Questions…Questions

There are 3 types of parliamentary question an MP can put to ministers. First an ‘urgent question which, if granted by the Speaker (the matter being entirely at his discretion), will bring a minister to the Commons that day to make a statement in answer to it.

Second, an oral question: each department of state answers oral questions in the Commons on a monthly rota, but questions are drawn by ballot, and even if successful, yours might not be reached in the time available. If called, you get a supplementary question which, to be in order, must be pertinent to the substantive question that was granted. Oral questions are really for the purpose of making a political point rather than genuinely seeking information.
A written question however, is not subject to ballot and you can -within reason- even specify the date for answer (although that answer might just be ‘it has not been possible to answer the question within the time available’…then you wait). Written questions may not present information; they may not make an argument; they may not be pejorative; they may not seek an opinion; they have to be factual questions within the minister’s competence and the answer to which cannot be had from any other public source.

So, given my opposition to lockdown and the threat posed by the Indian variant to the lifting of all restrictions on 21 June, I put down the following question on 14 May: 

“To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish statistics on the (a) number of infections, (b) deaths and (c) hospital admissions by each covid-19 variant of concern”
On 25^th May I got the following quite astounding answer 

“Data for hospitalisations and deaths is not currently available in the format requested.” 

I would have thought that this data is essential for any informed decision about removing the final stage of lockdown.
On 24^th May My Colleague Dr Julian Lewis MP tried with 

“To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to release to the media, on a daily basis, the numbers of people hospitalised with covid-19 who are (a) vaccinated and (b) unvaccinated against the virus.”
on 28^th May he got no further with the following answer
“The data requested is not currently held centrally in the format requested.”
Incredible!
If not, then why on earth not? 

Dr Lewis has now put down the following question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the answer of 28 May to question 6161 on the vaccination status of people hospitalised with the Indian variant of covid-19, for what reason such essential data are not held centrally in the format requested; in what format, if any, those data are held centrally; and if he will make it his policy, without further delay, to (a) gather centrally and (b) subsequently release to the media, on a daily basis, the numbers of people hospitalised with the Indian variant of covid-19 who are (i) vaccinated with (A) one and (B) both doses, and (ii) unvaccinated against the virus.” 

I can’t wait to read the answer!

I’ve been receiving a steady stream emails from constituents incensed by press reports that the government intends to assuage the thirst for independence in Scotland through ever more generous spending there. Rather more worrying from my point of view, is the government’s  ambition to spend so much more throughout the UK: there will be consequences for inflation and interest rates.
Let’s, for the present however, stick with the Scottish question.

The Scotland Act 1998 reserves the constitutional status of Scotland to the exclusive jurisdiction of Parliament at Westminster. Accordingly, the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence was held with the consent of Westminster. The agreement to hold it was made on the clear understanding by all parties that it was to settle the question for a generation.
The precipitate demand for a further plebiscite is advanced by the argument that the whole nature of the question is now changed by Brexit, notwithstanding a majority of Scotland’s votes being for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.
I do not accept this as a ‘game-changer’: any Scot voting on independence in 2014 would have factored into their decision the uncertainty of what might happen in the 2016 referendum on the EU, after all, the issue was highlighted throughout the independence referendum campaign.

Following its re-election this month, the Scottish Government has made it clear that it will legislate to hold a second referendum on independence. The Prime Minister has made it equally clear that Westminster will not grant the powers to allow such a referendum to lawfully proceed.
Consequently, the matter will come before the courts. The judges will look to interpret the Scotland Act 1998 which reserves the question of independence to Westminster: end of story?
I rather doubt it.
The Scottish Government will frame its referendum question to give the Judges sufficient wriggle room to thwart Westminster. A straight referendum question on independence would fall foul of the 1998 Act, but how about a question asking voters to approve their Government in Edinburgh entering into negotiations with Westminster on the terms by which a future separation might be had.
How would the Supreme Court justices respond to that?
I fear that we need to prepare actively and urgently for another independence referendum.

