The numbers of migrants crossing the channel in small boats has now exceeded 200,000.
Rather than diminishing with every new initiative –‘smashing the gangs’; the one-in/ one-out agreement with France;  and now a further £600 million investment to pay for French riot police on the beaches- on the contrary, the numbers are accelerating again.

I’ve said it all before, but I believe it is worth repeating, there is no silver bullet. Rather a whole series of initiatives are needed including those already listed. More important however, are agreements with countries of origin for the return of their citizens. And most important of all, a third country where migrants can be sent when they simply cannot be returned to where they originated from.
The reality is that, without this essential probability of removal to a third country, migrants will make repeated attempts to cross the channel with the near certainty, that once they get here, the possibility of being removed is very remote indeed.
That third country in which British taxpayers invested £700 million was to be Rwanda. The current government wrote off that investment and abandoned the scheme before it could be implemented, since when they’ve been casting around for another without success.
There is another essential element that would have been necessary to make Rwanda, or any other third country workable: Legal certainty. So long as our own courts or the ECHR in Strasbourg can intervene to prevent the deportation of illegal migrants to a third country, then that enterprise is doomed, and with it the whole possibility of stopping the boats.
The essential piece of the jigsaw therefore, is to withdraw from the treaties and human rights laws that afford the courts the power to intervene.

Hitherto, It is from this last essential requirement that politicians shrink. There is a moral hazard in not doing so. The migrants who cross the channel in small boats will have paid very substantial sums to criminals in order to do so. Having arrived here they will be accommodated at great expense funded from our overseas development budget which would otherwise be deployed helping many thousands more people in desperate need elsewhere. As a former minister who had responsibility for that budget, I can vouch for the fact that the money goes very much further in the regions from which the migrants are coming. Resettlement in the UK is the least cost-effective way of deploying our resources when it comes to helping people in greatest need.

The Renter’s Rights Act has come into force. It will be some time before we can assess its consequences.
Certainly there will have been many ‘no fault evictions’ as landlords exited the market, selling their properties before the new legal provisions came into force. It is reported that such sales have been running at some 700 per day over much of the last year.
This could have a very significant impact on the availability of properties to rent. It will depend on how many of the sales were to other professional landlords. It is too soon to tell.

As a Member of Parliament, housing has been the largest element in my mailbag and ‘surgery casework’ throughout the last 29 years. I have seen the consequences for families subjected to a no-fault eviction. It means disruption to schooling and employment. It can often mean a long spell temporary B&B accommodation.
Huge anxiety is caused by the advice from local councils that tenants must wait until a court order to leave is issued to them, otherwise they will be judged to have made themselves homeless voluntarily, in which case the council will be under no obligation to assist them in finding alternative accommodation.

On the other hand, as a landlord myself, I know that there are often two sides to a story. The Section 21 ‘no fault eviction’ was a convenient way of securing possession of the property without the difficulty and expense of going to court with the evidence of non-payment of rent, anti-social behaviour, or some other breach of the rental agreement, which were often the real reason for the eviction.
For my own part, I have sometimes offered to reduce the rent to hold on to a good tenant.
I’ve had some excellent tenants over the years. But changing tenants is expensive in time and money, with redecoration and legal costs in order to re-let a property. And then there is always the possibility that a new tenant turns out to be a thorough nuisance, or even a complete nightmare. I’ve had tenants like that too.
The worst was a housing association. The advantage of letting to them was that all the administration for the sub-tenants was handled by the housing association, albeit for a lower rent.
When the association no longer required the property, I went to take it back. I was horrified by the state of the place, only to be told by the housing association representative that she considered it in pretty good nick, considering the way some of their clients left properties.

The change in the law that is of most concern is the abolition of fixed term tenancies that previously provided landlords with a predictable term. From now on tenants can vacate on giving two months’ notice. This uncertainty will have a disproportionate impact of the availability of student lets.

A member of my family who lets a property and who also holds elected office, is a member of the Green Party. I wonder if he even realises that his party’s Maoist policy is to abolish ‘landlordism’ altogether. I’ll let him discover the hard way.

