After weeks of onslaught against our international aid I think I have just about heard it all. One of the few accurate statements is that we are the world’s second largest donor. Yes we are, and in a world with such evident humanitarian need, I think that is a rank of which we should be proud.

They claim we overspent last year by 0.01% of our national income and that it should be paid back. I am not quite sure how we get it back from hungry children in South Sudan, but that can wait, because it is far too soon to tell. Final statistics are not yet available and all we currently have are estimates. Last year at this stage a similar overspend was estimated, and the year before a bigger one. In the end it was found that we spent exactly the right amount.

They claim that the expenditure is unscrutinised. It isn’t. It’s subject to thorough scrutiny by two parliamentary committees; the Independent Commission on Aid Impact, and the National Audit office. The public can scrutinise it for themselves using the Aid Tracker tool on our website. We are up at the top of the league for transparency.

They claim we rush money out of the door with reckless abandon as the year-end approaches. We don’t. The reality is that large scheduled payments including our contributions to the World Bank and other institutions fall due at that time of year.

They claim we lavish payments on private contractors. We don’t. We drive a hard bargain to get value for money in highly competitive processes, and we have won CIPS awards – the independent organisation for procurement professionals.

The say we are paying Palestinian terrorists: Absolutely untrue. That we built a new palace for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah: Complete rubbish.

They say we built a shiny new HQ for the Centre for Global Development in the USA.  Actually, we paid for some important health research.

They say that we paid for BBC Somalia to broadcast messages encouraging migration. On the contrary, the message was about the perils of doing so.

I could go on, but you get the gist of it.

We spend 0.7% of our national income on international aid, which means that, as the 5^th richest country in the world, we have 99.3% of our income for ourselves. What really upsets some people that they believe that ‘charity begins at home’. Their fundamental error is thinking of it as charity. It isn’t. It is an investment. It is spent in our national interest in order that we can live in a safer, more stable, and more prosperous world. We spend it for  our benefit. The huge numbers of migrants fleeing poverty, violence, and injustice should bring home to anyone the truth that, unless we invest to deal with their problems at source, those problems are coming in our direction.

As for being one of the largest donors, the UK always takes the lead, it’s what we do. Others follow. Remember that when voting on 23rd June!

I saw David Cameron with the Devil -10th April 2016

 

Whist tax arrangements are in the forefront of our minds it is worth considering the extent to which our tax law is increasingly constrained by Brussels. The fundamental principle of parliamentary sovereignty is expressed in its absolute supremacy over taxation. It was the King’s attempts to raise taxes, without the agreement of Parliament, which sparked the Civil War.

Now however, we only make our tax law by leave of the EU.

A number of corporations have gone to the European Court of Justice to have the tax laws made in Parliament overturned. Taxes raised with parliamentary approval have had to be repaid, costing us – as the rest of the taxpayers – billions of pounds. There are plenty more cases pending, which may cost us billions more…unless, of course, we do something decisive about it on 23^rd June!

 

No, of Course I didn’t. Rather, it was Elizabeth Proctor that Abigail Williams saw with the Devil (along with a host of the other inhabitants of Salem) in Arthur Miller’s 1953 classic The Crucible, about the New England witch craze seen through the perspective of McCarthyism. I have found this powerful drama resonating in my mind all week with the media coverage since the Panama leaks.

It has been a gruesome and unedifying spectacle. I am glad that the Prime Minister has said that he ought to have handled it a lot better, but there is nevertheless something deeply distasteful about the interest in private matters, the assumption of guilt by association, and the attribution of the basest of motives to any action. I was appalled to see Mrs Cameron’s gift to her son described in The Times as a ‘tax dodge’.  No it isn’t, it’s a gift. If his mother survives for 7 years after making it, then it is still a gift, even though it will not attract any tax. That is our law, if we don’t like it, then we can change it, but we shouldn’t criticize people for acting lawfully.

I really dislike the precedent that has now been set. Is there to be no privacy? Are we going to go the way of those Nordic countries that require everyone’s tax returns to be published and available to every nosy parker? Should all our gifts and private arrangements be made public? What on earth are we becoming?