There are a number of English Nationalists who are inclined to say ‘good riddance’. I profoundly disagree. Scotland’s departure from the Union will have an enormous impact on the other member nations.
The cornerstone of our nuclear deterrent is built on deep water access through the Firth of Clyde.
The Scottish Government’s very different appetite for immigration and for re-joining the EU would necessitate a hard border between us which would make our current difficulties with the Northern Ireland Protocol look like a picnic. The economic damage would rebound on both of our economies.
Given that the UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would have ceased to exist, the question would undoubtedly arise as to whether we, as the remnant, should retain the UK’s permanent seat at the UN Security Council. We would be much diminished.

We need to develop a winning strategy, but I’m far from convinced that spending more money is it.

As one might expect, I’ve been reading the analyses and commentaries on the local election results.
By reading, I mean exactly that, reading can be done in your own time and at your own pace. Listening or watching the wall-to-wall coverage however, is just too intrusive, so much noise, I’ve never been able to understand how anyone can put up with it. Yet constituents often ask me if I watched so and so on Marr?
Watch politics on TV and on a Sunday morning!
First, I have better things to do. Second, I don’t want to go mad.

Now, having read the commentaries and analyses, they might be right, but they might not. It is, after all merely the opinion of the commentators, and very little science lies behind it. I rather doubt that those who write so much about what voters want, or why they vote in the way that they do, have ever knocked on many doors and engaged with the voters about it.
I have, and it isn’t easy. First of all, it’s quite difficult to find anyone at home irrespective of the time of day that you call -within reason.  You can cover a whole street and have just one or two short conversations. I say short, because most people have busy lives with plenty of other things to be getting on with.
The notion that one might speak to a sufficient number of people to be able to come up with a statistically significant sample of opinion is just fanciful.
Often, when you really do encounter a voter on their doorstep, the reason they give for their voting intention just doesn’t fit with any of the prevailing political ‘weather’ or events, frequently it’s just the random caprice of an individual decision.  Imposing a credible political narrative on it is equally fanciful.
So instead, increasingly we rely on the science of polling -quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (focus groups). The problem is that sample is often self-selecting and the participants are led by the nose through a template of questions that impose an order on their opinions that, in reality, just isn’t there.

So, what are the lessons to be drawn from the articles by the pundits that I’ve been reading in the papers and online?
Broadly, they conclude that, after this set of local results following on from the 2019 general election, Labour -as we know it- is finished.
Now I’ve heard that before many times over the last 40 years. I’ve heard it said about Labour, Conservatives, and Liberal Democrats. At some stage such a prediction may turn out to be right, but not yet. They were wrong then and my hunch is that they’re wrong now.

What has changed in the last 40 years, from my own experience, is the dramatic reduction in party allegiance. When I first started knocking on doors most people appeared to be committed to one of the two major parties and the election would be settled by the movement of relatively small numbers of ‘swing’ voters.  This has changed: Overwhelmingly, when you do encounter someone on the doorstep, they don’t know who they will vote for and say they will decide later: more than half the voters now have no residual party allegiance and are open to persuasion. That’s why elections are more volatile with much bigger swings between the parties than we used to experience.

I certainly wouldn’t write any political party off.

I didn’t get out much over the last few months, so It is good to get back into the swing of routine commitments – visiting enterprises and organisations in and around my parliamentary constituency.
I confess to being surprised and even mildly irritated however, when a request to visit a commercial premises, to discuss a problem the proprietor was encountering, was accompanied by an instruction to have a Covid test prior to my arrival.
On reflection, my irritation was misplaced. My host, after all, was merely following government guidance. Ministers have told us that notwithstanding the success of the vaccination programme, “reclaiming our lost freedoms and getting back to normal hinges on us all getting tested regularly”
Indeed, starting from the 9^th April provision was made for each of us to take lateral flow tests twice weekly.
I wonder how many readers of this column have done so, or intend to.
It certainly doesn’t sound much like a return to normal life to me.

Actually, I think it’s plain bonkers.
In England there are 56.3 million of us, with each of us testing twice per week that’s 104 tests annually, 6 billion for all of us put together. The tests come in at £5 each, which amounts to £30 billion per year.
Is this a sensible way to spend such a vast sum of money, (instead we might increase England’s NHS budget by fully 40%)?
 
