Margaret Thatcher’s mentor Sir Keith Joseph, ended any prospects that he may have had of leading the Conservative party with a speech in 1972 whilst he was Secretary of State for Social Services. The subject was what he called the ‘cycle of deprivation’. In it he observed that an increasing proportion of our children were born to those least fitted to bring them up. There was a great furore from the ‘great and good’ over what they willfully misconstrued as a proposal for eugenics.

 

The problem however, remains. From time to time foster parents visit my surgeries to discuss aspects of the difficulties that they face. I often reflect on the work that so many of these amazing people do in trying to repair much of the damage that the natural parents have inflicted. Some children are born already damaged by their parents’ lifestyle. Others, at the age of five still cannot walk, talk, or are not toilet trained because they have spent their lives strapped in a buggy placed in front of the TV.
The tragedy is that so much of a child’s future prospects are determined by the attention and affection received in the early weeks of life, a truth dwelt on by Andrea Leadsom at the hustings in her aborted bid for the Tory Leadership this summer.

 

Recently local campaigners for 70/30 came to my surgery: their aim is to demonstrate that we can reduce child maltreatment by 70% by the year 2030 through a proper prevention strategy.

The damage done to children by maltreatment costs the UK taxpayer £ billions in social services and other costs as these children go on to struggle with problems in later life. The 70/30 approach is to prevent maltreatment to children before it happens by investing resources to tackle the root causes. These might be maternal mental health problems, domestic violence, drug abuse or a whole host of other issues affecting parents. Early, effective support could help them deal with these problems before they get out of control.  This might mean a mum-to-be who is struggling with her mental health – where the right support could make all the difference to her ability to cope.  Or it might mean a couple who have unhealthy tension in their relationship – helping them to get things back on the right track prevents the severe stress a baby experiences in a tense or violent home.

 

The challenge is to get people thinking ahead to the point that we can really start seeing prevention as something urgent, not just something that would be nice to work on once we have finished intervening where things have already gone wrong.   In fact, that is the whole point. We will never finish intervening until we have stopped things from going wrong in the first place. To use an analogy from WAVE Trust, the charity behind the 70/30 campaign, if your taps are on and your sink is overflowing, you will never finish mopping up unless you stop to turn the taps off.

I certainly support the campaign. If readers have experience of children’s services or would like to get involved with the campaign details can be had from slawes@wavetrust.org

 

Parliament returned for just two weeks with an agenda that included subjects which arouse the most passionate and ideological of debates: grammar schools, the future of the BBC, and nuclear power; added to that mix were the statements on Brexit, the G20, the Foreign Affairs select committee report on Libya,  and the announcement that David Cameron is leaving the Commons. All on top of the momentous events from mid-June to mid-July.

For those former regime loyalists like myself, still struggling to adjust to the new reality, and realigning ourselves to the metaphysical plain, the news of Cameron’s departure came as another jolt (I was his Parliamentary Private Secretary for seven years). Particularly so, given a widespread perception amongst the ‘commentariat’ that his legacy was being expunged, much in the manner of some disgraced former Soviet Politburo member.

As if to put all these events into a proper perspective, this week the Gaia telescope, a million miles from the Earth in space, reported its findings over the last 14 months by releasing a map of 1.1 billion stars. So vast is the data that the European Space Agency cannot process it all and has asked for the assistance of amateur astronomers and schools. Yet this mind numbing number of stars represents just 1% of our own Milky Way galaxy. Our best estimate is that there are another 100 billion galaxies out there. All hurtling apart (our own galaxy, taking us with it, is going at 1.3 million miles per hour) since the moment of the Creation some 14 billion years ago. These numbers are just too mind bogglingly large to comprehend. Think of it, Just 1 billion minutes ago Jesus was preaching in Galilee.

What can have been in the mind of God when he conceived the Creation of such vastness? Certainly, the very question puts into perspective our priorities and preoccupations, irrespective of how momentous we imagine events to have been over the last few weeks and months.

The data from by Gaia will prompt fascinating studies and speculations. For those of us perplexed by the crowding-in of recent events however, there is I believe only one proper reaction to Gaia’s revelations: it’s that of the Psalmist; “Be still and know that I am God” Ps 46.10

 

I think it was in 1976 or thereabouts that I wrote a cheque for £1 to support the national campaign in the battle to save Tameside Grammar. It was my token gesture of support as a student in straightened circumstances – although £1 was worth a lot more then. It was right to stop good schools being interfered with, and it still is.
I do not carry any ideological baggage about grammars. I voted against the 1998 legislation that prohibits the opening of new grammars, and I would vote to repeal it: no school should be ruled out on principle. Equally, I am no enthusiast for any widespread return to selective schools.

