As the annual ballot for private member’s bills draws nearer, I find myself being lobbied by increasing numbers of constituents who have had ‘happy thoughts’ -as Winston Churchill characterised them- about new laws by which we might be governed.
My prejudice, on the contrary, is that we already have too many laws and that we should be taking time to repeal some of them rather than making even more.
Nevertheless, every year I obey the instructions of my whip and put my name into the ballot, then I hope like hell that, once again, I will be unsuccessful.
The unfortunates, who do come in the top ten, will be inundated with pleas from every good cause to sponsor a bill to address some perceived evil.

So far, this year’s most numerous entreaty, even before entering the ballot -let alone being successful, is that I sponsor a bill to address the existential threat to humanity posed by climate change.
We already have a the Climate Change Act 2008 and, as a consequence, we’ve cut our Co2 emissions more than any other leading economy. The reality is that UK generates less than 1% of the World’s emissions. Real impact impact on the problem now lies in the hands of the big emitters like the USA, China and India. No UK legislation, from either the Government or a private member, will have any leverage on what those nations do.

So, back to the Private Member’s ballot: Success gives the winners a small amount of parliamentary time. To proceed to the become law therefore, a bill has itself to be small -that is, of very limited scope, or it will run out of the limited time available to it, unless the Government were to step in and give it some of the Government’s own parliamentary time – in which case it is arguable that it is no longer a private member’s bill, but something that the Government really wanted done anyway.

There are only 13 sitting Fridays set aside for the Commons to deal with private member’s bills.
Most MP’s will be in their constituencies on those Fridays, with a long list of things to do. Nevertheless, we will receive entreaties from constituents, charities and other interest groups to go to Westminster on a particular Friday to support the bill they favour which is to be debated on that day.
I almost always decline.
The principal enemy of any private member’s bill is the shortage of time available. Opponents need not trouble themselves to vote against it – earning the opprobrium of all its supporters. All they need do is take up the time with lengthy speeches, even saying what a wonderful measure it is.
So, if you were an avid supporter of a bill, the last thing you would want to do, is to endanger its progress by turning up on its Friday and taking up some of its valuable time.

Hopefully I’ll be unsuccessful in the ballot again this year.

A number of constituents emailed enquiring why candidates for the Conservative Party Leadership, who -on the basis of media speculation- were expected to ‘throw their hats into the ring’, had not yet done so.
There are several possible answers. First, the speculation may have been misinformed. Second, the anticipated candidate might not have secured the required ten signatures from colleagues necessary for a valid nomination. It is always preferable to get the nomination sewn up first, then to announce your candidature, rather than to announce first, only to have to subsequently and ignominiously withdraw, having failed to get sufficient endorsements. Third, the potential candidate may have thought better of it and changed their mind.

I think this is my 9th Conservative Party leadership contest in 28 years a member of the parliamentary party. In only one of them have I backed the winner from the outset of the official contest.
On this occasion I have signed the nomination of Mel Stride. I accept that there are other candidates with great strengths under whom I would be pleased to give support from the backbenches. (I have no desire to return to the frontbench having spent 11 years there in opposition and 6 years there in government.) Nevertheless, I regard Mel as the most experienced candidate because he has been a Treasury minister, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and -In my estimate most important of all, and unlike any of the other candidates – he has been a whip.   I regard experience of the whip’s office, the nuts and bolts of managing the ‘wolf pack’ that is the parliamentary party, as being extremely important, particularly in opposition where you have no ‘payroll’ on which to rely or other preferment that you can offer.

Have some sympathy however, for whomsoever wins this contest.
I served two Leaders of the Opposition as parliamentary private secretary over six years. Leading the Opposition is the worst job in politics imaginable, particularly when a new government has been elected with a large majority. That government has all the initiative and all the interest of the media and ‘commentariat’ is focussed upon it. Nobody takes much notice of what the Leader of the Opposition has to say, unless it turns out to be something stupid, in which case they will make a meal of it.
There is little money to afford heavyweight support. And it is always much harder to ask the questions at the weekly match with the Prime Minister than it is for the PM to answer them: The expectation is that you must address the big issues of the week, otherwise it will be thought that you are ducking them, and on those questions the PM will have been briefed to the eyeballs with the full resources of government.
You will have your own record in government traduced and thrown back at you, and you will be humiliated when some daft comment by one of your colleagues is quoted back to you.

I wish Mel the best of British…but whichever candidate wins, I hope they know what they are letting themselves in for.