 

Looking at the polling on the EU Referendum I am, thus far, pleasantly surprised at the resilience of those proposing to vote to leave, in the face of the continuing assault of ‘project fear’.

In the 1975 referendum I recall that we began the campaign with a two-to-one poll-lead for leaving the Common Market, but when it came to the actual vote, this was reversed. This time, so far, the polls show little movement in what looks like a much closer race. Perhaps that is why the warnings are ever more incredible. In the last week we have been told that our children’s opportunities will be blighted and that they won’t be able to travel.

Gadzooks, does anyone really believe this guff? It is of course possible, if improbable, that we be hit by an asteroid and vaporised in a nanosecond. Next they will be telling us that the probability is much higher if we leave the EU. Readers may wish to know that on 13^th May I shall be going ‘head to head’ with Vince Cable in the New Milton Memorial Hall at 7.00. It is a ticket affair – they are available from the Memorial Hall and the Town Council. I know that a similar event is being arranged for Fordingbridge and I will investigate the possibilities in Ringwood. I will make details available in this column and on my website.

 

The latest campaign by the 38 Degrees website has generated a score of emails to me from constituents opposing the Government’s plan to turn all schools into academies, and demanding to know where I stand on the issue.

Such automatically generated emails receive a polite, but equally automated response.  They are told that the contents will be noted but that individual replies will not be sent. As a government minister, clearly I must either support the Government’s proposal, or resign. It is not an area of policy that I have responsibility for, or which I have been involved in.

All my gut instincts however, tell me that it is the right way forward. I am not entirely without experience, having been a teacher for 7 years and, quite separately, a school governor for another five. The essential difference between an academy and a ‘standard’ local authority school, is simply that an academy enjoys vastly more autonomy over virtually everything that takes place in the school, including setting staff terms and conditions (little wonder then that the giant unions, accustomed to national pay bargaining, are viscerally opposed to them).

Academy status brings new responsibilities and powers, but it is not a panacea, a silver bullet, to address all the problems faced in education. The schools still require strong leadership from inspirational and dedicated headmasters and headmistresses. I believe however, that the powers conferred by academy status make it easier to recruit and retain such talented people.

Given the excellent record of success enjoyed by the academies in this part of the New Forest (including Burgate, Ringwood School, Arnewood, and Priestlands) I don’t believe we have any reason to be nervous.

 

At a public meeting in the Forest last week the audience, in exasperation, demanded from me ‘the unbiased facts’, with which they could make up their own minds about the EU. In equal exasperation, I replied that there simply is no repository of unbiased information to be had. What facts there are, we interpret differently according to our point of view.

‘Helpful facts’ will be emphasised and ‘unhelpful’ ones will be ignored. This is a debate between partisans who hold their opinions with a passion that moulds any facts to suit their argument, and I am not immune – but at least I am honest enough to recognise it. I told my audience that they had to wake-up, and invest a serious effort in thinking for themselves about the subject before reaching a decision.

To cap it all, facts change: the world is changing, and the EU is changing dramatically too. None of us can predict what it will be like to remain in a changing EU, any more than we can predict what it will be like as an independent nation in a changing world. There are risks with either course of action. The key difference is that as an independent nation we will be able to decide how to respond to risks and inevitable change in our own national interest, rather than have those responses determined for us in Brussels.

 

Last week we recorded a dismal anniversary: 5 years of war in Syria. It is difficult to find anything to say that can lift the human spirit about a time during which we have witnessed scenes of barbarity that nobody should expect to see except perhaps in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. These visions of Hell have escaped both his imagination and the borders of Syria and are now visible on the beaches of Lesbos, Lampedusa, border posts in the Balkans, and even 20 miles from our own shores in Calais.

We will each have our own image that crystalizes the conflict in our minds. Mine is of a barefoot young girl carrying her even younger brother. She is standing watching as the rest of the family struggle to clear the snow off their fragile shelter before it collapses under the weight. There are some brighter spots however. First, countless individuals and charities has risen to the demands of the crisis, raising money and delivering relief. Second, the world has not forgotten, and ‘donor fatigue’ has not set in: in February London hosted the 4^th donor conference and raised $11 billion in a single day, more than such a conference has ever raised before.

