(Matthew 24:6-7) “ you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.”

We’ve certainly been hearing those rumours in recent weeks. The Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, appears to be one of ‘doves’ when he told us last month that Western armies and political leaders must anticipate conflict with Russia in the next 20 years. Other analysts and commentators have put the prospect of total war very much closer.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff, has said that our forces would not be large enough to defend the country if there was a war, and it and that it is essential that we lay the foundations now for “national mobilisation”. Others have explicitly called for the return of conscription.

I accept entirely, notwithstanding that we already have the 4^th largest defence budget in the world, we do need to beef-up our defences in the face of Russia’s expansion of defence expenditure to a third of their entire national budget. We are one of the few NATO members to reach the current defence expenditure target of a mere 2% of national income. So, we have a lot of ground to catch-up.

The purpose of the increased the defence capability that we now need to acquire, is not so that we are able to fight the next war, but so that we can avoid having to do so.
 As the Roman said ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum’, which loosely translates as ‘if you wish for peace, then prepare for war’.  Only our readiness will deter the enemy from the risks of making war upon us. It is the possibility of defeating us that will tempt the enemy to try: Deterrence is cornerstone of our defence policy.

Do we have time?
 I certainly don’t accept the hyperbole that the threat is imminent. Russia’s military performance against Ukraine does not indicate that they will be capable of successfully taking on NATO in the short term. Furthermore, NATO retains very impressive capabilities, far in excess of what Russia has encountered in Ukraine, which should make Putin think twice.
As we were surprised by Ukraine’s ability to resist, similarly in the nineteen-eighties we believed that the Soviet capability was so great, that our only chance of holding their advance was to resort to first use of battlefield nuclear weapons. Very swiftly, at the end of that decade, the myth of Soviet superiority was exposed by its complete collapse.
That Russia has had to empty its prisons to field troops in Ukraine, may indicate that we may, as in the eighties, be overestimating their capability.

I shall return in this column, to the question of how we might improve our defence without breaking the bank, and certainly not by resorting to conscription.

In the meantime, whilst we do live in very dangerous times… “but the end is not yet”

Today is the fourth anniversary of the UK leaving the EU: Brexit freedom day.

Nevertheless, it is the nature of email, by which most of my correspondence is received, that it is a medium chiefly of complaint, and rarely of celebration.
Doom merchants continue to talk-down our country.
Yet, the other leading complaint they send to me is to deride our monumental struggle to reduce immigration, both legal and illegal. It should have occurred to these doomsters that it is precisely because Britain is so much better than anywhere else, that migrants are making such herculean efforts to get here.

The truth is that the vote to leave the EU was a massive vote of confidence in this country, and that confidence has been justified:
Whilst I accept that the EU has placed all sorts of bureaucratic costs in the way of our exporters, nevertheless, despite all the dire warnings, trade with   EU is up almost 40%.
And, free of the EU tariff regime, our trade with the rest of the world is up almost 60%.
No longer are we surrendering 75% of our customs revenue to the EU, Nor are we having to pay an annual membership net contribution of £13 billion, with the addition of all sorts of extra burdens like a contribution of 600 million euros to the EU Covid Recovery Fund.

We have become the world’s eighth largest manufacturer. Out technology sector is now three times the size of France’s and twice that of Germany’s. ‘Project fear’ warned that if we left the EU we faced economic oblivion, but, on the contrary, since the referendum in 2016, the UK economy has grown faster than Germany, Italy, and Japan. We have the third fastest growth in the G7 group of leading economies. We are more innovative than both our European neighbours France & Germany and our Asian allies Japan & South Korea.
London has regained its pre-eminence as the global financial centre.

The UK now has more trade agreements than any other independent country on the planet. We have negotiated free trade agreements with 73 countries, from Mexico to Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. We’re the first European nation to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership with the Indo-Pacific’s most dynamic economies, which will make up nearly a quarter of global GDP by 2050. 

We are masters in our own house once again. We are now able to ban the cruel export of livestock for slaughter. We are have scrapped the dead hand of the Common Agricultural Policy, and instead incentivise biodiversity and stewardship.
We are able (if only we’d show more energy to get on with the job) to cut red tape and set the economy free.
Far from losing our influence, as we were warned, we have taken a lead in the world with our response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and to the situation in the Middle East.

