The disputed state of Kashmir has caused 4 wars and soured relations between India and Pakistan since 1947.
The events of the last couple of weeks brought a long statement to the House of Commons. There were questions from across the house, but in particular from MPs representing seats with Kashmiri diaspora populations.
No matter how the questions were couched they all boiled down to one essential: “what is the Government going to do about it?”

It reminded me of my ministerial experience of visiting a number of Commonwealth countries and being asked by officials, ministers, opposition politicians, and ordinary folk, to do all sorts of things as if UK was still the colonial power.
That was not the case however, in Pakistan or India. I found that whilst we got on very well indeed at state government level where they were very pleased to see us. With the federal governments however, there was an awkwardness, even a ‘frostiness’.
I got the impression that they regard us in the same way that one might with a rather embarrassing relation that you really don’t want to have to invite to your wedding.
Of course, we should use whatever influence we have in the pursuit of peace, but we should be realistic in our expectations and recognise that in particular cases that influence is very limited indeed.

Slightly under half our members emailed me asking me to support the PM’s Withdrawal Agreement.
Of all my correspondents however, overwhelmingly they demand that the UK leave the EU without a deal. Many of them are highly critical of my own decision to vote for the Withdrawal Agreement notwithstanding the devastating critique of it that I had earlier delivered.

Whilst there is complete nonsense spoken about a no-deal Brexit, it would hurt, and some enterprises would be unable to continue trading, nevertheless, if I could deliver a no-deal Brexit then I would.
I told the PM that, if it were a choice between her Withdrawal Agreement and no-deal, then I would choose no-deal.
Alas, I don’t believe we have that choice. I fear that the choice we have is either her Withdrawal Agreement or no Brexit.

The PM began well by setting out her stall with her Lancaster House speech, but she decided that a majority of only 15 was insufficient to get her plan for a comprehensive free trade deal through Parliament. She chose to ask the voters for a majority from which she could negotiate from a position of strength. I supported her in that decision.
Unfortunately the election campaign was dreadful, the worst I’ve ever experienced. We squandered an initial poll lead of 20 points and lost our majority in Parliament altogether.

That 2017 election defeat had consequences: it pulled the rug from under our negotiating position with the EU.
The key to successful negotiation is to persuade your counterpart that you are prepared to walk away if the terms offered are insufficiently attractive. Without a majority the EU could see from the start that Parliament would never let her do that. Accordingly, they negotiated to protect their £100 billion trade surplus by seeking to keep us in their customs union.
Their only offer of a free trade deal was confined to Great Britain alone, with Northern Ireland remaining in the EU, a position they knew we couldn’t possibly accept.

I am sure that the PM and her ministers –including enthusiastic brexiteers like Gove, Fox and Leadsom- really do  believe that the Withdrawal Agreement will enable them to negotiate a favourable trade deal once we depart on 29 March. I however, see only a trap: With its ‘backstop’ it is a trap to keep us in the customs union.

So why did I vote for a trap?
And why will I vote for it again on Wednesday?
If the choice is between being trapped in the EU, or being trapped only in the customs union, then I’ll take the customs union any day.

We are a parliamentary democracy. There is a determined parliamentary majority to prevent a no-deal BREXIT. I don’t like it, but I’m stuck with it.

We are in danger of squandering our only chance to get out of the EU in 44 years. I’m not taking that risk.

I’ve received many emails about Shamima Begum, the British ‘Jihadi bride’ now held in a refugee camp in Syria.  Notwithstanding her youth, the loss of two children, and just having given birth to a third, my correspondents have little sympathy for her. To be fair, she hasn’t helped with her own comments to journalists about having no regrets, and for trying to justify the 2017 Manchester bombing that murdered the children of others.

We have had two sessions on this in the Commons and I found myself having to make the same point to the Home Secretary on both occasions.

