Kate Forbes is, in my estimate, the best candidate to be leader of the Scottish National Party -and by a country mile. The difficulty for a member of a rival political party, like myself, is that you don’t necessarily want the best and most effective candidate to win. The interests of my own party and, I sincerely believe, of the nation too, are best served if they instead choose a complete dud.
Nevertheless, Kate Forbes has been treated most shamefully by the public media whose focus has been almost exclusively on her Christian beliefs which are, more often than not, at odds with current fashionable social mores. What she would actually do in the Edinburgh government, and the direction in which she would take her party, has been almost entirely crowded-out by discussion of her Christian beliefs -including that marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman.
I remember when Tim Farron became leader of the Liberal Democrats and was treated in a similar fashion for exactly the same reason.
What is rather odd, even somewhat sinister, is that politicians who adherents of other religions which, nevertheless share the same traditional approach to marriage and sexuality, are never exposed to similar criticism. The treatment of Hamza Yusef, another rival for the SNP leadership, would be an obvious case in point.
It is as if our liberal intelligentsia has decided that Christianity, uniquely among religions, must be hounded from the public sphere and confined to ‘safe spaces’ out of sight in churches.

As the Government Whip who was responsible for shepherding the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 through all its Commons stages, I have some ‘skin in the game’.
I was clear in my own mind that the legislation properly distinguished between marriage as a legal status which the state has every right to define, and Holy Matrimony which is a religious matter instituted for quite different purposes.
Notwithstanding that distinction, Christian MPs divided almost equally in support and opposition to the measure (as indeed they have on almost every ‘conscience’ vote in my experience since I’ve been in the Commons).  The implications of biblical accounts of what Jesus actually taught are not always straightforward  -especially if you’ve read the New Testament in its original Greek.
Enoch Powell ( himself a former professor of Greek) in his discussion of John ch8:  the woman taken in adultery, leaves me struggling with what Jesus could possibly have meant when he told her ‘neither do I condemn thee’ before issuing what he knew to be the impossible command ‘go and sin no more’.

As a Christian, I don’t share the positions taken by Kate Forbes or some of her beliefs, but she has every right to a hearing in the front line of our national politics.

Sir Keir Starmer made every effort throughout the 2017-19 in Parliament to prevent UK leaving the EU. He has made clear however, that Labour is now reconciled to BREXIT and will not seek to reverse it. But this is rather undermined by Labour’s current actions in Parliament.  At every opportunity, when a problem occurs, They put it down to our having left the EU. This week, for example, they blamed the shelves emptied of salads in our supermarkets on the decision by the British people to vote to leave the EU. As I pointed out in the Commons in response to this nonsense, perhaps we ought to have been told -before we voted – that a vote to leave was going to result in the frosts in Morocco.
The reality is that most of our salads, at this time of year, come from southern Spain and Morocco both of which had an exceptionally warm December followed by an exceptionally cold January. Consequently, the crop has been particularly disappointing. Our own domestic supplies of these commodities won’t arrive until summer because the cost of heating greenhouses is prohibitively uncompetitive.
Seeking supplies from elsewhere has had the additional complication of striking French ferry workers.
None of this, of course, has a blind thing to do with BREXIT 

Perhaps even more indicative of Labour’s continuing hostility to BREXIT is its determination to thwart the Retained EU Law Bill.  This Bill completes most of the Brexit agenda. There are some 4,000 pieces of EU legislation which remain on the statute book because we incorporated them into our own law as there simply wasn’t long enough to consider them individually in the time available while we were negotiating our exit. Then there was the Covid-19 pandemic, causing a legislative backlog; then the war in Ukraine seized the political agenda. Only now therefore, are we wrestling with the EU retained Law Bill. Basically, the bill empowers the Government to go through all the EU laws and, those that it does not specifically decide to keep, will automatically lapse according to the timetable set out in the Bill.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats are now sponsoring amendments in the House of Lords that will require that each of these individual legislative measures be separately debated in Parliament. It is, in effect, a wrecking amendment. It would clog-up all available parliamentary time for years.
The motive behind such an agenda seems rather obvious to me: its supporters don’t want us to differ from the EU’s regulatory regime, because to do so, would make it harder for us to re-join -which is their real objective. 

