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Sir Desmond Swayne TD MP

Sir Desmond Swayne TD MP

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Migration

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In this column on 16th November https://www.desmondswaynemp.com/ds-blog/rwanda-facing-down-the-judges/ I pointed out that despite the beached Rwanda policy being an important part of the deterrent to Channel crossings, we have seen a reduction this year of one third.

The net migration figure however, is going in the opposite direction: In the year to June 2023 675,000 represents disastrous failure for those of us who have campaigned in election after election for a reduction in immigration.

Nevertheless, nothing is ever as bad as first reported.
About half the numbers are accounted for by students and their dependants. The reality is that tertiary education is one of our major export industries which is worth about £20 billion to the UK economy. It also allows own students to study at university at substantially lower fees, in effect subsidised by foreign students.
Those foreign students return to their native countries with a British education and goodwill towards us, which will have a beneficial impact on developments, commercial and diplomatic, for years ahead.
It is right however, that we have clamped down on short and ‘low value’ courses which attract migrants who really aren’t interested in study but just want to find a way of getting into Britain.
We need however, to cut the 150,000 dependants that postgraduate students have been bringing with them. So, beginning with courses starting in January, students on taught postgraduate courses will no longer have the ability to bring dependants; only students on designated postgraduate research programmes will have that entitlement.
All this begs the question of why we include students, here temporarily, in our migration statistics at all, when most other jurisdictions don’t. The answer is simple: we always have; So, any government that chose to exclude them would be accused of ‘fiddling the figures’.

Which leaves us with the other half of the net migration figure: those on work visas.
As I’ve said before in this column, there isn’t an enterprise that I have visited that isn’t having  difficulty recruiting staff.  We have a million vacancies, yet 21% of our working age population, nearly 9 million people (including 3 million ‘on the sick’) are economically inactive.
Little wonder then, that businesses and public services sponsor so many visas for overseas workers, making a mockery of the ’points-based immigration system’ which was modelled on Australia’s.
The argument is made that -were we to abolish the list of critically short occupations allowable and to raise the salary threshold, the consequent fall in the number qualifying migrants would fuel inflation and cause some sectors to grind to a halt.
I am sceptical. The counter argument is that, whilst migration is generating greater national income, the income per head of population is not growing in proportion. Genuine economic welfare may actually be falling as a result of the pressures on housing and public services arising from the growing migrant populations.
Furthermore, despite the numbers arriving, the shortages persist: 70,000 people were recruited from abroad for care roles in the year to June, while the number of vacancies in the sector dropped by only 11,000.

Foreign workers cost employers 20% less than UK employees: this incentive to recruit from abroad should certainly be removed.
But the strain on our society, economic an social, of immigration well beyond what we can safely absorb, will not be assuaged until we can curb our appetite for foreign labour and address economic inactivity amongst our own working age population.

The Tax Burden

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I am at a loss to understand the surprise that so many people express when told that the tax burden is higher than it has ever previously been. It is also the case that public expenditure is higher than it has ever previously been. The two are not unconnected.
There seems to be an insatiable desire for the state to do more and more for us, inevitable placing a greater burden on taxpayers.

Rarely, do constituents come to me with suggestions for cuts in public services.
Those of us who believe that both society and our economy will benefit from lower taxes, need to come up with a coherent plan to restrain the apparently insatiable demand for more public expenditure

Employing Ex-Offenders

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Over the last couple of years I’ve had my ear bent by so many local enterprises about the difficulty they are having in recruiting staff. It is a national problem: we have a million vacancies. With that in mind, I am now lending my support to  Starting Fresh – a campaign being run by Sodexo, one of our principal recruitment specialists, which aims to encourage businesses to employ more people with criminal convictions. The campaign is designed to help remove the barriers associated with the employment of ex-offenders.

