A number of constituents have written to me to complain about various aspects of state pension reform. A mistake common to most of them is that they treat their contributions as if they were savings that had been paid into a retirement fund – on which they are entitled to draw when fully paid-up, and that any reform constitutes a change in the terms and conditions upon which they made their contributions in good faith.

The system just doesn’t work like this, and most people should be very glad that it doesn’t. For the overwhelming majority of us, had our national insurance contributions been paid into a savings fund, they would never have generated anything like the level of income in retirement that the state pension now affords. So, for most of us, it’s a bargain.

Our contributions, are in fact just taxes. They qualify us to receive a pension but they don’t pay for it. They just go into the total available to pay for all government expenditure, including, of course, the current pensions bill. So, in a sense, our national insurance contributions are paying the pensions of those who are already retired, in the expectation that the national insurance contributions of younger earners will pay for our pensions when we retire.

This leads to the critical need for reform: as we live longer and are retired for so much longer, the proportion of those of working age is shrinking relative to that of those in retirement. If the bill for pensions is to remain affordable for the working age people who are having to pay it, then we need to reduce that bill by either cutting the pension or by delaying the retirement of those who receive. Delaying the pension is much the more sensible course.

Under the Pensions Act 2011 the pension age for men and women accelerates to reach 66 by 2020. One of the current campaigns argues that this disproportionately affects women in their mid-fifties (born after 5^th April 1951) and that for them the change should be reversed. I recognise the complaint of those who now find that they have to retire later (my wife is one of them),  but the line has to be drawn somewhere – to the frustration of those just the other side of it. The campaigners need to explain why these particular women should be protected from a rise in State Pension age, when women just days younger – and men of all ages- will wait longer for their state pension.

 

 

In 1975 I campaigned and voted to leave the Common Market. My attitude to the European Union has not altered a great deal over the years – as regular readers of this column will be aware. I do believe however, that David Cameron has earned the right to be trusted in re-negotiating our EU membership. As Leader of the Opposition he withdrew his members of the European Parliament from the federalist European Peoples’ Party and instead created a new Eurosceptic block. When he got into government he became the first Prime Minister ever to repatriate powers from the EU: First by withdrawing UK from the Euro bail-out mechanism that the previous government had signed-up to; and second, by leaving scores of Justice and Home Affairs arrangements that we had previously opted into. He is the only UK prime minister ever to veto an EU treaty, and the only one ever to secure a cut in the EU budget. He enacted the Referendums Act which requires a referendum every time that powers are ceded to the EU, and now he is implementing his election promise to re-negotiate the terms of our EU membership and delivering the In / out referendum, that his opponents said would never happen.

Given this record, I believe that I owe it to the Prime Minister to wait and see what his negotiations achieve, before coming to a decision about how to campaign and vote in the referendum.  Many constituents however, have already made up their minds and write to tell me as much. Overwhelmingly my correspondents are in favour of leaving, but this week I had my first letter from an outraged EU enthusiast. His beef was that the PM’s investment in trying to negotiate us out of the aspiration to ‘ever closer union’ was the height of gesture politics, and is of no substance whatsoever. I disagree profoundly. The objective of ever closer union, which is central to the Treaty of Rome – the initial founding treaty, informs the judgement of the European Court of Justice that determines the interpretation of EU law and all of our disputes with it. Dispensing with a UK commitment to ever closer union would be a very significant departure. It would mean that, whatever speed the rest may choose to go at, we would no longer have join them at their destination, or even go in their direction.

After the demands in the tabloids, I am surprised that I have had only a couple of emails from constituents telling me that foreign aid expenditure should be diverted to supporting our own flood victims and building better flood defences.

I just do not share the indignation of tabloid leader writers who appear to be incensed by the thought that the UK has been spending money on flood relief in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mozambique and many other countries. The fact of the matter is that we have been spending record amounts on flood defence back in the UK too over the last decade. Clearly, we are going to have to spend more, but as the 5th richest country on the planet I am confident that we are quite capable of finding the necessary expenditure without taking it from our international development budget, which is designed to assist the world’s poorest people.

We spend 0.7 percent of our national income on international development, which means that we can set our other national priorities with the 99.3 percent that is left.
Notwithstanding the severity, and misery of the floods we have experienced we do still need to keep a sense of proportion. In the last great devastating floods to hit Pakistan in 2010, 2000 people drowned and 20 million were driven from their homes – fully 12 percent of the population. An area the size of Italy was devastated with hundreds of billions of pounds worth of damage.

The purpose of our international development expenditure is to increase our own national security by investing to make the world a safer, more secure, and more prosperous place. One way of promoting this is by spending money to ensure that poor countries are more resilient to climate change, the flooding, and the other hazards that it brings. Were we not to do so, and instead to spend 100 percent of our income on ourselves, then we can only expect even greater flows of population as the world’s desperate people seek a better life here.

