My second reaction to the news of the arrest last week of pensioner Richard Osborne-Brooks, was of dismay at the prospect of a deluge of quite properly outraged emails that I knew I would receive because of it.
How on earth could an elderly man be arrested for defending himself when being robbed in his own home, even if that defence ended with the death of his robber?
That outrage was only set to multiply as more information emerged, that his assailant had a formidable criminal record involving the targeting vulnerable pensioners.
I was naturally relieved, when Mr Osborne-Brooks was released without charge.

My first, reaction however, at hearing the news was one of total bemusement. It was early in the morning when I first heard the newscast: was I dreaming it?
Surely it couldn’t be happening, because I remembered that we had fixed the problem: after years of effort didn’t we change the law to protect the likes of Mr Osborne-Brooks?
The Answer is yes.
For years in opposition we attempted to get two private members’ bills through and failed, but we managed get the law changed under the coalition government in 2013. That change that we secured enabled anyone finding a burglar in their home to defend themselves, and to be protected from prosecution if they killed or injured the intruder, unless it can be proved that wholly disproportionate force was used.
So how come Mr Osborne-Brooks was even arrested?
Clearly, he shouldn’t have been.

Imagine yourself, disturbing a burglar in the dead of night. You hear a noise downstairs, you go to investigate, in the kitchen someone leaps out at you, it’s dark, you can’t see if your attacker is armed, but instinctively you grab the bread knife and take a lunge at him. Unfortunately, your attacker is killed, and subsequently discovered to have been unarmed after all. Have you committed an offence?
I do not believe that a public prosecutor would go to the expense of proceedings, because there would be no reasonable prospect of a jury being persuaded to convict.
If however, your burglar fled and you chased him down the garden path and you stabbed him in the back as he tried to get away. Well, then there might be more of an argument as to whether wholly disproportionate force had been used, a day in court therefore would not be an unreasonable expectation.

Ultimately, whatever the words in the law say, we have to rely on the good sense and judgement of 12 jurors.

I have had several emails from constituents who have worked themselves into quite a state over the takeover of the engineering firm GKN by Melrose. Some of my correspondents have got the wrong end of the stick, likening it to the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft back in 2010, they appear not to have spotted that Melrose is a UK enterprise just as much as is GKN.

I have not been able to get excited about it. GKN has been a great British enterprise with an illustrious history, but with respect to the takeover bid, I think it had it coming.
For the last few years the performance at GKN has been less than impressive. The impression was of a company coasting, event slacking, and senior management lacking focus and energy.
Melrose, on the other hand, has performed formidably and has a record of refocusing enterprises on their core business and sharpening the management. As for the fear that parts of the business will be sold off, there is nothing unusual about that, it can often be the sensible thing to do, and apparently GKN was planning to do that itself anyway

One great British enterprise bought-up by another successful British enterprise, is not a great headline, that is why it has been dressed up with all that pejorative stuff about ‘asset-strippers’ and ‘greedy city hedge funds’.
My perspective different: it’s one of free markets exercising a discipline that keeps companies and their managements on their toes, performing at the top of their game.

Just suppose however, that Melrose had been a foreign-owned undertaking. Would my attitude be different?
It would not. I believe in free trade and the free movement of capital, from which we prosper more than most: In the UK we own more overseas assets per head of population than almost any other country in the world. The profits from which flow back into UK coffers. It is something we have been doing for generations. As the greatest of ‘offenders’ we are hardly in a position to complain when somebody else buys-up something British.

I felt that all the angst about Cadbury was rather misplaced. Traditional British chocolate manufacturer, still informed by the social values of its Quaker founders, swallowed-up by multinational giant. Not quite!
Remember, whilst Cadbury was indeed once a traditional Quaker confectioner, it had itself become a voracious and acquisitive predator, it was after all actually Cadbury-Schweppes.

If companies want to fund their expansion and investment in one of the most effective ways available, raising the capital by selling shares, then we must accept that shareholders have a right to realise their own investment and sell the shares when, and to whom they choose. To seek to interfere with that right will drive capital from our shores and kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs.

I have received a number of angry emails criticising ‘Brexit betrayal’.
Two issues in particular have got their goat: the decision to award the contract for the blue passport to a French company, and the EU transition agreement which will see the UK remain within the Common Fisheries Policy for a further 21 months.