I made my position clear in this column Electing Party Leaders (desmondswaynemp.com) when I argued that ordinary political party members should not choose the leaders of their parliamentary parties. The choices that they made, overturning the choice of their MPs, were disastrous for Labour with Jeremy Corbyn and for the Tories with Liz Truss.

Party Members should never have been granted that power. Nevertheless, taking acquired rights of members away from them is rather more difficult. Conservative Party membership is already increasing in response to the prospect of electing a new leader.
Changing the Party’s constitution to remove the membership vote would be controversial and would take some time to deliver, if indeed the two thirds majority from the members is a realistic prospect.
I fear that we are stuck with the existing system for the present. Perhaps in the medium-term we might placate members by reversing the current arrangements to allow the membership to have a role in thinning out the candidates, but to let MPs have exclusive choice between the final two candidates.

A number of Conservative supporters and former supporters did suggest to me during the election campaign and afterwards, that the division of right-of-centre voters between Conservative and Reform should be healed by somehow engineering the election of Nigel Farage as the Leader of the Conservative Party. I do not think there is the remotest possibility of this happening, nor should there be.
First, the suggestion is based on the false assumption that that those who voted for Reform were formerly Conservative voters and that the swiftest way to ‘repatriate’ them would be to engineer a Farage Leadership. Undoubtedly, the intervention of Reform turned a Tory defeat into something of a ‘wipe-out’ but is quite mistaken to believe that the collapse in Conservative votes was principally the work of Reform, and that therefore, an accommodation with it would repair the damage.
 Lord Ashcroft’s polling suggests that only one quarter of those who voted Conservative 2019, but who abandoned the Party on 4^th July, voted for Reform. The rest either stayed at home, or voted Labour, Lib Dem and Green. That polling bears out my own experience on the doorsteps.

Second, it is just pie in the sky. There is no such deal to be had.
Somehow, I find myself on Farage’s mailing list. He emailed last week clearly indicating his belief that Conservatives are a spent force, that he aims to first destroy, and then to replace them. And to that end, he is already focussed on the next phase of the endeavour: the council elections next May.

Third, the very idea is grotesque, that Conservatives should embrace a man as leader, who, when asked to name the politician he most admired replied that it was Putin.
He has become an apologist for the invasion of Ukraine; And he is the most enthusiastic devotee at the shrine of Donald Trump – stepping forward to defend even Trump’s most egregious excesses.
Were such a leadership a possibility, and mercifully it isn’t, nothing could be more calculated to bury Conservatism for the foreseeable future.

At the hustings during the election campaign, when I asserted the strength of the economy, it was greeted with laughter and distain. So, when the Gross Domestic Product numbers were published last week, confirming further economic growth ahead of the rest of the G7, and the headline was ‘boost for Starmer’ :  the irony was not lost on me.

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 I am sorry to have lost so many diligent and committed colleagues at the election, many of whom will now have to find employment to support their families. I used to meet with a dozen colleagues on a Tuesday morning for a short Bible study. Alas only two of us have survived.
I suppose that its very nature, politics is a risky career and politicians go into it knowing the odds.
Any career, profession, or employment can end in disappointment, defeat, and failure. Perhaps the only real difference with politics is that such defeats are attended with the glare of publicity.

*

Ironically, another group of politicians for whom I have a great deal of sympathy are the thirty or so Labour front-benchers who slogged it through the hard years in opposition, only to find that they have not been rewarded with a position in government.
Opposition is a thankless task for a shadow minister, you are on your own marking your government opposite number, but without the special advisers and civil service back-up that your minister enjoys. You will spend your weekends travelling, at your own expense, to make a speech somewhere in the vain hope that someone is going to take any notice of what you have to say.  I know, I did twelve years of it. To have done it faithfully, but not to have been rewarded with a government red box, will be a bitter pill to swallow.
 Undoubtedly, managing those the bruised egos will be a significant headache for the Labour whips, in addition to managing the expectations of their very large majority, many of whom may be rather unrealistic about their own prospects of achieving ministerial office any time soon.
I suspect that the Government whips office will do what they did with their large majority in 1997. They simply won’t need them all to get their business through the Commons. So, they will be able to run shifts, allowing many to spend more time in their constituencies building up a reputation for being helpful, rather than plotting, airing grievances and frustrations in the Members’ Tea Room.

As to how it will all turn out, its far too soon to tell.

