Last week I received a call from Solent Radio asking me to comment on a report that I had been prevented from entering a village shop because I wasn’t wearing a mask. I told them to send their investigative journalists to the village and interrogate the staff in every shop and they would discover that it was nonsense.
In Parliament I called the requirement to wear a face covering a ‘monstrous imposition’ and I believe that the wearing of masks feeds into our national mass hysteria which is doing such damage to our economic and community life.
Nevertheless, it is the law and I wouldn’t break it, if only to avoid giving satisfaction to the dreadful sorts who email me to report their neighbours for minor infringements of the regulations. Don’t tell me, just download the Gestapo App. 

I receive a very large correspondence, principally by email: it is not unusual to receive 200 emails in a single day.
Over recent years email correspondence has grown exponentially, so much so, that increasingly I have to ration my responses. Some constituents complain that I am rude. I dispute this. Certainly, I dispense with salutations and answer the question asked without preamble. I accept that I am brief -I have to be.

Whilst, I read all the email I receive, I will make a judgement as to whether an automated acknowledgement is a sufficient response.
I confess however, that I do not read any messages sent to me via social media. So when I receive an email from Facebook telling me that someone has commented on my ‘post’; ‘written on my timeline’ (whatever that may mean); or has sent me a message, I am afraid that I take no action. 

I do have a pang of guilt because I have a Facebook page and a Twitter account which I use solely for the purpose of broadcasting.
When I was Regimental Signals Officer I used to lecture fellow officers about the need to resist the temptation to have their thumbs constantly on the Clansman pressel switch (on permanent ‘send’) and instead, to listen out on the radio net. Alas, in that respect I no longer obey my own instruction: I just broadcast and don’t receive.
The reasons for this are twofold: First there are only so many hours in a day and I have a great deal else to be doing. I receive literally thousands of ‘notifications’ on Twitter, where one earth would one even begin?
 Second, whilst email can be bad enough, the unpleasantness of some of the commentary on social media is of such a pitch that it would drive you to a state of depression were you to read it. I know colleagues who have been quite unnerved by what is said to them on social media.  

So, if you wish to express an opinion to me stick to email swayned@parliament.uk and even though it is an email, nevertheless give your full postal address, or write to me at the House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. 

Just as fewer people are dying at this time of year than would normally be expected to -according to the long term average, and of those who are dying, more are doing so from flu than Covid19, nevertheless we are wrecking holidays with new quarantine impositions and increasing the ferocity of punishments for non-compliance with our new face-wear requirements (which only weeks ago we were being told were unnecessary, or even counter-productive)
Is there no end to this mass hysteria?
It has so many unfortunate consequences

Usually we are treated to scenes of delight as pupils receive their exam results at this time of year, but instead my email inbox has exploded with the furore surrounding their estimated grades.
It is easy to say that I wouldn’t have started from here, but I wouldn’t have: we should never have closed our schools and cancelled our public examinations. Other jurisdictions did not do so and yet have had better Covid19 outcomes.
But having closed them, we had to find a substitute for the exams.

The statistics show that when it comes to predicting exam outcomes, individual teachers consistently overestimate the performance of their pupils. It is natural for teachers to predict on the basis of what they believe their pupils to be capable of, but exams measure actual performance.

Clearly, to have relied on teacher-predicted grades as a once-off this year would have involved a measure of unfairness: There would have been no consistency across schools and it would have put pupils with teachers inclined to make more realistic assessments, at a disadvantage.
The mechanism to moderate predicted results using the historical performance of schools might have seemed reasonable in theory, but has given rise to many anomalies, not least having a quite unfair impact on exceptional pupils at historically less well performing schools.
Reliance on unmoderated teacher predictions, though unfair and imperfect, is preferable to the moderating effect of an algorithm

There is no ‘good’ way of addressing the problem but why didn’t we see it coming from a mile off?
One way of dealing with it might have been to have done everything somewhat earlier (after all, we didn’t have to wait for the exams to be over and marked because there weren’t any), then schools could have had confidential access to the results well ahead of publication, giving them time to remonstrate effectively in a clearly defined and agreed appeals process (and even as I write, that process in yet to be defined).