A number of constituents have emailed me to demand the prosecution of Sports Direct for allegedly not paying the minimum wage. Of course, it is proper that the law is enforced, and if it is found to be inadequate, it must be strengthened. Politicians however, must have nothing whatsoever to do with individual decisions to prosecute. To allow them to have any such influence would be to breach the important constitutional principle of ‘the separation of powers’. We have witnessed the corrosive influence of political agitation recently when the Police responded to the demands of Tom Watson MP to pursue allegations against Leon Brittan, which they knew to be groundless. If politicians were to decide who is investigated, prosecuted, or imprisoned, then our Liberty would not long endure.

For the benefit of those constituents who email me about the dangers of Islam, I want to share the contents of a letter from Dr Mohammed Fahim, Imam of the South Woodford Mosque, which was inside his Christmas card:
“ISIS are criminals who hijacked Islam, a religion of peace, tolerance and justice. They are not Muslims, even if they claim that they are responding to wars waged against innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, or the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis, and the support given to tyrant rulers in the Middle East.

Any Muslim who agrees with their Ideology or condones their evil practices, or sympathises with them in any form is regarded by God in the Quran and by the tradition of the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, as an unbeliever. This means he is not a Muslim. A severe punishment awaits him in this life and in the Hereafter, as detailed in the Quran in verse 93 chapter 4 and verses 32-34, chapter 5.

Those who carried out the heinous attack on innocent harmless victims in Paris on 13^th November, are nothing but criminals who should be eliminated, and their organisation destroyed. Our hearts and prayers are with all the victims and their families. May God be with all of them. May God’s peace prevail.”

Tim Peake’s spectacular launch into space coincided with a visit I made to the Southern Hemisphere, so I was looking out at  completely different stars to the ones that I habitually see with my telescope in the New Forest. The awesome size and age of the Universe laid out before us in night sky never ceases to fill me with wonder, and presents a certain tension -if not a standing challenge-to my professed Christianity, particularly at this time of year.

The principal Christian truth is that we are the critical factor in understanding God’s purpose: that humanity is central to the creation; that we were created to glorify God and enjoy him forever; and that -to this end- God created Heaven and Earth and then intervened in human history, through Jesus Christ, to redeem mankind and restore the integrity of  that original purpose. This dramatic intervention took place only a couple of thousand years ago. Indeed, human history itself only stretches back before Christ by some 5,000 years.

So the key problem is this: Given that the age of the Universe is nearly 14 billion years, why did The Almighty leave it so long before adding the central feature of the creation –humanity, and to make his key intervention –through the life of Christ?

I believe that the answer, if there is one, lies in the fact that we are literally made of stardust: the heavier elements -so critical to the formation of the larger molecules essential to the existence of Life, take eons of time to form, being the product of the life-cycle of generations of massive stars, and the enormous pressures created by their subsequent collapse.

The proper response therefore, on looking out into the Universe, from the space station window, from the Southern Hemisphere, or from a garden in the New Forest, shouldn’t be one of ‘how insignificant we are’ as such recent and tiny occupants in such an incredibly old and massive universe. Rather it should be the opposite: ‘How incredibly important we must be to God’s purpose’ that we are the product of such a vast and time consuming process.

Donald Trump’s intervention, demanding the exclusion of Muslims from the USA, suits Daesh and its terrorist agenda very well. He is delivering the suspicion and the hatred that it craves: It is determined to present its grotesque violence as a war between the Muslim caliphate and Christendom. Trump has fallen right into the elephant trap that it dug for him. This tiny group of psychopaths believe themselves to be the only authentic expression of Islam. Trump has gone some way along the road to accepting their analysis and, in effect, presenting them with a badge of honour.

The same is true of all those constituents who have emailed me to demand an end to our programme of affording asylum to 20,000 vulnerable Syrians over the next five years. My correspondents believe that what happened in Paris makes it just too risky. Closing the programme -which we’ve only just started- would be another spectacular own-goal: Daesh would love it; the very idea of the ‘Christian’ west giving sanctuary to war-weary Muslims, runs utterly counter to their ideological narrative.
In any event, with 700 ‘home grown’ terrorists having left UK to fight for Daesh in Syria, the arrival of refugees, many of whom have fled Daesh’s terror, will itself be a powerful corrective to Daesh’s perverted version of events.

Daesh massacres Muslims. So, just as I believe that Muslim fighters should take the lion’s share of the endeavour to defeat Daesh on the battlefield, equally I believe that Muslims must take the lead in exposing the falsehood of its perverted ideology. It is for this reason that I am delighted to have received a Christmas card from the Imam at the Woodford Muslim community centre, wishing me God’s peace, mercy and blessings. The card points out that over 1.5 billion Muslims believe in Jesus Christ and his second coming. On the reverse of the card is the following statement

“Islam is a religion of peace, justice and tolerance. It rejects violence and condemns the killing of civilians anywhere in the world irrespective of their race or religion, even if Islam is insulted or ridiculed”

Now, that is a much more effective antidote to Daesh and its poison.

A number of constituents have emailed in indignation to demand an apology from the Prime Minister for being branded ‘terrorist sympathisers’ for opposing the extension of air strikes from Iraq to Syria. I was at the meeting when the comment was made and I have assured them that he said nothing of the sort. What he did say was that many colleagues with legitimate and quite understandable reservations should beware of entering the voting lobbies with terrorist sympathisers. That is not to say that opponents are terrorist sympathisers, but to accept that there are indeed some terrorist sympathisers, and there really are: Over the years there are a number of apologists who, at every terrorist atrocity, have taken the opportunity to blame our foreign policy rather than taking time to condemn the personal responsibility of the terrorist for choosing to blow innocent people to pieces.