I was surprised, and delighted, by the scale of the Prime Minister’s ambition to improve education, and by the way that she explicitly linked this great endeavour to Brexit. I will need some persuading however, on the detail of the plans. The key objective that both the PM and the Secretary of State have set out, is to get many more good schools. I agree with that.
Many selective schools are very good schools, but I am not convinced that selection is a significant factor in making any school a good one. I have visited some fantastic comprehensives in ‘deprived’ and unpromising areas. I believe that the key difference is made by the quality of teachers and, even more importantly, their leadership.
How do we get more good teachers and excellent heads?
Returning to selection won’t fix it. Rather, we need to raise the whole status of the teaching profession -which will come at a cost. (The recently introduced requirement that new teachers have at least a 2.1 honours degree, was well intended, but I fear that in practice it is unhelpful: inspirational teachers don’t necessarily have the best degrees, and we should remember that Einstein got a third).

Selection and choice can be opposites: you cannot choose a school that will not admit you. A school’s ability to select pupils, is equally its ability to reject them. Each of the 4 market towns in my parliamentary division supports one secondary school. Imagine that Burgate School acquires the ability not to select a proportion of pupils from Fordingbridge. I don’t relish the prospect of informing parents that they will have to have their children bussed elsewhere. So, one component in the debate that will now follow, will be about the quality of provision that will be made for pupils that are not selected. We have be told that there will be no return of secondary moderns, but this will be a ‘hard sell’.

 

A journalist asked me if, with an effective working majority of only 15, how difficult will it be to get these measures through the Commons. As a whip in both opposition and in government, I have witnessed the House become much more independent over recent years, irrespective of a government’s majority. I think we have reached a position where, if ministers want to get their measures on the statute book, they have to win the argument. I’m all ears.

I think the government accepts that it has to persuade, otherwise the PM would not have sent out such a clear message by promoting some serial ‘rebels’ to ministerial and cabinet rank in July.

 

I am delighted by the announcement that the government has secured commitments from local authorities for the resettlement of 20,000 Syrian refugees. I am surprised at how soon it has been agreed, because I recall just how challenging it was for my colleague Richard Harrington a year ago. Scotland and the north were generous but it was much harder to find places in the south. Notwithstanding the offers of local churches, the proposal that Ringwood should take a family secured very little support from the council.

 

I think the balance the government struck was the right one: we are the second largest donor and, with 4.5 million Syrian refugees, our money goes so much further helping many more refugees in the region. Nevertheless, our decision to take the most vulnerable direct from the camps was both proportionate and properly targeted, because it did not encourage further trafficking across the Mediterranean – where Syrians account for only a minority of those being trafficked. At one discussion a senior cabinet minister told me that it was the job our £14 billion aid budget (his overestimate) “to buy the migrants back to Africa”. It was Theresa May who rescued me by pointing out that, were we to do so, their places would very soon be taken by others. The proper job of our aid budget is to spend it securing peace and economic development in the places where so many people see that their only current option is to leave. That this is in our vital national interest, strikes me as blindingly obvious.

*

News of the personal life the Bishop of Grantham reminded me of that vast correspondence – dwarfing even the letters about hunting – which I received about gay marriage. Having ‘whipped’ the bill through the standing committee and the Commons, I was warned that it would mean the end of marriage, and the world as we know it. I’m waiting. I suppose it’s a bit like Brexit: they’ll say it’s still too soon to tell.

*

I rejoice at the canonisation of Mother Teresa. I recall the delight of her visit to my children’s excellent primary school where, despite the very high proportion of free school meals, they were always collecting for charity. That so much air time should be given over to her critics however, seems bizarre. Beware, the secular agenda which cannot comprehend that, to the dying, the warmth of human contact equipped only by the love of God, is of greater comfort than any high-tech medical intervention.

I have received an outraged email from a constituent in Barton-on-Sea, disgusted at the actions of the Supreme Court of France, because of its failure to uphold bans by the local mayors of the Cote d’ Azur, banning burkinis. Alas, the court is not accountable to me, and the French must sort out their own affairs.