First, the passports.
I regret that the best bid did not come from a UK company, but I disagree profoundly with my  correspondents who say the contract should have been awarded to a poorer bid just because it came from a UK producer.
I would no more criticise a neighbour who bought a foreign car because it best suited his needs and his pocket, than I would the Home Office for selecting the best offer, even though it came from France.
One of the reasons I campaigned for Brexit is because I believe that we are an outward-looking nation that benefits from free trade.
I don’t want to live in an inward-looking island that favours its own producers even though better deals could be had by its consumers elsewhere.
It is international competition that will keep our producers striving to be the most innovative and competitive.
The moment we follow President Trump down his blind alley of ‘America First’ shielding our producers from competition, we will be on the road to ruin.

Now, for the fish.
I was angry at the news that we would not be leaving the Common Fisheries Policy on 29 March next year at the same time as we leave the EU, but I had to reflect on why I was so emotional about it.
After all, the fishing industry is a tiny proportion of our economy: to put it bluntly, we have bigger fish to fry.
What is more, having campaigned to leave the EU and its Common Fisheries Policy for 45 years, how much difference will a further 21 months make?
Well, here are the answers.
The fishing industry is tiny because it was sacrificed when we joined the Common Market in 1973. There was no Common Fisheries Policy before we joined; they saw us coming, and created a policy to plunder our waters. It was considered as a price worth paying by the government of Edward Heath.
Second, there is something deeply symbolic about regaining control of our territorial waters as a great maritime nation, and to put it off is to put in doubt our will to ‘take back control’.
Which brings us to the issue of only a further 21 months.
Given past experience, such is our mistrust of our partners that we suspect that 21 month window will offer them the opportunity to alter arrangements with other coastal states like Norway and Iceland, that will bind and constrain us well beyond the 21 months.
Also, because in the past access to our waters has been offered up as a bargaining chip to secure greater economic prizes, the concession of a further 21 months is seen as a worrying sign that the habit may persist.
Only time will tell.

Some organisation has initiated a campaign on voting reform, one can always tell when you start to get a string of identical emails from constituents.
Some of them have been rather grumpy about my brief replies, and my refusal to entertain them at a surgery. I certainly don’t mean to be rude or unhelpful.
The fact is however, that there are a large number of people who want to see me, and some of them who really need to see me.

It’s not because I disagree with them (although I do), on the contrary, as a politician I enjoy a good argument. The fact is that I simply regard the matter as settled and I don’t want to endlessly go over old ground.
They may have forgotten, or they may just not have liked the result, but we had a referendum in 2011 in which 70% of us voted to stick with our current voting system. In my view that should settle it for a generation.

The same is true for those endlessly seeking to re-run the arguments of the June 2016 EU referendum. It’s done. We made a decision, and we just need to get on and implement it. As John Major said at the time “there won’t be another referendum: this is it”

The shocking nerve agent attempted murders in Salisbury, together with the development of world events over the last few years, point to the fact that we have been far too complacent about our intelligence and defence capabilities. To be frank, we have neglected them for far too long.

Our decision at the end of the Cold War to cash in a ‘peace dividend’ by reducing our defence and security expenditure, now with hindsight seems to have been seriously misguided.

Instead, we have had years of growth quite properly in NHS expenditure, and in Education –where we now spend more per pupil than either Germany or Japan. We have also seen very substantial growth in our overseas aid budget: we are now the world’s second largest donor. I support this because I see it as a vital way that we project power and influence in our own national interest. It is designed to address at source so many of the problems and conflicts which, left to themselves, end up coming our way.

The budget that has grown exponentially while defence has languished is our expenditure on welfare benefits. Increasingly these are paid to families who are in work. Perhaps we should consider to what extent the growth of tax credits and other in-work benefit payments, have actually kept wages lower than they otherwise would have been, and subsidised employers accordingly.

The Prime Minister’s speech quelled the noises off, for a time, at least.

 

For all the nonsense talked about the EU not knowing what the UK wants from BREXIT, the PM reiterated the messages she gave at Lancaster House and at Florence: that we are leaving customs union and the internal market, and that instead, we want to replace them with a mutually advantageous free trade agreement. It couldn’t have been clearer.

