The Prime Minister was right to increase defence spending. We have neglected to properly fund our armed forces for far too long. It is a matter of deep regret that much of the worst damage occurred under the stewardship of my own political party.
I do not believe that the increase announced is sufficient, but it is an important start, and it is a realistic amount – given the current demands on the public finances.
The Prime Minister has chosen to fund the increase in defence expenditure by a pound for pound reduction in our overseas aid expenditure. As a minister once responsible for that expenditure, I know that this will be a popular choice. Indeed, this choice has been welcomed by my own party leader.
A popular choice does not however, make it the right choice. My preference is for the stance that the Prime Minister took when the then Conservative government under Boris Johnson reduced overseas aid expenditure from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%. Starmer said then ”this is wrong because investing 0.7% in international aid is in Britain’s national interest…”

 Governing is about choices and the Prime Minister has made his choice. I believe it is the wrong choice. My own choice, had I been entitled to make it, would have been to raid the welfare budget. If we could only reduce our addiction to welfare benefits to pre-Covid levels, we would save £40 Billion, dwarfing the current proposals for increased defence. We have an army  – particularly of younger people-  who believe that their mental health is too fragile to allow them to go out to work. Yet, it is accepted medical wisdom that going out to work is good for your mental health.
We are currently awaiting the Government’s proposals on welfare reform. I hope that they turn out to be suitably ambitious, because the current bill is one that we can no longer afford to shoulder.

The cut in international development aid is even more dramatic than at first sight, because an additional £4 billion annually of that aid budget is being spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels. I know, as the minister once responsible, that one can support so many more displaced people in distress in their own region, than you can by resettling a lucky few here in the UK.

We entered into an agreement with the other rich nations back in the nineteen seventies to spend 0.7% of our national income on overseas development aid. It took us until 2011 to honour that pledge. In doing so, we were almost alone. Since when, we have stepped back again. Had all the nations that made the pledge honoured it -and done so immediately having made it, I believe that there would be far fewer seekers after asylum arriving on our shores from basket-case economies in poorer parts of the world.

I accept that there was too much wasteful aid expenditure. As the minister responsible it used to drive me into a state of apoplexy. I wanted to exclusively focus our aid on economic development to create jobs. For that is why the world’s poor seek to come here. They come here, not to live on benefits (even though we are ready enough to provide them). They come to seek work.
It is our own people who appear to be much more inclined to live on welfare benefits. That’s why we can’t afford to defend ourselves.

Were we to restore our commitment to spend 0.7% of our income on Aid, it would leave us with 99.3 % of our income for our own priorities. I think that is sufficient, even given our defence needs.

The PM and the Leader of the Opposition have been rebuked by Baroness Carr, the Lady Chief Justice, for an exchange that took place at Prime Minister’s Questions last week. Kemi Badenoch raised the absurdity of a judicial decision to allow the migration of a family of six from Gaza under the scheme exclusively designed for Ukrainians (this is just yet another in a long history of ridiculous immigration judgements) . The PM agreed, saying that the judgement was clearly ‘wrong’.
The Chief Justice has written to complain that it is the role of government “visibly to protect the independence of the judiciary” and that where it disagrees with judges, then the proper course it to appeal to a higher court. 
Well, strictly speaking she is correct, but she protests too much. The independence of the judiciary was not being questioned, politicians were merely remarking on the stupidity of their decisions not their independence.
Cleary the Lady Carr has ideas above her station if she thinks that the decisions of her judicial colleagues should be above the criticism of elected representatives, particularly when they so often offend against common sense.
I have long believed that Parliament should bring the judiciary to heel (see my blog of  25/09/19: Yes, it is a coup and my demand that Boris make ‘bygones’ his…top priority). Alas, that important agenda remains unaddressed.

Every now and again, someone will write to me demanding a written constitution for the UK. I never agree. We have far too many priorities for legislative time, to be able to set aside so much of it for the enormous task of finding an elusive consensus to establish what the constitution ought to be, what the powers -and the limits on powers- should be. It would require an enormous consultative undertaking and plebiscite. Properly done, it would take years.