And another thing…I’ve already raised my concerns about the accuracy of tests in Parliament.
The lateral flow test gives false positives at a rate of only 0.3% – only 3 in every 10,000 tests. Nevertheless, were we all to obey the guidance to test ourselves twice per week, then  34,000 of us would end up having to isolate ourselves every week to no purpose, then multiply that by the numbers in the household who will then have to do likewise.
Very quickly the appetite for testing will diminish, if indeed it is ever first established, as people fear the consequent inconvenience of a false positive result. After all, the one thing most of us learnt at school is that, if you fear that you may not like the answer…then don’t ask the question

Why on earth are we behaving as if the vaccination programme is not the success that it clearly is?
Could it be that we already ordered and paid for the tests before the vaccination success was evident, and that the Government feel’s obliged not to waste them, and to waste our time instead.

Despite being a partisan right-wing politician, I have been fortunate in being able to maintain friendships with opponents across the political divide, including Marxists and Scottish Nationalists, Liberal Democrats and Remainers. To be fair, a couple of my oldest Remainer friends won’t any longer speak to me -holding me personally responsible for our leaving the EU, an honour I certainly can’t claim – but they are rare and the choice is theirs, not mine.
 I’m confident that political ideology has never been much of a barrier when it comes to convivial personal relationships.
I am therefore, all the more bemused by the way that the PM’s coterie of former advisers- despite sharing exactly the same ideological outlook and policy goals, have fallen out with one another so spectacularly to the extent that they clearly now hate each other’s guts.

As to the substance of some of the fallout from this, I can’t get excited about it. I am neither surprised nor alarmed that Sir James Dyson texted the PM, and that the PM sought to accommodate his reasonable requests in what was clearly the national interest.
Obviously I do not have one iota of the influence that the PM wields, yet friends, acquaintances and people of whom I have never previously heard, who have got hold of my mobile number or my email address, lobby me to wield what little influence I do have in their own particular interest.
The key point is that, in responding, I act in the interest of all my constituents when deciding how to accommodate them.  I consider the process is proper so long as I do not become prisoner to any particular lobby: The measure of what is appropriate, must be what is in the national interest.

As the furore about leaks escalates, I recall David Cameron (whose parliamentary private secretary I was for 7 years) expressing his frustration at yet another leak of sensitive inter-departmental correspondence -properly handled through civil servants- expressing his frustration and asking “why can’t ministers just talk to one another?”
Certainly, that was the way that I always operated. I recall a difficult meeting in a foreign capital where my ministerial counterpart was refusing to co-operate with a UK policy objective because another UK department of state was making difficulties over a quite unrelated issue. I couldn’t understand the fussy objections of my civil servants when, after the meeting, I got back into our car and simply phoned the responsible minister back in London to get it sorted out.

Now as a back-bencher and having acquired so many mobile phone numbers  during my time at number 10 and as a minister, when a constituent raises a time-sensitive issue with me, if I consider it important enough I will, of course, properly send correspondence to a minister’s private office, but I’ll also text or phone that minister to lobby them, or I’ll even bend their ear at breakfast in the Commons Tea Room.

This is the stuff of ordinary life. I believe in business they now call it ‘networking’.

As the photos of the various former aids, now at war, stare out at me from the Sunday papers, am I alone in thinking that they would do better dress properly and have a shave?

I last wrote about Covid Passports in this column on 2/12/20 when ministers were denying that there was any such plan.

It seems that proof of vaccination or negative tested status will become an inevitable requirement for international travel, but the project to develop a smartphone app is driven by the desire to have a convenient way of limiting access to large gatherings, hospitality, and even retail in the domestic economy.
Where will that end?
Will it include church services?
What about the school carol concert?

Representatives of sports and events have signalled their support with the caveat that it must not be discriminatory.
It will be discriminatory!
Of course, it will: Its sole purpose is to discriminate between those who are vaccinated and those who are not; and to exclude the unvaccinated unless they can provide evidence of a recent test, or be tested there and then: neither of which will be convenient nor trivial undertakings. 

Some constituents have written to me to say that this is acceptable, after all, everyone will have been offered a free jab, so if they choose not to take it, that is their look-out.
My response is that this is a matter that affects us all: do we really want to live in a checkpoint society where we a challenged to show our vaccinated status and to carry with us what will rather quickly become a kind of identity card?
Are we content to impose costly administrative overheads on so many venues and enterprises to check their customers?
To what extent can vaccination described as voluntary if the unvaccinated are excluded from much of civil society?

