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Sir Desmond Swayne TD MP

Sir Desmond Swayne TD MP

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Higher Pay for MPs

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Once again I have had the luxury of replying to the indignant emails, complaining about the proposed 11% pay rise for MPs, by saying ‘not me guv’ and telling them to write to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) instead.

MPs used to vote on their own pay and allowances, which many people found shocking, but at least we were accountable to voters at elections, and had to bear in mind that we would have to look our constituents in the eye, and explain our actions. In the panic of the expenses scandal however, we handed over the determination of our remuneration to a completely independent body. The folly of this is now obvious. A truly independent body isn’t accountable to anyone, and so this has proved with IPSA. They have shown themselves to be serenely independent of, and impervious to, both public and political opinion.

IPSA have backed their proposals with a detailed study of the work that MPs do, and an international comparison of similar elected representatives. Whether IPSA’s conclusions are sound or not, is irrelevant, because their complete independence has shielded them from a political reality that is obvious to the rest of us: it’s the economy.

One of the principal roles of an elected representative (or, at least it certainly ought to be) is to set an example. At a time when we still have a substantial deficit in the public finances and are rightly imposing wage restraint on public sector workers, we cannot afford, either economically or politically, for our politicians to be paid more, whatever international comparisons there might be.

Ministers should not only share in the restraint being exercised by everyone else, they should be leading the way, and we have tried to do exactly that: We cut the pay for ministers by 5% after the 2010 election and then froze it for the 5 years of that parliament; last week I signed a disclaimer forgoing any rise in my ministerial salary during the lifetime of this parliament too.

Some constituents have written to me demanding that if the increase for MPs goes ahead, then I should reject it or give it to charity. There is a rub however. The increased pay proposal is cost neutral: the 11% pay increase is to be matched by reductions in allowances, pension benefits, and an increase in pension contributions. Are my correspondents suggesting that I take the hit on these, yet forego the matching increase? – And that’s on top of having cut and frozen my ministerial salary. It’s a big ask!

You can have your say by registering your opinion in the public consultation which ends 30th June. Responses should be emailed to mppayandpension@parliamentarystandards.org.uk or sent to MPs’ Pay Consultation, Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, 4th Floor,

30 Millbank, London, SW1P 4DU, but don’t write to me!

Repealing the Human Rights Act

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Over the last month since the election constituents have been emailing me asking me not to vote to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998. It’s a bit late! We’ve had the election and during the campaign I made explicit my determination to vote to repeal it. Indeed, the approach to the Act was a defining difference between the political parties. For my own part, I voted against the Act back in 1998 in the first place.

Some people seem to be under the extraordinary illusion that human rights began with the act in 1998, and that prior to that we lived in a dark age without any rights. What the 1998 Act did was to make the European Convention on Human Rights enforceable in our own courts, making our own judges follow the lead given by the judges in Strasbourg.

I am wholly opposed to this sort of rights legislation which I believe gives creative opportunities to judges to place some people above the law.

You may recall a spat back in 2011 when, in a speech at the Conservative Party Conference, Theresa May – the Home Secretary – condemned a judgement allowing a foreign criminal to avoid deportation on the grounds of his ‘ human right to a family life’ – because he owned a cat!

Now, it doesn’t matter if the fellow was spared deportation because of the cat, or some other circumstance, be it a lover or whatever. The fact is that he was placed above the law and spared the proper penalty for his crime. Had another individual done as he did, but without possessing a cat or having a lover, he would not have been spared. This is fundamentally unjust. It is, however, not only offensive to some abstract concept of justice, rather it is a significant practical problem: scores other offenders are walking our streets because judges have put their rights above the law, the will of Parliament, and the elected representatives of all our people.

I have a much more fundamental view of our human rights: I believe that we have the right to live as we please and do as we wish, so long as we do not break the law – which we are all equal before, and none of us – however mighty, is above. The real battle for those of us who value liberty is to constrain the ever-present legislative urge. Do not underestimate this struggle: the state, armed with all its coercive power, already extends into private aspects of our lives and homes which free Englishmen would never have tolerated in the past. This desire for ever more laws is almost universal: sometimes I wonder if am totally at odds with my constituents in opposing it; daily they write to me suggesting new laws to govern our lives as a remedy to some real or imagined problem: banning this or that, enforcing this or that. Heavens! Some even write demanding that it be compulsory to vote. The incessant demand for more law and regulation is the real threat to our liberty.