I make no pretence that there isn’t a heap of intractable problems that we need to fix, but just consider the public disquiet and political angst in Germany, or the blockade of Paris by French Farmers.
Looking back isn’t the answer to any of our problems, neither is Labour’s ‘closer alignment with the EU’ -whatever sinister meaning that phrase may have.

On Monday the Commons debated the second reading of the Offshore Petroleum Licencing bill which is opposed by all the opposition parties, with the exception of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.
The Bill enables the licensing of new North Sea oil fields on an annual basis going forward.
 It is opposed because it is perceived to sacrifice UK’s World leadership role in the movement to reduce carbon emissions in the battle against climate change.
I think this fear is quite misplaced. Our leadership is established by the fact that despite generating only about 1% of the world’s carbon emissions, notwithstanding being the 6^th largest world economy. we have cut those emissions by more than any other developed economy – they are down by a whopping 30% from the level they were at in 1990.
This achievement has been partly secured by cutting out coal for power generation and increasing
reliance on wind and solar for electricity. In 2010 these two forms of power generation accounted for only 7% of our electricity, now they are producing 40% of it.
UK led has the world to give legislative imperative to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

The important thing to remember about this net-zero target however, is that it is ‘net’.
We will continue to generate emissions after 2050 because we will need many more years to replace our need for hydrocarbons in any number of uses from powering vehicles, heating our homes, manufacturing products, and generating electricity until we are able to replace gas-fired power stations, increasing nuclear, and until we have improved our capability to store power generated earlier through better battery technology.
Despite this time lag, we will reach a position of net zero by removing more carbon from the atmosphere through carbon capture and storage, so that overall we will balance continued emissions with the amount that we are removing.
This will be no mean endeavour: it will require new technology; transforming agriculture, and changes to the way we do things.
Nevertheless, it is much more manageable than the hair-shirt mentality that wishes to hobble our economy and prosperity by prematurely closing down one of our greatest assets: oil and gas in the North Sea.

We still need it; and we will still need it for decades after we achieve net-zero in 2050. So, if we do not get it by issuing new licences for North Sea exploration and extraction, then we are going to have to import it from overseas at much greater cost to ourselves and we will forgo what has been a lucrative source of tax revenue to fund public services, currently to the tune of £16 Billion annually.

The Opposition state however, that far from needing the oil and gas ourselves, we are exporting it.
First, they are largely wrong: virtually all the gas goes into our own UK distribution network.
But a significant amount of the crude oil does indeed go to Europe to be refined. This generates export earnings and tax revenues. It also obviates the need of those European refineries to get their crude oil from Russia and the Middle East, removing a source of profound  insecurity in our energy mix.

The reality is that the opponents of new licences for the north sea are not against oil extraction in principle, or the 200,000 well paid skilled jobs that enable it, they are just opposed to them being British jobs in British waters. They know we will simply have to get the oil and gas from other countries at higher cost.

The trump card however, and which renders the opponents case to the realm of ‘bonkers’, is that the carbon emissions created by extraction from our North Sea are vey much lower than the emissions generated by having to import it.
Mercifully, sanity prevailed and the Bill was carried by 293 votes to 211

With the Post Office Horizon scandal fresh in our minds, the Commons debated the Loan Charge yesterday.
Horizon and the Post Office rumbled on for years with debates and inquiries but did not explode into public consciousness until the recent ITV Drama.
The Loan Charge is in that rumbling along stage, having had a limited inquiry and a few debates but, notwithstanding thousands affected and ten suicides, it has yet to make an impression on the public and so, demand political action.

It is in all our interests that HM Revenue & Customs pursue ‘disguised remuneration’ schemes which disguise income in order to evade tax.
Many contractors however, faced with the complications of a particular tax regulation called IR35, were persuaded by employment agencies, employers  and accountants to accept payment in the form of a loan. They were assured that this was proper and above board, typically they paid fees of 18% to the provider. They declared the arrangements in their tax returns, unchallenged by HMRC.
Then years after the event, for tax years now closed, they started to receive huge tax bills, with eye watering additions for interest stretching back over the years.
Typically, these are people of modest means including many nurses, computer programmers, some were even contractors working at HMRC.

