I have just returned from Nepal, which is recovering from the earthquake that struck the country in March.

Actually, whatever readers may have seen or read, the relief effort was very successful and the response by international donors impressively fast.

Humanitarian relief after disasters is one part of our international development effort of which the British people thoroughly approve. The Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Nepal quickly raised £83 million, and that is in addition to many other fund raising efforts that took place all over the country. The UK Government has committed £70 million.

There remains a significant number of remote areas that are still in need of substantial relief. The monsoon and the coming winter make addressing that need all the more urgent.

Naturally, focus is now on reconstruction and the need to ‘build back better’ – as the campaign slogan puts it.

The most important lesson that people need to understand is, I believe, that the success of the rescue and relief effort was built on the back of our international development budget over several years of investment.

We had earthquake-proofed some 60 schools, all of them survived where some 7000 other schools were destroyed, the same is true of the hospitals that we had reinforced. We had put in place a ready-to-use logistical staging facility for relief supplies at the airport. Had this not been ready and waiting it would have cost the relief effort 7 weeks overall in cumulative delays. We had pre-positioned essential supplies and invested in the training of volunteers for distribution, for rescue, and for first aid. We had rehearsed and rehearsed.

It is this sort of investment in resilience,every year,that makes the difference, not just opening our wallets once a disaster has happened.

Nepal is now open for tourism again. I visited a number of its fantastic World Heritage sites. The country has so much to offer, including its magnificent Himalayan trekking trails. Tourism is Nepal’s largest earner and it’s down 90 percent since the earthquake. If the Nepalese people are to thrive they need tourists. So, COME TO NEPAL…and, of course, always check for latest travel advice at www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/nepal

I have been deluged with correspondence about the Assisted Dying Bill. This is a private member’s bill which is due to have its second reading early in September. The bill would make it lawful for medical professionals and others to assist someone in committing suicide. The correspondents in favour of the bill were well ahead earlier in the summer but, after a late surge, the antis have caught up. Currently it’s neck and neck.

Many correspondents tell me it is my duty as their representative to vote in accordance with their wishes. I respond by telling them that my duty is to represent all my constituents, the vast majority of whom have expressed no opinion whatsoever.

Suicide, and attempted suicide were once criminal offences. The church would even refuse Christian burial to suicides. Nowadays we have rather more understanding and greater compassion. You can now lawfully take your own life. Were anyone to assist you however, they would commit a criminal offence, and it is this that the bill seeks to change.

The key change however, is to make suicide easier by allowing medical professionals to provide the required service at the time of the patient’s choosing.

I have every sympathy for those with terminal medical conditions with gruesome prognoses who, having decided to avoid a grizzly end by terminating their own lives, face the dilemma of going early or delaying too long and losing the physical ability to actually do the deed.

For me however, allowing assisted suicide is a step too far. I have no doubt that what starts as a possibility would all too soon become an expectation. I can imagine elderly and infirm being encouraged ever so subtly to ‘do the decent thing’.

I shall be voting against the bill.

The refugee crisis is the principal concern in my emails. Naturally their focus has been Calais: Constituents have demanded that we send in the Army – oblivious to the fact that we ceased to rule Calais on 7th January 1558, when it fell to the French.

Some estimates suggest that as many as 1% of the refugees who have entered Europe this year, have now reached Calais. I think we are right to demand tighter security and to protect our border. We do however, need to maintain a sense of proportion. Consider that this year Germany will have to accommodate as many as half a million refugees. The problem for Germany, and much of continental Europe is the Schengen Agreement to which most EU countries are signatories (but very wisely we didn’t sign-up to). The agreement removes internal borders between the signatories. This is convenient for travellers who need not be delayed by passport controls within the Schengen area. It does however, mean that once a migrant has secured entry to a Schengen state, they can then travel unchecked to any other. The very large numbers now arriving in Italy and Greece will make their way to Calais, where at least we have a chance of halting their onward progress, and to Germany where there is no such chance.

Shouldn’t we take our fair share?

Isn’t there a case for all European nations dividing up the burden?