Instead, we have no special category for constitutional laws, they can be amended or repealed just like any other law, so that no Parliament can be bound by its predecessor.
But now, I’ve come to the view (however disagreeable I find it), that we do already have a written constitution, and that it is the Human Rights Act 1998:  The Act requires that every government bill introduced to Parliament must be certified by a minister as being compliant with the Human Rights Act.
When courts subsequently rule that legislation is not compliant (irrespective of what ministers thought). Then Parliament meekly rushes to amend the offending statute.
It remains true in theory, that Parliament could simply ignore the court’s judgement, but in reality we inevitably surrender to rule by judges. Little wonder then that Lady Car has such an elevated conception of her status.

Parliament is currently, once again, meekly in the process of surrendering to the courts in the most egregious of cases. We are rushing through legislation to amend the Northern Ireland Legacy Act to enable Gerry Adams to resume his legal action seeking compensation for a conviction for escape from lawful custody during the conflict waged by the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Court having ruled that preventing the claim, as the Act set out to, is contrary to human rights.
 You couldn’t make it up.

 

 

Reform is ahead in the opinion polls for now, but there is a cloud on its horizon that is growing fast: Nigel Farage has tied Reform so closely to President Trump, and acts as his apologist and mouthpiece.
Over the coming months this may turn out to be an enormous liability.

I should caveat what I will say next about Trump, by stating first, that I agree with Vice President Vance’s analysis, that free speech and democracy have been endangered in Europe -and here in Britain- by our own political masters. Equally, that we Europeans have coasted under the US umbrella for years, enjoying a ‘peace dividend’ instead of meeting our proper financial share of the defence commitments. Little wonder that we are now being side-lined by the new US administration.

Nevertheless, Trump is making a monumental strategic mistake, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, by rewarding Putin, even before negotiations begin, offering up the key concessions of Ukrainian territory and a veto on its being admitted to NATO.

 Notwithstanding the stalemate on the battlefield, Putin had already lost the war. He anticipated eliminating Ukraine’s independence within days. He has wrought terrible destruction and terror there, but he has also suffered enormous Russian casualties and economic damage at home. He has reduced Russia to little more than a nuclear-armed petrol station.
And now they have a problem with the petrol: According to analysis from Reuters, Russian oil companies are preparing to start forced production cuts as they are unable to sell millions of barrels of oil. Volumes from Russia’s western ports in January were down 17% from a year ago, and the cost of transporting a cargo from Russia’s Pacific ports to China increased fivefold last month. Goldman Sachs estimates that Russia has stored 17 million barrels aboard ships since January 10^th. That figure could rise to 50 million barrels in the first half of this year. There is nowhere else where they can store it: there are virtually no large storage facilities in Russia, and the ones that do exist were damaged by Ukraine last month.  Ukraine’s drone attacks have also knocked out around 10% of Russian refining capacity.

Russia is reliant on the largesse of China, North Korea, Iran and Belarus – the world’s pariahs. This is exactly the moment to double down on sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and materiel support for Ukraine. Yet this is the moment that Trump has chosen to bring Putin in from the cold and back into the centre of world affairs. The Kremlin is cock-a-hoop.

As the ramifications sink in and events unfold, especially in Britain where we have been so united in our commitment to Ukraine, Reform’s nuptials with all things Trump may well begin to pall.
And Trump may just keep giving… with tariffs, climate vandalism, Gaza, and heaven knows whatever next.

 Farage has tied his party’s fate to something over which he has no control.

