Notwithstanding, the nonsense now being talked about a November election, last week’s bid by Adam Boulton and SKY for a commission to supervise election debates between the party leaders reminded me of just how much I detested them.

My recollection was that the debates in 2010 sucked the life out of the entire campaign with all the focus hanging on the debates to the exclusion of almost everything else. (That is until Gordon Brown forgot to take his microphone off in his car before making unguarded comments following an encounter when a voter gave him a piece of her mind about immigration).

It was a mistake for David Cameron to have issued the debating challenge in the first place, and a measure of Gordon Brown’s desperation that he accepted it.

In the 2017 election the debate was a shambles. Notwithstanding Theresa May absenting herself, the same exposure was given to regional parties and those only contesting a few seats, as was given to the main parties contesting every parliamentary division, which was quite absurd.

More important, the debates are a constitutional monstrosity: We do not directly elect our prime ministers in the United Kingdom, on the contrary, we elect Parliament. The only voters that will have the Prime Minister’s name on their ballot paper will be those in the one parliamentary constituency out of 650 that he or she is seeking election to represent.
The Prime Minister is accountable to Parliament and not directly to the voters. To invest the aspiring PM with head to head debates against  potential rivals is to give them the dangerous impression of power and authority that under our constitution they do not, and should not possess.

If we really want a presidential style of politics it is perfectly proper for us to entertain changing our constitution to directly elect the PM as Israel has done. There may be constitutional arguments and advantages for doing so, though I doubt it. I would be very reluctant to change because, in my experience, one of the problems parliamentarians have striven to redress over recent years is the relative weakness of Parliament as against the powers wielded by government. Directly electing the head of the government would enhance its power and authority vis a vis Parliament, which is the very opposite of what we have been trying to achieve.

We certainly ought not to consider changing our constitutional arrangements to suit media pundits whose primary concern is TV ratings and entertainment, however they might dress it up.

Dated 9th September

Last week I attended a meeting for MPs with an interest in the Equitable Life scandal which, before its collapse in 2000 was once one of our largest and most respected pension providers.

It’s a long history but this summary will suffice: about a million savers were affected and notwithstanding scandalous mismanagement of which the regulatory authorities were aware, the Government of the day refused to provide any assistance. It wasn’t until ten years later, when George Osborne became Chancellor in the coalition government, that a £1.5 billion compensation scheme was implemented.  (It also took a decade for the company’s auditors to be fined for failing to warn the policyholders).

Osborne’s scheme dealt differently with each of the categories of savers. For the vast bulk of policyholders however, their settlement amounted to less than a quarter of what they had lost.
As far as the Government was concerned that was the end of the matter. For the campaign on behalf of the policyholders and their 240 supporters in Parliament, that was never going to be the case.

I came late to this group. My prejudice was that first, the policyholders were relatively sophisticated savers and should have had more ‘nouse’ to spot that their returns were too good to be true. Second, that compensation would be paid by all taxpayers, many of whom would never have been able to afford to put aside the premiums which they would now be paying to compensate.

A number of constituents badgered me until I made sufficient effort to investigate and discover how wrong I had been: overwhelmingly Equitable Life’s clients were of very modest means with small savings. Second, an impression was given within the public sector in particular, that Equitable Life schemes were somehow government approved.

I read the two reports by the Ombudsman into the scandal which are quite shocking and reveal the level of regulatory failure, and the fact that the Treasury was aware of it. Consequently, I came to the view that this fact alone makes the Government culpable and liable to pay full compensation.

The second report by the Ombudsman required that the settlement be fair to the policyholders, but also fair to the taxpayer in terms of what could be afforded.
It was against the background of the frightful state of the public finances inherited by George Osborne after the financial crash that he designed his compensation scheme.

The situation with respect to the public finances has since changed dramatically, and that is why MPs and campaigners are demanding that the settlement be reopened and a more generous provision be made. Ministers however, insist that the 2010 settlement was final.
The matter now falls within the brief of the new Treasury minister, John Glen MP for Salisbury, who came to our meeting to listen to the case we made last week.

