Da’ash (ISIL) has sought to recruit by propagandising the cruelty with which it treats its fellow Muslims. There was the gruesome burning alive in public of a captured Jordanian pilot. Then a month or so ago video footage was released to show just how inventive their cruelty could be: a group of captives were tethered at the neck with explosive cord used in construction, and decapitated simultaneously when the cord was detonated; another group were crammed into a car which was then destroyed with a rocket propelled grenade; The worst atrocity was reserved for a third group who were slowly lowered in a cage into a swimming pool to be drowned, with underwater cameras to capture their last agonies.

That these tortures were designed by zealots claiming to be the servants of God, and meted out on their own co-religionists, is truly bizarre. What God is it that they worship? Kali perhaps? Certainly not Allah the most gracious, the most merciful.

In an idle hour on holiday, whilst my wife busied herself in a museum of cookery, I visited a museum of mediaeval torture. These tortures were designed by Christians for Christians. I am afraid the display of ingenuity at delaying the moment of death, whilst maximising the pain and prolonging agony, puts Da’ash to shame. By comparison with the servants of Christendom – in the pain game, at least – they are a bunch of mere amateurs.

What sort of mind is it that busies itself designing gruesome ways of killing others so horribly?

I do not believe that such minds have any place in Islam, any more than they had any place in Christianity. There is a darkness within humanity however, some of us just enjoy killing. Whilst some people may play golf, a tiny number of others plan their next serial murder.

The added horror is when these twisted souls adopt an ideology which they believe sanctions their grizzly hobby. This perversion is apt to give religion a bad name. It seems to me reasonable that Muslims and Christians alike should strive to point out that it has absolutely nothing in common with true religion.

The tide of humanity that we saw crossing the Mediterranean earlier has now reached Calais. In reality, it was already there long ago: the problem is not new, even if its effects on commerce and travel, are more intense.

It is outrageous to see repeated criminal damage go unpunished, and illegal attempts to breach the UK border with impunity, in addition to burden being placed on haulage companies and others. Security and deterrence need to meet the severity of the situation.

Whether we prefer to call it a tide or a swarm, or whatever, we fool ourselves if we think it will abate. On the contrary, there is every indication that it will intensify.

Last week I visited Syrian refugees encamped in the Beqaa valley in Lebanon. I spoke to one Lebanese mayor whose town is now dwarfed by the refugees camped around it. For many of them this is their 4th year since fleeing home, their savings are exhausted. The World Food Programme has announced the withdrawal of assistance due to insufficient donor funds. So, there will be an even more powerful attraction for those who are able, to make the journey to Europe for a new life. Add to them hundreds of thousands from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq, Nigeria, the Sahel, South Sudan, Yemen, and any number of others.

Given the size of the problem, it is absurd to criticise the UK for not taking a few thousand more, when it is measured in millions, and growing.
The only serious long term strategy is the one in which we are leading: spending large sums investing in stability, humanity, and prosperity, in the regions from which they are fleeing.

When I was asked how many Syrian refugees we had given asylum to, I could have put a number to the several thousand which we have, but I preferred to point out that we have committed £900 Million to dealing with their needs in the region.

UK is alone in meeting NATO’s 2% target for military expenditure AND the UN 0.7% target on international aid. It is time the others caught up.

On Friday The Times published an article under the headline ‘Taxpayers rushed into £500m aid giveaway’ – criticising a payment made by the Department of International Development to the Global Fund in a race to meet our aid target of 0.7% of national income. I believe that this is very misleading, not least because it ignores the critical role the Global Fund plays in saving lives and ridding the world of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. At the end of 2013, programmes supported by the Global Fund had saved 13.7 million lives. Britain’s support for the Fund is saving a life every three minutes and will dramatically improve the lives of millions of people.

When we announced our support to the fund back in September 2013, we explained that we would give our contribution to the fund over three years – so long as others joined us in ensuring it meets its target and our contribution came to no more than 10 per cent of the total replenishment by the time that three year period ended. This is exactly what we are doing. The claim by The Times that the UK has breached our own rules on donations is just plain wrong.

The Global Fund has already saved millions of lives and Britain’s support is turning that success into long lasting change that brings us one step closer to a world free from AIDS, TB and malaria. This is in all our interests and is something readers of The Times, and people across Britain, can be proud of.

Every week there is some story or other in the papers designed to undermine our international aid programme and suggest that it is a waste of money. When I read this latest story I was visiting some of the poorest people in the most awful circumstances, people that we are seeking to help by giving them a livelihood and hope. This is in our national interests: it stops people trying to risk the desperate journey to try and get a better life by illegally entering Britain; and it stops others from turning to terrorism.