Much of the debate last Thursday was taken up with the detail of HMRC’s shocking treatment of its victims and the terrifying experience it can generate.
The worst of it however, is that unlike the Horizon scandal, where the Post office and Fujitsu can be blamed, the powers that HMRC are now using were specifically granted for that purpose by the House of Commons itself in the Finance (Number 2) Act 2017. (Exclusive blame lies with the Commons because Finance bills don’t go to the House of Lords for scrutiny).
A key question that we touched on was, how was it that, when we approved the measure, we didn’t realise the full implications and consequences of what we were about to inflict?
The 2017 Loan Charge measure defies the principles of good legislation because, first, it is retrospective in its effect, and second, it denies anyone affected the right to have their case resolved by a tribunal or court: It makes HMRC their sole judge, jury and executioner.

I have constituents who came to me for help, insisting that they declared all their affairs properly at the time and believed they had paid the tax that was due. HMRC didn’t challenge them or raise any question about what they had clearly set out in their tax returns. Then, using the power to re-open closed tax years retrospectively, HMRC has presented them with demands that they just cannot comprehend, against which they have no right of appeal.
Their lives are in turmoil, and they stand to lose everything

I wonder if it will take a TV drama to resolve

Hansard (parliamentary official report) 11 Jan:

“Sir Desmond Swayne 
What support the Church is providing to the Anglican Hospital in Gaza. 

The Second Church Estates Commissioner 
(Andrew Selous)
The House may not be aware that the Anglican Church is one of the largest providers of healthcare and education globally. The al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza is an example of this. Before Christmas, the hospital was severely damaged again and a tank demolished its front wall. Most of the hospital staff were taken away by the Israeli Defence Force and the Church of England has asked the Government here to inquire about their wellbeing and whereabouts and to request that they be released.

Sir Desmond Swayne 
Intimidation by hard-line settlers has prompted the Patriarch to say that clergy are fighting for their lives, and that the Armenian quarter faces a ‘violent demise’.
Is a Christian presence in Jerusalem still viable?

Andrew Selous 
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for bringing this issue before the House. He is right: a century ago, a quarter of Jerusalem was Christian; now, just 1% of the population is, and in the Armenian quarter of the old city, the Christian presence has come under intensified threat from intimidation and aggressive property acquisition by settlers. The Church of England is very concerned that the rule of law should prevail in Israel and the status quo be maintained. It is unconscionable that Christians should be driven from the holy land.”

I quote this exchange that took place in the Commons last Thursday to draw attention to two important issues. First, with respect to Gaza, whilst I support Israel’s right to go to war against Hamas (which was the subject of my last contribution in this column A special place in Hell (desmondswaynemp.com) ). I don’t believe that I have a single constituent who isn’t horrified by the consequent destruction and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

Second, the long-standing concerns I have had about Israel’s stewardship of the West Bank. On Wednesday I heard a dreadful report  (as yet, uncorroborated) of a visit by Israeli defence Force to a charity in Jenin which runs a home for disabled children, I’m told that they ‘trashed’ the place and took away all the Children’s winter clothes. I hope it isn’t true – and one has to be cautious about any partisan reports (as the BBC has learnt -or failed to learn- to its own cost).
What I will say however, as a former minister responsible for our assistance to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, I reached the conclusion that the Government of Israel had abandoned any prospect of a two-state solution and that this was made evident by support for the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank that would make any future Palestinian state geographically and economically unviable.
Whenever, I’ve badgered  current ministers about this, they always respond by saying that we constantly raise this issues with Israel. Well, I did that too. At least I did so sufficiently robustly that the Deputy Prime-Minister stormed out of the room. There must come a time however, when constantly raising matters to little effect, demands a different response.

Having, on many occasions over the last 50 years, participated in political protest marches -indeed, I organised some of them – I am loathe to restrict the right to protest peacefully, irrespective of whether I approve or disapprove of point that any particular protest is trying to make.
I believe that freedom of expression is an essential ingredient of our liberal democracy. None of us has a right not to be offended by the peaceful protests of those with whom we disagree, however profound that disagreement may be.
Nevertheless, I also believe that a balance has to be struck between the right of some to protest and the rights of others to go about their lawful business unmolested and without great inconvenience.
It was for this reason that I voted for measures to constrain the sort of protests that were typical of groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, which deliberately sought to severely disrupt the economic and social life of anyone not themselves involved in the protests.
I think it is now time to consider some restraints on the repeated weekly disruption caused by pro-Palestinian marches in London and other city centres. I understand that Lord Walney, the Government’s adviser on political violence and disruption, has raised the possibility of charging the organisers with the costs of policing the marches (£17 million in the case of the Metropolitan Police Force between early October and early December alone). Personally, I would be reluctant to introduce such a principle, which could be used to stifle any protest by making it too prohibitively expensive. I think a better solution would be make a provision where such protests could, in certain limited circumstances, be confined to a suitable location rather than occupying the public highways.