My deep suspicion of Olly Robbins stems from his being our chief BREXIT negotiator under the disastrous stewardship of Theresa May. Nevertheless, by all accounts he was doing a magnificent job cutting costs at the Foreign Office, however, what has really sent his reputation soaring in my estimation, was the way he began his evidence to the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He told them there were only two things he could recite by heart, first was his departmental code of conduct, and the second was the Book of Common Prayer. Magnificent! I recite it by heart too, every Sunday. The Church of England has largely abandoned it to the poverty of modern liturgies. No wonder congregations are dwindling, after its memorable phrases gave so much comfort to countless generations.
But, back to Olly’s evidence: whilst much of what he told the Committee was deeply damaging to the Prime Minister, in particular the demand that an ambassadorship be found for Kier Starmer’s -surplus to requirement- Director of Communications (subsequently elevated to the Peerage only to be suspended from the Labour Party after campaigning for a paedophile). Nevertheless, Olly’s evidence cleared the PM of the principal charge, namely that he misled Parliament by denying that he had known that Peter Mandelson had failed his developed vetting.
Two members were rightly forced to leave the Commons Chamber on Wednesday last week for accusing the PM of having lied. As do so many of us, the PM obfuscates, he conceals, but he does not lie.
I tried to nail him down. I asked why, when he was asked by Kemi Badenoch on 4^th February “did the official security vetting that he received mention Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with… Jeffrey Epstein?”
The Prime Minister replied, “Yes, it did.”
So how could he deny having ever received the official vetting report?
The answer is that he had simply confused the terminology of the different reports. He was referring to the Due Diligence Report, which he had received, not the Vetting Report, which he hadn’t. Confusing two different reports in quick-fire during Prime Ministers Questions, isn’t lying. He’s off that hook.

Readers will appreciate that I am not an impartial observer, on the contrary, I am a committed partisan. Notwithstanding that I was often a severe critic of the last Tory government -despite having been part of it, I believe that this Labour government is infinitely worse on almost every front.
 Of course, the Official Opposition is right to go after the PM for his failures, but do we really want his scalp?
Be careful what you wish for: ‘Hang on to Nurse, for fear of Something worse’. The candidates lining up to replace Kier Starmer should terrify middle England.
There is talk of a vote to refer the Prime Minister to the Privileges Committee. Forget it! I wouldn’t vote to refer anyone to that kangaroo court, not after the travesty of their proceedings against Owen Paterson. The notion of politicians sitting in judgement on anyone, should fill us all with horror.

My blog post of 12^th April 1956! attracted a rather wider audience than my posts are usually accustomed to reaching. As a consequence, I’ve had quite a large email correspondence on the back of it. Most controversial is the figure I quoted stating that the average person born in 1956 will have consumed some £300,000 more in benefits that they will have paid in taxes.
I’ve had many emails from that age cohort complaining that they’ve ‘never taken a penny’ and demanding to know how the figure is calculated.

The calculation appeared in a paper produced by the Resolution Foundation:  An intergenerational audit for the UK (2023):
In Annex 1 – “Analysis of net lifetime benefits from the welfare state” , (Chart) 6 –“Net lifetime benefits from the welfare state, by year of birth” They gave an estimate of between £290,000 and £310,000. As stated in their notes below the chart, they included the following net lifetime benefits: State pension; NHS spending; Education spending; other public service consumption; and cash benefits.
Minus taxes paid: Income tax; National Insurance; VAT and other indirect taxes.
All the figures are discounted to present value and expressed in 2023 prices and, averaged across the entire 1956 birth cohort.

Such a mathematical illustration will invariably include a spread with many well above, and also well below the mean.
What I thought was healthy about the response was that people clearly did not want be seen as being part of a cohort that was not self-reliant, and which consumed more benefits from the state than they paid for in taxation. I take this to mean we are a bit embarrassed about being dependent, that there is still a residual pride about not living ‘on the parish’.
Halleluiah! I had begun to fear that we had become shameless, seeing state benefits as an entitlement, and that we were inured to dependency.
If there remains at least some a concept of a ‘moral peril’ with regard to welfare dependency, then we have a prospect of recovery from it.