I last wrote about the Chagos Islands in this column on 5^th October last year( Chagos ).  Since when, the UK negotiating stance, plagued by our own ‘lefty’ lawyers, appears to have weakened dramatically.
To recap, the archipelago is a legacy of the Empire, as the British Indian Ocean Territories.
In the early nineteen seventies the native population were resettled to Crawley in England and to Mauritius off the coast of East Africa, so that the main Island, Diego Garcia,  could be leased to USA for a vital strategic air base.
Notwithstanding previous agreements and payments, Mauritius has claimed sovereignty and was backed by a UN non-binding judgement.
To see if a new agreement could be established, our last government opened negotiations. We ‘walked away’ however, when it became clear that the demands by Mauritius were excessive.
In July our newly elected government reopened negotiations and has now reached agreement.
Parliament was told the bones of the agreement are that UK will cede sovereignty to Mauritius and then lease back the Islands for 100 years, with an option to extend for a further 40 years.
What was withheld from Parliament was the price attached to the lease. Although, informed opinion suggested that it was £9 billion.
There was some urgency to complete the deal before the supportive Biden presidency ended. This was prevented by an election in Mauritius, which  resulted in a new government there, which thought that the deal negotiated by its predecessor was a sell-out. Negotiations were reopened and a revised deal concluded.
The Prime Minister of Mauritius told his Parliament that the price of the lease would be an index- linked £18 billion and that Mauritius would have a veto on any lease extension.
Our Foreign Office Minister told the Commons on Wednesday that the terms of the deal hadn’t changed. So, were they always that bad?

It is outrageous that we are contemplating paying billions to rent something that we already own, at a time when we are so strapped for cash that we have stripped pensioners of winter fuel payments the Treasury is even consulting on taxing death-in-service payments to the Armed Forces.

The Government’s defence is that our tenure of the Islands require certainty and that there is a danger that this would be thrown into doubt if a case was brought against us at the International Court of Justice. This is pure sophistry, the United Kingdom is not subject to the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ when it concerns disputes involving members or former members of the Commonwealth.

This dreadful deal is now on the desk of President Trump. We are at his mercy, hoping that he will save us from ourselves and the rotten deal that the Government has negotiated.

Now, to cap it all, we discover that the Government is about to open negotiations with Caribbean nations on the issue of reparations for the Slavery. They are asking for trillions, notwithstanding that we were the first to abolish slavery and then expended enormous sums using our naval power to stamp out the trade internationally.

So much of the effort against us on the question of the Chagos and of slavery reparations is driven by our own left-wing lawyers who hate Britain and are ashamed of our history.

Whenever brutal child murders fill the news, I receive several dozen emails demanding restoration of the death penalty. The trial of Axel Ruhakana has prompted many more such demands.

I have voted for the return of the death penalty on the three occasions that the opportunity has presented itself during my parliamentary career. Alas, I was always in the minority -and by a wide margin.

When I first became a parliamentary candidate in the New Forest, I expressed my view robustly. I was challenged at a church hustings, as to how I could reconcile this support with my professed Christian faith. I answered by quoting article 37 of the 39 Articles (which form the doctrinal foundation of the Church of England): “The laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences”.
When my questioner responded with the sixth commandment “ Thou shalt not Kill” , I pointed out that the original biblical languages suggest “thou shalt do no murder” is a closer translation, and that is a clean different thing.

The latest polling by More in Common reports that overall, 55% support restoration with 37% opposed. This is a 5% increase in support and a 5% reduction in opposition, since their last poll in 2023. In the generational breakdown, there is majority support across the age ranges with millennials (28- to 43-year-olds) leading the way, 58% of them are in favour, to only 27% against. Generation X (18- to 26-year-olds) was closest with 45% in favour and 42% against, even here however, there has been a 16% increase in support since the last poll.

Whatever the level of public support, the reality is that there is just no parliamentary majority for it.
Even if we did restore it, a significant minority would remain viscerally opposed and every death sentence would be the focus of public protests. It might also be more difficult to secure convictions for capital offences -as jurors contemplate the finality of a guilty verdict. Whatever the argument, one way or another, it certainly won’t happen in this Parliament.

The public demand for justice might be assuaged however, were a life sentence to mean what is says. Which is why the inability to sentence Ruhakana to a whole-life term was so frustrating. It is an affront to justice to see criminals who have been imprisoned for the most horrible offences being released (even though this is very unlikely in Ruhakana’s case).

We devalue human life by our refusal to punish those who take it, with death.