Together with a number of senior parliamentary colleagues, I watched the footage taken from public and private security cameras, and also the body cameras of Hamas terrorists involved in the pogrom of 7th October.
When it finished, nobody spoke, we just filed silently from the auditorium having witnessed such unspeakable scenes of horror.
The merciless torture and killing, including women, children and babies wasn’t the worst of it. Neither was the grotesque mutilation of their corpses. What really affected me were the scenes of the terrorists whooping with joy as they phoned home on their mobiles to boast to their families about exactly what they had just done, demanding that mothers be brought to the phone so that they could hear the detail and offer their congratulations.
For me, the ultimate degradation was the jubilant chanting over the corpses that ‘God is Great’. These cannot be the worshipers of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful (anymore than the perpetrators of similar massacres in sixteenth century European wars of religion were the servants of Christ). There has to be a special place in Hell for this blasphemy

On 19^th December, just as Parliament was about to go into its Christmas recess, the Government published its reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework. This is a vitally important document because it sets out the terms within which local planning authorities (in our case the elected New Forest District Council) must determine planning applications.
I say it is vitally important because housing development is, by a country mile, the most common complaint that prompts constituents to contact me.
There is an acute housing shortage nationally, and the New Forest is no exception. Few young people, born and brought-up in this district have any prospect of being able to afford a home here either to purchase or to rent. Nevertheless, almost every significant housing development becomes the focus of local opposition.  Increasingly, even though residents accept the need for more houses, they believe that proposed developments represent the sort of housing that it suits developers to build, rather than the sort that the community actually needs.

The new National Planning Policy Framework is designed to support the Government’s commitment to building more homes; more quickly, more beautifully and more sustainably.
It gives much  greater scope to local planning authorities like NFDC to determine what kind of development is appropriate through their own updated local plan; to reject inappropriate development and protect the Green Belt.
In this respects it builds on the reforms that have been implemented incrementally since 2010, including abolishing housing targets imposed from Whitehall.  Frankly, those Labour-imposed regional targets simply didn’t work. In fact, they built nothing but resentment: housebuilding fell to its lowest peacetime levels since the 1920s. By contrast, net housing supply last year was higher than any point under the last Labour government’s targets, and over 2.5 million extra homes have been delivered across England since 2010. It is just bizarre, given the evidence, that the Labour Party have announced that, were they to return to government, they would re-impose the central housing targets.

The new Framework was preceded by a consultation which began in December 2022 and ended in March 2033 and generated 2,600 responses.
One of the issues consulted upon, and about which the Government has yet to respond, was the question of implementing the power set out in the Levelling-up Act 2023 which will enable local planning authorities to decline applications from developers whose previous record has been poor.
Currently every planning application has to be determined entirely on its own individual merit. It is important that this new power to take into account the developer’s previous record is implemented as soon as possible. One of the reasons given by opponents of proposed housing developments is the developer’s poor record of honouring undertakings and abiding by the conditions upon which permission has been granted in the first place. Giving the promised power to planning authorities would improve public confidence in the planning system by ensuring that developers raise their game.

The Commons has not considered a bill on assisted dying since 2015 (when it was defeated by a decisive margin of almost three to one: 330 to 118), the subject has been debated several times since then, though without a vote. I have no doubt that it is time to test parliamentary opinion once again.

My own opinion, however, is unchanged.  
I accept that it is very difficult to stand out against the appeal of Esther Rantzen and others with terminal illnesses who wish to end their suffering on their own terms and at a time of their choosing. It is hard to prolong their suffering, or the suffering of others that surround and give support to them.
Nevertheless, hard cases can make bad law.