So called rights which place some people above the law, be they cat owning thieves, illegal immigrants or terrorists, undermines the fundamental principle of equality before the law, and ends up making a mockery of justice. The Human Rights Act 1998 should be consigned to the dustbin.

Referendum

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Increasingly there is speculation that the EU referendum may come earlier that 2017.

I was surprised that the revelation that the Bank of England has been ‘war-gaming’ scenarios arising from a vote to withdraw from the EU, made headline news. The only remarkable thing about it was that it was ever considered as a matter for secrecy.

As to how plausible these scenarios are, that is another matter entirely. Recent polling indicates that those wishing to remain in the EU are significantly ahead. I am a veteran on the ‘No’ campaign of 1975. I recall having a two to one lead in the polls for withdrawal, yet still losing that referendum. It is still very early days but I just do not detect the great groundswell that would be required to sustain a successful campaign to withdraw, in the face of what will be a well-funded and determined effort on the part of business and corporate interests to ensure that we remain.

During the recent election campaign I was asked at the hustings how I would vote in the referendum this time around. I replied that it is too soon to tell. I remain as hostile to the EU as I was to the concept offered to us back in 1975. I do believe however, that David Cameron has earned the right to be trusted with a renegotiation. After all, he is the only British Prime Minister ever to veto an EU treaty, ever to secure a reduction in the EU budget, and ever to bring back powers previously given away to Brussels. His record is a very good one.

Do I have any ‘red lines’ which will determine my referendum vote one way of the other?

I would certainly want to be shot of ‘ever closer Union’ from the original Treaty of Rome. Beyond that, the things which I dislike most about the Union are not the subject of renegotiation. For example, it is the institutions of statehood like the parliament which I regard as illegitimate. I want a Europe of nation states co-operating together, and not a Europe claiming to be a state in its own right. A parliament represents a people, and I just do not believe in a European people, rather the peoples of Europe have their own parliaments to represent them.

Counterintuitively, one of the things I like most about the EU is the principle of freedom of movement, and it is something that 1 million Britons have taken advantage of. I certainly don’t believe however, that it extends to a right to claim social security benefits anywhere in Europe.

Ultimately, this referendum, like the Great Charter of the eighteenth century, is a “knife and fork question, a bread and cheese question”: I believe that the outcome will come down to the issue of jobs; people will decide on the basis of how they think it will impact on their prosperity.

My own belief is that in the long term our prosperity depends upon our competitiveness, and my prejudice is that our competitiveness in international markets may be increasingly compromised by the burden of EU regulation. There is however, a rub: If we are to have continued access to the EU’s single market – which is the world’s largest free market – then, like Norway and Switzerland, we will have to abide by all the regulations anyway, but without having any voice in their making.

We are deluding ourselves if we believe that the referendum is going to present us with simple and easy options.

A Social Media Triumph

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I am delighted to have returned to my previous ministerial post at the Department of International Development. I had anticipated that I would do so. After all, I had only been in the job for 9 months. The Prime Minister knew I was enthusiastic, because I had told him that it was what I wanted. Given that the consensus was that I was making a reasonable fist of it, my working assumption was that I would return.

On Monday last week, as the reshuffle was in progress, I went to the department in Whitehall only to find that my security pass would no longer operate the entry barrier. Having secured the assistance of the staff, I went upstairs to my office. I discovered that my belongings had been packed into boxes. I joked with my private office staff asking if they knew something that I didn’t. They explained that this was just standard procedure because, were a minister to be moved and replaced, the office had to be ready immediately for occupation by the new minister. I think they were a little embarrassed by the circumstances but we had a good laugh about it. In that spirit I logged on to my Twitter account and tweeted that my pass didn’t work, my stuff was in packing cases: was this ‘the end?’

It was not intended to be taken seriously. Unfortunately hundreds of my followers on Twitter reacted rather differently. Some began to express their sorrow, and others their fury at my shabby treatment. Journalists began to call, asking me if I could confirm that I had been sacked. Colleagues sought me out to express their sorrow. Touched though I was by all this sympathy, I found the business of trying to explain it all, and that I still fully expected to be back at my post, very repetitive. In the end I simply had to go and hide at the far end of the library.

Later that evening the call from Number Ten came, and put the matter beyond doubt. Not for everyone however, a fellow did email me to suggest that this was a social media triumph: that I was indeed to have been sacked, but such was the ‘Twitter storm’ that the Prime Minister had had been forced to reconsider. Some people will believe anything!

