In my column of 20^th November, I ended with a question: do the opponents of BREXIT have the numbers to derail the EU Withdrawal Bill?

On Wednesday that question was answered in the affirmative by a majority of five.

The demand was for a ‘meaningful vote’ in Parliament at the conclusion of our negotiations on withdrawal from the EU, but that isn’t what the wrecking amendment actually delivers.

If fact, the Government had already conceded this ‘meaningful vote’.

The Government’s opponents are determined that ‘meaningful vote’ means one that isn’t just “take it, or leave it”. They want to be able to change any agreement that the government makes. They want the ability to send the Government back to the negotiating table with detailed instructions. In effect, this is a bid by Parliament to enter the negotiating process.  This weakens the position because Parliament does its business in public but, to be effective, negotiations have to be conducted in private: you don’t reveal your hand in a game of high stakes poker.

I consider the action of the Government’s opponents as an attempt to wreck the EU Withdrawal Bill.

The bill seeks to incorporate 44 years of EU legislation into UK law so that there is certainty for business, organisations, individuals and government; that we leave the EU in an orderly fashion and that the law will function properly on the day after we leave, as it did the day before.
This is a massive task and, accordingly, the bill gives order-making powers to government to get on with this enormous job without delay.

The amendment that the Government’s opponents voted for -and on which they triumphed- puts off the moment from which some of these order-making powers may be used, until the agreement with the EU has been made, and the bill to give it legislative effect is before Parliament. This delays elements of what is already a complex and very tight timetable.

So where are we now?
In her Lancaster House speech the PM defined Brexit as leaving all aspects of the EU including its internal market and customs union, and instead replacing it a negotiated free trade deal.
As Wednesday’s defeat proves however, the Parliament elected in June has a majority of members who do not share the PM’s definition of Brexit.
Her opponents fall into three categories: Those who really just want to use the issue as a means to bring down and replace her government; those who want to hang on to some form of EU participation in the internal market and customs union; and finally those who see this as really a strategy to prevent our leaving the EU at all, and they are using the others as what Lenin used to call the ‘useful idiots’ in delivering this strategy.

Who will prevail?
It’s still too soon to tell, but the contest will run, and run: So, we all need to cultivate strategic patience if we are to retain our sanity

Of the problems that constituents bring to my ‘surgeries’,  I would estimate that for nine out of ten cases, in whatever way the problem has presented –be it housing, debt, schooling or whatever- scratch the surface, and the real underlying cause is family-breakdown.

 

Sometimes that breakdown is explicit and presents in a dispute over access to the children.

I never cease to be amazed at the way in which some parents are prepared to use their children as weapons in a continuing vendetta against their former partner.

 

I think that the current state of family law exacerbates the situation and cries out for reform.

 

In practical terms, the amount of access that the non-resident parent can have, is set by the resident parent. If the non-resident parent accepts this then that is fine, but if this is not accepted, then the only option is for the non-resident parent to go to court.

 

The court will decide the matter in accordance with the principle set out in the Children Act, namely ‘the Child’s best interests’, but nowhere is this defined, and nowhere is it set out what reasonable expectations of access ought to be.

 

Of course, cases will differ and there must be discretion. Indeed, there will be some parents that ought properly to be denied any access to their children whatsoever.
There ought to be however, a principle underlying a child’s right to see a parent and a parent’s right to see a child. I suggest that the principle should be: ‘unless there is a good reason not to grant reasonable access, then such access should be had’.

 

This still leaves us with the problem of what ordinarily will constitute reasonable access. The Judges in the family courts rely on the ‘expert’ advice of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS). I am suspicious of this expertise: I understand that CAFCASS gives its officers no written guidance on the parenting-time that should be recommended. Neither does it offer that advice to parents, so that they can have an idea of what sort of access is expected in their type of case.

 

The absence of any published guidelines is a standing invitation to the resident parent to be unreasonable and to resist any settlement arrived at by mediation, because there is no expectation about what a court would decide in their sort of case. So, the burden and expense then falls on the court system. Where, because there is no defined principle or reasonable expectation, the outcome can range from full reinstatement of contact to protracted and near total severance as the case grinds on.