In any event, I am confident that no burkinis have been seen in Barton-on-Sea, or on any other beach in the New Forest parliamentary division.
Am I disappointed?
I have always taken the view that people should feel free to show off as little or as much as they like, when it comes to beachwear. Like any hot blooded male however, I appreciate beauty, which can sometimes enhanced by a bikini. Equally, often there can be something quite attractive, alluring, even sensual, about concealment.  It leaves more to the imagination.

Whilst there are of course exceptions,  as a general rule, most of us look far better with all our clothes on.

 

A colleague told The Sunday Times that anti-Corbyn Labour MPs begged him to push for an early election. I envy his Influence. Perhaps he can persuade the Prime Minister to secure her own electoral mandate distinct from her predecessor, to capitalise on her ‘honeymoon’ and on Labour’s confusion, but I doubt it. At every leadership hustings she told Tory MPs that there would be no election before 2020.
The notion that she needs her own distinct electoral mandate is constitutional nonsense. We have a parliamentary democracy not a presidential system: the Prime Minister’s mandate to govern rests only on her majority support among MPs, who were elected for a full five year term.

Whilst it might be tempting to cut and run early, given the opportunity afforded by the state of the Opposition and strength in the polls, the suggestion completely ignores the post coalition reality. The discretion of the Prime Minister has been removed. She may no longer, at a moment of her choosing, simply ask the Queen for a dissolution of Parliament. For an early election now to take place, one of three of three things would be required; Losing a vote of confidence and failure to put together a new administration; Or a vote by two thirds of the Commons for a dissolution; Or primary legislation in both houses to restore the status quo ante.
None of these strike me as at all likely before May 2020.

Whilst it may be unlikely, it is of course possible that the Government might lose its majority at some stage over the remaining four years of this parliament. For example, if there were to be a highly divisive spat over what ‘Brexit’ should actually involve. Notwithstanding reports of dissent, we are still a long way from anything like that. An early election however, to cement a large majority, would certainly reduce the possibility of any such eventuality. Nevertheless, whatever the potential advantage, perceived wisdom, or the calculated risks of seeking an election soon, such speculation is time wasted: the Prime Minister simply no longer has it in her power.

 

The report by Sir Eric Pickles on electoral fraud , with his criticism of the police for failure to pursue investigations with sufficient vigour, fits into a pattern of establishment cowardice when dealing with issues that have a minority ethnic or religious dimension.  The initial dilatory response to the child sex scandals in Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Rochdale and Rotherham would be another example, as would the slow response to the early warnings of the ‘Trojan horse’ Islamic takeover of schools in Birmingham.

Actually, cowardice on the part of the establishment is the wrong diagnosis. A more accurate description of the condition is ‘contempt’ on its part. It is evidence of a wider culture of low expectations. We might sum this despicable attitude up thus: It is because these minorities are not considered our equals and certainly not up to our own exacting standards, that we have to tolerate their dodgy electoral arrangements. They are not really like us, so we won’t interfere with their systematic grooming and exploitation of young and vulnerable women (whom we consider as even more worthy of our contempt). And so on, as different and lower standards are expected.

It is rarely explicit, more often subliminal, but never the less evidence of a deep seated racism.
Let me hazard another such example of this profoundly unhealthy attitude: our tolerance of Sharia tribunals; which substantially disadvantage the rights of women in cases of divorce and inheritance.

We no longer stand for such treatment for our own daughters, but we turn a blind eye on such treatment for less fortunate daughters. We hide behind the excuse –the fiction even – that these are entirely voluntary arrangements and that justice can always be had on application to our courts.

What could be considered ‘voluntary’ in the arrangements of a young woman, sometimes even unable to speak our native language, cowed by family and community, and whose only spokesman might be an entirely unelected ‘community leader’?

Earlier this year the Home Secretary, now our Prime Minister, appointed Professor Mona Siddiqui to look into the application of Sharia. I hope her report won’t be a whitewash, because tolerating different standards of justice for separate communities is a potent example of our contempt for them.

 

I escaped for a brief holiday only to be pursued by intemperate emails.  The evening before departure I had a scheduled appearance on Radio Four’s late night Westminster Hour programme. Where I was ambushed by a question about the Sunday Times scoop on David Cameron’s leaked resignation honours list.

I hadn’t seen it but, as a ‘former regime loyalist’ and Cameron’s parliamentary private secretary for 7 years, I felt it proper to defend his right to make honours recommendations. It was almost as if I suddenly I became the world’s leading authority on honours, sought by every news outlet: even having to rendezvous with the BBC en route to my holiday destination.
I stand by what I said: In this country we do not, for the most part, provide public funding for political parties. Those public spirited individuals who do step forward and provide such funding for parties and for important political campaigns, ought not to be excluded from the honours system because of that public service.