I have every sympathy for desperate plight that has driven so many people to such dangerous measures in their flight to Europe. To accommodate them however, will encourage potentially millions more to follow in their footsteps.
We have put our money where our Mouth is: we have committed £900 million in relief for those affected by war in Syria. Our money goes much further in providing shelter and assistance in the region than it possibly could in Europe. Our contribution is addressing the problem at its source.

If other wealthy nations followed our lead the flow of refugees would be reduced accordingly.

It is both fair and essential that we hold the line at Calais.

Da’ash (ISIL) has sought to recruit by propagandising the cruelty with which it treats its fellow Muslims. There was the gruesome burning alive in public of a captured Jordanian pilot. Then a month or so ago video footage was released to show just how inventive their cruelty could be: a group of captives were tethered at the neck with explosive cord used in construction, and decapitated simultaneously when the cord was detonated; another group were crammed into a car which was then destroyed with a rocket propelled grenade; The worst atrocity was reserved for a third group who were slowly lowered in a cage into a swimming pool to be drowned, with underwater cameras to capture their last agonies.

That these tortures were designed by zealots claiming to be the servants of God, and meted out on their own co-religionists, is truly bizarre. What God is it that they worship? Kali perhaps? Certainly not Allah the most gracious, the most merciful.

In an idle hour on holiday, whilst my wife busied herself in a museum of cookery, I visited a museum of mediaeval torture. These tortures were designed by Christians for Christians. I am afraid the display of ingenuity at delaying the moment of death, whilst maximising the pain and prolonging agony, puts Da’ash to shame. By comparison with the servants of Christendom – in the pain game, at least – they are a bunch of mere amateurs.

What sort of mind is it that busies itself designing gruesome ways of killing others so horribly?

I do not believe that such minds have any place in Islam, any more than they had any place in Christianity. There is a darkness within humanity however, some of us just enjoy killing. Whilst some people may play golf, a tiny number of others plan their next serial murder.

The added horror is when these twisted souls adopt an ideology which they believe sanctions their grizzly hobby. This perversion is apt to give religion a bad name. It seems to me reasonable that Muslims and Christians alike should strive to point out that it has absolutely nothing in common with true religion.

The tide of humanity that we saw crossing the Mediterranean earlier has now reached Calais. In reality, it was already there long ago: the problem is not new, even if its effects on commerce and travel, are more intense.

It is outrageous to see repeated criminal damage go unpunished, and illegal attempts to breach the UK border with impunity, in addition to burden being placed on haulage companies and others. Security and deterrence need to meet the severity of the situation.

Whether we prefer to call it a tide or a swarm, or whatever, we fool ourselves if we think it will abate. On the contrary, there is every indication that it will intensify.

Last week I visited Syrian refugees encamped in the Beqaa valley in Lebanon. I spoke to one Lebanese mayor whose town is now dwarfed by the refugees camped around it. For many of them this is their 4th year since fleeing home, their savings are exhausted. The World Food Programme has announced the withdrawal of assistance due to insufficient donor funds. So, there will be an even more powerful attraction for those who are able, to make the journey to Europe for a new life. Add to them hundreds of thousands from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq, Nigeria, the Sahel, South Sudan, Yemen, and any number of others.

Given the size of the problem, it is absurd to criticise the UK for not taking a few thousand more, when it is measured in millions, and growing.
The only serious long term strategy is the one in which we are leading: spending large sums investing in stability, humanity, and prosperity, in the regions from which they are fleeing.

When I was asked how many Syrian refugees we had given asylum to, I could have put a number to the several thousand which we have, but I preferred to point out that we have committed £900 Million to dealing with their needs in the region.

UK is alone in meeting NATO’s 2% target for military expenditure AND the UN 0.7% target on international aid. It is time the others caught up.

On Friday The Times published an article under the headline ‘Taxpayers rushed into £500m aid giveaway’ – criticising a payment made by the Department of International Development to the Global Fund in a race to meet our aid target of 0.7% of national income. I believe that this is very misleading, not least because it ignores the critical role the Global Fund plays in saving lives and ridding the world of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. At the end of 2013, programmes supported by the Global Fund had saved 13.7 million lives. Britain’s support for the Fund is saving a life every three minutes and will dramatically improve the lives of millions of people.