 

Apart from the benefit to businesses in finding employees in a tight labour market, getting ex-offenders into work is an important part of making sure that they successfully reintegrate into their local communities.
Too often misconceptions and prejudice prevent businesses from tapping into this underutilised resource. Concerns about hiring people with criminal convictions can often be attributed to a failure to appreciate the quality of education which now takes place in prison. Many of the 50,000, or so, offenders who leave prison every year do so with formal qualifications they didn’t have before they were sentenced.

 

Businesses can access the Starting Fresh online hub, where they can find advice about how to make use of this underutilised resource and provide support in the workplace.

Sodexo also runs prisons on behalf of the Ministry of Justice and is, in addition,  using this campaign to let employers know they are welcome to visit their prisons if they are interested in offering job opportunities to prisoners when they are released. Organisations with multiple job opportunities can even run employer days in the prisons.

More information on the campaign can be had from https://uk.sodexo.com/startingfresh.hmtl

Rwanda – facing down the judges

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Some of my parliamentary colleagues, particularly those who are lawyers, get frightfully upset when I criticise judicial decisions. They believe that the separation of powers -political from judicial- is so sacrosanct that no politician should intrude by criticising the judgements of the courts.
I disagree. As an elected politician it is quite proper for me to give voice to the frustration that so many constituents express to me about judicial decisions, whether it is the leniency of sentences or ‘high politics’, where courts have frustrated the will of Government -which should properly be a matter for Parliament.

There is enormous anger about leniency in sentencing. More than half our most prolific offenders -with at least 45 previous convictions- are never sent to prison. This is the reason that Parliament has increasingly been intervening with new laws to set mandatory minimum sentences to bind the judges, as we will again on 28th November with the second reading of the Criminal Justice Bill.

Greater still is the frustration with Judicial intervention in the most contentious political issues of the day. I expressed my robust rejection of the authority of the Supreme Court in this column in my blog about the prorogation of Parliament back in September 2019:
 Yes, it is a coup (desmondswaynemp.com)
Now we have  had the judgement that the Government’s scheme to deport asylum claimants to Rwanda is unlawful, with which I profoundly disagree.

Nevertheless, I’d be the first to acknowledge that throughout history Judges have played a key role in preserving our liberty. And that an independent judiciary is an essential part of a functioning liberal democracy. In any event, we already have a solution where we believe judicial activism has gone too far.
In their decisions judges make law. If we don’t like the laws that they make, then we have the remedy in Parliament, just as we have with lenient sentencing: Statute law made in Parliament trumps law made by judges in the courts.
The problem is that it will take time, and time is running out. A bill to make the Rwanda scheme lawful would pass at speed in the Commons but would be held up by the delaying power of the Lords, where the Government has no majority. We could prorogue, and re-present the bill in the new parliamentary session, forcing it through under the Parliament Act. it would be controversial and messy, it might not be quick but it would work.

That leaves us only having to deal with the international judges whose power derives from the treaty obligations to which we voluntarily acceded. They will not be overawed by Parliament. If they intervened, we’d have to withdraw from those obligations. The PM has indicated that, if necessary, he will do so.

The Rwanda deal, as a deterrent to illegal migrants, is an essential element to successfully stopping the boats, but it is only one element. Of greater importance are bi-lateral agreements to return the migrants to their countries of origin. Our agreement with Albania, from which the greatest number were coming, has cut those numbers by 90%.
The argument is made that, were we to withdraw from the international conventions, then it would be so much more difficult to sustain and extend bi-lateral return arrangements, that we’d be a pariah and that nobody would deal with us.
I think this is nonsense. Other European countries are experiencing very much greater numbers of illegal migrants and are already following where we have led. There is a common view now that the historic conventions on refugees are completely unfit for the current reality. I’m confident that  where we continue to lead, other developed nations will continue to follow.