I note that those organs that howl loudest about these honours are also the most vitriolic in their denunciation of any suggestion that political parties should instead be taxpayer-funded.
I accept that this is a controversial matter about which adults disagree, but I worry about the nature of public discourse when such intemperate language is used. People whom I have never met or spoken to, feel free to send me emails denouncing me in the most inappropriate terms. This is a form of fascism that seeks to intimidate anyone from expressing opposing points of view.

We saw examples of this during Scotland’s independence referendum when ‘cybernats’ attacked business leaders and other public figures who put their heads above the parapet, arguing that Scotland should remain in the UK.
As a thick skinned politician I am not intimidated by email correspondence from people who cannot express themselves without resorting to profanity. I fear that others may be more easily overwhelmed.
Back to the Westminster Hour however, the best line came from my fellow panellist the historian Peter Hennessy, who observed that one should always accept an honour because of the anger it will provoke among your enemies. By that measure Mr Cameron’s list has been very effective indeed.

 

Like that species of kremlinologists that I thought had disappeared with the Cold War, the commentariat has been obsessed with analysing the policy pronouncements of Mrs May’s new government and, in particular, whether they are designed to remove any vestiges of a Cameron legacy. Frankly, I doubt it, but it really is far too soon to tell.

Most exciting, or alarming – depending on your point of view, is the eleventh hour review of the EDF nuclear development at Hinkley Point. I am no expert, but if the Chinese are financing it, and French taxpayers are bearing the development risks, then why look a gift horse in the mouth?

The key question is – are we getting a good price for the electricity. The way the issue has been handled however, sends all the wrong signals to potential investors just at a critical moment when we need to be sending out a very clear message that Britain is open for business.

Our new kremlinologists detect the hand of one Nick Timothy, the Prime Minister’s former special  advisor and now her joint chief of staff. Apparently, he wrote something in the past raising questions about the national security aspects of Chinese investments in our strategic industries. Well, we will all want to know a great deal more about Mr Timothy as the PM’s new consigliere, indeed we will want to know everything that there is to know. Some will never have heard of him, others – like me, will know little more that that he sports a beard like Ivan the Terrible.

Actually, it’s complete nonsense: Nick Timothy will have no more decision making power than Larry the Downing Street cat, or any other of the PM’s familiars. Hitherto she has been renowned for running a very tight ship and all decisions will be very much her own. I am confident that her ministers will have been as surprised by the Hinkley decision as were the board of EDF and the Chinese Government.

 

I was horrified to read on Guido that George Osborne has been allocated a ‘sh*t’ room with no view to add further humiliation after the slaughter of the cameroons. I know the feeling. You should see the room I’ve been allocated.

I really don’t believe however, that that there is anything vindictive in any of this. I know the deal, I was once the accommodation whip, and the current holder of that distinguished office could not be a nicer guy.

Personally I should never complain. For three years I enjoyed the best office in Westminster – on the third floor of Number one Parliament Street, with a balcony overlooking Parliament Square, and Big Ben as my wall clock. It was the perfect venue for a party during William and Kate’s wedding. Andrew Mitchell has it now.

When you become a minister you give up your room in the Commons and instead you get allocated something more like a ‘booth’ in one of the dark and dingy ministerial corridors. Ministers have their real offices in their department of state elsewhere in Whitehall. I had the most magnificent room in the Old Admiralty building that Winston Churchill occupied from 1911-1915 when he was First Sea Lord. It’s only a week since I was purged and I miss it terribly.

The problem facing the accommodation whip is this: there is no stock of empty rooms. So, ministers that are being dismissed have to swap with those being promoted. As a general rule the ministers being dismissed are relatively senior and have correspondingly high expectations. Those being promoted to ministerial rank however, tend to be relatively junior and consequently have less desirable accommodation to give up. The only way to handle this mismatch is to allocate the choice of rooms strictly according to a rule, and that rule is in order of seniority determined by year of first election.

Ex ministers whose pride is already hurt, can be even more discombobulated when they see the quality of the accommodation that the whip has to offer, but as I used to say when I had that unenviable job: “you weren’t elected to sit in a room, but to sit in the chamber of the Commons”. I’m not sure that it cheered them up though.