Bizarrely, a Government Treasury minister passed me in the lobby and complimented me on the blog. I was surprised (and flattered) that a Minister, with a Red Box of vital state papers to deal with daily, would take time to read a blog of mine. No doubt, an official spotted it and flagged it up to him. Perhaps, the Government has started to think about the future of the Triple Lock on pensions…before the deteriorating state of the public finances causes the IMF to force it to do so.

20 years ago I pleaded in Parliament against a Forestry Commission decision not to renew a tenancy near Holmsley, where it planned to sell the land. The result was the eviction of two households, the destruction of a renowned wildfowl reserve and the termination of a successful small business. Below, I have printed an extract from the parliamentary debate. I ended it with a rhetorical flourish, predicting the demolition of the properties and their replacement with palace fit for footballers’ wives. I was wrong. Walking my dog, I passed the site yesterday. There is no palace. Where there were two cottages and a magnificent landscape there is now a wasteland.  Literally a wasteland, because remains of the demolition carried out well over a decade ago, have attracted fly- tippers into the very heart of the New Forest.
See it for yourself at Grid 221010 or what3words  ///ringers.shifters.written
This devastation resulted from a decision by the Forestry Commission, I believe that Forestry England should now take responsibility to address it.

Hansard 24^th July 2006 Column 713
“…I now come to a more pressing and imminent concern, and that is the disposal by the Forestry Commission of Holmsley lodge and Shrike cottage, together with 13 magnificent acres at the heart of the New Forest…. The current tenants have been told that they need to leave by January 2007… They have a business, they have nowhere to go and that they have been in those properties for 40 years….

As to the impracticality of those properties as family homes, tell that to the Landers, who have raised a family of five in Holmsley lodge, and to the Mays, who have raised a family of four in Shrike cottage. The irony is that those properties were previously not ‘practical family homes’: Shrike cottage had no kitchen, a leaking roof, rotten window frames and one open fireplace to heat the entire cottage, but that property has been transformed, as has Holmsley lodge, by the existing tenants. Perhaps this has contributed to such a gem being disposed of on the open market, rather than being secured for the long-term interests of the New Forest.

The Landers and the Mays have installed a vermin-proof fence around all 13 acres of magnificent landscape. They have built up a wild fowl business of national and international renown. It currently contains some 1,000 birds, many of which are endangered species….

At the beginning of the 20th century, the New Forest was much more than the heathland and woodland that it now comprises. It was a great national estate, which included farms, mansions, shops and businesses all under the Crown Estate. The Forestry Commission sold off many of those assets, until it was checked, partly by the Illingworth report in the mid-1980s. The question is whether that process has started again—I ask the Minister to consider his Mandate, the fundamental principle of which is the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of the New Forest. Over the best part of the past half century, the Mays and the Landers and their wildfowl have become part of that cultural and natural heritage. The millionaires or footballers’ wives to whom these properties will be sold are unlikely to do so

I’ve received several emails expressing concern about the mass prayer in Trafalgar Square involving Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London on 16th March. My colleague, Nick Timothy MP, called it an ‘act of domination’. The Prime Minister demanded that Kemi Badenoch sack Mr Timothy and Nigel Farage then weighed in, demanding a ban on all mass religious observance.
I replied to the emails saying that I believe in freedom of worship.

Our Lord instructed his followers to pray in secret rather that to do it in public, but that was to differ explicitly from the Pharisees who prayed in public in order to demonstrate their piety: showing off to everyone else. I conclude that it is fine to pray in public with proper motives.

When, in 2012 the High Court  ruled in favour of an objecting Bideford town councillor who had complained that prayers at the commencement of council meetings were ultra-vires, within 48 hours government legislation overturned the ruling and restored the status quo ante, so they could continue to pray at council meetings.
The first official daily business in Parliament, is prayers -even though we don’t admit the public.

I understand the concern that mass religious observance can make people uncomfortable. It might indeed, be interpreted as a demonstration of power, even – were the numbers to warrant it – an act of domination. Though having spoken to a participant at Trafalgar Sq. I was assured that the intent was quite the opposite, it was simply to show that there was nothing out of the ordinary or sinister about Muslim worship.