Although, he would not address Mrs Begum’s case specifically, the objective is to resist the return of as many Daesh fighters and their camp-followers from Syria as we possibly can.
Estimates vary, but we are talking about several hundred, of which just less than half have already managed to slip back.
The Home secretary was robust in announcing his intention to use all the powers available to him to keep them out, including stripping them of UK citizenship. True to his word, he then stripped Mrs Begum of her citizenship.
The problem is that the ability to take away citizenship only applies in cases where dual nationality is held. The Home secretary has already lost a number of legal challenges and I have every confidence that after a few rounds in the courts Mrs Begum will recover her citizenship and arrive back in full expectation of access to public services, housing and benefits.

Of course, she will be subject to police enquiries as to what UK laws she broke in Syria as a Jihadi bride, but then we can imagine the difficulty of securing credible evidence and witnesses sufficient to sustain any charges beyond reasonable doubt.
With literally hundreds of these cases our resources will be swamped. Indeed, they already are.
Our regime for monitoring suspected terrorists is extraordinarily expensive and demanding of police time. The old ‘control orders’ introduced by Labour were difficult enough to administer, but then, at the insistence of the Liberal Democrats in the coalition government, they were revamped and emerged as TPIMs – an even more complicated and expensive arrangement.

The reality is that we cannot rely on the courts to deliver security in the face of this returning threat.
There is an expedient to which we have had recourse in the past both in wartime and during heightened terrorist threat: internment. Or, as it is properly known, ‘executive detention’.
It is not a silver bullet, and certainly it needs to be selectively and intelligently applied.
Some experts argue that it was counterproductive in Northern Ireland: that the intelligence was poor, leading to many of the wrong people being interned with consequent greater opportunities for radicalization. Also, that the circumstances in which they were accommodated facilitated that process of radicalization.

If however, we learn from those mistakes, internment could be a useful tool for more effectively taking out of society a large number of returnees, at least until they are sufficiently assessed and quarantined.

The motion before the Commons on Thursday 14^th February was

‘That this House welcomes the Prime Minister’s statement of 12 February 2019; reiterates its support for the approach to leaving the EU expressed by this House on 29 January 2019 and notes that discussions between the UK and the EU on the Northern Ireland backstop are ongoing.’

Many of my euro-sceptic colleagues abstained, ensuring that the motion was defeated. I was not one of them. They refused to back it because they believed that it implied ruling-out the possibility of a no deal exit from the EU, but in her statement of 12 February when the PM undertook to go back and renegotiate with the EU as demanded by Parliament, she made it clear that no deal had to remain an option. Furthermore, ministers made it plain as day during the debate on 14th Feb the outcome must involve the possibility of not reaching an agreement and so leaving on March 29^th without one (because that is what the Withdrawal Act 2018 requires).

The PM is not strengthened in her negotiations by having to return to Europe with another parliamentary defeat under her belt.
Failing to support the motion was an act of folly.

Readers of last week’s column will recall the furore over Sir Christopher Chope blocking progress to a private member’s bill because it had not been debated (notwithstanding that it was a highly desirable measure which would have afforded greater protection ton girls considered to be in danger of genital mutilation).
In the row that followed, some of the criticism fell on Sir Christopher’s judgement, and some on the Government itself for leaving such an important measure to the vagaries of a private member’s bill.
The Government has now responded by undertaking to pass the bill in Government time and with the support of the Government whip. Consequently, it will become law much quicker than it otherwise would have done.  So it turns out that Sir Christopher has done us a favour, as he did in exactly the same way last year over the issue up-skirting.

What did worry me however, was the number of colleagues sounding-off about Sir Christopher’s actions when it was clear that they had little understanding of procedure, or experience of handling private members’ bills on Fridays.
They were arguing that a member’s right to object and block progress on an un-debated bill should be removed. Essentially therefore, they are arguing that legislation can proceed without being examined or voted on, which is completely absurd. 
The word ‘parliament’ derives from the French ‘Parler’, meaning ‘to speak’, which is exactly what we are supposed to do before legislating.

I ‘ve had a stack of emails complaining about my neighbouring MP, Sir Christopher Chope, who objected to a bill last Friday, which would have afforded greater protection to girls at risk of genital mutilation.
Readers of this column might recall that in June of last year there was a not dissimilar row when he objected to a bill to create a specific sexual offence of ‘up-skirting’.
The short answer to any email is that Sir Christopher is not accountable to me, he is accountable to the voters of Christchurch, of whom he is the elected representative.