The surrender by Scotland puts pressure on ministers to do likewise and accept a year of grade inflation. It certainly wouldn’t address the unfairness caused by a lack of consistent assessment across schools and individual teachers, but I think it would be the lesser of two evils.

Of course. We’ll all blame the Government, but the cock-up is largely the work of professionals and  an independent quango. What we can blame the Government for is allowing itself to be persuaded to close the schools and cancel exams in the first place -so we are back where I began: mass hysteria.

There is an organized email campaign to ease the restrictions on asylum seekers whilst they await the processing their claims (which can be prolonged given the numbers waiting and the numerous avenues of appeal that are available when an application fails).
The principal request that my email correspondents make is that applicants be allowed to seek employment whilst they wait for their cases to be determined.
Whilst it is preferable that anyone should be encouraged to support themselves rather than rely on public provision, nevertheless to make such a change would send a clear signal to potential economic migrants across the globe that the UK is an even ‘softer touch’ and the preferred destination.

At the very same time my inbox is understandably filling up with expressions of dismay and frustration at the daily records being broken by migrants being intercepted whist crossing the Channel in small dinghies.
They demand that something be done, but what?
My neighbour in Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood MP, Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, has called for the Royal Navy to patrol the Channel. But what will the Navy be able to do that Border Force cutters are not already doing: Which is rescuing the illegal migrants in accordance with the International Law of the Sea; bringing them ashore; processing their claims; providing them with accommodation and the rest…
What else do we expect them to do -ask them nicely to turn around, or threaten to sink them?

Nigel Farage alleges that notwithstanding the substantial payments that the UK makes to France to maintain the security of our border and the treaty obligations placed upon the French authorities, they are nevertheless escorting the boats into UK waters whilst showing insufficient zeal in tackling the people trafficking networks operating from French shores.
It is not clear to what extent this is an accurate picture, but the opinion columns of our daily newspapers demand a new and more robust treaty with France.  Calling for a new treaty is the easy bit, but it begs the question of what is in it for the French.

We have returned a tiny proportion of those who have illegally managed to get here. Simply condemning the Government’s miserable performance on this score ignores the difficulty in securing the agreement of countries to which we might seek to return them, and our own courts which interpret human rights legislation to frustrate deportations.

So long as migrants can secure entry to the UK illegally in the expectation that they will be able to remain, the queue of those trying will continue to grow.
The real question is one of  political will: Are we prepared to withdraw from treaty obligations; repeal human rights legislation; and take punitive measures against migrants for breaking the law by entering the country illegally.
Have we the appetite for this?
Is there really an the political consensus that would be necessary to drive such an agenda forward?

So much of my correspondence begins with a statement that the point of view being expressed, is universally held. “Mr Swayne, everyone I speak to agrees with me…”.
I think the universal truth is really that we tend to mix with people like ourselves, who tend to think like us, and therefore largely agree with us. Either that, or they are just too polite to disagree.

I am no different. Almost everyone I speak to appears to agree with me that our response to Covid19 has been a disastrous overreaction.
It a hard thing to say when so many people have died of the disease, many of whom were relatively young and with no other health problems. Nevertheless for the vast majority of us the experience of catching the disease is mild to imperceptible. Yet our disproportionate response has been to close down our economy with devastating consequences for employment and incomes, with all the health problems -both mental and physical- that will flow from their diminution.
 We have prioritised our healthcare system to the enormous disadvantage of anyone suffering from conditions other than Covid19, which will cause much suffering and many deaths.
And we have devastated education by closing schools.
To cap it all, we have sacrificed our liberty to the extent that we are now told whom, when and where me may meet, marry, worship, or whatever. And even what we must wear.