 

Furthermore, unreasonable behaviour can become habit-forming. Resident parents -having got into the habit before a court settlement, find it hard to get out of it, resulting in multiple returns to court.

 

I believe that it is high time that the judiciary defined reasonable expectations for broad categories of cases (age related, or whatever).
This guidance needs to be given to separating parents so that they know how the courts are likely to deal with them, should they get there.
This will then inform their behaviour from the outset and make for more reasonable and less costly mediation.

 

At the very least, it’s worth a try.

 

 

I return to the subject of this column published on October 15^th: the student loans system; I concentrated then –as did most of my email correspondence- on the question of the level of fees and the debt with which students are left, but since the Chancellor’s decision to raise the income threshold from £21,000 to £25,000, below which no repayments are made, my correspondence has shifted to the question of the interest rate charged on loans.

 

My emails complain that the rate of 6% is ‘daylight robbery’, and that the extra money should have been spent reducing the interest rate for everyone with a student loan rather than raising the repayment threshold which only helps those who will be on incomes below it.

 

I give two answers. First, it is always best to concentrate relief where it is most needed and this is better done by raising the threshold to protect those on the lowest incomes. Second, the complaint betrays an ignorance of the student loan interest rate system (I don’t blame them for that, because it’s complicated, and it is complicated in order to be fair to students, very few of whom will be paying 6%.)

 

The Government introduced a new tiered rate of interest for students taking out loans from September 2012.

Those with incomes above the income threshold and paying-off loans taken out before 2012 (known as plan 1) will, for the current year (1 September 2017 – 31 August 2018), pay a rate equal to the retail price index (3.1%) -but subject to a low interest cap- which means that they will actually only pay 1.25%

For those who took out loans after the new system was introduced in 2012 (plan 2), interest accrues at a variable rate over the life of the loan dependent upon their level of income:  while studying the interest rate added is RPI + 3%, when a student graduates however, and is earning under the income threshold the interest rate falls to RPI  and when a student is earning over the threshold the interest rate starts at RPI and rises gradually back up to RPI + 3% only when a graduate is earning over £41,000 per year.

The intention of the scheme is to make repayments more progressive so that graduates earning more would repay more. The amount of interest charged therefore depends on the circumstances of the student, which is much fairer.

What we should not return to, is a system where opportunities are fewer, and where 18-year -olds who don’t go to university end up paying higher taxes to pay for the courses of the lucky few who do get a place at university.

 

That said, students do need to be much more forceful in demanding value for their money. An undergraduate complained to me recently that an effective lecturer and tutor on her course had been replaced by a dreadful one, I enquired as to what the students on the course had done about it collectively or individually, the answer was ‘nothing’. Well, nothing will come of nothing: They need to agitate about teaching standards.

I’ve had a worried correspondence about Universal Credit. This has not been informed by experience: the benefit has not yet been implemented in the New Forest; rather, it is based on the hysterical ‘shroud waving’ of politicians and commentators.

Many of my correspondents ask for implementation to be paused until problems are ironed out. This is unnecessary because we learnt from the experience of Working Tax Credit which was introduced as a ‘big bang’ in 2003 -with truly disastrous consequences. For this reason the roll-out of Universal Credit is deliberately very slow. It will not be complete until 2022 and currently only 10% of eligible claimants are on it. The process is designed to identify and remedy difficulties as the implementation proceeds.

Universal Credit replaces 6 benefits, each of which have their own problems and disadvantages. To compare Universal Credit with some previous ideal state is ridiculous. No benefit can be perfect and without anomaly. A benefit has to address the needs of the community as a whole, by encouraging claimants to seek work, and also be effective in the very diverse circumstances of individual claimants who have different attitudes and needs.

Universal Credit addresses many of the limitations of the ‘legacy’ benefits that it replaces.
It removes the discouragement to work more than 16 hours per week that is built into Jobseeker’s Allowance.
It removes the cruel choice between financial support and work which is a feature of Employment Support Allowance  -when most claimants really need a bit of both.
It addresses the disadvantage of Working Tax Credit where, once claimants are in work, there is a disincentive to increase their working hours because they lose 70 pence of every additional £1 that they earn.

The results speak for themselves: Claimants on Universal Credit find work quicker and remain in work longer.

