I thought that the daftest Brexit offering, was the demand by opposition MPs and one (now former) Conservative MP, that the Government share its EU exit negotiating strategy and objectives with the House of Commons. As one of my colleagues put it “I just wish I had had the opportunity to play high stakes poker with them”. As I’ve said before in this column, if you really want a particular thing out of a negotiation, you don’t reveal it, on the contrary, you show that you are absolutely indifferent about it, otherwise your counterparty will raise his price accordingly.

Now however, Tim Farron has revived an earlier demand for a second referendum: One at the outcome of the article 50 negotiations, so that people can decide to either remain, or to leave on the basis of the negotiated terms.

There is a small fly in the ointment: So far, we have been told that article 50, once invoked, is irreversible (indeed the High Court based its recent judgement on this very fact) and that the EU won’t negotiate with us at all until we do invoke article 50. There is therefore, no logic whatsoever to any post article 50 referendum, because the moment we invoke the article there is already no going back, even if a subsequent referendum result demanded it.

(Of course, this could all change with the Government’s appeal to the Supreme Court).

There is another glaring problem, obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a moment: The EU does not want us to leave; holding another referendum at the end of the negotiations presents the EU with an opportunity to offer the most dreadful terms imaginable (including cutting off its own nose to spite its face), confident that these terms will be rejected in the referendum.

Of course, that is the objective of those that propose the second referendum: they want to reverse the result of the first one, so perhaps Tim Farron isn’t daft at all, but he must think that we all are.
The notion that we did not know what we were voting for on 23rd June, and that we need a second chance to get the right answer, is not untypical of elites who disparage and distrust democracy.
The Remain campaign painted a picture of the ‘hardest’ Brexit imaginable. They told us that not only would the Leave campaign’s extra billions for the NHS never materialise, but that on the contrary, we would be too poor and too denuded of NHS staff to afford to have an NHS at all. The voters didn’t fall for it. They have made their decision and it is now the responsibility of all democrats to get on and implement it.

The National Park Authority has issued a quite extraordinary notice on the Latchmore ‘restoration’ planning application: It says that it is minded to grant approval (the actual decision will be taken on 15 Nov), but that it supports my request to the Secretary of State to have the application ‘called in’ – given “the unusually high number of objections and the widely perceived view that the Authority has a prejudicial interest in the application”.

I would have thought that the unusually high number of objections would be proper grounds to reject the application, or at the very least to examine why so many people are so opposed to it.
As for the perceived conflict of interest, I’m glad that they have finally spotted it: not long ago we were just being told that it was routine for planning authorities to determine their own applications. Which is true, but then, this is no routine application.

The 40 or so pages of the High Court’s ruling can be summed up in three sentences:
The 1972 Act joined us up to the EEC;
Article 50 invokes an irreversible process that leads automatically to our leaving the EU;
Therefore, if ministers – using the prerogative power of the Crown – initiate article 50, the result will reverse the provision of the 1972 Act, offending the constitutional principle that prerogative power cannot reverse an act of Parliament.

They key issue as to how we now proceed to deliver the referendum result, depends on the remedy to the High Court judgement. There are three possibilities.

First, the Government wins its appeal in the Supreme Court and carries on to negotiate the terms of our exit.

Second, it loses, but it is judged that a resolution of both Houses is sufficient to authorise the Government to invoke article 50. I am confident that this could be delivered quickly – although it could be messy in the Lords. Voting against such a resolution would require an MP or peer to explicitly oppose the referendum result, which is a tall order and I estimate that few would be so foolhardy.

Third, it is judged that such a resolution is insufficient, and that a full act of Parliament is required. This does really get us into dangerous territory. Opponents could cover themselves by supporting the bill at second reading, but then delay and derail the process by seeking to amend the bill during prolonged committee and report stages, by trying to tie the Government down to a specific negotiating strategy. Nick Clegg has already announced that the Liberal Democrat peers will do exactly that.

In such a scenario the obvious way out would be to dissolve Parliament and settle the contest in an election. Press speculation already suggests that this is what the PM will do. As I have pointed out in this column previously however, calling an election is no longer in the PM’s gift http://www.desmondswaynemp.com/ds-blog/begging-for-an-election/
and would involve jumping through a complex set of hoops.

Clearly, the best way out is for the Government to win its appeal. Whatever happens, it’s not going to be dull.

Despite what you may see of the gladiatorial contest for half an hour every week at Prime Minister’s questions, overwhelmingly the smooth and orderly functioning of Parliament and our legislative process works on goodwill, co-operation and understanding.

The vacancy on the Justice select committee was a Labour vacancy. It was a matter for the Labour Party to fill it. Whether I approved or disapproved of their choice, the choice was theirs to make.

The ill-considered attempt by rogue colleagues to interfere with Labour’s choice and overturn it, could have had disastrous consequences for all the other areas where ‘give and take’ are necessary to ensure the Parliament can function without always descending into an unseemly row.