All this might be bearable (though personally I doubt it) given the prospect that it is only to be short-lived. The announcement yesterday however, poured cold water on any such notion. There was a deeply chilling note in the Chief Scientist’s observation that we may have reached the limit of possibilities with respect to easing of restrictions.
We appear to be at the mercy of these scientists. And our only prospect of relief is scientific advance in the form of a vaccine or a cure, neither of which is guaranteed.

Yet the science which has imprisoned us is controversial. There is another point of view and course of action: whilst taking care to protect those who are particularly vulnerable, to allow the natural process of ‘herd immunity’  to build up amongst the rest of us so that the virus has much less opportunity to spread.

I said almost  everyone I speak to agrees with me. Well, I’m not stupid: I know they tell me what I want to hear; they email me because they’ve already heard that I agree with them.
Nevertheless, there is clearly a difference of opinion amongst scientists and amongst the public in general.

So, the key question for me as an elected representative -in what is supposed to be a democracy -is this: why is there so little debate in Parliament about the measures that have been forced upon us and the science that justifies them?
On occasions I have found myself as almost a lone voice in opposition to the Government’s chosen course of action.
Most shocking of all, I have never had the opportunity to legislate: I have neither voted for nor against any of the laws that now govern and constrain our social intercourse and which the police have the power to enforce.
The Government simply rules by decree, without argument or challenge in Parliament.
It does so using powers granted to it in the Public Health Act 1984.
I have said it before, but it bears repetition: how prescient George Orwell was in his choice of that year in naming his dystopian novel.

I was delighted to be given an earful by my dentist when I got into his chair last week. He told me that dental practices should never have closed during the lockdown; that dentists were skilled clinicians, used to working with PPE and quite capable of managing the risks of virus transmission.
I say I was delighted to receive his rebuke, because when I said exactly all that in the House of Commons I received a volume of vituperative correspondence telling me I was a complete ignoramus who clearly knew nothing about dentistry.

Hey ho.

In the interviews and correspondence that followed my protest at the Government’s decision to require the wearing of face-coverings, a comparison has often been made with the requirement to wear a seatbelt in motor vehicles.
People say that it is for our own good, and for the good of others, yet we require it on penalty of a fine, so “what’s the difference they ask”, inferring that I wear my seatbelt by fixed habit and without complaint. 

The difference is fundamental and I am surprised that it has been missed by so many. I recall the introduction of compulsory seat belts. The requirement was preceded by a public debate, a publicity campaign fronted by Jimmy Saville (remember “clunk, Click, every trip”), and -most important of all- debates and votes in Parliament with the full scrutiny of primary legislation going through its three stages in both houses.
There were opponents who felt that this was a step too far, with the state telling us what was good for us and them making us do it. The counter argument being, if it really is good for us, let us choose to do it for ourselves. 

The opponents of compulsory seat belts accepted their defeat pretty gracefully and those who end up getting fined for not wearing one, are overwhelmingly not acting in defiance, they simply forget.
The acceptance rests on consent. Those who lost the Parliamentary battle against compulsory seat belts were given every opportunity to put their case in a democratic process.
The same is true of government generally, after a general election those of us who voted for losing parties consent to be governed by our opponents because it was a democratic process in which we participated. 

Being required to wear a face covering -however, good it might be for us and others, and that is arguable- is nevertheless, a pretty fundamental intrusion into our personal liberty. What makes it so utterly different from seat belts, is that there was no debate in Parliament, the arguments were never heard, we were given no opportunity to put our case: there was no vote
The government simply issued the order using powers granted to it back in 1984. 

Governing by directive is very convenient for ministers and will become a habit if not checked. 

Even before the decision requiring face coverings to be worn in shops, I was receiving a few emails in favour of such a move, but a much larger number demanding that there be no such compulsion.
Nevertheless, I am never persuaded that counting emails adds up to a representative sample. On the contrary, the opinion polling has been showing a clear lead for compulsory masks.
But I know that I spoke for  many when opposed this policy in the House of Commons. I was the only dissenter when the announcement was made, and it is important that the significant minority opinion have its voice heard in Parliament.