When the Elections Bill was in Parliament, which included the requirement that voters produce photo ID at polling stations for the first time on the mainland, I received few letters of objection, and I still do.
Voter fraud in the form of ‘personation’ has not been a problem in The New Forest but there are districts in some of our cities where the there has been real concern about the integrity of the ballot.
In any event, it is no use reheating the arguments that were rehearsed in Parliament during the Bill’s passage. It is now The Elections Act 2022.  So, as from May this year individuals who wish to vote in person, including those acting as a proxy on behalf of another individual, will be required to produce an accepted form of photographic ID at the polling station in order to vote. They have had to do so for years in Northern Ireland, and it was also successfully piloted in a number of districts on the mainland too: We know that it works.

We have District and Parish Council elections in the New Forest on 4th May, so get ready: When you go to your polling station you will need to take with you one of the following documents. It doesn’t matter if they have expired so long as the photo is still a good likeness.

A Passport issued by UK, any of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, British Overseas Territories
Or

• A Passport issued by an EEA State
• A Passport issued by a Commonwealth Country
• Photographic driver’s licence (full or provisional) issued by the UK, Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, or an EEA state
• EEA photographic ID card
• UK Biometric Residence Permit
• An identity card bearing the Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (PASS card)
• A blue badge
• Oyster 60+ card
• A concessionary travel pass funded by HM Government or local authority, such as a Hampshire County Council Bus pass, disabled persons bus pass or Welsh or Northern Ireland travel card.

You must take the original document with you to the polling station:  A scanned, electronic version or a copy will not be accepted. 
(Beware, University and College Student Union cards are NOT included).

If you do not have any of these then you can apply to New Forest District Council to get a free Voter Authority Certificate. This is a document containing the voter’s name and photograph, specifically for the purposes of voting and will be accepted at the polling station. The deadline to apply for a Voter Authority Certificate will be 5pm on Tuesday 25 April.  But don’t wait, do it while it is in your mind, like the right now!
The application form can be downloaded from https://newforest.gov.uk/VoterID and emailed to electoralservices@nfdc.gov.uk 

Recently I showed a guest around Parliament who was incredulous to find Bishops in the House of Lords, that the daily proceedings in both Houses began with prayers, and that much of the architecture, both internal and external, resembles that of a church.
 “What about the ‘secular state?’ She asked.
I had to tell her that we don’t have one. One the contrary, and as anyone can see on every coin, the Monarch reigns by the Grace of God (D.G) and is ‘Defender of the Faith’ (F.D).
The coronation oath requires the Monarch, as ‘Supreme Governor’ of the Church of England to defend the ‘Protestant Reformed Religion, by law established’.

Only in the Last hundred years has Parliament delegated powers to the Church of England to alter its liturgy and doctrine. Even that delegation isn’t absolute: any proposed changes to Church canon law have first to be ratified by Parliament’s Ecclesiastical Committee.
An MP is appointed as a Church Commissioner and answers questions every month in the Commons on behalf of the Church.

Recently tensions have arisen between the Church and Parliament over the issue of Gay Marriage.
Parliament passed the Equal Marriage Act in 2013, but it specifically excluded the Church of England from its provisions.  Were same-sex marriages to take place in the Church of England, Parliament would need first to amend the 2013 Act. Recently, some parliamentarians have threatened the Archbishop of Canterbury with exactly that prospect, given their frustration at what they consider to be the slow progress of the Church on this question. After all, it was only last week the Synod considered merely providing prayers for same-sex couples in church. These prayers will ask for God’s blessing on the individuals, not their union. The Church’s doctrine of marriage will remain unaltered, namely that it can only take place between one man and one woman.

The problem for the Church is that in its legislating Synod there are two irreconcilable blocks, neither of which has a majority. About 45% are traditionalist and resist change to doctrine and practice, whilst another 45% are liberal progressives that promote the very changes that the traditionalists resist.
The Progressives want same-sex marriage, whilst the traditionalists want no change. Blessings for same-sex couples is a compromise or ‘fudge’ that satisfies neither side.

It is difficult to see how this can end well. The Bishops will now go away and come back with proposals for the prayers to be used in these blessings, but they will need to be accepted by a two-thirds majority in the Synod. Currently, that majority just does not appear to exist, or anything like it.