 

In fact, at the election last year 80% of the voters supported parties committed to exactly that: because it was what the Labour, Conservative, DUP and UKIP manifestos promised.

 

Subsequently, and unfortunately for the strength of the UK’s negotiating stance, the Opposition has sought to join nationalists, Greens, Lib-Dems and Tory rebels in trying to hang on to some aspects of EU membership, be it a customs union or membership of the internal market.

 

Were they to be successful, they would have to explain to the voters how it was that they broke their pledges at the last election. I can imagine the awkward exchange on the doorsteps:
“You said we would get our money back, but we haven’t. You said that we would take back control of our borders, but we haven’t. You said that we would make our own laws, but we can’t”

 

The intervention of John Major and Tony Blair demanding a second referendum is evidence that all this is just part of a wider campaign.
(If there was one thing that LEAVE and REMAIN both agreed on during the referendum campaign, it was the importance of that one plebiscite in settling the question for a generation. John Major himself stated that “there will not be another referendum: This is it!”)

I told a public meeting at Milford-on-Sea on Saturday of my belief that all the confusion being generated by arguments about the Irish border, the customs union, and the internal market, together with a constant news-feed announcing that the end of the world is nigh, are part of a strategy to delay our departure, demoralise the British people, in order ultimately to defeat BREXIT.

 

Notwithstanding the relative calm following the PM’s speech on Friday, this campaign will intensify over the next few months with the objective of persuading Parliament to reject whatever agreement that the Government negotiates.

 

The ‘blurb’ on the cover of Nick Clegg’s latest book How to Stop BREXIT states that it is “essential reading for anyone fearful of the rise of populist extremism”.
Of course, the popular extremists are the 58% of the people of the New Forest who voted to leave.

European elites have form when it comes to defeating the will of the voters.
As the campaign intensifies to wear us down, it comes to this: Are we made of stronger stuff?

When I was first elected Parliament sat on most Fridays, on some there was Government business and others were given over to Private members bills. Constituency duties were therefore, largely confined to weekends.

 Things have changed, we now only sit on 13 Fridays per year and they are all taken up with private members bills.

 Constituency Fridays have become a habit. Weekends are no less busy, but there are things you can do on a Friday that you just can’t do at the weekend, such as visiting schools, most business premises, or most public services and officials. Consequently, MPs have become quite jealous about protecting their productive Fridays in their constituencies.

 How does this square with private members bills?

First, to be successful in piloting a bill through Parliament you need to be lucky because the order is determined by ballot. Second, you need to choose a bill that is of very limited scope and almost wholly uncontroversial. This is because your enemy is the limited time available to you. Very rarely will your opponents need to vote against your bill, they just have to take up the available time.

Unlike the US Senate however, we do not tolerate a filibuster. Scrutiny of your bill must be proper and pertinent. Mr Speaker will order members to resume their seats if they are tedious, repetitious, stray from the point, or read speeches verbatim. If however, your bill has wide implications and is controversial you are multiplying the opportunities for your opponents to legitimately opine at length without difficulty.

There have been demands for reform and to make more time available, but the current system has suited Governments of all persuasions. Back-bencher’s bills have bees in their bonnets and happy thoughts that usually come with a large price tag or any number of complicated implications. It is convenient for ministers to rely on a small number of Friday devotees to ‘talk them out’.

Campaigners write to their MP to demand their attendance on a particular Friday to support a bill listed for that day. It is a ‘big ask’ because several bills are listed each sitting Friday and unless the bill is first in the order there is little chance of it being reached, so your time will have been wasted.

 Even if you support a bill passionately, its enemy is the time available, so you would be foolish indeed if you went along and took up any of that precious time yourself. Actually, the best way to support a bill is to shut up, or to stay away.

 Of course, a very few controversial private members bills have succeeded, but that is only when they have been backed by the Government.
 There’s the lesson: complicated, controversial, or expensive legislation needs to take place in government time when it will have lengthy and thorough treatment by both Government and Opposition, not just an interested few on a Friday.

