the effort.
In any event we are we are still a very long way from restoring normal economic activity. Swimming pools, Gyms, theatres, live concerts, beauty salons (despite a huge investment in PPE by many of them) all remain closed to us.
I accept that we are more than economic beings and I am delighted that the Churches are to restore public worship. But we are not to be allowed to sing. Will they fill the time with longer sermons?
That is unlikely to draw many of us back, having broken the habit.

I am tired of listening to pundits on the wireless, boring the socks off us all, as they bang on about how life is going to have to change for good (-no more kissing  being the very least of it).
Don’t these puritans realise that most of us want to get back to normal, and not some concept of ‘the new normal’.

The only way back to normal is when we overcome our fears and begin to treat Covid-19 as just another of life’s hazards, like catching the flu or having an accident.
We aren’t there yet, give the medics a bit more time for a vaccine and cures, and we will get there. In the meantime, we all need to practice, as far as we are able, behaving a bit more normally.

And NO return to collective punishment.

I count my sojourn as Minister of State for International Development as the most productive and useful of my time in Parliament. I was very sorry to be sacked, but then, one might say ‘I had it coming’. I certainly expected to be one first casualties of Theresa May’s premiership given -what they call in the trade- my “previous” (when I was David Cameron’s parliamentary secretary I twice tried to persuade him to sack her).

It was a privilege to have worked in an organisation that has justifiably acquired a tremendous reputation and respect throughout the international community.
It is staffed by dedicated and amazing people that have achieved tremendous results.
I have no doubt that the UK’s continued place at the top table in the counsels of the world owes much to expertise and professionalism of DFID.

I will wager that, of all the ‘wasted aid’ scandals that have so driven the readers of the Daily Mail into a state of apoplexy over the last decade, 99% of them will have been projects initiated and managed by the Foreign Office and not by DFID.
It is vital that this reorganisation in Whitehall is a genuine merger, and not an hostile takeover.
The influence and ethos of DFID needs to be extended within the new organisation and its management standards applied to the whole foreign aid budget.

The UK Aid brand will sustain some damage by the perceived loss of independent action. To minimise that damage we must maintain the current statutory requirement that foreign aid expenditure has to be for the relief of poverty. Equally, we must abide by the manifesto commitment not to tie aid to trade. We should continue to promote the trading abilities of the world’s poorest countries as part of our main effort, but we must eschew the example of so many other donors who see their development aid as a ‘loss-leader’ for their export drive.

Nevertheless we have to accept that official development aid is not charity.
Charity is when you dip your hand into your own pocket and distribute the contents without any expectation of return.
Development aid however, is extracted from our pockets with all the coercive force of the law. It is taxpayers’ money to be spent in the national interest. It is an investment from which we do indeed expect a return: it is our investment in a more stable and peaceful world in which we can be secure and prosper.

We cannot complain about the unsustainable wave of migration heading across the world unless we are prepared to invest in security and sustainable livelihoods in the places from which people are migrating.
I hope that this will be the focus of the new organisation.

Last week I was deluged with email messages for having called out rioters, looters and arsonists, but this week I’ve been inundated with messages demanding more robust police action against marauding mobs that are defacing public monuments.
Constituents have expressed their anger at watching the Police standing by (or even kneeling). My solidarity however, is for the vast majority of our police who have a very difficult balance to strike and end up being seriously injured for taking the trouble.

Values and standards change, and every generation has the right to reappraise the actions and attitudes of its predecessors, and that this might even extend to the removal of monuments if that is done by consent and lawful means.
What is completely unacceptable is to have people taking things into their own hands.
There is a proper democratically controlled planning process for the removal of listed monuments and changing the name of a street requires the formal consent of two-thirds of local taxpayers who reside in it.

It is a measure of the mindlessness of the mob that they take out their anger on monuments rather than put their energy into addressing, through our democratic system, the injustice of which they complain. The truth is that these anarchists have no interest in consent and democratic politics, like the fascists from whom they differ so little, they want to impose mob rule without consent.
The attacks on the Cenotaph and on the statue of Sir Winston Churchill show that the mobs are determined to outrage public opinion.

Our history over centuries is bound to have thrown up both great achievements and terrible horror stories.  As Historic England puts It
“We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations. They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults. To tear them down would be to lie about our history, and impoverish the education of generations to come.”
I’d put it a little stronger: seeking to erase the past in this way is no better than Daesh when it destroyed the standing Buddhas in Afghanistan, and ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria.
If we followed the absurd mindset of the mobs we’d erase every remaining trace of Roman civilisation in the our Island and the Egyptians would tear down the pyramids.

Some of the emails to me have been so despondent about mob behaviour that I have had to try and cheer them up. I tell them that the hysteria will pass, it usually does.

Next Week The Commons will debate the second reading of the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill.
For Those of us who believe in the fundamental importance of marriage as the basis for family life -and all the implications for a strong and stable society that flow from it, making divorce easier will always be a difficult subject and I’ve been receiving large numbers of representations.

The principle of the bill is to remove ‘fault’ from divorce.
Under the current law, anyone seeking to divorce must initiate proceedings against a spouse,  citing one or more of five ‘facts’ :adultery; unreasonable behaviour; desertion, separation of two years where both parties agree that the marriage is irretrievably broken down; or 5 years separation if one of the parties disagree.
If one of these facts is proved, then a court must grant a divorce to the petitioner.

The new bill dispenses with these 5 facts and by doing so removes the concept of fault or blame.
Under these proposals all that either spouse need do is present a statement that the marriage has irretrievably broken down and the court will accept it as conclusive.

Notwithstanding, that I do believe that there is indeed blame and fault in divorce, I can accept the principle of the bill because, in my experience, the process of attributing blame by raking over the adultery or detailing the unreasonable behaviour, is itself bound to generate greater bitterness and hatred. I have witnessed parents using their children as weapons in a continuing war with their former spouse, as a consequence of the lasting anger and bitterness of such a divorce process.
Removing the need to attribute fault will not remove the pain and bitterness of divorce, but my belief is that it will be less likely to stir it up.

Where I do depart from supporting the measures in this bill however, is that it introduces an overall timeframe of 6 months from the application for a divorce, to the granting of it. This is ridiculously short. You might even describe it as ‘drive-thru’ divorce.

Currently many more couples explore the possibility of divorce than actually proceed to obtain one. In the intervening period there is an enormous opportunity for guidance, counselling and reconciliation.  The proposal to reduce the divorce process to a mere six months removes so many opportunities for reconciliation and suggests that divorce is an easier option and a quick way out.

Actually, divorce is the swiftest route to poverty. Of all the difficulties that constituents bring to me in the hope that I can be of assistance -irrespective of how the problem presents: whether it be debt; housing, insufficient income, schooling, child access, or whatever. When I scratch the surface, I find that divorce and family breakdown are the real root cause.
This bill will generate more of it.