My personal prejudice is that Christianity has always spent too much time worrying about sex and sexuality, and there are much more important issues to address.
Nevertheless, a way out needs to be found in order to prevent collateral damage to the international Anglican Communion and to the integrity of the relationship between the Established Church and the State.

The Church of England is comprised of two provinces: Canterbury and York. That division is purely one of Geography. Perhaps we could instead make the division doctrinal: traditional parishes could opt for, say, Canterbury, and liberal progressive parishes for York. Schism and disestablishment could be avoided.

It might just work.

I’ve had quite a correspondence from a number of regular remailers, carping about the Brexit anniversary and citing the gloomy forecast from the IMF.

Let’s take the IMF first. Like most forecasts, they are rarely accurate. The IMF has consistently underestimated UK economic performance. Sometimes they have been spectacularly wrong, not least when they warned George Osborne that his policy would deliver mass unemployment, when on the contrary, we delivered record levels of employment.
When it comes to dealing with a forecast like the IMF, it is always worth reading all of it, rather than relying on a few nuggets that  headline writers have extracted to suit their own purposes.
On the morning of the forecast’s publication, the newscasts made it sound like the UK was facing oblivion. But  what the report actually reveals, together with its accompanying commentary, is that the IMF thinks that the UK is “on the right track’”; that we had done well in the last year, with growth revised upwards to 4.1%, which is one of the highest growth rates in Europe for 2022.

As for the depression about the Brexit anniversary, since the European Union referendum, the UK economy has grown at about the same rate as Germany, and our cumulative growth over the 2022 to 2024 period is predicted to be higher than that of both Germany and Japan, at a similar rate to that of the United States of America.
We are not immune to the inflationary and supply-side consequences of the war in Ukraine but the Governor of the Bank of England has said that any UK recession this year is likely to be shallower than previously predicted: Comparatively, we are weathering the storm pretty well.

The Economic benefits of Brexit were all bound to have their impact in the long run. They are the consequence of regulatory freedom that allows us to suit ourselves and play to our comparative advantages, rather than be bound to the collective interests of the EU. But making use of the regulatory freedom to change our way of doing things requires the dedication and courage of the Government to implement that change, only then, and after time to bed them in, will we see the results. Alas, we lost two years to the overwhelming agenda of addressing Covid-19. Now however, when the Government does have the will to proceed and has introduced its Regulatory Freedoms Bill, I find that I’m inundated with an email campaign not to proceed with the Bill.

You can’t have it both ways. Complaining on the one hand, that we haven’t seen the economic benefits of Brexit. Whilst, on the other hand, demanding that we desist from implementing the changes that will deliver those benefits.
The reality is that they don’t want us to move out of the EU’s regulatory orbit, because ultimately, they want us to re-join it.

We already have the best benefit of Brexit is: we are no longer told what to do by people that we did not elect, and whom are unable to remove.

Whilst the Public Order Bill was going through the Commons Last October I received a large correspondence against its provisions from constituents who believed that it reduced the opportunities for lawful protest.
I do have reservations about the extent of discretion being given to senior police in some circumstances, but I believed that the right to protest was safe, that is until it was compromised by an amendment, which the Government opposed, but was carried.
 There is always a balance to be had between protest and the potential for disorder. What if the right of protestors to demonstrate prevents others from going about their lawful business?
We’ve all seen how groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have made life a misery for people trying to get to work or preventing from dealing with important family commitments. Ordinary people have rights too.
 So, I thought it was right to give the Police sufficient new powers to prevent protests from wrecking things for everyone else.

The irony is that during the bill’s passage in the Commons, MPs who were among the most opposed to the balance that it sought to strike in restraining aspects protest, themselves inserted its most illiberal provision: excluding freedom of speech and any demonstration whatsoever within an exclusion zone;
New Clause 11 prevents anyone within 164 yards of an abortion clinic (or any adjoining highway, or area visible from such a highway) from protesting in any way at all, even just being there.
I accept that those seeking the services provided by the clinics have an absolute right to free and unmolested access but these provisions are extreme: you won’t even be allowed just to stand there silently.