Sometimes however, something will turn out to be surprisingly uncontroversial: last Friday the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill passed its second reading in good time and unopposed

I’ve had several emails demanding nothing short of the discontinuation of UK Aid as a consequence of the revelations about Oxfam in Haiti and the subsequent furore.

I don’t think that this sordid and tawdry affair alters the fundamentals of the case for UK Aid.
Our international development effort rests on two pillars: First, that as the fifth richest country on the planet, we have a duty to help those poorest countries struggling to catch up. This duty is currently discharged in the commitment we make to spend 0.7% of our income on aid to the poorest countries, leaving us all of 99.7% of our income for ourselves.

The second pillar is our own national self-interest: The objective of our aid budget is the same as that of our Defence budget and our Foreign Office budget, namely to project our power and influence internationally, in order to deliver stability and security in which we will prosper.

I am always keen to argue about how this budget could be spent more effectively to achieve this end, but I do not question that it continues to be in our interest to spend it. Indeed, at this point in our history, when we are leaving the EU and seeking to re-establish our place in the international order, I think it would be folly to reduce the ‘soft power’ that our UK Aid represents and the influence internationally that it affords us.

‘Sex-gate’ has raced through Hollywood, Parliament, the media, and sport. Now it has reached international humanitarian and development aid. It raises questions about the way we go about doing things but it does not fundamentally undermine the purpose of doing them.

Nevertheless it does underline the importance of taking control of your supply chain if you are to avoid severe reputational damage. If our Department of International Development subcontracts a project to Oxfam to deliver, then it has to be exacting in the standards that it demands.

This is by no means straightforward. for example, let’s say we decide to fund a reputable international organisation like The World Bank, to build a hospital in a very poor country like Nepal.
The World Bank, then sub-contracts to civil engineering companies and builders to carry out the work. One of the builders orders locally made bricks –which is a good thing because it helps the local economy and creates jobs.
Then investigative journalists discover that the brick-maker is employing child labour in frightful conditions. The reputational damage will go right back up the chain to the World Bank and our own Government for not investigating carefully enough exactly what they were paying for.

The same discipline applies to entirely commercial undertakings: when Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013, killing over a thousand garment workers, the reputational damage rebounded on our own high street chains for not taking more care over the conditions in which their imported stock was being manufactured.

We all have a duty to ask searching questions about what we buy and about charities that we support.
If things turn  look too good to be true, usually it’s because they just aren’t true

 

Occasionally constituents will come and give me a piece of their mind about how the country should be run, but that is rare.

 

During a typical ‘surgery’ constituents will, more often than not, come to see if I can help resolve their problems.

 

The problem in question might be to do with housing. It might be a family in bed and breakfast accommodation; or a house that is too small for their needs; or damp, or next door to unsuitable neighbours.
They might come and see me because they are in debt.
Or it might be that there is a problem with schooling, being unable to manage the journey to the allocated school place, or problems with behaviour or attainment at school.
Or it might be problems with social security benefits leaving them unable to make ends meet and having to rely on food banks.
Or it might arise from problems with payments from a former partner for maintenance of their children, or perhaps access to the children being improperly denied by one of the partners.

 

However the problem presents, scratch the surface, and nine times out of ten the root cause is family breakdown. It is the swiftest way to poverty and it is of epidemic proportions, costing us billions of pounds in dealing with the social consequences.
For children under 12 we are judged to have the most volatile family circumstances in the developed world. More than half our sixteen-year-olds no longer have a father living in the home.

 

Marriage is not perfect, no human institution can be given our fallen nature. Yet it is the most stable of social arrangements that we possess: For children whose parents marry, those parents are more likely to remain together throughout their childhood by a factor of two thirds, as compared to those children whose parents choose not to marry.

 

Arguably any number of government policies impact to the disadvantage of marriage.
Currently the Department of Education is consulting on how marriage should be treated in our education system, to which end I met the new Secretary of State last week. Notwithstanding the huge social problems that we face it would appear that ministers are reluctant to robustly defend marriage for fear of appearing ‘judgemental’.  It seems to me, given the magnitude of the social problem, that there is a proper judgement to be made.

In his response to a debate a fortnight ago, the Minister for the Cabinet Office told us that ‘families come in many shapes and sizes’. I asked him just exactly how many, and if a family was just any collection of people who happen to share a fridge?