Even were it a demonstration, I believe in freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate. And if demonstrations make us uncomfortable, that is the price we pay for having our freedom of expression.
 Mr Farage’s demand that mass religious worship be banned would an outrageous intrusion by the State into our liberty. We really must get beyond demanding a ban on anything, just because we just don’t like it.
Personally, I don’t much care for street preachers, they can be loud, intrusive, and often, quite wacky. In my estimate, they are not an effective means of evangelising (St Francis said that we should preach the Gospel always, but rarely resort to words!).  Nevertheless, our freedom would be much diminished were such preachers to be outlawed.
 We are, however, already way too far down that road: there are examples of officious police harassment, seeking to censor what street preachers may say.
We even have laws that prohibit silent prayer within 100 meters of an abortion clinic. A woman, arrested for praying silently, despite the clinic being closed at the time, was asked by the arresting officer, what it was she was praying about!
 We really are on the cusp of implementing aspects of George Orwell’s dystopian vision 1984.

Mr Farage’s knee-jerk response to ban public religious observance is a denial of the rights of people of every religion and none.
If you don’t like acts of public religious observance , the answer is simple: don’t go to one.

 In February last year, shortly after the election of President Trump, when David Lammy -then our Foreign Secretary- was busy ingratiating himself with the new regime. I reminded him in the Commons of all the dreadful things he had said about Trump in the past.  I asked him if, when it became apparent that his earlier assessment of Trump was the accurate one, he would follow the example of the martyred Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and plunge first into the flames, the hand with which he signed his recantation.

 My assessment of the renewed assault on Iran is somewhat conflicted by my experience of having served in the Army in Iraq in 2003, and all that followed. But here are some prejudices on which I arrive at any  judgement.
First, I am not impressed by the suggestion that the military action is unlawful given the blood that is on the hands of the Iranian regime through its sponsorship of international terrorism, the massacres of its own people, and its determination to acquire nuclear weapons with ballistic missile capability.
Second, I believe in the lasting wisdom of Churchill expressed in his 1946 Fulton speech: the need to stick closely to the USA; this is an enduring principle and should not be lightly set aside, even when a US administration behaves unpredictably.
The USA is our principal ally, on whose support we have come to depend for our own national security.
Our initial and continued unwillingness to give our full support will have consequences, particularly so, given the caprice of the President. I fear for the consequences our inaction may have for the future defence of Ukraine and other areas of our national interest.
Our involvement was inevitable and so it has proved: our sovereign territory has been attacked, as have our allies. Attacks that have closed the Straits of Hormuz touch our vital economic interests.

All that said, was warfare wise when negotiations were still proceeding?
The action has, as yet untold consequences in terms of the enduring effect on the world economy and the incalculable effect on the stability of Iran and its impact on the region.
The answer to the question depends on an assessment of the proximity of Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Did the USA and Israel believe that Iran was so close that it required immediate action, and so all the terrible potential consequences would be the lesser of two evils.
I’m doubtful that such an assessment was made. Indeed, the president told us last June that his action then had set Iran’s capability back by years. Furthermore, the US Director of National Intelligence told the US Congress that Iran had made no efforts to try and rebuild its uranium enrichment capability since last summer’s bombing.

The plans and thought of US Central Command are not available to us. But the President’s running commentary is continuous. It is full of contradictions. It appears that events have taken him by surprise and that there never was much of a plan. He chops and changes.

The economic consequences of all this will be very painful and lasting. Whether anything will have been gained by it, it is too soon to tell.

As warfare raged in Gaza over the last 18 months, and now extending to the whole region, a number of MPs, have continued to focus at what has been going on in the other larger occupied Palestinian territory on the West Bank of the River Jordan.
Occupied by Israel since the June 1967 Six-Day War, it remains the territory that would form the basis of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This ‘two-state solution’ has been the goal of European and US policy for decades in our attempts to bring a lasting peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

When I was the minister responsible for our policy in the West Bank I had the most frustrating dealings with the Israeli authorities over a whole series of issues: illegal Israeli settlements; the destruction of schools and infrastructure funded by UK taxpayers; Israeli settler violence against Palestinians; detention of Palestinian children; martial law and restrictions on Palestinian movement; collective punishments …and  plenty more. On one occasion, when I raised these issues with the Israeli Deputy-Prime Minister and Chief Negotiator, he denounced me and stormed out of our meeting.