He made no promises, but I hope he was impressed by the number of newly elected MPs who have joined the group: clearly, the issue is not going to go away anytime soon.

Lack of savings provision for pensions is a major problem that we face for the future. There is hardly an incentive for younger people to make that sensible provision when they see the shabby treatment meted out to pension savers of a previous generation, for what was a clear failure by government.

This campaign will run, and run.

A couple of years or so ago, during a meeting with female refugees in a camp in Burma, it became clear to me that the translation was inadequate: Something the women were telling me was demonstrably making them very upset, yet the male translator gave a quite implausible explanation given the level of emotion with which the original statements were being expressed.
I sought the assistance of a Catholic priest who explained that there was a shortage of sanitary products and they couldn’t afford to buy any, with the result that teenage girls had to miss school during their periods.
It was one of those rare moments of power where, as a minister, you could fix a problem by issuing an instruction for ‘action this day’, and I did.

Recently the Red Box Initiative was brought to my attention by local campaigners who are supplying sanitary products direct to our schools in Lymington, New Milton, Ringwood and Fordingbridge.
Having come across this need in the desperate circumstances experienced by refugees in war-torn Kachin State, I was surprised to discover that the same applies even in the New Forest.
I understand that nationally, one in ten girls have been unable to afford sanitary wear.
It’s not always just a question of the expense however, some girls have difficult relationships at home and find it difficult to manage the whole issue of periods in their families.

I am always sceptical that any problem can be solved simply by government providing more money. Certainly, it would not help those young women where family circumstance rather than money is the root of the problem.
Even for those families living on benefits and in straightened circumstances, I have often been surprised at the choices that some make. In the USA expenditure would be conditioned by the rules of the ‘food stamps’ system. Here however, more generous benefits would not necessarily translate into a greater provision of ‘necessities’.
There is at least the prospect of a 20% reduction in sanitary product prices because the Government is pledged to zero-rate them for VAT when we make good our escape from EU regulation.

What I do find so very encouraging, is that public spirited individuals, having identified a problem, have set about doing something about it locally.
If you want to find out more contact redboxprojectuk.lym.brock@gmail.com

 

 

In Arusha the car pulled up to a small house in the Centre of town. Inside, it had been transformed into the offices of a local partner charity of Railway Children UK, Amani Centre for Street Children, who work with close to 1,000 (former) street children and youths across Tanzania.

Working on the streets with Amani’s dedicated social workers is where I met some “hardcore” street children and youth. Arusha is a big city (about half a million people, half of them below the age of 18), and the children who live on the streets there become involved deeply and quickly into a number of dangerous street behaviours, including serious substance use. Walking through the dingy and dirty alleyways and slum areas, we encountered children and youths who, in their fight to cope with street life, were happy to see us and the Amani staff. Some young children were carrying sacks bigger than them, filled with empty plastic bottles for recycling which earn them around 75pence a day. Often part of this goes on their transport back to the place where they sleep, and the rest is enough for one basic meal (a plate of rice, with some beans) and some street substances. Many of the children and youths we met were carrying around empty bottles filled with glue and petrol for sniffing, they had cuts and bruises which looked as though they hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, and were wearing dirty, ripped clothes.

They were surprisingly friendly towards me and the Amani street educators, giving us “high fives” and pats on the back, participating in the special group session that the street workers conducted, making jokes and discussing their problems openly.

The young children who are rescued by Amani street educators are taken to a temporary shelter in Moshi, the Amani Children’s Home. Here they receive a whole range of services to help rehabilitate them, re-start their education, and they are later reunited with a caring family member. The older youths are counselled intensively and given the options of going to study basic vocational training or joining a Youth Association Model – a group of youths developing a joint ‘business plan’ and life skills plan to get out of street life.

