I’m uneasy with the outcry over demonstrations and the chanting of ‘jihad’.
I believe in the right to demonstrate -however strongly I might actually disagree with the cause about which the demonstrators are protesting.
The line that I draw is when a protest prevents everyone else going about their lawful business: I’d sooner someone was arrested for blocking a road than chanting ‘jihad’.

Of Course, some chanting could contravene the laws that we have passed to prevent incitement to violence and hatred and, no doubt, that threshold has been reached on occasion in recent days.
But does chanting ‘jihad’ reach that threshold?
 The difficulty in any court will be the question whether ‘jihad’, beyond any reasonable doubt, constitutes incitement or a ‘hate crime’. Surely the defence would simply plead that the proper and true meaning of ‘jihad’ is purity and spiritual renewal, rather than violent holy war.

The statement the Lord Chancellor to Parliament last Monday clearly indicated that he believed that sentences were too lenient or inappropriate.
He indicated that space for the longer prison sentences for more serious offences will be made available by no longer imprisoning minor offenders for short sentences.
I am not opposed to reform and I acknowledge the fact that short sentences have proved unsuccessful, and often make for a higher rate of reoffending.   I hope however,  that when more space is delivered by our largest prison building programme since Victorian times, he will consider that part of the answer to the problem of short sentences is to make them longer.
Because prison works – do not underestimate the relief to a whole neighbourhood had by removing persistent minor offenders can have.

They say fish Rots from the head down, so let’s start with the head – the capital crime: murder. The law shows its contempt for the sanctity of life by the leniency with which it treats those who take life.
On three occasions in Parliament I’ve taken the opportunity to vote for the restoration of the death penalty. My demand for justice would have been assuaged however, if the mandatory life sentence meant life -or at least some greater approximation to it- but of over 7000 murderers currently in prison, less than 1% have a whole life tariff. Typically, they only serve between only 11 and 16 years.

Moving on to Rape, the requirement that rapists serve at least two thirds of their sentences was reduced to only a half in 2003 – needless to say, I voted against the measure. Of the tiny proportion of reported rapes that finally make it through to a conviction, in 2022 twenty rapists received sentences of less than 5 years, some less than 2 years.
The scandal is that nearly a fifth of all sex offenders reoffend within one year of their release.

We are living through an epidemic of Knife Crime, and despite bill after bill in Parliament giving the courts greater sentencing powers, repeat offenders for possession continue to avoid custodial sentences. Taking violent crime as a whole, in the year to 2021 sentences fell by a quarter – down by 19 months.

Moving on to burglary, unbelievably the average Burglar will have been convicted for up to 27 offences before being jailed.
And when any custodial sentence actually is handed down, however rare, we go through the charade of the judge specifying a  term, and everyone else in court calculating on the back of a fag packet how long it will actually be, because they all know that most prisoners serve less than half their term.

So Let’s jump down to the tail, to  those crimes that make the lives of neighbours and neighbourhoods a misery: the anti-social louts, the vandals, the shop-lifters, the benefits cheats, the fly-tippers, the fraudsters: none of whom will see the inside of a prison cell, for them it’s ‘community punishments’
The Lord Chancellor said that he was going to ensure public confidence with a robust regime for community punishments. Well he would need to, because last year I asked in Parliament

“It is reported that community punishments can be discharged by working from home. Please tell me that isn’t true. “

The policing minister replied that although they would reduce the proportion of sentences that could be worked from home, they would retain them for ‘those unable to manage a brush and shovel’.

Leniency is measured by the public frustration that justice is not being seen to be done.
Let’s bring back penal servitude with hard labour!

Until July 2016 I was the minister with responsibility for UK’s assistance to the Palestinians, much of which was channelled through United Nations agencies, some in collaboration with the EU, and some directly by our Department for International Development’s operations based in Jerusalem .
I regarded myself as a critical friend of Israel, but I kept that criticism between myself, our diplomats and the Israeli ministers and politicians with which I interacted.
At one meeting with the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, who was also their chief negotiator with the Palestinian Authority, my criticism was sufficiently forceful to cause him to storm out in rage.
I had made a number of complaints: illegal settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank of the Jordan; the unfair treatment of Palestinians; and the bulldozing of schools by the Israeli occupying authorities -built with funding from UK taxpayers.
My concern was that the proposal for a ‘two state’ solution to the conflict, with a Palestinian State co-existing peacefully alongside Israel (which was -and which remains- UK Government’s policy), was becoming increasingly untenable given the rate at which  Israeli settlements were expanding into the occupied Palestinian territory,  making it very difficult to include in any viable and geographically contiguous future Palestinian state.

When I no longer enjoyed that ministerial responsibility, I went public with my criticism for the first time: I led a debate in Parliament on the illegal Israeli settlements in February 2017
Occupied Palestinian Territories: Israeli Settlements – Hansard – UK Parliament
Following the debate I was invited  to meetings with any number of Palestinian representatives. Basic ‘due diligence’ revealed that many of them were on the record with all sorts of blood-curdling statements about the destruction of Israel, and they had associations with terrorist organisations.
In this light it is important to see the conflict from the Israeli point of view: it is impossible to negotiate a settlement with opponents whose aim remains the obliteration of Israel. The horrific attack by Hamas from the Gaza strip which they control and govern is just the latest and worst in a long history of terrorism. The curtailment of civil rights in Israeli occupied Palestinian territories, of which I previously complained, is itself very largely a consequence of the security measures that have had to be taken to protect Israeli citizens from the terrorist threat.
Israel has endured, bombings and killings for so many years. This latest atrocity is the last straw. The Government of Israel must destroy the terrorist organisation that is Hamas, in order to prevent it from continuing its own quest to destroy Israel and all Israelis.