The principal complaint has been that there is six week wait and that people are left to go hungry and their rent arrears to build up. This is just not true: Claimants can get an advance that very same day if necessary.

Most benefits have ‘waiting days’ before which the benefit does not start to accrue. This is to discourage very short term claims when people are between jobs. There were six waiting days for Universal Credit but the Chancellor has now abolished them in his budget last week.
There is a calendar month in which the evidence of the claimant’s circumstances is collected and the amount to which they are entitled is calculated. Then, there can be up to a further week for the payment to reach the claimant’s bank account.

Remember, the purpose of the benefit is to prepare claimants for the world of work: and three quarters of workers are paid monthly in arrears. So, encouraging claimants to budget over a similar period is a good discipline.

For those claimants who need money right away, a same day interest free advance can be had. This was repayable over 6 months, but the Chancellor has now extended it to a full year.

As for the allegation that rent arrears are building up as a consequence of Universal Credit, actually the reverse is true: many claimants arrive with rent arrears and, after four months on Universal Credit, these have on average fallen by a third.

Nothing is ever as bad as reported.

Last week we had the first two days of the marathon committee stage of the EU withdrawal Bill, at times it was more than lively, and at others a combination of unrelieved tedium and viciousness. We still have the best part of the 100 hours or so of scrutiny to go.

 

It is important to remember what the purpose of the bill is, because that purpose occupied little of the debating time.
Its purpose is to provide predictability, continuity and certainty to businesses, Government and individuals by ensuring that our domestic law is the same the day after we leave the EU as it as it will be on the day before we leave.

What has happened however, is that the bill has been hijacked by MPs who want to use it as a vehicle to wrest control of the negotiations with the EU from the Government, and to have Parliament dictate the terms of any agreement itself.

On the face of it this is a not unreasonable thing to demand in a democracy. After all, Parliament is the elected, representative and sovereign body, and the Government is accountable to it.

The problem with this is twofold. First, the one thing Parliament is least fitted for is negotiating a treaty.  Binding the hands of the Government in public debate in terms of the sort of agreement that it demands will leave the Government’s position completely exposed and at a huge disadvantage in negotiations with the Commission: If you play high stakes poker you need to conceal your hand, as the EU is doing.

 

Second, the demand to legislate on the terms and process, and indeed the outcome of the negotiations –which is the thrust of the amendments- is a demand to put off Brexit indefinitely until Parliament gets what it wants, even if that isn’t available. This became explicit during the debate: They will use the provisions with which they seek to amend the bill, in order to prevent Brexit if they do not like the agreement that the Government reaches. They want a veto and they were clear that this means delaying Brexit indefinitely. It is for exactly this reason that they do not want a leaving date in the legislation.

 

(This strategy is an invitation to the EU to offer less eligible terms, given that the 27 are still canvassing for us to change our minds about the whole thing.)

 

As far as possible they try and maintain the fiction that they have accepted the will of the people expressed in the referendum result and that their only purpose is to improve the terms on which we will depart. But the mask slips: sometimes quite explicitly in what is said; sometimes in extravagant applause for an unreconstructed ‘remain’ speech.

Their real strategy is to delay the whole process long enough for the public to lose interest or, as they desperately hope, until it changes its mind.

So it comes down to this: do they have the numbers to wreck the Bill?

The answer:
It’s still too soon to tell.

 

I receive dozens of invitations every week asking me to attend meetings at Westminster in order to be informed or lobbied about any number of issues. Virtually all of them clash with times at which the House of Commons is sitting.

I attend as many as I can, particularly if they are ‘drop-in’ events where you can arrive, receive an individual briefing, and leave.

What I increasingly refuse to do however, is attend ‘receptions’ for a briefing. The House of Commons now charges the commercial rates for its refreshment services in this prestigious and sort-after location.  Even 5 years ago I invited a dozen or so Normandy Veterans to tea. The Commons wanted £500 for a very small dining room; £25 per head for the tea, plus £5 per head because it was a Friday. In the event, my secretaries and I made the tea and served it elsewhere in the Palace of Westminster.