On each parliamentary sitting Friday a number of bills are listed for debate (with the order determined by ballot). In the time available it is rare for more than two bills to have been debated. At the end of the sitting however, those bills listed, but not reached on that day can be given a second reading (the first stage in the legislative process before they proceed to detailed scrutiny by a parliamentary committee) ‘on the nod’ unless an MP shouts “object”.
When I was a member of the Government whips office it was the responsibility of the whip on duty to make that objection to every bill listed, on the basic principle that, whatever the merits of any particular bill, no bill should proceed without having been debated.
I am not privy to why the whips have discontinued this function, leaving it instead to Sir Christopher.

Sir Christopher turned out have done us all a favour on up-skirting last year: Such was the furore surrounding his cry of ‘object’, that the Government adopted the provisions of the bill as an amendment to one of its own bills. With the result that up-skirting became a criminal sexual offence much sooner that it would have done had it remained a private member’s bill.

The lesson here is simple: important measures should form part of the Government’s legislative programme, benefiting from the Government’s whip and its parliamentary time, rather than being left to the vagaries of private members legislation on a very few thinly attended Fridays.
It will be interesting to see if the Government now similarly adopts and expedites the provisions of the FGM bill.

As to any question of a shortage of parliamentary time: there is no such thing; rather, there is a shortage of the will to make that time available. 
When I was first elected, Parliament had a 5 day week: we sat most Fridays, on some there would be government business and on others private members bills.
Now, in effect, we have a three day week: overwhelmingly Thursdays are given over to worthy but thinly attended back-bench debates, and there are only 13 sitting Fridays per year.
Many members return to their constituencies on a Wednesday evening.
One thing that can certainly be said of Sir Christopher is that he attends assiduously, including Fridays

Notwithstanding 80% of voters casting their ballots at the last general election for parties explicitly committed to leaving the EU customs union, there is a growing demand in Parliament for us to remain within it, as a means of breaking the current impasse.
We need to be clear what this means.
It would mean that we could trade as we do now with the EU without tariffs but this comes at a cost:
We would not have any flexibility to negotiate better trade relationships with non-EU third countries; but we would have no voice or vote in the conduct of EU trade policy; our trade would remain subject to the jurisdiction of the EU court; the EU could negotiate favourable trade access to UK markets for third countries outside the EU, whilst affording us no reciprocal access to their markets.

It’s not a tempting prospect, and it doesn’t even solve the problem anyway. It will neither address the problem of the Irish border nor deliver a continuation of frictionless trade at any border.
Unless the UK remains within the EU Internal market (continuing with free movement, paying our annual subscription, and being subject to EU laws –but without any voice in the making of them), we will have to comply with checks to ensure that exports from the UK are compliant with EU standards.

I do not doubt that the advocates of remaining in the customs union realise all this. Theirs is a war of attrition, an incremental battle, once acceptance of a customs union is achieved, they will add the demand for the EU internal market too.
If they get their way, we will leave the EU in name only.

From the very outset the Government’s negotiations with the EU have been undermined by the presence of a vociferous element in Parliament sending the clear signal that, in effect, the UK would have to accept whatever terms Brussels offered, and that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ was merely a ‘paper tiger’ slogan.

The very worst outcome for the EU is a no deal BREXIT: it denies them the substantial financial settlement and their businesses will be saddled with the vast bulk of tariff payments –they, after all, have the £100 billion trade surplus.
This fact should have afforded us great negotiating leverage with the mere threat of no deal. Alas, rightly they assessed that the PM had no parliamentary majority to make that threat credible.

Last week Parliament voted for two things: first to send the PM back to re-negotiate the deal; Second, it resolved that we should not leave without a deal.
These are mutually exclusive objectives.
Why should the EU blink first?
They know Parliament won’t walk away. So they know that they won’t have make any concessions.

Infuriating, isn’t it?

A minority of my many correspondents continue to demand a second referendum.