When we announced our support to the fund back in September 2013, we explained that we would give our contribution to the fund over three years – so long as others joined us in ensuring it meets its target and our contribution came to no more than 10 per cent of the total replenishment by the time that three year period ended. This is exactly what we are doing. The claim by The Times that the UK has breached our own rules on donations is just plain wrong.

The Global Fund has already saved millions of lives and Britain’s support is turning that success into long lasting change that brings us one step closer to a world free from AIDS, TB and malaria. This is in all our interests and is something readers of The Times, and people across Britain, can be proud of.

Every week there is some story or other in the papers designed to undermine our international aid programme and suggest that it is a waste of money. When I read this latest story I was visiting some of the poorest people in the most awful circumstances, people that we are seeking to help by giving them a livelihood and hope. This is in our national interests: it stops people trying to risk the desperate journey to try and get a better life by illegally entering Britain; and it stops others from turning to terrorism.

When constituents complain to me that we are spending 0.7% of our income on overseas aid, I remind them that this means we are still spending 99.3% on ourselves.

War is not a matter for half measures, to succeed you have to confront the enemy and defeat him in every theatre. We are now at war with Daesh, a wicked and repulsive terrorist organisation whose speciality is in designing ever more grizzly ways to kill people.

Rather oddly however, we are only prepared to use lethal force against it in Iraq. We are giving recognition to a land border with Syria which our enemy entirely ignores. What is more, our allies in the region ignore it too. This is even more perverse when you consider that our enemy’s strength, and his greatest danger to us – and to all humanity, is largely concentrated in within Syria.

We enjoy the support of the Government of Iraq for our operations there. We do not have the permission of the Syrian Government (although that hasn’t troubled our allies). The writ of that government however, no longer runs in most of its territory, rather it is Daesh, that largely occupies the land.

Were we to extend our air operations into Syria would we place ourselves in greater danger of terrorist attack?

This question might have had some purchase had we maintained our neutrality, but we are already at war – even if only in Iraq; It is time to grasp the nettle…and uproot the weed in Syria.

My views on the MPs’ pay were set out in the public consultation and in this column (see http://desmondswaynemp.com/HigherPayforMPs-6thJune2015.htm ).

A number of senior colleagues have now publically announced that they will give their pay rise to charity.

Definitive advice on this question however, can be found in St Mathew’s Gospel chapter 6, verses 1 to 4.

When we last had parliamentary proceedings on foxhunting it was before email and campaigning websites like 38 Degrees had become fashionable. Overwhelmingly, correspondence was delivered by a postman. The strength of a constituent’s opinion on a matter, and the determination to convey that opinion to their MP, would be tempered by the need to write a letter and purchase a stamp.

Now that foxhunting is back on the parliamentary agenda however, there is no similar restraint: your MP is only one easy click away. Consequently, I have had to spend much of my time clearing my inbox of hundreds of emails – in equal numbers from constituents on either side of the hunting argument.

I am afraid that many of my correspondents have got quite the wrong end of the stick. This week’s parliamentary proceedings are not about the principle of the hunting act and they do not seek to amend it. The Government has laid a statutory instrument before Parliament in response to the complaints of upland farmers about the problem of foxes killing lambs. The statutory instrument makes a number of small changes to regulations, not to the Hunting Act itself, to align them to what currently works in Scotland.

These technical amendments to the regulations will not lift the ban on hunting with dogs: Changes to regulations, secondary legislation (like statutory instruments) cannot be used to defeat the purpose of the original Act . The Hunting Act will remain in place and will continue to prohibit the pursuit and killing of a wild animal by dogs. What the changes do is to amend the exemptions – that Members on all sides of the House of Commons agreed during the passage of the Act – where they are necessary for the purposes of “pest control”.