Had Labour voted to veto a Conservative choice for a select committee, I would have been incandescent with rage. Accordingly, I voted to uphold Labour’s right to make its choice, whomsoever they had chosen.

The discovery that one of the children admitted to the UK from the Calais Jungle turns out to be a 22 year old student from Kabul University, reinforces the lecture that the President of Afghanistan gave me, and about which I wrote in this column last week: Some of his people are bravely taking the fight to the Taliban, whilst others are giving up and running away.

The United Kingdom has sent many of its own sons and daughters to fight the Taliban. I asked the Home Secretary in the Commons last week, if she would bear the President’s words in mind, when deciding which priority cases are most deserving of our support.

The National Audit Office has written to let me know that they will investigate my concerns about the New Forest wetland restorations (of which Latchmore is the largest and most controversial). Specifically, they will investigate my complaint that public expenditure rules have been improperly circumvented; and that the way that this has been done has contributed to the questionable quality of the works.

There have been a number of reviews of the schemes, some have been highly critical whilst others have been fulsome in their praise, It turns out that one of the organisations that gave the Forestry Commission the ‘thumbs up’ for the work on the wetland restorations, has on its board the managing director of the main contractor doing the restoration work.

I still await a response from the Minister to the submission I sent her including my belief that Natural England have broken their own rules and the Habitat Regulations by authorising the works without first carrying out the ‘appropriate’ assessment.

Natural England and the Forestry Commission have announced another review, but it seems to me absolutely absurd however, that they should proceed with the planning application for Latchmore before this new review has concluded. One can only assume that they have already made up their minds, and that they are determined to carry on as before irrespective of what this latest review may find.

The National Audit Office have indicated that they hope to give some indication on the progress of their investigation by 30th November.

I can barely bring myself to watch TV scenes reporting the distress of refugees, particularly where children are involved.

Of the refugees that we have already admitted as part of our commitment to resettle 20,000 of the most vulnerable Syrians, half have been children. These have been accompanied children because the UN advice is that unaccompanied children are much better off staying in the region where there remains the possibility of being reunited with their extended families. Notwithstanding, we have also made commitments to take such children where it is judged to be in their best interests and, in addition, we have committed to take unaccompanied children who have already made it to the European mainland.
There is however, a preponderance of young men, and men not so young, some of which claim to be children, and many of which claim to be refugees, when many are actually migrants.

(I blame no migrant for seeking a better life, but our proper response to the problem of mass migration is to invest in the economic development of the places from which they are migrating. The UK is one of the very few developed nations meeting its commitment to spend 0.7% of our national income on this important international development aid. If all the developed nations did so, and if we had all done so 40 years ago when that commitment was made, perhaps we would not be faced with mass migration on the scale that we are now dealing with.)

When I visited the President of Afghanistan earlier this year I raised with him the issue of our difficulty in returning Afghans whose claims to asylum in Europe had been rejected. In the end, he agreed to take personal charge of the issue and to resolve the matter, but before we got to that satisfactory conclusion, he delivered a lecture to me. This is the gist of it: He told me that his main effort had to be delivering progress for all the people of Afghanistan who, despite their difficulties, had stuck with it; that his priority was the needs of the young men and women who were taking the fight to the Taliban. Only after these priorities were met, could he address the issue of receiving back those of his countrymen who gave up on his country and went away.

When we think of the blood and treasure that the United Kingdom has expended in Afghanistan, we might reflect on the President’s lecture.

(First published in the Forest Journal 6/10/16)
I spent last week travelling with a parliamentary delegation to the Republic of China (Taiwan: the Island of Formosa; and distinct from the People’s Republic of China –the world’s most populous -and communist- state, occupying the Chinese mainland).

With a population of only 21 million, nevertheless Taiwan retains its position as one of the Asian ‘tiger economies’ and a major exporter of IT equipment including laptop computers. We benefit from extensive trade and investment with Taiwan and it is just the sort of country with which we need to encourage even closer political, trade and investment relationships as we leave the EU.

As it happens, our parliamentary delegation coincided with the visit by our own UK trade minister, with whom we met whilst there in order to share our insights and common objectives.

Despite our tour being disrupted by a devastating Typhoon we still managed to conduct the greater part of our planned programme of discussions with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Vice-President, The Speaker, our fellow legislators, and the Chairman of the Defence and Security Council. In addition, we spent half a day in a University Hospital because one of my parliamentary colleagues has a particular interest as a member of the Commons Health Select Committee. The Taiwan universal healthcare system is based on insurance and affordable co-payments (people with serious and chronic conditions have their co-payments waived). Remarkably there are no waiting lists for treatment at all.