 

That afternoon we travelled through the hectic Arusha streets, past the pavement hawkers and rows of boda-boda “motorbike taxi” drivers to meet one of the Youth Association groups. They had already started their life skills session by the time we arrived in the centre of the city – Daraja Mbili. One adolescent boy stood in a circle of 20 boys, speaking with passion and conviction. We stood on the fringes and just watched for a while, as the youths challenged each other and debated the issues their business was facing. We were welcomed into the circle and Hija, the youth who had been leading the discussion when we first arrived, introduced his team to us. Hija is the chairperson of the NMC Youth Association which has 21 street youths in total, and is working on the business plan of creating and running public bathrooms, and charging for them. The transformation of the youths we had seen on the streets the night before into the motivated and dedicated youths in front of us was remarkable. Each youth had their own independent role and worked every day to help the start this business and make it a success.

At the end of the day, we travelled to the outskirts of Arusha to visit the family of a former street child, who was rescued by Amani and now reunified with family. I was with Hassan and Naomi, two of Amani’s dedicated family reunification workers. Speaking with them on the way, I gained more of a picture of how challenging it is to reunite former street children with their families. The reasons the children run away from home range from lesser issues like stealing from their family or neighbours, to having suffered severe physical and sexual abuse. The child we were going to see, Karim, had run away from home because of extreme poverty. Around 50% of Tanzanians live in extreme poverty; not eating 3 meals per day, unable to afford basic healthcare or education for their children, and living in a substandard home.

Karim’s mother had been given a conditional grant by Amani to help her repair her home, pay for medicine, and buy enough food for them to eat 3 nutritious meals a day. Although we had to stoop down to enter the shack in which they were living, they greeted us warmly and sat close together on small stools. The reunification seemed to be working. I stayed for some 45 minutes, listening to the translated version of the counselling from Amani’s social workers. It was family therapeutic intervention, and the main aim of the session was to help both the mother and child understand each other’s needs. Naomi explained to me that Amani’s staff had been trained for one week by Railway Children UK on this method of counselling and it was working remarkably well with the families of reunified children.

The most notable part of my experience on the Arusha streets was witnessing the tenacity of the street children to survive, the level of fun and comradery they managed to maintain, and the close relationships they had built with Amani’s social workers. They were like family. This seems to be the reason Amani is so successful in working with these children and youths – they treat them like family and give them guidance in the same way parents would.

Later that week, I travelled 80km north of Arusha to the Amani Children’s Centre in Moshi to see their holistic care programmes for rescued street children.

The huge yellow building that is Amani Centre for Street Children can hold up to 90 children maximum, aged 7 to 15/16. As I walked through the building, I went past the nurse’s office, counselling room, the colourful Starters Classroom and both the boys’ and girls’ dormitories. I learned that Amani’s programme is extremely extensive, offering street children healthcare, counselling, accelerated formal education, food, clothing, and a safe temporary shelter whilst they trace the families of the children in order to be able to reunite them.

The main thing that struck me at Amani was how happy the children were. They were laughing and playing, and reading outside. They seemed just like normal children, there was no evidence of the trauma and suffering they had gone through on the streets. And the caring atmosphere that I had previously witnessed on the streets continued at Amani Centre. Staff and children interacted as though they were family, and there was a warmth and friendliness to the atmosphere. A good number of children came up to greet me wearing huge smiles, and I happily joined in with a small group of kids playing hopscotch.

I was most moved by the story of one girl, Neema. Although only 13 years old, Neema had already gone through more hardships than most adults face in their lives. One of the weekend caregivers explained to me that she was the daughter of a commercial sex worker and that her mother had also sold her to men in exchange for money as she was growing up. Despite all of those challenges, Neema is a confident and cheerful girl at Amani Centre. When I first arrived at the Centre she was darting between the tasks of reading a story book on a bench outside, and playing a board game using pebbles with her friends. But when the lunch bell sounded, Neema took pride of place alongside the cooks, helping to organise the plates of food for all 60 children at Amani and ensuring everyone got their fair share without any quarrels. The staff told me that Neema was a natural leader, kind listener, and could be trusted with any task. When I asked her what she would like to do when she grows up, she told me her dream is to be a teacher.

I hope the above has conveyed the special experience I have been given, to get to know and understand the situation of street children in Tanzania. As I am part of the cross-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Street Children, I hope to take what I have learned from my time in Tanzania, both with Railway Children and with Amani, back to the UK Parliament to discuss with my colleagues. It is clear that issues involving street children are fundamentally important to the development of countries across the world, and that we are in a position to help those less fortunate than ourselves to become positively contributing members of their societies.