I fear that what may begin as a choice, will swiftly become an expectation. There will be an ever so subtle pressure on the elderly and infirm to end the effort and expense of carrying on living.
One can see the attraction from the economic point of view of the healthcare providers: it will be much more cost effective to make available a service that despatches terminally ill patients, than to continue to manage complex nursing requirements. Canadian clinicians visiting Westminster have warned us of this. And that the provision of the new life ending service there has been at the expense of palliative care.
 No patient should live in fear that their end will be grizzly, undignified and painful. Terminal conditions, properly managed and with the right palliative care can make for a good and peaceful death.

I debated this subject last year at the University of Durham. I was up against Baroness Meacher who was then sponsoring an assisted dying bill in the House of Lords. She was determined to keep the terms of reference as narrow as possible: there had to be a terminal prognosis of death within six months, with brace of safeguards including certainty that the patient was of sound mind.
She was rather undermined however, by her seconder, a psychiatrist who argued, on the contrary, that the service should be available to absolutely anyone who wanted it, indeed that one shouldn’t need to be ill at all.
There is a significant danger here. Those jurisdictions that have embraced assisted dying have all begun with tightly defined criteria and strong safeguards. Very swiftly however, the criteria have been extended including even, in some cases, to children.

In 2016 a teenager survived, physically unharmed, a bombing at Brussels Airport, which killed thirty-two others. She suffered post traumatic stress disorder and at the age of 23 in 2022 had her life ended by doctors at her request. I think we need to consider very carefully the direction of travel of assisted dying, and where that road will end.
For certain, the creation of a ’dying service’ would profoundly change the nature of the medical profession.

Parliamentary opinion has hitherto been very different from public opinion polling on this question, possibly because we argue in detail, rather than give an instantaneous opinion to a pollster, nevertheless I have great respect for parliamentary colleagues  – and for Esther Rantzen too -who argue in favour of change, though I disagree with them profoundly.

Given perpetual political controversy, people are often surprised to discover that
The Palace of Westminster can be quite a spiritual place: The design of the building is profoundly influenced by Pugin, our most prolific church architect of the 19^th century Oxford Movement; The Lord’s Prayer is carved into the external stonework right around the building; The iconic clock face on the Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, is surrounded with words from Psalm 37 “All through this hour Lord, be my guide”; Central Lobby, at the epicentre of the Palace, resembles an Orthodox cathedral, overlooked by icons of all the patron saints of our United Kingdom. Its central floor tiling design
displays words from Psalm 127 “Unless the Lord Build the House, those that labour, labour in vain”;
The hammer beam ceiling of Westminster Hall, the only surviving part of the original palace dating back 900 years, is held aloft by 26 carved angels.
The first official daily business in Parliament is prayers: in the Commons read by Mr Speaker’s Chaplain, and in the Lords by one its 26 Bishops.

Of Course, as with the rest of the nation, we have long abandoned the notion that the season of Advent, like Lent, was supposed to be a fast in preparation for the subsequent feast.
Nevertheless, the nature of the building, lit with Christmas lights, in the dark mornings and early evenings, makes it much easier to ‘plug into’ the proper spirit of Advent: Hope.
And don’t we need such hope when our TV screens are filled with the intolerable suffering of children in so many ravaged and war-torn places.

Advent carol services, of which there have been four in the last week at Westminster, begin with Isaiah’s prophesy of Christ’s Birth 700 years before the event. Isaiah’s was a time of hope when Israel had returned from 70 years exile in Babylon, to rebuild Jerusalem.
Advent is about Hope In darkest of times; Hope in the promise of a New Heaven and a New Earth.

Karl Marx regarded such hope as an ‘opiate’ to make the miserable lives of the proletariat tolerable by placing their hopes in the joys of a future life; An opiate propagated by the bourgeoisie to prevent the proles from rising and taking revolutionary action to change the terms of their miserable existence.
Arguably, religious belief in a future life may dull the disappointments of this one. Nevertheless, if we have religious hope, it in no way constitutes any disproof of what it is that we hope for. In the same way, during a night of anxiety we might hope for the dawn. Just because we desire and need the dawn to come, doesn’t mean that it won’t.
Marxism poses no threat to the Hope which characterises Advent. The real threat to it, is our own self-satisfied inability to recognise our need for redemption in the New Heaven and the New Earth.