There are two issues that arise from the grotesque murder of children at a dance class in Southport. The first is how Axel Rudakubana, being well known to the authorities and thrice referred to the anti- terrorist ‘Prevent’ programme, avoided surveillance. The Home Secretary has made it clear that this is properly to be subject to an inquiry.
The second concerns whether the riots, which followed the murders, might have been prevented had the authorities been more candid with the public. The Home secretary avoided answering whether this too would be subject to the inquiry.

The riots were inexcusable and should not be blamed on anyone but the rioters. Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to ask if they might have been prevented.

The Home Secretary’s statement on Tuesday was immediately preceded by that of the Parliamentary Under- Secretary for Communities entitled ‘a statement on community engagement principles and extremism’. I put it to him that “when a crime has the attributes of a terrorist outrage, but the police, in their engagement with the community, proactively announce that it is not initially being treated as such, is that not bound to give rise to public suspicion that the truth is being covered up?”
 The Minister replied “I do not know what in particular the right hon. Gentleman is referring to”, which is absurd given that his statement had been prompted by the Prime Minister’s words in Downing Street that morning on the Southport murders. The minister’s response is exactly the sort of obfuscation that may have been a contributory factor in the rioting that followed the murders.

The authorities were aware that Rudakubana had been referred to the Prevent programme. That he possessed an al-Qaeda manual and the poison Ricin (themselves offences under the Terrorism Act 2006).
These facts were not disclosed to the public in case a fair trial was subsequently prejudiced. But was it necessary for the public to have been told, as they were, that there was no evidence that the carnage was motivated by terrorism and that it was not being investigated as such?
It was into this void that suspicion of a cover-up and misinformation spilled online, some of it, apparently, originating from hostile states, and fuelling the riots.

Would being more open with the public have prevented riots?
I don’t know, but it is a fair question to ask.
Would being more open really have prejudiced Rudakubana’s trial?
I doubt it. After all, the authorities released this information in October before the trial began. If it wasn’t prejudicial in October, why would it have been prejudicial last August?

Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said this “The Government has to be aware…that if there is an information gap…then there are other voices, particularly in social media, who will try and fill it….If there is any information you can give, put it in the public domain, and be really careful that you don’t fall into the trap of saying ‘we can only say zilch, because there are criminal proceedings….Quite often, there’s a fair amount…that can be put into the public domain…. just saying ‘there’s a charge, we can’t say any more’, is not going to cut it these days.”

I think he’s right and the authorities got it wrong last August. The Inquiry should examine it.

I recall the mayhem, carnage and horror of the ‘troubles’ in Ulster, so much of it orchestrated by Gerry Adams, and so I recoil at the prospect of him receiving compensation along with hundreds of terrorists.

This grotesque possibility was ruled out by The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, which sought to draw a line under the conflict and move on with the peace process.
To be fair, the legislation was highly controversial and opposed by almost everyone except the Conservative Government. Drawing a line under a conflict can be like that: There are still scores to be settled and investigations unresolved, but after so many years there has to be an end to it all.
Equally, we had to stop the outrage of elderly former soldiers being hauled before the courts to answer charges that they overstepped the rules of engagement. When, at the same time,  the immunity of so many terrorists has been provided by indemnities in the form of ‘letters of comfort’ furnished to secure the peace agreement in the first place.

Labour opposed the Act and made it clear that it would be repealed after the election. But there was one part of the ACT that enjoyed unanimous support in both the Lords and the Commons: the part the which prevented compensation for Adams and others like him -sections 46 & 47.