The take-up of smallpox vaccination proceeded effectively until it became compulsory in the 1850s when it collapsed disastrously and did not begin to recover until that requirement was abolished. Compulsion or coercion plays into the fears of those people and communities that are suspicious of the state and its motives. 

Nevertheless, apparently a Covid passport scheme is working without controversy in Israel.
There is a key difference between them and us however, for reasons of national security Israeli’s are used to carrying ID and having it checked regularly. That is not our tradition.
In any event, I understand that there isn’t much checking going on because the take-up of the vaccine is proceeding so satisfactorily that there really isn’t a need for checks. -everyone’s having it. 

Perhaps, that is our government’s real motive: a ruse to persuade the reluctant and to achieve almost universal take-up with the mere threat of huge inconvenience otherwise. If successful, this strategy would avoid actually having to implement the scheme, the threat having done the trick.

Or perhaps, over the last year, ministers have acquired such a taste for control over every aspect of our lives and are reluctant to release their grip, perhaps they really do want a check-point society.
We’ll soon see which it is. 

As a Christian since childhood, I thought that I’d read pretty well all of the published works of C.S. Lewis, starting with the Narnia series and moving on to his treatises on theological questions as I grew up, but here is something I had missed.
Since the beginning of our response to the pandemic I have been struggling to find the right words to address the distinction between pure tyranny and ‘benevolent’ dictatorship that constrains our liberty for our own good. I asked myself what dictatorship, however ghastly, didn’t present its actions for the greater of good for its subjects?
Well, here is a quotation that a  constituent has sent to me from  God in the Dock:” Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology), A work by lewis that I had nor read.
Make of I what you will:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under
robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber
baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us
without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier
to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable
insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we
may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not
yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed
with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

As I say to so many of my correspondents., you may disagree with me profoundly but, at least, you have no doubt where I stand.

I know it’s a cliché,  but I really do recall my housemaster telling me -before administering ‘six of the best’ – that it was going to hurt him more than it would hurt me (of course, it may be just false memory syndrome) and although I’ve subsequently found myself recalling his advice with increasing respect and fondness, I’m quite sure that he was wrong about that particular incident.
Over time, how I’ll feel about the PM’s constraints on our liberty…it’s too soon to tell, but for the present I will continue to resist vociferously

When I saw the film footage of the outrage at Christ The King Church in Balham on Good Friday when two police officers made their way into the Sanctuary and told the priest and his congregation that their worship was unlawful and that they must go home or face a fine of £200 each, I thought I was going to have an apoplectic fit.
Was it a wind-up?
Perhaps an April fool’s prank, surely?
Could this really have happened in the UK?
I tried some mindfulness breathing techniques (yes, I did the course a couple of years ago) but to no avail.
I tried Ruby Wax’s remedy of clapping your hands so hard that the stinging sensation brings you back to the present. Alas, that didn’t work either.
I could feel my temperature rising as the Incredible Hulk within roused himself: “Don’t make me angry; you really won’t like it when I’m angry”
Nothing else for it, despite it still technically being Lent, I reached for the brandy.

I voted against these regulations, but I took the trouble to read them first, and I am confident that the police exceeded their powers.
Acts of public worship in church are specifically permitted. There is no limit set upon the numbers attending, clearly that will depend on the size and layout of the church. The regulations place the duty of conducting a risk assessment upon the church authorities, not upon the police.
Police say members of the congregation were unmasked, the church authorities say that they were properly wearing face coverings.
The police say that they weren’t sufficiently physically distanced from one another, the church authorities say that, on the contrary, they were.
For God’s sake this was a sober and indeed very sombre church service, not some illegal rave!

I disapproved of the regulations, that’s why I voted against them, but we live in a democracy and I was on the losing side, so we have to live by them.
Nevertheless, throughout the last year I’ve seen repeated instances of the regulations being confused with mere government guidance. That guidance is not the law and must not be enforced as such.  Whether the confusion of the two is through ignorance or is deliberate policy, is difficult to tell. In any event, I have seen law abiding citizens being ordered to leave public places quite improperly. I’ve seen officers telling citizens that they were only entitled to go out for exercise once, for an hour each day -which is completely untrue: The regulations place no limit on the duration or the frequency of exercise.  The officer was seeking to enforce government guidance not the law.
Government guidance is no more than the opinion of ministers, if the police are charged with enforcing it, then we have abandoned the Rule of Law and become no more than a police state.