The subsequent reaction demonstrates that I have tapped into a well of outrage: of some 360 emails I received in the 72 hours following my intervention, twenty were in support of the stance that I took to every one against. Again, I do not pretend that this is a representative sample, but clearly a very significant number of people are angry about being compelled to wear a face covering.

Quite a few of the emails were from clinicians who split evenly between those supporting the policy and those opposing it. Some arguing that masks were a danger to health. I am not qualified to intrude on that dispute. What I can confidently say however, is that scientific opinion remains divided.
(I understand that no studies have been done on Covid-19 and masks, and we rely instead on studies based on flu, which are inconclusive).

I possess a mask and I wear it, as required, on the train. Personally, I have no objection to people being strongly encouraged to wear masks, but clearly many people object to being forced to do so, as do I.
As I see it,  the difficulty is that, having implemented this policy now -when the disease is in abeyance (we have a deficit of deaths: fewer people are dying than the long-term average for this time of year), and we are easing all the other restrictions that have been imposed, how are we ever going to find the circumstance in which we can remove the requirement.
When he was asked this in the Commons, the Secretary of State said we’d have to think about it later.
We have discovered that it’s easy enough to impose restrictions but much more difficult to lift them, re-opening schools being an obvious example

I believe that this policy on masks was a decision taken with the laudable objective of getting the economy moving. Many of our more wary citizens have yet to be tempted back on to our high streets where their footfall and consumption is desperately needed to revive economic activity. The calculation is that they will feel more comfortable and safer if they, and everyone else, is masked.
I hope the Government has made the right call, and that it doesn’t have the opposite effect -which was certainly the concern expressed to me by a number of prominent local retailers.

I’ve said before in this column, that in the age of the internet retail has to have ‘a better offer’: it needs to be a pleasant social experience if it is to compete with the convenience of the internet.
I don’t believe that masks will help, but now that the decision has been made, I really hope that I am wrong about that.

The Self-Employment Income Support Scheme is one of the most generous COVID-19 support schemes in the world, but I have received complaints from constituents who do not qualify.

Individuals, including members of partnerships, were eligible if they had submitted their Income Tax Self-Assessment tax return for the tax year 2018-19, continued to trade, and had been adversely affected by COVID-19.

 Around 95 per cent of those with more than half their income from self-employment in 2018-19 may have been eligible for this scheme. It pays a taxable grant worth 80 per cent of the average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering three months’ worth of profits, and capped at £7,500 in total.

Alternatively, those who paid themselves a salary through their own company, were eligible for the ‘furlough’ Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, available to employers, including owner-managers, and individuals paying themselves a salary through a PAYE scheme.

The main complaint I ‘ve been getting is that those people who pay themselves a dividend from their company rather than a wage, are not covered.

The difficulty is that incomes from dividends aren’t wages, they are a return on investment, and are taxed differently because of that.
Even setting aside this difference of principle, under current reporting mechanisms, it is not possible for HM Revenue and Customs to distinguish between dividends derived from an individual’s own company and dividends from other shares that they possess.

 
The Government did consider providing a new system for those who pay themselves through dividends, but this is much more complex. The information required by the other support schemes, is already held by HM Revenue and Customs.
A dividend scheme would require owner-managers to make a claim and submit information that HM Revenue and Customs could not efficiently or consistently verify to ensure payments were made to eligible companies, for eligible activity.
Some of my correspondents suggested that that a ‘pay now, but clawback later’ approach could have been taken, but that  would have required manual and highly resource-intensive procedures to ensure compliance, and there would still be a high risk that incorrect or fraudulent payments could not be recovered.