It is complicated:
In the 1970ies, Adams, with so many others, was interned (imprisoned without trial on the orders of the government, not the courts). In 2020 Adams successfully appealed against convictions for escaping from his internment, because his internment was unlawful – having been ordered by a minister rather than the Secretary of State.
Section 46 and 47 restore the longstanding principle that powers conferred on the Secretary of State can properly be exercised by subordinate ministers, effectively reversing the Supreme Court ruling by statute.
In February last year Adams appealed again and the Northern Ireland High Court ruled that section 46 and 47 were incompatible with European Convention on Human Rights and issued a Declaration of Incompatibility with the Act.
But Parliament remains supreme. Such a declaration does not change the law or require Parliament to change it. Parliament can just decide to leave things as they are.
Sunak’s government chose, in the first instance, to appeal. There is now a body of expert legal opinion of the view that the government appeal would have been upheld and that the original Supreme Court ruling was flawed.
Nevertheless, in July the new Government withdrew the appeal and last month used its power under the Human Rights Act 1998 to issue a remedial order for Parliament to repeal sections 46 & 47 of the Legacy Act.
It is this unforced and chosen course of action, this remedial order, that now reopens the frightful possibility of thousands of pounds of taxpayer’s money  being paid in compensation to hundreds of murderous terrorists. The Prime Minister says he will find a way to prevent such payments. He’d better, because he has opened up the possibility, which the last Government had shut down.

On Wednesday the Prime Minister almost pleaded with the Leader of the Opposition to withdraw her wrecking amendment to the Schools and Children’s Wellbeing Bill. I can’t imagine why. Given the size of his parliamentary majority, there was no prospect of the Government being defeated and the Bill being lost.
The occasion was the second Reading of the Bill. The opportunities to improve a bill by amendment come at committee and report stages. To be orderly at second reading, an amendment cannot seek to improve the bill, on the contrary, it must be fatal to the bill e.g. “That this House declines to give a second reading to the xxx Bill because…”. Hence the term ‘wrecking amendment’.
The PM’s concern was that the Opposition were using their amendment merely as a ruse to secure a vote on a public inquiry into sexual grooming gangs just to achieve the political objective of embarrassing the Government with a vote that it didn’t want, and in which ministers would have to whip their members to vote contrary to both popular will and the advice of Andy Burnham, their most successful regional mayor.
The PM appeared to be horrified that the Tories would be so destructive as to vote against a perfectly good bill just because it didn’t contain provision for an inquiry, notwithstanding that it contained so many other desirable measures. When, in any event, the Tories could have supported the bill as it stood, then moved amendments at latter stages to include the inquiry.

Of course, it was -partly- a political ruse: It was important to secure a vote on a matter which had hit the headlines in a big way, even though the Government didn’t want the embarrassment of the issue getting a further airing.
For my own part, I am not an enthusiast for public inquiries. They are very expensive and time- consuming. On this occasion however, I think that Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who himself commissioned one of the earlier enquiries, was right in his assertion that there is proper scope for a limited national inquiry to pull together the threads from the local inquiries and explore the question of why the establishment failed comprehensively. Such an inquiry would not impede proceeding swiftly the recommendations made on the basis of the earlier findings.

The PM’s concern about the Opposition’s naked political expediency by voting against a sensible measure just to embarrass the Government is however, quite misplaced. We would have voted against this frightful Bill in any event.
Though the Bill does include some measures to improve child protection, nevertheless it undermines the long-standing combination of school freedom and accountability that has been the foundation of the dramatic improvement in England’s educational standards. These were first introduced by Tony Blair with the enthusiastic support of the Conservative Opposition. These successful policies were then extended under the following Tory years. This Bill now seeks to abolish academy freedoms which have been at the heart of that success. It ends freedom over teacher pay and conditions, making it harder to attract and retain good teachers. It ends freedom on Qualified Teacher Status, making teacher recruitment harder. It removes school freedoms over the curriculum, leading to less innovation. It repeals the requirements for failing schools to become academies and for all new schools to be academies and it will undermine school improvement and remove the competition which has led to rising standards. The Bill will make it harder for good schools to expand, reducing parental choice and access to a good education.
It is just dreadful.