About Amani (Notes):

• Amani Centre for Street Children (full registered charity name)
• Amani Centre for Street Children was founded in 2001 by three Tanzanian volunteers. It is a Tanzanian registered charity.
• The HQ is based at the Amani Centre in Moshi, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.
• The Amani Centre can house up to 90 children at any point in time and offers services to children including; food, clothes, accelerated formal education, healthcare, professional counselling, reunification with families.
• Amani also has a drop-in Centre and night shelter in the bigger city of Arusha, approximately 80 km from Moshi, where it works with street children and youths, and rescues young, vulnerable girls who are engaged in sex work.
• Amani has a smaller Satellite Centre in one of the poorest regions of Tanzania, Singida, where they focus on rescuing and reunifying children.
• In total, Amani works with almost 1,000 (former) street children and youths.
• Amani is supported by individual fundraisers and also relies on grants from foundations and larger institutions.
• Amani is co-funded (as a sub-grantee) by DFID and USAID.

 

Website:  www.AmaniKids.org

 

‘Liberal democracy’ has come to mean rather more than just some means of ensuring majority rule.
It includes the separation of powers between the different branches of government: executive, legislature and judiciary -guaranteeing the independence of the justice system so that no politician can order anyone’s arrest or imprisonment. It has also come to include the independence of many other institutions including, of course, the press and broadcast media. These refinements guarantee our rights and liberties. Democracies can be quite as prone to tyranny as any other form of government. It is worth remembering that Hitler first achieved power after winning an election.

These proper restraints on democratic power are nevertheless, a source of constant frustration. A number of citizens not only fail to understand their importance, they appear not to be aware of their existence. Much of my correspondence is taken up with demands that this or that be done, where there is no lever that government can pull address the complaint. Typical of this sort of correspondence is alleged bias in BBC coverage.
I quite understand the frustration: you go to the trouble electing a government and expect it to be able to take action to address the issues that you consider to be important, only to discover that it can’t.

This frustration is shared by elected representatives, although I trust they have a better understanding of importance of the proper constraints on their powers. The temptations to set aside those restraints, always for the best possible motives, are constant.

The Chairman of the Magistrates Association has called for the rules which prevent convicted criminals from becoming magistrates to be set aside, in order to promote more diversity on the bench.
Its’s enough to make your blood boil, certainly those who emailed me about it were already at boiling point.
Is it the purpose of the courts to deliver justice, or to promote diversity by adding a sprinkling of criminals to magistracy?

Happily, notwithstanding the independence of the judiciary, those rules that currently prevent criminals from joining the bench, cannot be changed without government action, – action which will be informed by the common sense that comes from periodically having to seek democratic support from hard headed voters.
Phew!

I know quite a few public spirited individuals who voluntarily pick up litter wherever they go, I am among their number.
I despair at the amount of litter that is left in and around our magnificent Forest, most of it simply thrown out of passing cars.
I achieved some notoriety in the press earlier this year by being too explicit in my use of language to a group of school children visiting Westminster when I described what I really thought about litter louts.

Now one of my correspondents demands that I do more, and even lead a campaign. I am at a loss as to how respond. To be frank, although I abhor litter and those who are responsible for it, I do have important fish to fry.
Even if it were my top priority, what’s to be done?
I’m reminded of Oliver Cromwell’s despairing question when confronted with the nation’s growing vice (which then included playing sports on Sunday). He asked “if I were to arm one in every ten, will that be enough?”

Being in Moshi at the foot of Kilimanjaro I missed the furore over Boris Johnson’s comments about burkas, and the opportunity to participate.
I did get lots of emails about it however. Communication by Royal Mail had almost dried up completely, until this week -that is,  when the Boris Burka effect caught up and a batch of letters arrived on the subject; perhaps it just takes longer to get round to writing to your MP, finding a stamp and making it to the post box.