Capitalism & Climate

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I debated against motion  “The Climate Crisis Cannot Be Effectively Tackled Without Transforming Capitalism” at Durham University last night: 

 

The Proof of any pudding is in the eating:

The boffins at Yale, mapping their Environmental Index on to the international indices that measure the ‘capitalism of economies’ -the World Bank’s Ease of Doing business index and the International Chamber of Commerce’s Open Market Index  -reveal that the freer the economy the better environmental record.
Furthermore that there is a critical point in the economic development of free economies when additional economic growth leads greater environmental benefit
This is the reverse of what groups like Extinction Rebellion tell us

Why?
Well., there are several reasons, but I’ll fix on just one
Capitalist driven economic growth affords citizens the opportunity to care more about the environment. We aren’t consumed with worry about disease, slums, and malnutrition, so instead have resources to care about the environment and to demand political action from our democratic systems to address it.

For Example:  Notwithstanding that our coasts and rivers are cleaner than they have been for years, every time a storm overflow discharges into the river Avon I get scores of emails demanding action, and that sort of political pressure drives the eye-watering £60 Billion investment now planned.
Equally London was often ground to a halt by smog and fog  so thick they were called ‘pea soupers’ it led to political action and the Clean Air Act.
Where is the campaign for clean air in Beijing?


 People who are worried about where their next meal is coming from, or about dying from malaria, are not in a position to be concerned about the extinction of endangered species or potentially rising water levels driven by climate change. And even if they were, they don’t enjoy the political freedoms and property rights that capitalism promotes, in order to demand a remedy

Some comparisons: In the 198ies Total Green House Gas emissions in the USSR, with an economy a fraction of the USA generated, at the most conservative estimate, at least one and a half times as much pollution as the USA per unit of GNP.
East Germany provides an example as a socialist-capitalist contrast with West Germany. Before it folded, CO2 emissions in the German Democratic Republic were almost twice the West German level, in per capita terms – astonishing when compared to how much richer the German Federal Republic was.
When the Soviet system collapsed, the enormity of environmental degradation became apparent including the  disappearance of the Aral Sea, perhaps one of the worst environmental disasters, and directly attributable to socialist planning.

I do not contend that Capitalism is an environmentalist’s paradise. Of course there are plenty of examples of capitalist excess that we need to address through regulation, as Adam Smith sets out in Book 5 of The wealth of Nations. This is why property rights, contract, rule of law, a free press, and democratic oversight are essential components of Capitalism.

But the present danger is this:
A New puritanism is out to rob you of your liberty. To coerce you into giving up meat, to confine you to 15 minute cities, to take away the convenience and liberation of your own car, restrict you to public transport, stop you enjoying international travel.
But let’s be clear. We account for about 1% of Co2 emissions. Were we to stop at once, it would make no difference to climate change. The future of emissions will be determined in Latin America, India and China. Currently they have other priorities,
Remember Alok Sharma in tears closing COP 26 when he thought he had unanimous agreement to abandon coal – but they pulled the plug on him at the last moment
 Why?
 Because their people are, per capita, much poorer, so they attach a much greater priority to increasing consumption. If you were poor your priorities would be exactly the same.

As Bill Gates points out in How to avoid a Climate Disaster, the solution lies in the technologies that enable us to enjoy increasing prosperity whilst repairing the damage to the planet’s climate.
Where socialist planning has sought to catch-up by investing in industrial espionage and the theft of intellectual property. It is the initiative and enterprise of capitalist economies that are the essential engines of innovation and technological advance,
This is Capitalism’s greatest strength, and frankly, without it we have no chance!

On the contrary, Capitalism -far from being the problem – it is the solution.

 

 

[In the student debate Capitalism won – by a very comfortable margin]

Humanitarian Pause -2

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As we approach Remembrance Sunday, we are reminded daily of the horrors of war by the newscasts on our television screens, they are shocking and dreadful to watch.
In World war II the scenes that would have accompanied civilian distress throughout Europe would have been as equally horrible and shocking had instant close-up television coverage been available.
Perhaps the absence of mass demonstrations demanding a ceasefire back then, can be put down to the unavailability of that television coverage.
Alternatively, we might put it down to a clearer national consciousness that our Kingdom, for all its faults and short-comings, was in an existential struggle for survival against an ideology that would extinguish our liberties, our values and our way of life. Therefore, in those circumstances, whatever the misery and the innocent civilian casualties, there was no prospect for ceasefire, for compromise, we just had to prevail at whatever cost, or face oblivion.