Minister’s, who opposed the new clause, accepted that it contravenes our Human Rights laws and that something needed to be done to amend it in the Lords. Unfortunately, The Government has no majority in the Lords and we will just have to wait and see what they send back to the Commons in the next few days. Unamended, it will probably end up in another spat it the Strasbourg Court under the European Convention on Human Rights.

In the meantime, when the bill hasn’t even become law yet, we’ve already had the Police arrest someone for standing silently close to an abortion clinic, even though it was closed at the time so she wasn’t in anyone way.
When she was interrogated about what she was doing, she said that she was praying silently. They then demanded to know what she was praying about!
We really are now in the realms of Orwellian ‘thought Crime’.

Further to my article in this column last week, the Government has intervened to prevent the Scottish Parliament’s Gender Recognition Bill proceeding to receive royal assent.

The debate following the Government’s announcement was a very angry affair. First, because Scottish National Party MPs felt that the Parliament in Edinburg was being slighted by Whitehall. Second, because the debate about sex and gender has been particularly vicious from the outset. Individuals have been treated shamefully when they have expressed concern that the privacy, dignity and safety of women may be compromised when men present themselves as female and are given access to women-only facilities: The philosopher Professor Kathleen Stock was hounded out of the University of Sussex for saying so; The author J K Rowling has been denounced and ‘cancelled’ for agreeing with her; The Labour MP for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield, was heckled by her own side in the Commons last week when the supported the Government’s sensible course of action. These women have been brave. Many others have decided to keep their own counsel because of the vitriol poured out on the women who have broken cover.

I predict that the temperature will rise further because the Government has now committed to bring forward its own legislation to outlaw conversion therapy. This has long been planned but was originally designed to restrict the measure to therapies that purported to convert gay people into heterosexuals. These therapies have a long and bizarre history, from testicle transplants, to lobotomies, exorcisms and hypnosis. My concern about any new law is first, that most of these egregious practices are now unlawful anyway and would constitute an assault. Second, because of the difficulty of defining a new law so it does not constrain freedom of speech.

The intention is now include transgender conversion therapy within the proposed ban. This adds a level of complexity to an already highly emotionally charged debate. When Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, he made it clear that his proposal would exclude transgender conversion therapies – he was right to do so, I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole- but the current administration has reversed that decision.
The problem remains essentially the same: how to define the law so that it does not prevent freedom of speech. The difficulty is greater however, because there is much less of a consensus.

Young people, including children at school, who are confused about their gender may find themselves considering treatments which will interfere with puberty and have consequences that they may later bitterly regret. It is essential that they think this through and are sure about what they are contemplating. The problem will be to define a law which does not constrain the ability of parents, teachers, clinicians, friends, and why not clergy too, to have serious conversations with children about their decisions.
Standing in the way of such discussions is deeply irresponsible.

I’m surprised to have had so many emails demanding that the UK Government desist from any inclination to deny Royal Assent to the new Scottish legislation on gender self-declaration.
I disagree.
What they do in Scotland is a matter for them, but we cannot allow them to make changes there that have such profound implications for the rest of the UK without our consent.
I’ve said in this column previously [ Can a Woman have a Penis? (desmondswaynemp.com) ] that I don’t care what people chose to describe themselves as, but physical attributes have consequences. It simply isn’t proper or safe for a bloke with a penis, even if he presents as a female, to have access to exclusively female facilities. And I don’t believe that there is a majority in favour of it in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Scottish legislation entitles beneficiaries to a new birth certificate with their gender of choice. This would be indistinguishable from any other birth certificate if presented in in other parts of the UK, lawfully entitling them to gender exclusive facilities.
I know that Keir Starmer has indicated that he would implement the same law in England, but he isn’t Prime Minister…yet. I believe that we should veto the New Scots law until we vote for a UK Government in favour of it. After all, we just might not.