I would only countenance that as a last resort to prevent our ‘REMAIN’ Parliament from preventing us leaving the EU altogether.
The motive of my correspondents however, is different: they want a new referendum purely to overturn the decision reached in the last one.

First, they say people didn’t know what they were voting for. I have heard the same argument in Parliament from MP’s representing seats with Leave majorities that dwarfed ours here in the New Forest. They say their constituents voted LEAVE because they are poor, their towns lack investment, they’ve been ‘left behind’.
I think they just wanted their country back.
They say people never realised how dreadful it was going to be. Well, I reject that premise: I think it’s going to be fine, but even if you don’t agree, REMAIN painted the bleakest, hardest BREXIT imaginable, so nobody could claim that we weren’t warned of all possibilities.
They claim we were misled, specifically they refer to the money that LEAVE said could be redeployed from the EU to the NHS. Well, we haven’t even left yet and the Government has already redeemed that promise in its 10 year NHS plan.

I do however, have some sympathy with the argument that we were misled: I recall being told that economic Armageddon would dawn on 24 June 2016 if we voted leave on 23 June. We were threatened with an immediate emergency budget to raise taxes. Nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, employment continued to grow to an all-time record and foreign investment in UK outstripped that in all the other EU countries combined. Now the forecasters are saying UK growth next year will be the highest in the EU… and all despite Brexit.

We have certainly been misled, but we’ve been misled for years:
We were told, before we joined, that there’d be “no essential loss of National Sovereignty”
We were told that Maastricht was the ‘high tide’ of EU Integration
We were told that we faced disaster if we didn’t join the exchange rate mechanism, then we were told it’d be a catastrophe if we left it
Were told we’d suffer grievous economic harm if we didn’t join the Euro
We were promised a referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty
We were told that the Treaty of Lisbon was a mere ‘tidying-up’
Yes, from the very start we’ve been misled, as our political class have assured us that the treaties they signed on our behalf didn’t really mean what they said

The greatest lie however, would be if it turned out that we were lied to about the 2016 referendum, when we were assured that this was to be the people’s one chance to settle the question for a generation.
The one thing that REMAIN and LEAVE agreed on was the importance of that vote in determining the outcome.

I think people knew exactly what they were voting for in June 2016.
What they didn’t know, was what they were actually voting for in the 2017 election, they can be forgiven because 80% of them voted for parties pledged to deliver the 2016 referendum result, and specifically pledging to leave the EU customs union and single market. 
Yet now they discover that Parliament is against the people, that it is seeking to usurp power and stop us leaving.

Certainly, very few of us thought we were voting for that.

Every Parliamentary day begins with prayers, and in particular the following prayer

“Lord, the God of righteousness and truth, grant to our Queen and her government, to Members of Parliament and all in positions of responsibility, the guidance of your Spirit. May they never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind; so may your kingdom come and your name be hallowed.”

These sentiments seem to me entirely proper given that the most common complaint levelled against MPs is that they are self-interested, or put party before country. Reciting these words in the presence of the Almighty should ensure that they at least start each parliamentary sitting in the right frame of mind.

Prayers are not compulsory, members are quite entitled to wait and come into the chamber after prayers are over. 
For some, the voluntary nature of praying is not sufficient: the National Secular Society now demands that formal parliamentary prayers be abandoned altogether.

Just a few years ago a parish councillor took his council to court to stop them praying before meetings –unbelievable, the lengths some people will go to!
Anyway, the courts decided that he was right and that formal prayers could not be part of the agenda. Fortuitously however, within 48 hours the Secretary of State used his own statutory powers to grant councils the authority to pray at meetings, which the courts said that they hadn’t until then had.

I pray that the attempts to ban parliamentary prayers will prove as unsuccessful as was the battle to stop councils praying. We are a Christian nation with an established Church with the Queen at its head at the heart of our constitution.

Given the strife over BREXIT I cannot imagine a less propitious time to abandon prayers. In fact several constituents have written to me to reassure me that they are praying for MPs, and in particular for wisdom at this time. My response to them: Please Keep Praying!