When constituents complain to me that we are spending 0.7% of our income on overseas aid, I remind them that this means we are still spending 99.3% on ourselves.

War is not a matter for half measures, to succeed you have to confront the enemy and defeat him in every theatre. We are now at war with Daesh, a wicked and repulsive terrorist organisation whose speciality is in designing ever more grizzly ways to kill people.

Rather oddly however, we are only prepared to use lethal force against it in Iraq. We are giving recognition to a land border with Syria which our enemy entirely ignores. What is more, our allies in the region ignore it too. This is even more perverse when you consider that our enemy’s strength, and his greatest danger to us – and to all humanity, is largely concentrated in within Syria.

We enjoy the support of the Government of Iraq for our operations there. We do not have the permission of the Syrian Government (although that hasn’t troubled our allies). The writ of that government however, no longer runs in most of its territory, rather it is Daesh, that largely occupies the land.

Were we to extend our air operations into Syria would we place ourselves in greater danger of terrorist attack?

This question might have had some purchase had we maintained our neutrality, but we are already at war – even if only in Iraq; It is time to grasp the nettle…and uproot the weed in Syria.

My views on the MPs’ pay were set out in the public consultation and in this column (see http://desmondswaynemp.com/HigherPayforMPs-6thJune2015.htm ).

A number of senior colleagues have now publically announced that they will give their pay rise to charity.

Definitive advice on this question however, can be found in St Mathew’s Gospel chapter 6, verses 1 to 4.

When we last had parliamentary proceedings on foxhunting it was before email and campaigning websites like 38 Degrees had become fashionable. Overwhelmingly, correspondence was delivered by a postman. The strength of a constituent’s opinion on a matter, and the determination to convey that opinion to their MP, would be tempered by the need to write a letter and purchase a stamp.

Now that foxhunting is back on the parliamentary agenda however, there is no similar restraint: your MP is only one easy click away. Consequently, I have had to spend much of my time clearing my inbox of hundreds of emails – in equal numbers from constituents on either side of the hunting argument.

I am afraid that many of my correspondents have got quite the wrong end of the stick. This week’s parliamentary proceedings are not about the principle of the hunting act and they do not seek to amend it. The Government has laid a statutory instrument before Parliament in response to the complaints of upland farmers about the problem of foxes killing lambs. The statutory instrument makes a number of small changes to regulations, not to the Hunting Act itself, to align them to what currently works in Scotland.

These technical amendments to the regulations will not lift the ban on hunting with dogs: Changes to regulations, secondary legislation (like statutory instruments) cannot be used to defeat the purpose of the original Act . The Hunting Act will remain in place and will continue to prohibit the pursuit and killing of a wild animal by dogs. What the changes do is to amend the exemptions – that Members on all sides of the House of Commons agreed during the passage of the Act – where they are necessary for the purposes of “pest control”.

The purpose of the amendments to the regulations is to:

Enable farmers and gamekeepers to make a judgement, based on the terrain and other circumstances, as to whether it is appropriate to use more than two dogs to flush out foxes and other wild mammals. This is particularly important in upland areas where the use of two dogs across large and difficult areas of ground, often covered by woodland, is not regarded as effective or practical. There is no limit on the number of dogs that can be used in Scotland;

To maintain the current restrictions of only one dog being used below ground in stalking and flushing out animals, but to enable the current provision for the protection of game and wild birds to be extended to livestock as well. This amendment will help provide upland farmers with an additional tool against livestock predation. A dog may be used below ground for a much wider range of purposes in Scotland;

To amend the requirement to produce evidence of land ownership or landowner consent in cases where a dog is used below ground. In Scotland there is no such requirement. This amendment will mean that the evidence does not need to be carried by the person carrying out the activity but can be presented at a police station within seven days. This is in line with the timeframe for presenting a driving licence under road traffic law;

To extend the scope of the “rescue” exemption to include “diseased” animals. This is a logical extension of the provision that enables hunting to be undertaken to relieve a wild mammal of suffering when it is injured.

These changes do not lift the ban on hunting with dogs and whilst placing greater trust in farmers and gamekeepers – those who know the land and terrain they operate on best – the controls remain more restrictive than those in Scotland. Any pests still have to be killed by shooting, and not by the dogs.
Foxhunting with a pack of hounds in the traditional sense that we have known it, remains banned. That is a battle that has yet to be refought. The Government had a manifesto commitment to put it to a free vote. I don’t know when that vote will come, but when it does, I am confident that my email inbox will know all about it.