Further to my last contribution to this column, when I commented on my colleague Andrew Bridgen’s speech in the commons about the safety of Covid vaccinations, I have, over the last few days, had a stream of outraged emails after the Government whip was withdrawn from him.
When I first heard the news I was about to explode with indignation too. Freedom, of speech  (however, one may disagree with what is actually said), is an essential element of our democracy. One of our most important parliamentary statutes, the Bill of Rights 1689, is explicit:
“freedom of debate and speech in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place other than in Parliament’
I quickly recovered from my apoplectic fit when I discovered what had actually happened. Mr Bridgen did not have the whip withdrawn for the questions he raised in Parliament, rather it was for what he said on Twitter. Frankly, it was grotesque: He quoted a clinician of his acquaintance comparing the Covid vaccine programme with the Holocaust. Whatever doubts one may have about the vaccine, to compare an heroic effort to combat disease -which liberated us from the misery of lock-downs, with a deliberate attempt to wipe out Jewish people, is beyond the pale.

Covid vaccination is voluntary. Patients can make up their own minds about their effectiveness and the risks of an adverse reaction -the statistic for which are available for anyone with an enquiring mind. (I took a very different view when there was the element of coercion involved, with the threat of dismissal for health professionals and ‘vaccine passports’ for the rest of us, but that has all gone).

I am not a clinician but my prejudice is that Covid is insufficiently dangerous to justify a vaccination programme beyond those particularly vulnerable to it. Because of my age I was glad to have mine, but I am sceptical about the benefits for younger people and especially children.
Many vaccinations run the risk of adverse reactions which can amount to an unpleasant few days, to permanent disablement and even death. For our collective benefit we seek to encourage vaccination. So, we really need to address the shortcomings of our vaccination damage compensation scheme: the evidential bar is set too high and the scale of compensation far too low, with the result that claimants face the delays, risks, and expense of having to go to court.

There will always be risks, and I have every sympathy with those who have had adverse reactions, but I remain of the view that the swift roll out of the covid vaccine was a triumph.

I have received a substantial email correspondence in support of a speech in Parliament by my colleague Andrew Bridgen MP, demanding that the Covid-19 vaccination program be discontinued on the ground that it presents a greater danger than the disease itself.

The emails expressed outrage that the Commons Chamber was virtually empty when Bridgen delivered his speech. As it happens, I was listening at the time he gave it, but the reason the that the Chamber was empty was because it was the end-of-day Adjournment debate:  There is a ballot for the half-hour slot at the end of each day’s parliamentary business. The successful applicant gets 15 minutes to speak on his chosen topic and the minister with responsibility has 15 in which to reply. Nobody else is expected to participate. As the debate falls at the very end of day’s whipped business, the Chamber empties and in is not uncommon for only the four MPs to be left: the member who secured the slot, the minister answering, the duty whip and Mr Speaker. No particular indifference or disrespect was being displayed on this occasion.

Mr Bridgen has since been suspended from the Commons and some of my correspondents have emailed to express outrage at this denial of freedom of speech. Their concern is entirely misplaced: Bridgen’s suspension was for a breach of the lobbying rules that has been going through the quasi-judicial processes for some time and has nothing to do with the recent speech on vaccines.
Nevertheless, the claims that Mr Bridgen made are very serious and demand answers. There has been plenty of coverage on social media, but the issue has been almost completely ignored by the press and broadcasters.
Bridgen gave detailed statistics and revealed the sources of his data. Given shocking conclusion that he drew, we deserve a detailed point- by-point rebuttal in defence of the current vaccination policy.
Both public and Parliament benefited from detailed independent expert questioning of the models and data presented by the advocates of lockdown. Equally, we would now benefit if the medical establishment were to answer Mr Bridgen and justify their policy scientifically.

At the hight of the ‘witch craze’ hysteria that accompanied the pandemic, I was denounced for being ‘anti-vax’ and Cabinet members demanded that I recant and apologise. Comment in one national newspaper -whilst not exactly saying that I was a child molester nevertheless suggested that I looked like one!
I was never ‘anti-vax’, I was just opposed to the policy of lockdown, the disastrous consequences of which are becoming ever more apparent. On the contrary, I welcomed the vaccine as a great scientific breakthrough and as the means of our escape from the dreadful lockdowns. (Though I believed that the vaccination effort should be confined to those who are particularly vulnerable to the disease, and I was never persuaded that it was wise to extend it to Children).

Serious questions have been raised about the wisdom of continuing with the current policy. They need to be addressed in detail, but they are simply being ignored.