The proper recourse for those who do not qualify for the schemes is to fall back on Universal Credit, which has performed incredibly well, in paying out on time for a surge of millions of new applicants.

The difficulty is that you cannot qualify for Universal Credit it if you have savings of more than £16,000, and this is where the perceived unfairness lies. None of the Covid-19 schemes are subject to a savings threshold, so I can quite understand the disappointment of those who’ve worked so hard, but don’t qualify, and are now having to live off their savings, whilst others are receiving help.

Should the savings threshold have been raised, or suspended, during the pandemic?
It sounds easy, but it raises questions about hundreds of thousands of applicants denied Universal Credit because of their savings before Covid-19 even came along.
Does the very existence of a savings threshold discourage thrift by penalising the thrifty when they run in to hard times?
But then you wouldn’t want to see millionaires claiming Universal Credit even if they had lost their job.
Equally, one of the reasons that we save is for “a rainy day” as my Granny used to say. And isn’t losing your income that rainy day?

Nothing is simple, and nothing will ever be 100% fair

Earlier in the week I was lobbied by 30 or so constituents seeking more action on climate change.

Their principal request was for local empowerment so that communities could lead initiatives themselves. I agree. Of course, there is an agenda that Government must lead from the centre, but there is so much that can be done locally.
Our New Forest Communities are active in tackling the scourge of pollution, from litter picks, to recycling initiatives across the area,  to mass tree plantings on community land. This volunteering spirit reminds me of what we tried to foster a decade ago through the ‘Big Society’ which sought to give “communities and local government the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want.”
It is a force that we need to harness in order to drive forward change.
A good example of initiatives that we should be pursuing is in the Local Electricity Bill which is currently in Parliament. This will allow electricity to be generated locally and sold direct to households in the community. It is not only positive environmentally to harness energy locally but in an increasingly uncertain world it is also prudent in terms of energy security.

Making those households much more energy efficient is the natural partner to renewable electricity supply. The statutory requirements for The Future Homes Standard to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 75-80% don’t kick-in until 2025. I’d prefer it to be much sooner, but there is a cost involved, and we have yet to address how that cost is to be divided between the developer, the purchaser, and the taxpayer.

Inevitably the group raised the issue of litter and plastic pollution. I am all too familiar with it and I’ve used this column on before to draw attention to it. I am frustrated that, having concluded a consultation last year on a bottle recycling scheme, the Government has decided to proceed with yet another one next year before we see it implemented. Nevertheless, there has been some success with a 90% reduction in single use plastic bags. Again, I’ve used this column to point to the example of Rwanda where plastic bags are banned entirely -and they are doing just fine.
I also believe there is far more scope for regulation to reduce the obscene amount of packaging. I am glad that progress has been made on banning micro-plastics in cosmetics and the ban on plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds takes effect in October.
From  2022 products will be taxed that do not contain 30 per cent recycled materials.
I was happy to report that the leading campaigner on this agenda, Rebecca Pow, the MP for Taunton Dene, has been promoted to be the minister with responsibility for this brief.

There was a clear preference expressed by the group for more cycle-friendly transport policy. As a cyclist myself, I am glad that this has been part of the Government’s strategy: we can expect more cycle lanes when  the Prime Minister (himself a keen cyclist) announces a new cycling and walking strategy later this Summer.

We all agreed with each other that the move to electric vehicles required a transformation in the charging points available. Equally, we should congratulate local services like MoreBus: Their electric X3 from Salisbury to Bournemouth via Ringwood and Fordingbridge generates fewer emissions than my push lawnmower.

It was a useful and positive exchange, and it is essential that we keep it that way: I’ve come across far too much defeatism on climate change. It is not beyond our wit to reverse the damage that we’ve done to the planet, and to enjoy a better quality of life. The UK was the first developed country to impose legislative targets to reduce our emissions, since when we’ve met those targets and reduced emissions dramatically. There is plenty more for the Government to do, for local communities to do, and for each and every one of us to do.