National Insurance currently raises £145 Billion annually

The current cost of the state pension is £111 Billion annually

There is a common misconception that pensioners earned their State Pension, in that, as with an occupational pension, their National Insurance contributions and those of their employers, were invested to generate their income in retirement.
That was indeed the original intention when the state pension was conceived in the first decade of the twentieth century, but it was never implemented in that way.
The National Insurance contributions are not invested. Instead, they go into the government revenues with all other taxes to pay for current public expenditure. This expenditure will include pensions as well as defence, the NHS, and every other public expenditure. There is no direct read-across from the National Insurance levied, and the amount of the state pension.

National insurance contributions are necessary to qualify for the State Pension but they do not earn it: The State Pension is a ‘contributory benefit’.
Because our contributions are a percentage of our incomes, we will all make very different contributions, but qualify for the same benefit, a fixed amount of pension.

The tax system is complicated. There are two taxes levied on income from employment: Income Tax and National Insurance.
Why have two?
Why not simplify the tax system and just combine them into one?
These are questions that have occurred to several Chancellors of the Exchequer, including the current Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, who, in his last Budget, expressed his ‘aspiration’ that , when it becomes possible, to get rid of National Insurance altogether.
This will be a long way off because both Income Tax and National Insurance have intricate complications, making it difficult to combine them without creating a significant number of losers (including pensioners who don’t pay National Insurance).

The author of the current scam is a political party which is seeking to terrify voters with the false assertion that the aspiration to do away with National Insurance is, in effect, a threat to abolish the State Pension.

This is nonsense. There is no direct link between revenue from National Insurance and the State Pension, and here is the proof: we’ve cut National Insurance contributions by 2%, but the state pension has just increased by 8.5%, another £900, the highest increase for 30 years.

Further to my article in last week’s Forest Journal regarding the pernicious danger of smartphones. I can express my satisfaction at the removal of another intrusion to deny children their childhood: the removal of aspects sex education until year 9 (typically 12 to 13 years-old) and the complete exclusion of transgender ideology.
Of course, as a former teacher, I have some reservations about government telling teachers what to teach, when to teach it, and how to teach it. Nevertheless, some members of the profession had clearly taken leave of their senses, evidenced by the inclusion of inappropriate material, often provided a considerable expense to schools, from third parties with an ‘axe to grind’, and in many cases, an unwillingness to be transparent about that content with parents.

But let me return to the question of children and smartphones, which was debated at Westminster last week, and quote from my colleague, Miriam Cates MP’s speech last week:

“In this country, we often take the physical safety of our children for granted, but imagine if our streets were so lawless that it was unsafe for children to leave their homes. Imagine if, on their daily walk to school, our children had to witness the beheading of strangers or the violent rape of women and girls. Imagine if, when hanging out in the local park, it was normal for hundreds of people to accost our child and encourage them to take their own life. Imagine if it was a daily occurrence for our children to be propositioned for sex or blackmailed into stripping for strangers. Imagine if every mistake that our child made was advertised on public billboards, so that everyone could laugh and mock until the shame made life not worth living. This is not a horror movie or some imaginary wild west; this is the digital world that our children occupy, often for hours a day.”

The point is well made. The consequences are dreadful. I am besieged with requests from desperate parents seeking assistance in securing mental health interventions for their children. Suicide rates for teenage boys in the UK have doubled. They have trebled for girls. Incidents of self-harm for 10 to 12-year-old girls have increased by 364%. Anxiety rates for the under-25s have trebled. Feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, loneliness and despair are growing among our youngest citizens. In just 15 years, childhood has been abolished.

The evidence and research points to smartphones and social media as the culprits. They have become an addiction throughout the developed world. This is hardly surprising given that the suppliers design applications with the intention of making them addictive.
It is significant that TikTok, one of most popular social media amongst children, severely restricts Children’s screen time in its native China, but unlimited in its ability to undermine them in the free world.

My prejudice has always been to resist interfering with the freedoms and personal choices of the people who elect me. Nevertheless, I do not think we can simply stand aside as we witness the creation of an ‘anxious generation’ whose confidence has been so undermined by hours and hours of often harmful screen time and starved of real social interaction with peers. It is our duty to protect our children.
The Online Harms Act is a start, but we now need to proceed much further and faster to to restrict access by age and content.