This commitment to long term finance will enable us to ensure that there is no ‘lost generation’ and that all Syrian Refugee children can receive an education. Finally, our own leadership as the World’s second largest donor, has continued: at over £2 billion we have committed more to this endeavour than to any other humanitarian disaster ever. Hope springs eternal.

 

After scores of emails demanding that the personal independence payments be protected from the Chancellor’s cuts – including some individuals who had clearly been repeatedly emailing throughout the night, I awoke to the news of Ian Duncan-Smith’s resignation. Notwithstanding my admiration for all that he has achieved, I stand by the original proposal and, frankly, I can’t see what all the fuss was about.

The budget for disabled payments is enormous at £50 billion per year (for comparison, our entire defence budget is £34 billion).  As I see it, the problem is that some people need more than they currently are getting in order to cope with everyday life. Whilst others are taking the rest of us for a ride. We need to concentrate resources on those who really need them.

One difficulty is that a qualifying criterion for the payments is reliance on an ‘aid’ or ‘appliance’ (which might be something as simple as a bed or a chair – even one supplied by the NHS), which mightn’t actually add anything to one’s weekly cost of living. Over the last 18 months claims for payments based solely on reliance on aids and appliances have tripled. Of the cases reviewed, 96% have indicated that there are no – or very little – additional living costs arising.
I am persuaded that there remains plenty of scope for reform.

 

 

 

One of the recurrent complaints constituents make to me is that they were deceived during the referendum campaign of 1975 with respect to the consequences for national sovereignty of remaining in the Common Market. They say that they were explicitly told that no decision could be made in Brussels without the agreement of a British minister responsible to Parliament. Were they lied to, as they believe? They were not: what they were told was true – at that time.

The fact is that the European Union is a continuously evolving institution. The rules changed: British ministers no longer enjoy such power to prevent decisions which they judge to be against our national interest, and they are over-ruled. The choice in the referendum is being presented as one of sticking with the certainties of the EU, against the unpredictable consequences of leaving. This is a false prospectus: there is no certainty about what the EU will evolve into next.

The only certainty is that we have been offered an opportunity to reclaim the ability to govern ourselves, or to leave increasing power in the hands of Brussels.

The Archbishop’s assurance that expressing concern about immigration has nothing whatsoever to do with racial prejudice, is welcome. I recall the way that expression of such concern was derided by the ‘establishment’ over the last decade. During the 2001 election campaign there were howls of anguish and indignation, indeed there was even a walk-out, when I raised the subject at a hustings organised by a New Forest church.

Now that we have the leave of the Archbishop to discuss it, I can say that – overwhelmingly – immigration has been the subject most often raised with me by constituents over the last 19 years. It has been their top concern, where their dislike of the EU has been way down the list by comparison.

The two are intimately connected however, to put it bluntly, we can’t control immigration because of our membership of the EU. Most of our immigrants come from the EU and the terms of our membership require that they be given free movement into our country, and the same employment rights as British subjects. So, when governments announce honest intentions to reduce immigration, they fail because they have absolutely no way of limiting the greater part of the source of immigrants.

We are often told that immigration is good for us and promotes prosperity and economic growth. It is true that foreign entrepreneurs bring their skills, enterprise and investment here. In the end however, it comes down to a question of numbers and a balance of advantage: 70% of EU migrant workers in the UK claim in-work social security benefits, at the same time they consume public services and acquire a pension liability; The notion that this is all economic gain is fanciful.

Clearly, the Government recognises this, and that is why we tried to create levers to control the flow of EU migrants. We failed: the re-negotiation has come up only with an ‘emergency brake’ which requires the consent of the EU Commission if we wish to operate it. The brake consists of nothing more than a temporary diminution in amount of benefit payable. It is certainly better than nothing, but it does not amount to control of our borders and I do not believe that it will diminish the numbers of migrants.

This brings us to a key principle underlying the whole EU debate: Control. Pundits demand that both sides paint a picture of what the future holds inside, or outside the EU. Of course, neither of us can with any certainty, because we live in an unpredictable world and we are not clairvoyants. The real issue therefore, is that we are likely to fare far better in this unpredictable world, if we have control of our own affairs to pursue our national interest, rather than that control should reside in Brussels.