It is well covered ground. I wrote about it, in this column almost exactly two years ago (the article can still be found at http://www.desmondswaynemp.com/ds-blog/bhurkinis-barton-sea/
or simply use the search tool top right and enter ‘Burkinis’

I also recall Jack Straw, when he was a minister under Tony Blair, sounding-off about how uncomfortable he felt when a woman attended his surgery in a niqab with only a slit for her eyes.
(I digress, but as for the Islamic demand for ‘modesty’, having travelled extensively in the Middle- East, when a woman can only show off her eyes, it is amazing what she can make of them).

My view is unchanged: although, with the exception of a very few lucky individuals, most of us look at our best with all of our clothes on,  I believe that people should be allowed to wear as little or as much as they please. So, I’m with Boris, in that I would not join calls to ban the burka, any more than I’d seek to ban naturism. I also agree with him however, in that I do not like them: I believe that they isolate their wearers from healthy social interaction, and that they are a symbol of male power over women.

Boris clearly gave offence, but holding a disciplinary enquiry in my political party is just absurd.
Within the range of terms that might give offence, I thought his use of language at the lower end of the scale.
The enjoyment of our right to freedom of speech, does from time to time incur the possibility of giving offence. Some have a lower threshold for taking such offence than others.

In the scale of things, I am much more concerned about our proper right to freedom of expression being eroded than I am to people taking offence.

6.45 and it’s still dark -we’re in Mwanza not so far from the Equator.
We approach what looks like a pile of old sacks dumped on the verge of a busy street.
As we wait, small boys -from seven to early teens snuggled together, start to stretch and emerge from under the hessian, polythene and cardboard.
The charity street worker explains that the boys sleeping off to one side on their own are the ones that wet themselves at night, so they are excluded from the communal warmth.
The boys are familiar with the street worker and greet her warmly. In turn, she is practised at extracting information about what has happened during the night: have they been harassed by the authorities, or anyone else, are there any injuries or are any of them sick?
A new boy is brought forward by the others, his first night, he hasn’t slept because he was too frightened.
The street worker asks the others to bring him to our centre later in the morning, and we move on to check-in with other groups of boys of different ages close by.
I ask about girls. I’m told that you won’t find them: they hide themselves away because it’s much more dangerous for girls.
We did however, see a young mother packing-up her bedding and hoisting her baby onto her back.

By 7.30 we’re having coffee at a stall on a market square, stallholders and street vendors are setting-up shop. Many of the boys that we saw earlier are congregating round some burning cardboard for warmth. Others are buying something to eat –they have some earnings from fetching and carrying for the vendors.
A motorcyclist stops and gives 1000 shillings to a vendor to distribute ten buns amongst the boys, apparently he comes by and does it every day.

We end up back in our centre, little more than an old classroom a few hundred yards away, little boys and girls are making things with putty and playing games, and a ‘pop-up’ school comes by.
The new boy sits with a social worker. He has had enough and wants to go home, but it’s a very long way. Our family workers will have to check it out and address the issues that led him to run away before he can be re-integrated with his family with appropriate follow-up.
Later that evening I saw him accommodated in a very basic but cheerful and loving short-term shelter: The emphasis is to avoid long term institutionalisation.

Also that day, I saw the mutual support groups that the charity sets-up and assists with help and advice until they are in a position where members can be supported with a loan or training to get a livelihood and somewhere to stay. The high point was meeting seven older boys who had been trained at the technical college over the last two months in shoe-making. Their instructor swelled with pride at what they had achieved: he was right; they were excellent shoes.

So what drives children to the streets?
It’s no different from the reasons one might run away here: neglect; abuse; inability to come to terms with a new step-father or step-mother.

I am currently teaching ‘life skills’ to young adults near Kilimanjaro. My experience with street children took place last week when I was with Railway Children, a charity based in Crewe (they called it Railway Children because the founder was a railway executive and when he visited India he noticed that the street children congregated at railway stations).