Paying a corporate entertainment rate is fine if you are a wealthy corporation. What is worrying however, is that so many charities are paying these rates to entertain MPs. The way charities go about it is to get their supporters to email their MP asking them to attend the reception.   Now, I’ve done enough fund raising and rattling the collection tin to be nervous about using those funds to enable MPs to quaff wine and canapés at the expense of those who were generous enough to put their hands in their pockets and make a donation. Did they really expect their donations to be spent in this way?

When I politely decline these invitations and explain that I am happy to receive a briefing, but without putting the charity to such expense, I have been surprised by the dusty response that follows. Constituents have replied saying that I don’t care enough about the issue that the charity seeks to highlight. On the contrary, I care enough to want them to spend their money more wisely.

Often the charities are medical ones, and allied to an ‘All Party Group’ of MPs and peers. It seems to me that there is such an all party group for every disease and condition known to man, perhaps with the exception of rigor mortis.
Essentially these groups exist to raise the profile of the disease so that greater priority is attached to it. For my part, I believe that the decisions about medical priority should be made by clinicians rather than politicians:  all this lobbying is being targeted at the wrong people; Complaints about the priority attached to a particular disease, its diagnosis and its treatment ought properly to be taken up with the medical profession.

 

For the trains that are running consult the SWR website at the following link:

https://www.southwesternrailway.com/plan-my-journey/rmt-strike

 

For us in the New Forest this strike is doubly frustrating because our train service is not in dispute. Our services will be unchanged with the guard continuing to open the doors.

It is the new trains that will come into service for the suburban lines that are the cause of the dispute. SWR has given assurances that guards will continue to be rostered for every one of these trains but that the driver will operate the doors whilst the guard in involved with other safety and ‘customer-facing’ services.

When I met senior executives of SWR last week I urged them to give way and let the guards operate the doors. After all, they have accepted that each train will still have two members of staff. So, is it worth a strike, just over which one of them operates the doors?

I pointed out that on our own London to Weymouth service the guard is quite capable of doing both the ‘customer-facing’ duties and operating the doors.

They responded by pointing out that on the suburban services there is much more opening and closing of doors, with shorter gaps. They insisted that it would be quicker and more efficient to let the driver do it, after all that’s the way the new trains were designed to be operated. They were absolutely clear that there was no need for the strike, given their willingness to continue to negotiate and the pledges they have made on jobs, and I certainly agree with that.

 

 

Of course,  we used to open and close the doors ourselves!

Earlier this year I was asked if I would to be interviewed by BBC Radio 4’s deputy political editor John Pinar on his weekly Radio 5 live programme. After discovering that I would be given the name of a female politician and have to respond with one of three reactions: “snog, marry, or avoid”. I explained that it really wasn’t my cup of tea and declined the opportunity. I forgot all about it until last week, listening to John Pinar and other journalists relishing every detail of the Westminster ‘sexgate’ scandal.

When Geoff Hoon was appointed Secretary of State for Defence he used a debate to announce an increase in the number of roles within the armed forces which would now be open to females. I welcomed it, but suggested he might even have gone further.  I pointed out however, that there was an administrative overhead that would need to be paid, in order to maintain discipline and morale. I quoted St Bernard of Clairvaux “to be always with a woman and not to have intercourse, is more difficult than to raise the dead.”
This provoked a furore: I was universally condemned. There was even an early day motion denouncing me.
I confess to having felt rather smug subsequently, when the papers were full of reports of courts martial cases concerning improper relationships.
The point I made about the forces, with St Bernard’s help, applies equally to Westminster: you need administrative arrangements and rules so that people know exactly where they stand and what standards are required of them.

The current ‘feeding frenzy’ of allegations where the most minor risqué remark is reported in the same breath as a very serious criminal offence is just absurd. It is just about as proportionate a reaction as the Junior Anti Sex League in George Orwell’s 1984.

As, I tweeted last week, I recall my housemaster’s advice when he reminded us of the rule that no boy be alone with a girl in his study “believe me boys, this is for your own safety”. I suspect that a number of parliamentary colleagues wish that they had had that advice, and taken it.

So, had I answered John Pinar’s question, whoever he might have offered me, without doubt: ‘Avoid’

 

I refer to those who demand that the Government resile from the PM’s statement that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’, and that it rules out the possibility of leaving the EU without a deal.