Last week the Government published its proposals to implement a system of ‘English votes for English laws’ to cries of outrage from various opponents, including the Scottish National Party. That this measure should have come as a surprise to anyone, is beyond my comprehension. It was a principal feature of the election campaign, from my own experience as a candidate, it was one of the most commonly discussed issues on the doorsteps – and the most popular.

The Government has been accused of putting the Union with Scotland at further risk by implementing the measure. On the contrary, the Scots already enjoy these powers, granting them to England will address one of the principal complaints that the English have about the Union.

The opposition of the Scottish Nationalists is all the more surprising given their stance in the last parliament: they took the principled view that English measures, on health and education for instance, where the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood determines these matters for Scotland, were none of their business, and they voluntarily abstained from voting on these questions. They have failed to explain why they have changed their minds in this Parliament.

This change of mind makes the measure necessary. Whilst Labour would never have agreed to a voluntary abstention when they dominated the Scottish parliamentary seats, now that they hold only one, their approach is of little consequence.

I have used this column before to express my view that a voluntary arrangement would be preferable. This was, after all, the approach that the Ulster Unionists adopted, when the old Stormont parliament operated. I do not like the notion of different classes of MP, some of which may, or may not vote, on particular matters. I think it would have been preferable to voluntarily have adopted the convention that MPs representing Scottish seats simply abstain on purely English matters. The abandonment by the Nationalists of their previous stance however, makes a formal change in the Standing Orders of the Commons (the nearest thing we have to a written constitution) necessary.

The issue is not new. We have wrestled with it ever since it was first identified by Sir Tam Dalyell of the Binns during the original devolution debates of the mid nineteen seventies. It was characterised as the ‘West Lothian question’ because that was the parliamentary seat that he represented. In his principled opposition to the prospect of a Scottish assembly he pointed out the absurdity of allowing the member for West Lothian at Westminster to vote for measures that wouldn’t affect his own constituents, but only those of English constituencies.

This theoretical possibility became real during the years of the Blair Government when English Education and Health reforms – and also the Hunting Act – where the support of Labours MPs in Scotland turned out to be critical in securing majorities for the measures, which would not have passed had they had to rely only on the English seats which were to be affected.

This is an outrageous unfairness to English voters. It has been crying out to be addressed for years. The determination to do so now, after an election with a clear manifesto commitment, is a way of cementing the Union by removing a grievance felt by the English – which, after all, are the largest part of it.

Last week on the morning that the story broke that UK overseas development aid was being squandered on finding a mate for Nemo, I was addressing the Gates Foundation on the occasion of their progress report on neglected tropical diseases. I hope that readers will agree that, unlike tropical fish fancying, eradicating disease is a perfectly proper use of our overseas aid.

These diseases, such as the scourge of Leprosy, have been around since Biblical times. In 2010 former US President Jimmy Carter came to a conference in Britain to galvanise a renewed effort to eradicate them, which resulted in the ‘London declaration’ expressing our ambition to eradicate them by 2020. Last week was the 5th anniversary of the declaration and an opportunity to review how we are progressing.

A medical research scientist once explained the difficulty of searching for cures by comparing the endeavour to a piece of Confucian wisdom: apparently the sage once said that the most difficult thing is to search for a black cat in a room without light, and particularly so…if there is no cat. I can understand the simile: the enormous effort searching with no guarantee that there will be a cure at the end of it. Of course there is scope for further research into these diseases, and we are paying some of it. Our problem however, is of a very different nature. The clue is in the name: neglected tropical diseases.

The irony is that we are awash with cures, what we have lacked is the will to distribute them.

Between 2010 and 2020 the pharmaceutical companies will have donated $17.8 billion’s worth of free cures. These numbers are so large that they scarcely mean anything to us – but reflect on it, only one billion minutes ago we would be back in Biblical times.

The cost of a pill to protect a child from bilharzia (a ghastly disease that eats away your organs from the inside) costs as little as 20 cents. The difficulty is not so much in finding cures for these diseases, as in providing the infrastructure and health systems to distribute them by the billion to remote and impoverished populations, and this is the proper role of international development aid, investing to increase the capacity and effectiveness of health services in the world’s poorest countries.

At this half way point between the declaration of our intent to eradicate these diseases, and the target date of 2020, I think we deserve a small pat on the back. We have certainly raised our game. The UK will spend £250 million over the decade on this endeavour. Poor countries themselves are spending their own meagre resources too. Ethiopia has launched a major initiative to clear a backlog of surgery to deal with trachoma (an excruciatingly painful cause of blindness). We have built up a fantastic international partnership with the UN, USAID, the Gates Foundation, Charities, and the Private sector – last year these companies donated 1.3 billion cures. The impact these partnerships are having can be dramatic: in 1987 there were 35 million cases of guinea worm disease (another really painful and debilitating condition), last year there were just 127, and so far this year only 4.