Constituents email me daily drawing my attention to the horrors on their TV screens, demanding my support for a ceasefire. There is no ceasefire to be had. Israel, whatever its faults and shortcomings, is locked into an existential conflict with Hamas, whose aim it to obliterate it and replace it with an Islamic republic of the most repressive sort. There is no compromise that can be had. A ceasefire merely provides the opportunity to rearm and resume
We must do all we can to provide humanitarian relief but the horror, unless a leopard can change its spots, will continue

Pull the Plug on the Covid Inquiry

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When the pressure is on to answer awkward questions at a time when there are many other pressing concerns to be dealt with, the temptation for a hard-pressed Prime Minister is to take the pressure off by putting the whole issue into a box which can be opened at leisure later -by announcing an official independent inquiry.
But it is, more often than not, a dreadful mistake. The short-term relief is bought at the expense of a prolonged nightmare. The government loses any control of the agenda as the inquiry meanders wherever it chooses, clocking-up ever greater expense.
The Covid Enquiry is doing exactly that. So far it has cost £100 million. The lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank. The rest of us can enjoy mild titillation, or despair, depending on our predisposition, as we are treated to what often appears as an episode of In The Thick of It, revealing who despised whom, and the fruity language they used to express it.

None of this addresses the they key issue that is of interest: why did the Government abandon the pandemic plan, previously war-gamed and rehearsed, and instead follow the herd of other nations  by locking-down the entire country both socially and economically?
The Inquiry would, ideally, come up with a cost/benefit analysis and conclude that either the Government got it right or that it imposed a cure that was, in its unforeseen consequences, worse than the disease.

The Inquiry has already revealed a prejudice in favour of lock-downs and I doubt that anything of value is now going to emerge from its further deliberations. And it’s going to cost a bomb. Its time to pull the plug and close down this farrago nonsense with immediate effect.

‘Humanitarian Pause’

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I’ve received a large number of representations demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Or, to be more precise, demanding that the UK Government join international calls for a ceasefire.
I do not see that there is any possibility of a ceasefire in the foreseeable future, so I can’t see the point in calling for one.
What I do believe is a possibility, and for which we must work strenuously is a ‘pause’ for the purpose of delivering humanitarian aid to civilians. Even this will be difficult because Israel is acutely aware that Hamas has a history of appropriating humanitarian aid for its own purposes. Screening the aid and ensuring that it is not stolen will be a complex operation.
Equally, using civilians as a ‘human shield’ is central to the standard operating procedure of Hamas.

I do not believe that either side sees a ceasefire as being in their interests.
The ferocity and ‘in your face’ barbarity of the Hamas attack on Israeli settlements was clearly designed to provoke an overwhelming response from Israel. Hamas has been building its network of underground tunnels and arsenal for years. It has chosen its moment to draw Israel into a very costly urban warfare for which Hamas is well prepared. It is not in the interests of Hamas to hold a ceasefire now, when it is on the brink of achieving the very objective which its attack was designed to provoke.

Israel, on the other hand, has been attacked by an organisation whose only purpose is to completely obliterate it and replace it with an Islamic state. There is no settlement that can be negotiated with such an adversary. One side can only prevail by annihilating the other.
To survive this existential threat Israel must take this opportunity to destroy Hamas, or face prolonging the bloodshed of further attacks by Hamas in the future. I see no reason why Israel would accommodate a ceasefire now.

We have to confine ourselves to what is possible, namely pauses in which relief can be delivered and as many lives saved as possible.

But the nightly vision of Hell will continue to unfold on out TV screens.

‘Jihad’

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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 Law is Too Lenient

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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!