No matter how much you might desperately want a deal in a negotiation , to say that you rule out the possibility of leaving without a deal, is to completely undermine whatever strength your negotiating position had. It announces to your negotiating counterparties that you will accept any deal no matter how bad, and they can adjust their demands accordingly.
It is a stupid negotiating strategy.
So why are clever politicians urging the Government to adopt it?

The same clever politicians have put their names to an amendment to the Withdrawal Bill which requires that Parliament be given the power to reject the deal that the Government has negotiated. This would give Parliament the power to ensure that there is no deal.
So, they demand that the Government rule out the possibility of no deal, but they demand that Parliament has the power to ensure that there is no deal.
This is truly bizarre.

There are three possibilities: perhaps they are not nearly so clever as was thought;
maybe they are just being awkward for the sake of it;
or perhaps some of them really want as bad a deal as can possibly be had, in the desperate hope that the British people will lose their nerve and demand to stay in the EU.
After all, senior EU politicians keep reminding us that we can still change our minds.
There are all sorts of campaigns running to try and persuade us to do so, including the ‘Grab Your Granny For Europe Campaign’ which seeks to get young voters to persuade their grandparents to change their minds about leaving the EU.
Add to this mix the way that broadcast media present every piece of economic news as part of a gathering Brexit catastrophe, and you realise that ‘project fear’ is still very much alive.

Did I ever expect them just to accept the referendum result and get on with it?
No I didn’t.
European elites have a record of ignoring referendums. The Irish rejected two treaties in referendums and on both occasions were bullied into voting a second time to secure the desired result. The same happened to Denmark with the Maastricht treaty. The French and the Dutch rejected the European Constitution (in Holland by a staggering 68% to 32%) yet all its provisions became the Lisbon Treaty.

I am confident that we British are made of sterner stuff and will not allow our democracy to be stolen from us.

The ideal of the family doctor is fixed in our minds by folklore, be it Dr Kenneth in Wuthering Heights or Dr Cameron and Doctor Finlay in Doctor Finlay’s Casebook.

However it may have changed, and now more commonly referred to as general practitioners (GPs), the institution remains One of the great strengths of the NHS. Overwhelmingly they remain private contractors who provide their services to the NHS. Strangely enough, when the wartime coalition government was making plans to set up the NHS, it envisaged nationalising the GPs (by making them paid NHS employees rather than private contractors) and leaving hospitals as the independent bodies that they then were. When the post war legislation was introduced however, they did it the other way round, by nationalising the hospitals and leaving GPs as private contractors.

 

When people write to me demanding an end to all privitisation in the NHS and requiring all services to be exclusively provided by the state, I reply by asking if they really want their GP to be nationalised?

 

The GP is the gate-keeper to other NHS services. Before your GP even begins an examination of the ailment that has brought you to the surgery, she -or he- starts will all sorts of knowledge about you, your family, and your medical history. So, she is ideally placed to decide how serious your condition is and whether you need to be referred to a specialist.

 

The problem is that this strength has been eroded over the last few decades as more of the NHS resources have been invested in hospitals at the expense of general practice. Too many GPs are leaving the profession at a time when rising patient numbers, and the complex needs of an aging population, mean that the demands for their services are growing exponentially. There is however, a plan to address the problem:

• More funding –an extra £2.4 billion annually for general practice to increase to over £12 billion a year by 2020/21 (a 14% increase in real terms). Last year the first £507 million of this growth was delivered.
• Providing a new affordable professional indemnity system for GPs and their staff against clinical negligence risks
• Increasing recruitment – record numbers of medical graduates are choosing general practice and the supply of medical students is being increased by a record 25% – 1,500 more medical school places every year, focussed on producing family doctors.

Last month, the Care Quality Commission gave a positive verdict on the state of General Practice in England: Nearly 90% of practices received ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ ratings, whilst of the rest with lower ratings, the overwhelming majority of them are improving.

There is however, something more that needs to be done. Only a quarter of GPs have had any formal training in mental health, of those that have, it has been in psychiatry of an advanced sort that is well beyond the more commonplace conditions that are now presenting in terms of anxiety and depression. Addressing this omission, I believe, should be a matter of urgency.