Nothing is ever as reported: and neither were the screaming headlines announcing the ‘countdown to war’, they ignored the fact that we have been flying these missions daily against Daesh for the last 14 months into Iraq. All we have now done is to extend them to attack Daesh’s operations in Syria.

I sat through the entire 10 hour debate listening carefully. I accept that the conditions for destroying Daesh are not yet in place: there will have to be forces capable of prosecuting a ground campaign against Daesh’s ‘capital’ in Raqqa. I cannot understand however, the logic of those who said that we must destroy Daesh, but should do nothing now because those ground forces don’t exist. Clearly, an air campaign can contain and harry the enemy, severely restricting its offensive capability, even if it cannot alone destroy it.

What really unnerved me were the armchair generals on the green benches giving us the benefit of their expertise and demanding all sorts of undertakings and guarantees before their support would be forthcoming. I really wonder if we could have fought the Second World War in the current parliamentary environment. No doubt Monty would have been summoned before a select committee and asked to guarantee the weather in the Channel before contemplating the Normandy Landings. Lethal military operations involve risk, the important thing is to calculate the risks carefully. It was the French World War One leader Georges Clemenceau who said that war was too important to be left to generals, but I’m not comfortable leaving it to politicians either.

Comrades, I just couldn’t believe it when John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor -in his response to George Osborne’s Autumn Financial Statement, quoted Chairman Mao and then passed his personal copy of Mao’s little Red Book across the despatch box.

I had forgotten that I had once owned a copy. It was the early nineteen seventies and the ‘cultural revolution’ was well under way in China. I recall that a number of us at school wrote to the Chinese Embassy in London for a copies of the Thoughts of Chairman Mao. My excuse is that I was a mere schoolboy with no knowledge of the enormity of Mao’s crimes and the poverty, starvation and misery that he inflicted on millions.

Armchair revolutionaries could be in no doubt about the nature of Maoism because it is all there in black and white, spelt out in the book. How about this for a taster:
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”
No compromise with the voters then!

‘Champagne socialists’ and other lefty intellectuals at their Islington dinner parties (I am confident that such dinner parties are not to be had in Ringwood or Fordingbridge, -but perhaps Lymington? No, surely not!) need to wise up to what ‘revolution’ really means. Here is further guidance from the Great Helmsman’s thoughts:

“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

To the barricades then Comrades, but make sure you know which class you’re in. I thought we were all middle class now, but then perhaps that just shows that I need to be sent to a re-education camp, along with capitalist roaders, some members of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, and others who have taken the wrong road.

Paris and its aftermath have prompted a flurry of emails from constituents which fall into two broad, but very different categories.

Islamophobe: emails denouncing Islam as inherently violent and evil and that we need to constrain or remove the Muslims already here; or those who believe that we already have too many Muslims in the country and that we certainly mustn’t let any more in -including Syrian refugees;

Pacifist: those who don’t want us to get any more involved with fighting Daesh (ISIL), but who want us to take many more Syrian refugees than the 20,000, to which we have agreed.

I disagree with both.

Daesh kills vastly more Muslims than it does of all other religions put together. Its whole ideology is based on the demand for Muslims to cut themselves off entirely from wicked infidels – with our democratic and ‘decadent’ liberal way of life. Those Muslims who fail to obey this demand are as deserving of death as any infidel.

Daesh would be delighted if we rejected all Syrian refugees: the notion of generous western democracies giving sanctuary to Muslims, runs counter to their entire narrative.

Overwhelmingly, Muslims are appalled by Daesh’s perversion of their religion into a fascist death cult. There is no escaping however, that the terrorists claim to be the only truly faithful Muslims. Destroying Daesh will require victory both in the use of force, and in the force of argument. It is vital therefore, that many more articulate Muslim scholars step up to the task of showing exactly how the terrorists have misinterpreted and perverted the true meaning of Islam.

Daesh is an armed military occupation operating from the territory it controls, and from which it exports terrorism. Daesh’s territory straddles Syria and Iraq. It ignores the border between the two countries. Currently we are prepared to attack it in Iraq, but not in Syria where its principal strength is concentrated. This strikes me as absurd. If we are to crush the serpent, we have to crush it wherever it appears.

As to the question of admitting even more Syrian refugees than the 20,000 to which we have pledged, this takes too little account of our main effort, which has been to provide relief to the 4 million refugees in the countries surrounding Syria, where our money goes so much further. We are the second largest donor to this crisis, spending £1.2 billion – more than we have spent on any previous humanitarian relief effort. Those who – like the bishops and the judges – have plucked numbers from the air, in their demand that we accommodate more, have no idea of the complexity and difficulty of finding homes, livelihoods, and support for the 20,000 to whom we are already committed. I believe that we are maintaining the right balance between the needs of the millions of refugees in the region surrounding Syria, and accommodating the only most vulnerable cases here in Britain.