My anger was not so much aroused by the enormity of two rogue police officers interfering with a church service on a most Holy occasion, as with our nation collectively: we have accepted this situation with such little protest, or even interest.
Benjamin Franklin said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” 

Hansard 25 March 3.04pm Column 1134

Sir Desmond Swayne

(New Forest West) (Con)

 

The habit of inhumane policy soon trickles down to the servants of the state. This morning, a constituent of mine experiencing a miscarriage was denied the company of her husband in hospital. I have sent the details to the Secretary of State.

 

Tyranny is a habit, and the motions on the Order Paper this evening show that we have not quite kicked it. The powers that touched our personal choices and came at such a huge cost remain. We were told that they were there purely temporarily to deal with the emergency. Well, by any measure the emergency is over and the hugely successful vaccination campaign is the guarantee against its return. Yet on the Order Paper tonight the Government seek to retain those powers to control aspects of our lives, together with the punishment regime for those who disobey.

 

Now, those of us who can spot the trajectory will have seen yesterday that, after months of denial, people will now indeed have to provide their vaccination bona fides when they go to the pub. Those who are teetotal and imagine that they might be spared such intrusion and inconvenience can dream on: this will undoubtedly be extended to restaurants, theatres, sporting venues, and so proceed to total social control. Did it ever occur to Ministers that they might actually incentivise vaccination—carrot, not stick? Undoubtedly it did not, because they cannot kick the habit. They are wedded to the stick.

 

Let there be no wringing of hands by Members of Parliament who vote for oppressive legislation and then wail with indignation when the police actually enforce it. When families are fined thousands of pounds for staying-over together at Easter, we will know that it was because this House willed it so. Those those hon. Members, wishing for these measures to pass tonight should reflect clearly on exactly what it is they wish for.

 

I am aware of how fortunate I am to live in the New Forest and so close to the beaches. This has been especially the case over the last year of intermittent lockdown. Some of my correspondents complain to me as if visitors to the Forest are some sort of intrusion into ‘our Forest’, but I can’t blame anyone for wanting to get out of an inner-city or suburban sprawl and spend some time in this magical place – so long as they treat it with the proper care that it deserves and don’t spoil it for everyone else.

 Last summer I had quite a correspondence from constituents who felt that the Forest was being overwhelmed by the number of day trips, litter, BBQs, anti-social behaviour and wild camping as a nation that had been locked-down descended upon us. Whilst some of these problems were exacerbated by the fact that the main official  Forest campsites, run by Camping In The Forest, remained closed throughout the year -which will not be the case this year,  nevertheless given a  release from our current lockdown and great uncertainty about foreign travel, we must expect similar pressures this summer too.

A great deal was achieved jointly last year by a range of local organisations including the banning the sale of disposable BBQs by 50 local retailers and recruiting 400 voluntary New Forest Ambassadors.

I am delighted that Forestry England together with The National Park Authority, New Forest District Council and Go New Forest have come together, supported by The Verderers, Hampshire Fire & Rescue and Hampshire Constabulary, to pool their resources and to use the lessons learnt last year in order to produce a plan to protect our unique landscape and encourage greater respect for the area, and to manage the pressures that we will inevitably face this summer.

There will be increased high visibility patrolling by Forestry England Rangers including their voluntary rangers, and the National Park rangers too.
New Forest Ambassadors will assist with litter removal, report parking violations and promote the New Forest Code – which sets out what people need to do in order to take proper care of the Forest (which you can find it at www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/news/new-forest-code/ )

There will be a complete BBQ and fire ban in the New Forest Crown lands and signs will make this clear.

Often constituents express their frustration to me that they want to help protect the Forest but feel powerless to do so, beyond picking up litter -which many of us do whenever we can.
Well, consider this: how about becoming a New Forest Ambassador; find out more at www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/communities/get-involved/what-you-can-do-the-new-forest-ambassador-scheme/