 

 

 

Ever since the referendum last in June 2016 I have had a fairly constant flow of emails from constituents who regarded the result as a catastrophe demanding that the referendum be re-run. One of the particular features of this correspondence is that the authors want a continuing conversation with me, and any answer that I give only encourages further emails and argument. Whilst email lends itself to a conversation, I get over 100 emails daily in addition to the many other things that I need to do, which makes it difficult to conduct multiple conversations with constituents released from the disincentive of paying for a stamp and making their way to the post box.

Now this daily flow has been augmented by scores from constituents outraged by what they consider to be a betrayal of the BREXIT vote implicit in the Government’s evolving negotiating position.

A common feature of both sets of correspondents is their certainty that they speak for everyone else, that everyone they converse with agrees with them, and that as their representative I should do likewise.

I think their belief that their own opinions are universally held springs from two sources. First: many people mix in company with people just like themselves, so it is not surprising if they hear opinions similar to their own. Second, we are a tolerant and polite people, when some bore keeps banging on about their hobby-horse, instead of taking issue and arguing with them, we take the line of least resistance by pretending to agree, even if only in the hope that it will shut them up.

As for my responsibility to represent them, my duty is to represent all my constituents, 99.99% of whom have not expressed any opinion to me whatsoever. I owe them my judgement by listening to the arguments and debate, a debate that takes place in Parliament with other elected representatives. I must not be prisoner to any vociferous email lobby.

A common theme of the latest surge of email correspondence from those who believe that their pro-BREXIT vote is being betrayed is that this is such a gross affront to democracy that the entire edifice of government now needs to be razed. These are what I call the ‘crazies’, who adhere to a doctrine of ‘revolutionary defeatism’: they believe that because the BREXIT settlement will not be exactly to their specification, like Sampson we must bring the whole temple down on our heads -whatever the consequences, and a new democratic Britain will somehow emerge from the ruins.

I am not going to join any political suicide squad. I voted for a ‘hard Brexit’ in the referendum, but there were plenty of other BREXIT flavours being touted. After all, for years constituents have been telling me that they were duped in the 1975 referendum because they only thought they were voting for a ‘Common Market’ not signing-up to  political integration. Well, I voted ‘No’ in 1975 because I didn’t even want the market, and I want to be free of its limitations now. Can I be sure however, that many, perhaps even a majority of BREXIT voters, would be satisfied to be free of political integration and yet hang on to the market?

My duty must be to secure what is the best BREXIT achievable according to my judgement, but in doing so I must not put at risk the prospect of achieving any BREXIT at all:  That really would be an affront to our democracy.

If Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, allegedly members of the Da’esh kidnappers and murderers known as the Beatles, are found guilty then I’m sure that they should be denied the death penalty.
They are, after all, members of a death cult that pursues ‘martyrdom’ and perversely believes that, were they to be martyred, they would be rewarded in heaven with the services of 42 virgins.
(I understand that some scholars question the translation and insist that the meaning is ‘raisins’ and not ‘virgins’. My word, there will have to be a major effort to manage expectations in paradise).
Much better to imprison them for life so that they have years of boredom in which to dwell upon the virgins (or raisins) that they are presently going without.

The first priority however, is to secure a conviction rather to put the cart before the horse and fret about the punishment.
The Government had exactly the right priority in furnishing the United States with the intelligence and evidence that it held against the two alleged terrorists so that they could be brought to trial, without making our assistance conditional on the outcome of any trial (by securing an assurance that, in the event of conviction the death penalty would not be invoked).
That the Government has had to suspend its assistance to the USA because of a legal challenge from the mother of one of the accused, illustrates just what a mess our Human Rights law is now in.

As I’ve made clear, for these particular individuals, if guilty, there are better punishments, but that must be a matter for the judgement of the court in the jurisdiction in which they are to be tried.
If we have evidence that could convict gruesome murderers we should provide it irrespective of what punishment may await them.

The great roar of indignation in Parliament earlier this week about the Government’s failure first to secure a ‘no death penalty’ assurance from USA before giving our assistance, is another measure of how out- of-step our ‘great and good’ political class has become from the people that they are supposed to represent.
In my experience the good people of these islands are not so squeamish about the possibility of the death penalty as their liberal- minded politicians appear to be.