I spent the best part of 5 years in the last Parliament serving on the Work & Pensions Select Committee. The experience reinforced my prejudice that the principal problem that we face is a culture of welfare dependency.
Our out-of-work benefits are not particularly generous by European standards and those who are dependent upon them are not, by any stretch, enjoying a ‘cushy’ lifestyle. Nevertheless, recipients grow accustomed to the life and learn to ‘get by’, particularly so, when they are relieved of the inconvenience of going out to work for a living.
The trends are particularly worrying amongst the young
More women are now out of the workforce due to sickness than those who don’t work because they are raising children. Whilst the number of young men off work due to sickness has trebled in the last decade and three quarters of them indicate that they have no interest in finding a job.
The economically inactive population of working age now stands at a record 10 million.
The bill for sickness benefits is currently running at £65 billion annually, and is predicted to rise to £100 billion by 2030.
This has to be set against a background of several years with vacancies at record, or near-record, levels and enormous pressure from employers on government to ease immigration control in order to enable them to recruit from overseas.
Some 40% of those claiming sickness benefits state that mental health issues are their reason for doing so. Yet nothing could be better for mental health than the stimulation of work, with a consequent improvement in self-esteem.
Ministers have undertaken to bring forward reforms to the welfare system this year with the intention of encouraging recipients back into the workforce. We will have to wait and see what they propose. I did however, try and steer the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the direction of the work of Jeremy Bentham and his utilitarian principle of ‘the greater good for the greatest number’. I do not believe that society can, or should, carry a growing cost of an increasing proportion of its members who are not working.
The most effective way to achieve this would be a return to Bentham’s policy of ‘less eligibility’:  that life on benefits must be less eligible than the meanest form of independent existence, so as to discourage anyone from choosing to live on benefits.
How could we implement such a policy without cruelty and a return to the Victorian workhouse?
I think we need to ensure that, as far a possible, welfare rights have to be balanced with responsibilities. We need a system of ‘workfare’ where benefits are paid in return for socially useful work. This would be good for the self-esteem of many claimants with mental health problems and encourage them to take a further step towards paid employment.

The future of the Western Solent has been under discussion for the last few years. The question has been the extent to try and ‘hold the line’ through engineering works in the face of rising sea levels and climate change, or whether we try and manage the retreat as the coastline realigns.

There is a consultation underway: the detailed proposals can be found at https://www.hurstspit2lymington.co.uk/  and representations must be submitted by email HurstSpit2Lymington@environment-agency.gov.uk by 11^th January

I find the proposals for ‘managed retreat’ pretty alarming. They include discontinuing the maintenance of the Hurst Spit shingle bank and abandoning the existing sea wall between Keyhaven and Lymington Yacht Haven.

Walking along the popular sea wall footpath from Lymington to Keyhaven will no longer be possible.

Once Hurst spit has been breached through discontinued maintenance, all of the salt marshes inside of Keyhaven river, all along the existing sea wall to Harpers post will ultimately be lost. This managed realignment will accelerate the loss of the intertidal habitat outside the sea wall and make the Lymington outer harbour area much more exposed.
I understand that the Lymington River will almost certainly silt up, it will be subjected to huge wave action and become no longer navigable.

Hurst Castle will be cut off permanently from the shore and Lymington Harbour as a whole will be at risk. All of the features in that area will be given up to allow the tidal waters to penetrate inland and create new intertidal habitats for the birds further inland.

The cost of raising the existing sea wall to “Hold the Line” is in the order of £100 million, whilst the “Managed Retreat” option is closer to £280 million. The more expensive option of managed retreat is now the preferred option of the environment Agency because it unlocks central government funding for the proposed creation of the new intertidal bird habitat. However, I do not believe that enough weight has been given to local marine-related employment, or sufficient recognition given to the needs of businesses in the town of Lymington which depend of a thriving harbour, or the local amenity of sailing, motor boating, sea fishing, or simply walking your dog along the sea wall between Lymington and Keyhaven.

The annual budget for maintaining the shingle bank at Hurst of £40,000 is per annum, but there has been no maintenance this year. Given the new policy of “do nothing”, it remains to be seen if there will be any future maintenance of Hurst Spit between Milford and Hurst Castle, or whether this has already been abandoned to “Managed Retreat”. Given the relatively moderate cost of maintaining this structure in a normal year, this should not be allowed to lapse.

These proposals will change forever the shape of the coastline with profound impact on amenity and businesses. We need to consider very carefully before we give them up.