Anyway, now that I have my feet firmly back under the ministerial desk, I make the observation that we did not hear very much about international development during the election campaign notwithstanding events which presented the opportunity to raise its profile: first the deaths of scores of people being ‘trafficked’ across the Mediterranean Sea; and second, the earthquake in Nepal.

I suppose the reason it did not become an election issue is that there is broad agreement about it among the all the main parties with the exception of UKIP. There clearly was no appetite to give UKIP oxygen by concentrating on an issue where the prejudice of the public was broadly in line with UKIP’s thinking – namely that we spend too much on international development.

I made my position clear however, at each of the six hustings that took place in my parliamentary division of New Forest West. The purpose of the international development budget is largely the same as that of our defence budget: to secure a safer and more stable world in which we can prosper; International development aid it is not charity, rather it is an investment that we make to secure safety and stability. It is no good us just wringing our hands at the political, social, security, and economic consequences of the tide of humanity desperately seeking to cross the Mediterranean and make a new life in Europe. We have to be prepared to invest in solutions to the problems that are driving them from their own countries. In short, we have to make life better there, and we have to tackle the forces that generate terrorism there.

My ambition is that by the end of this parliament we will understand this rather better and that, rather than grumbling about our foreign aid budget, we will be proud of what it is achieving.

Election 2015

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It was a surprise and delight to see my majority increase to over 20,000 votes, particularly given that I had been expecting to see it squeezed. I campaigned until the last possible moment –‘knocking-up’ pledged voters as the close of poll approached, having risen at 3 am in order to be at the rendezvous and start leafleting by 4.30 am (taking care not to rattle letter boxes or wake the dogs). I continued to present a determined optimism to my fellow activists, reminding them that the bookies would no longer take bets on a Conservative majority, whilst secretly preparing myself for defeat. I confess to having been duped by the polls. I was mentally adjusting to defeat. I had even typed up my final tweet to be released when my result was announced, quoting Julien from Stendal’s classic Le Rouge et le Noir:
“Au milieu de tant de perils, il me reste moi”
In the event I never sent it, because by the time my result came through, the unfolding national picture was already confounding the polls.

I have three particular reflections on the election campaign. First, the brutal punishment meted out by voters to the Liberal Democrats. In my estimate they did the right thing in 2010 by setting aside their profound differences with the Conservatives, and coming into a coalition government in order to give 5 years of stable government so necessary for the recovery of our economy. It never really worked for their voters however. The party itself has always believed in coalitions as the proper and normal form of government, and they were always intent on achieving power through coalitions. Their voters however, have been disproportionately made up of protest voters, objecting to those in political power, rather than seriously seeking to get it themselves. In my experience it was always a deeply frustrating experience arguing with a Liberal Democrat voter on the doorstep: no matter how far you could demonstrate how Lib Dem policy differed so dramatically from their own point of view (often particularly on Europe), they maintained their determination to vote for them. Why? I believe it was because they never expected those policies to be implemented, because they never expected the party to win power. Their vote was essentially against governments. Consequently, when the party became part of government they were bound to lose the support of this significant segment of their former supporters.

Second, whilst canvassing this time I have been quite astounded by the proliferation of those notices on doors announcing that canvassers and cold callers are unwelcome. In the past voters used to complain that nobody had called, now they make it clear that they don’t want you to. I came across several notices stating ‘no unwanted callers’. Well, how would you know if you were unwanted or not until you’ve called? The demeanour of many residents when they answer the door makes it clear that absolutely nobody is welcome. Are a significant number of our people determined to seal themselves off entirely from contact with the world outside the security of their castles?

Third, demand for electoral reform voiced by the disappointed leaders of the single issue parties is quite at variance with the clearly expressed wish of the British people. As recently as 2011 we held a national referendum with a high turnout in which we rejected such electoral reform by 70% to 30% -enough to settle the question for a generation.

The British electoral system makes life harder for small parties, but we knew that very well when we voted to keep it in 2011. The advantage of our system is that it encourages ‘broad church’ political parties that seek to reach out to a wide range of voters, and that it has tended to deliver decisive government that have majorities necessary to implement their legislative programmes. It was a bizarre experience to hear Nigel Farage demanding the sort of continental voting systems that deliver perpetual coalition, and the enduring political establishments of which he has claimed to so disapprove