Below is a column I wrote for last week’s edition of the Forest Journal

I am thankful, that my childhood was ‘screen-free’ and ‘phone-free’ (though it was always worth trying every telephone box to press button B and see if tuppence was to be had).
Equally, I am thankful that my own children grew up before smartphones became available. Parents are now badgered by their children to get them one at an ever-younger ages. I understand that they are now by far the biggest strain of modern parenthood: trying to understand the technology, monitoring it, nagging, negotiating and fighting about it.
Of course they have their uses, not least the reassurance that you can maintain contact with your children and know where they are. Beyond that however, they open the door to far too many dangers.

The National Crime Agency has issued an unprecedented alert to schools, after cases of  “sextortion” increased eight-fold (this is blackmail where criminals, posing as teenagers, make contact with real children online).

Apart from enabling these approaches from sexual predators, smartphones expose children to inappropriate and extreme content: Seeing hardcore pornography, extreme violence, cyberbullying, self-harm and anorexia content are now all too commonplace occurrences for young people. 

Smartphones and the apps that they support are intentionally designed to be highly addictive. According to the regulator Ofcom  ‘many children are spending six and even eight hours a day on social media – sometimes even more’, instead of playing and interacting in the real world with friends. Little wonder then, that teachers say that children find it increasingly difficult to concentrate, that they are often anxious, and that so many are lacking in self-esteem.

Certainly, the Online safety Act is a good start with its very large fines for the media giants when they break the law.
Also, The Department for Education has published new guidance which backs head teachers in banning mobile phone use throughout the school day, including at break times, to tackle disruptive behaviour and online bullying.
The new guidance says that schools should prohibit the use of mobile phones, but they will have a free hand on how to do this. Schools will be supported to prohibit mobile phone use with examples of different approaches including banning phones from the school premises, handing in phones on arrival at school, and keeping phones securely locked away at school. 

Frankly, the smartphone has abolished normal childhood and polls say that 60% of parents want them banned for under-sixteens. The Government has now launched a consultation on this. I’m for going further and I would consider  banning access to social media until adulthood.

On Monday we passed second reading of the Government’s Bill to quash all the convictions of the victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal.
The purists, especially among legal minds, ‘tut tut’ about the constitutional enormity of Parliament intruding into the proper business of the courts. They fancy that we, like the USA, have a ‘separation of powers’ between the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. They are mistaken. Notwithstanding, the recent innovation of our pretended Supreme Court, the reality is that Parliament remains supreme as it always has.
We have no separation of powers: executive, judiciary, and legislators are all mixed up together in Parliament. The High Court of Parliament remains our real supreme court.

So, we are going to quash the convictions of the wronged sub-postmasters. Once we’ve compensated them, there will remain another important item of business: the prosecution of those who wilfully concealed the truth. This may present all sorts of difficulties and delays.
Here’s a thought. Given, that we’ve used Parliament to quash convictions, why don’t we use it to make some?
It wouldn’t be without precedent, indeed, in the sweep of parliamentary history we passed many such acts of attainder. There appear to be worthy candidates for this legislation, given the number of witnesses who have told the public inquiry that they have forgotten anything they ever knew about Horizon.

Well, I suspect that even the wronged postmasters would baulk at the prospect of politicians deciding who goes to jug. They’d be right: nobody would be safe.

Sir Graham Brady gave a candid talk at Durham University, which was swiftly leaked and filled several column inches in the Sunday papers. He expressed his view that he did not believe that wider party membership should have a role in the choice of party leader. As chairman of the Conservative 1922 Committee – the principal ‘man in a grey suit’ , his voice carries weight.
I agree with him. I was opposed to the reform  from the moment when William Hague introduced it.

Inevitably MPs will be familiar with the candidates in a way that ordinary party members cannot possibly match. MPs will have seen them perform and they will know their strengths and weaknesses.
A parliamentary ballot can be organised in hours, but involving the party membership adds weeks. Hustings and debates have to be organised in addition to the logistics of the postal ballot itself. This delay may paralyse effective government at a time when events demand swift and focussed leadership, which is exactly what happened in England in the Summer of 2022, and is now likely to follow in Scotland.

Political parties in Parliament need to have confidence in their leadership if they are to function effectively in either government or opposition. The final choice of leader by a wider party membership however, raises the possibility of a leadership choice that a parliamentary party decidedly didn’t want.
This is precisely what befell the Parliamentary Labour Party after Ed Miliband’s resignation in 2015.
Labour MPs voted very decisively against Jeremy Corbyn but their wider party membership chose him anyway, with all the unhappy consequences for them that followed.
 And for the Tories, Rishi led in every round of voting and ended with 137 votes in the fifth and final ballot, beating Liz Truss with 113 votes. The membership overturned that result, and the rest is history