Of course, with justification, Israelis respond that the restrictions placed on the Palestinian population are a direct consequence of Palestinian terrorism to which Israel has been subjected.
The current government of Israel is determined to prevent the possibility of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. A glance at the map of expanding illegal Israeli settlement clearly demonstrates that the contiguous and economically viable territory available to a Palestinian state is fast diminishing. Last week I asked the Government how long remains, before a Palestinian State becomes a geographic impossibility.
This was the Minister’s response
“I thank the right hon. Member and my predecessor for that important question. We have pointed to a whole range of areas of concern in relation to the viability of a Palestinian state. One that has not received mention so far in our exchanges, but which is vital, is the E1 development. The British Government are deeply concerned by the speed with which the Israeli Government are proceeding with a project that we completely oppose. It is clearly designed to try to split two parts of a contiguous Palestinian territory. We oppose it, and we will continue to do so.”

Our opposition, however, won’t count for a bean. The E1 project is racing ahead and is part of a deliberate strategy to remove the possibility of a Palestinian State altogether. Indeed, there is now an expectation by many informed commentators, that Israel will take advantage of US protection in the UN Security Council, to veto any hostile resolutions, cemented by their allied military action in Iran, and proceed to full annexation of the West Bank.

Given the extent of the Trump administration’s commitment and support for Netanyahu’s government in Israel, I am pessimistic about the prospect of preventing annexation.
If the possibility of two-state settlement is off the table, we cannot go on flogging a dead horse. We need to start planning for what will be plan B, and the policy we will need to pursue in order to secure it.
If the Palestinians are to be denied their own state, then it is essential that they have equal civil rights within Israel.

Is the House is falling down?
No, not quite: nothing is ever as bad a first reported, but there is a significant backlog of important maintenance issues.
I am referring, of course, to the reappearance at Westminster of the Restoration and Renewal project, which is back on the agenda yet again. I say that, because we have seen it off at least twice in my time. We’ve sacked numerous consultants and consultancies and sent them packing with their monstrous and extortionate plans.
But they are back with another collection of totally inappropriate options, set out in a glossy one-hundred and twenty-five pages, fit for the best coffee table. They just can’t seem to get the message.

The Palace of Westminster, which accommodates both Houses of Parliament, is contemporaneous with its neighbour Westminster Abbey, together they are getting on for 1000- years-old. The Palace, however, has burnt down several times in the course of history, so much so, that the only surviving bit of the original is Westminster Hall. The rest of what you now see was rebuilt between the eighteen forties and sixties, following the last great fire. Subsequently the Commons chamber and one or two other parts had to be restored once more, after being bombed in the second World war.

The iconic building, a World Heritage site, is the result of an open architectural competition which was won by Sir Charles Barry, who subcontracted much of the design to Augustus Pugin, a prolific church builder, who was steeped in the Oxford Movement. The result is a magnificent and deeply spiritual building that, in its public spaces, resembles an Orthodox cathedral.

Like any building of that age and magnificence it requires continual maintenance. A backlog has built up. This is partially due the changed parliamentary calendar. Although Parliament is sitting for the same number of days as it always did, we’ve broken them up into so many ‘mini-breaks’ and we no longer have the mid-July to mid-October recess, when the workmen had the place to themselves. Now we come back bang in the middle, completely cramping their style.
Consequently, restoration has required us to work in a building-site continuously for the last few years.  It is inconvenient but we can get by. Indeed, Big Ben has been completely restored already, as have many other parts.
The problem is not ‘Restoration’, we are doing that.
The problem is ‘Renewal’: Instead of just preserving Pugin and Barry’s work for future generations. There is a  determination to modernise it with glass and steel. They want it to carbon neutral,  to be 100% ‘accessible’ and inclusive. They want new interpretive spaces, they want to rip-out and refurnish.
To achieve all this they’d have us move out for 8 to 15 years whilst they spend as much as £40 Billion on their new creation.
We all know how that ends: long overdue, and vastly over-budget. And they’ll wreck it.

The sensible alternative is just to restore the magnificent building that we already have, and on a budget that we can afford.