I have hitherto been rather sceptical of the value these sorts of visits and It’s the first I’ve been on in 19 years. Equally, one has to remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch: the entire cost of the visit, and the invitation also included my wife, was met by the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Clearly, they have their own agenda of building goodwill and alliances in an increasingly strategically important, and contested region. The militarisation of the South China Sea by China, and its strident claims to sovereignty over the islands, including Taiwan itself, threaten the stability of the whole region. Taiwan needs friends and Allies. We too, also need to build friendships and alliances. This is a region where we have a colonial history and where both we and the USA retain vital national interests. We do need to be clear and realistic however, in balancing our proper support for democracy and shared values in Taiwan, along with our desire for greater trade, with the implications this will have for the growing importance of our relationship with China.

I last went on such a trip back in 1996. It was to Germany together with Theresa May, courtesy of the Conrad Adenauer Stiftung. My abiding memory is that she tuned up at the airport with no more than a large handbag. Yet everyday she appeared immaculately turned out in a different outfit. I imagined that the outfits must have been freeze dried and flown out overnight.

(First published in the Forest Journal 13/10/16)
I’ve never been a conspiracy theorist, rather I prefer to think that most suspicious circumstances arise from coincidence, the random caprice of human nature, or just typical cock-up.

I have struggled however, to gain any understanding of how the New Forest wetland restorations continue to be pursued with such vigour in the face of the manifest evidence of their spectacular failure. Existing and thriving ecosystems, which also have the advantage of being beautiful to behold, are -at truly eye watering expense- being destroyed by large earth moving machines and hundreds of thousands of tons of clay. This clay is shipped in by the lorry load from nowhere near the New Forest (something that would never have been allowed in the past). All this, for such a marginal benefit, and that only if the schemes worked as the theorists predicted. The problem is that they don’t: there are already any number where the alien clay has simply been washed away as pollution, with mounting repair bills.

Why in the face of this evidence and expert ecological reviews which have panned the scheme, do the Forestry Commission persist?

The New Forest National Park authority is also a supporter of the restorations. As a consequence I do not believe that it is proper that it should be allowed to determine the planning application for the largest and most controversial scheme at Latchmoore. Rather worryingly, constituents have written to me to complain that the Park Authority has wrongly categorised objections to the proposal. Apparently, objections from ecologists and conservation organisations which clearly opposed the scheme, have been designated as ‘Neutral’: cock-up, or what?
I have written to the Secretary of State asking him to call in the planning application.

Why have Natural England allowed this destruction to proceed?
It is the organisation with a statutory duty to ensure that these sites of special scientific interest, some of which enjoy the highest levels of protected status, are preserved. I have written to ministers asking why Natural England gave the go ahead without first observing its own clearly stated rules by ordering an ‘appropriate assessment’ of the impact.

Then, a brown envelope gets dumped anonymously on my doorstep containing a printed email chain dating back to 2008 when the scheme was cooked up to secure EU funds and avoid the normal public expenditure rules which ought to have prevented them getting it. The Official Verderer even asks in an email for an indemnity from Natural England in case the ruse is exposed by an audit and the money has to be paid back.

Conspiracy theory or what?

I’ve handed the emails over to the National Audit Office.

The one thing both sides agreed on in the run up to the referendum in June was the importance of the vote and that it would settle the question of EU membership for a generation. Whether we like it or not, that question is now settled.

When Parliament passed the Referendum Act last year by an overwhelming margin, MPs handed over the decision about our future in the EU to the voters. The voters made their decision on 23 June and the Government has announced that it will implement that decision by beginning the process of leaving the EU not later than the end of March next year. Now however, some MPs are demanding a parliamentary vote on this beforehand. This is a demand for the opportunity to vote against initiating the process of leaving the EU. This explicitly runs counter to the Referendum Act 2015, which handed that decision to voters.

During last week’s debate on the negotiating process prior to leaving the EU, MP after MP got up and announced that, notwithstanding having campaigned to remain, they now accepted the will of their constituents, and acquiesced to the decision to leave. Then the mask slipped: one member stated that she would not give up on those who voted to remain, that those who voted to leave were beginning to regret doing so, and that -so proceeding- there would be a majority opinion for remaining. She is, of course entitled to that honest opinion. What was instructive however, was that she was cheered by those who insisted that they had now accepted the will of the people and would implement the decision made by them on 23 June.

Can they be trusted?

The demands made by MPs, that the Government first set out its negotiating strategy and submit it for their approval, needs to be seen in the light of their thinly veiled opposition to the whole enterprise. This demand is essentially an attempt to secure a means to delay, and ultimately to thwart the process.

Of course, even if the demand were made in good faith, it is manifestly absurd. If the Government sets out its negotiating strategy and objectives, then by doing so, it signals to the other EU members the price that they can extract. We would be sending our ministers bound and naked into the negotiation chamber.

Of course, Parliament can influence the Government through questions and debates and the two new select committees that are being set up. So long as the Government enjoys majority support in the Commons however, it must be allowed to get on and negotiate unfettered and unhindered, particularly by those still unreconciled to the referendum result.