The purpose of the amendments to the regulations is to:

Enable farmers and gamekeepers to make a judgement, based on the terrain and other circumstances, as to whether it is appropriate to use more than two dogs to flush out foxes and other wild mammals. This is particularly important in upland areas where the use of two dogs across large and difficult areas of ground, often covered by woodland, is not regarded as effective or practical. There is no limit on the number of dogs that can be used in Scotland;

To maintain the current restrictions of only one dog being used below ground in stalking and flushing out animals, but to enable the current provision for the protection of game and wild birds to be extended to livestock as well. This amendment will help provide upland farmers with an additional tool against livestock predation. A dog may be used below ground for a much wider range of purposes in Scotland;

To amend the requirement to produce evidence of land ownership or landowner consent in cases where a dog is used below ground. In Scotland there is no such requirement. This amendment will mean that the evidence does not need to be carried by the person carrying out the activity but can be presented at a police station within seven days. This is in line with the timeframe for presenting a driving licence under road traffic law;

To extend the scope of the “rescue” exemption to include “diseased” animals. This is a logical extension of the provision that enables hunting to be undertaken to relieve a wild mammal of suffering when it is injured.

These changes do not lift the ban on hunting with dogs and whilst placing greater trust in farmers and gamekeepers – those who know the land and terrain they operate on best – the controls remain more restrictive than those in Scotland. Any pests still have to be killed by shooting, and not by the dogs.
Foxhunting with a pack of hounds in the traditional sense that we have known it, remains banned. That is a battle that has yet to be refought. The Government had a manifesto commitment to put it to a free vote. I don’t know when that vote will come, but when it does, I am confident that my email inbox will know all about it.

Last week the Government published its proposals to implement a system of ‘English votes for English laws’ to cries of outrage from various opponents, including the Scottish National Party. That this measure should have come as a surprise to anyone, is beyond my comprehension. It was a principal feature of the election campaign, from my own experience as a candidate, it was one of the most commonly discussed issues on the doorsteps – and the most popular.

The Government has been accused of putting the Union with Scotland at further risk by implementing the measure. On the contrary, the Scots already enjoy these powers, granting them to England will address one of the principal complaints that the English have about the Union.

The opposition of the Scottish Nationalists is all the more surprising given their stance in the last parliament: they took the principled view that English measures, on health and education for instance, where the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood determines these matters for Scotland, were none of their business, and they voluntarily abstained from voting on these questions. They have failed to explain why they have changed their minds in this Parliament.

This change of mind makes the measure necessary. Whilst Labour would never have agreed to a voluntary abstention when they dominated the Scottish parliamentary seats, now that they hold only one, their approach is of little consequence.

I have used this column before to express my view that a voluntary arrangement would be preferable. This was, after all, the approach that the Ulster Unionists adopted, when the old Stormont parliament operated. I do not like the notion of different classes of MP, some of which may, or may not vote, on particular matters. I think it would have been preferable to voluntarily have adopted the convention that MPs representing Scottish seats simply abstain on purely English matters. The abandonment by the Nationalists of their previous stance however, makes a formal change in the Standing Orders of the Commons (the nearest thing we have to a written constitution) necessary.

The issue is not new. We have wrestled with it ever since it was first identified by Sir Tam Dalyell of the Binns during the original devolution debates of the mid nineteen seventies. It was characterised as the ‘West Lothian question’ because that was the parliamentary seat that he represented. In his principled opposition to the prospect of a Scottish assembly he pointed out the absurdity of allowing the member for West Lothian at Westminster to vote for measures that wouldn’t affect his own constituents, but only those of English constituencies.

This theoretical possibility became real during the years of the Blair Government when English Education and Health reforms – and also the Hunting Act – where the support of Labours MPs in Scotland turned out to be critical in securing majorities for the measures, which would not have passed had they had to rely only on the English seats which were to be affected.

This is an outrageous unfairness to English voters. It has been crying out to be addressed for years. The determination to do so now, after an election with a clear manifesto commitment, is a way of cementing the Union by removing a grievance felt by the English – which, after all, are the largest part of it.