The action against Hamas now presents huge dangers to Israel itself, to the occupants of the Gaza strip , and to the stability of the whole region. Nevertheless, what other course is open to Israel?
It must protect itself from continued attacks
Equally, no peace process can proceed whilst armed terrorists are determined that there should be no peace until Israel is wiped from the map.

I won’t be voting to raise the age at which it is lawful to purchase tobacco.
I don’t subscribe to the view that it is proper for the state to direct us to do things that are good for us, or to abstain from things that are bad for us. Providing warnings or encouragement is one thing, but giving us orders is quite another.

A number of journalists have demanded to know how I can continue to support the Prime Minister as leader of my party when such a profound philosophical difference has emerged between us.
Well, first, the PM made it clear that any vote on this question would not be whipped, so the pressure is off; it is purely a matter of conscience.
Second, democracy is messy: There will always be substantial disagreements on matters of principle within our political parties, and more so in the UK. Our voting system ensures that, to have any chance of success, a party must have a broad base of support. Proportional voting systems on the continent however, enable their parties to maintain much narrower ideological purity and still secure representation. The consequence is that multiple parties have to forge a coalition after an election and negotiate a programme for government that was never put to the voters. The virtue of the UK system is that we make our coalitions before any election, in that each political party is itself a coalition which puts its manifesto to the judgement of the voters. Inevitably, our ‘broad church’ polity means that, though united on most issues, our political parties will have significant disagreement on others.

So, back to tobacco.
I don’t doubt that had we known the dangers of tobacco when Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced it to England in 1582 it might well have been banned, but it’s too late now.
The experience in USA of the Prohibition era from 1920 to 1933, where attempting to ban a widely consumed product, in that case alcohol, gave rise to a crime wave, violent gangsterism and widespread flouting of the law, is a warning of how this might play out.
It is one thing to demand that youngsters prove their age, but as the age threshold rises year by year, are we really going to ask the retailer to distinguish between one old man who is entitled to purchase a packet of cigarettes, and another old man, albeit one year younger, who isn’t?
Are we really going to make sure that someone, now aged fourteen, is prohibited thought-out his life from enjoying the luxury of a cigar on New Year’s Eve?
Is this really the business of government?

Aside from rescuing us from ourselves, the principal argument for prohibition is the scale of cost that falls upon the NHS through treatments for smoking-related disease.
I accept that there is a logic to this. We have developed a system of socialised medicine where we share the cost of any individual ill-health among all tax-payers. It follows that anyone who recklessly endangers their health is a burden upon all the rest of us. Does it follow therefore, that we have the right to prevent them?
It may be logical, but it is the thin end of a very thick wedge. Its logic would soon extend to an absolute ban on smoking, and, so proceeding, to alcohol, and to any number of other products that food fascists have on their agendas

A constituent wrote to complain that he couldn’t find my blog on HS2. That’s because I’ve never written one…yet.

The reality is that most MPs are generalists. Of course, some bring particular, knowledge, expertise and experience from a profession or previous walk of life that they’ve been involved in. Others will master a brief and become expert in an aspect of policy in which they’re particularly interested, or if they’ve been appointed to a specific bill’s standing committee or elected to serve on a select committee.
Not many of us are polymaths, so we are reliant on advice of experts and to temper that advice with our own prejudices and the weight of opinion of constituents, and most important of all, participating in the debate in Parliament -which is, after all, what we were elected to do.

I’ve always had a healthy scepticism for large public sector infrastructure projects. The great age of the railway, though enabled by parliamentary legislation, was financed by private enterprise which carried both the risks and the rewards.
Nevertheless, HS2 with its huge implications for taxpayers, was given thorough parliamentary scrutiny. The Act that enabled it broke precedent by spanning two different parliaments (the members of the special standing committee, to ensure continuity, had to be from ‘safe’ seats which were unlikely to change hands in the election dividing the parliaments).
The Bill was subject to the hybrid procedure because it disproportionately affected so many different private interests. That procedure places a very significant additional burden on the MPs sitting on the committee, giving them a quasi-judicial role.  Various interest groups, represented by parliamentary counsel (specialist barristers) present evidence from witnesses and cross examine the witnesses of other interest groups. The MPs sit as both judge and jury, they can intervene to cross-examine witnesses themselves, as a trial judge might.
The snag is that, like a juror, an MP nominated to such a committee has to present for every session of what, in the case of HS2, was a marathon.

Though I had my doubts, I was never a partisan. I was prepared to accept the judgement of the standing committee that had examined all the evidence in such detail. Those MPs who were most vehement in their opposition clearly had a particular axe to grind: they were disproportionately those colleagues whose constituencies in the Chilterns, and elsewhere, were going to be dug up.
I was to some extent reassured by the pedigree of the protagonists. Philip Hammond, formerly the MP for Runnymede and Weighbridge, was the Secretary of State for Transport who gave the green light to the project, he also became one of our most conservative and parsimonious of chancellors of the Exchequer.

I always thought that halving journey times was a complete red herring. The case was always, in my estimate, built on the huge shortage of rail capacity on the routes north of London, where no new railway had been built for over 100 years. The question was one of ‘if we are going to build the new rail capacity that is needed, would we build an ‘old one’ or one using the latest cutting-edge technology?

We went for the latest technology, and that is largely responsible for the exponential rise in costs.
We have a duty to review the decisions we made in the light of the detrimental impact that these costs have on other important national priorities. It is always difficult to admit a mistake, particularly such a costly one, but it may be better than compounding the mistake by ploughing on.
I will await the outcome of the PM’s review before deliberating further.