‘But’, because there is still a big ‘but’. There are still 1.4 billion people suffering from one or more of these dreadful tropical diseases, and half a million people die from them every year.

Medical science can be a grizzly business, as anyone who has thumbed through the pages of a medical text book to look at the photographs will know. These particular diseases are among the world’s most grizzly, the grizzliest of the grizzly, in terms of the grotesque disfigurement and disability that they cause. This leads to stigma, isolation and poverty.

We need to redouble our efforts to eradicate them if we are to realise our ambition to do so by 2020. My message to the conference last week was that, were we to fail, and still to be able to sleep at night, we had to make sure that no one could accuse any of us of not having done enough.

Rather predictably the Prime Minister’s timely complaint at Bratislava – that there are elements within Islam that are in effect ‘complicit’ in the rise of violent extremism – has provoked the predictable criticism from the usual quarters. The critics need to consider carefully what the Prime Minister actually said, because their critiques so often attack something that he didn’t say. Mr Cameron made no general criticism of Muslims or their communities. On the contrary, his remarks were directed specifically and forensically. So, if the cap fits….

What I have found very encouraging over the last year or so, is the growing strength of the reaction within Islam in opposition to the extremists. A fortnight ago UK parliamentarians were privileged to hear the Grand Mufti of Alhazar, the most prestigious seat of Sunni Islamic scholarship, lecture on the how the Ideology of the violent extremists is incompatible with the proper interpretation of Islam. There is now a determined, even evangelical, effort underway within our Muslim communities to challenge and reverse the influence of extremism.

Minhaj-ul-Quran has just launched the first Islamic curriculum on peace and counter-terrorism and young Muslim activists are being trained to take on the extremist ideologies in their communities.

What the Prime Minister was rightly drawing attention to, are those within Islam who, whilst not preaching violence themselves, never the less foster an environment where it can develop. I believe that this falls largely into two categories. First, those who place the blame for radicalisation squarely on the perceived injustice of our own foreign policy and its effects in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. By blaming Western interventions in the Middle East – however, fair, or unfairly – they take their eye off the growing cancer that is preaching another bout of hatred and death as the solution to all the region’s problems.

Second, those elements within Islam, whilst not themselves advocating violence as a remedy, never the less regard western values, including democracy, as inherently un-Islamic and therefore seek to seal off their communities from all the cultural influences to which our life-style exposes them. This gives rise to confusion about identity especially amongst the young, and creates the environment in which distrust and suspicion develops into hatred and violent intent.

The Prime Minister was entirely correct in pointing out that this conflict is within Islam, and a very small minority at that, even if its consequences are disproportionate and disastrous.

There is a very different analysis: I continue to receive internet inspired hate email which paints the rise of violent extremism as a war of all Muslims against Christianity, the so called clash of civilisations. This really is such utter nonsense and contrary all our experience. Whilst it is true that the consequences of the war in Syria, and its spill-over into Iraq, has been catastrophic for Christian minorities, its principal victims are fellow Muslims. This is a war within Islam. It is precisely for this reason that voices within Islam must be at the forefront of the effort to vanquish the ideology that promotes war and death as the vehicle for propagating religion. The Prime Minister was right to point out that those Muslims who are refusing to engage in this vital effort, are themselves complicit in the consequences that arise from their failure to do so.

The increasing amount of litter being chucked out into the Forest is disgusting and a danger to livestock. For example, just look at the verges as you approach and exit Burley, notwithstanding the heroic efforts of the McDonald’s staff who work the verges south of the A31.

The cans, fag packets, stub ends, fast food boxes, crisp and sweet wrappers can be safely assumed to have come from passing cars. All the high energy drink bottles, water bottles, and increasingly sophisticated muscle gel pads etc. are more likely to have come from Lycra clad cyclists (rarely does one see runners there).

These litter bugs are just too idle to give a moment’s thought to the consequences of what they are doing. On the other hand however, the fellow who dumped his sofa at Picket Post a fortnight or so ago, clearly went to a great deal of effort. It is a pity he didn’t have the intelligence to spot that, in all probability, it would have taken less effort to dispose of it lawfully at the municipal facility on the way to Verwood.

What really gets to me are those people who assiduously bag up their dog poo and then leave the sealed bag on the ground or hanging from a bush for somebody else to deal with. Do they imagine that there is a collection service?

Are they worried that, were they to dispose of it properly, then they would be denying some Forestry Commission employee a livelihood?

I doubt it, I suspect they too are just idle and thoughtless.