It is reported that the PM wants to accelerate parliamentary legislation on medically assisted dying by affording government time to a private member’s bill. The are two from which the Government may choose, Lord Falconer’s bill in the Lords and Jake Richard MP’s bill in the Commons.
I am concerned that there should be any haste in the parliamentary process and the time for consideration.

Nobody, should have to fear a grizzly death. The proper answer is to invest in palliative care and end of life services. For the present however, that fear remains significant, but to alleviate it with medically assisted death would, in my estimate, be the greater of the two evils.
 The provision of such a choice, I believe would, more swiftly than we might expect, become an expectation. The process may be subtle, but the elderly and infirm, together with the handicapped and others, can perceive that they might be considered a ‘burden’.
And who would wish to be a burden?
Oregon has released its data for 2023. Of those who applied for an assisted death, 51% did so because they felt that they were a burden rather than because the feared a painful death.
(as an aside, let us not imagine that an assisted death is always straightforward. Oregon reports that in 2023 at least 10% of assisted deaths involved complications including regurgitations or seizures, and one established a new record: 5 days and 17 hours from the time of ingestion).

It is difficult to stand out against overwhelming support reported by pollsters and campaigning by celebrities like Dame Esther Rantzen. Nevertheless, altering the law will fundamentally change the nature of medicine and the purpose of the medical profession.
Whatever safeguards we insert into the legislation, we will have accepted the principle that clinicians can lawfully use their skill to hasten death, and we cannot know how the application of that principle will evolve subsequently.  The examples we have of jurisdictions that have adopted this principle, are that once a line has been crossed, the new service is very rapidly extended well beyond what was originally envisaged.

When I debated against Baroness Meacher, who had her own bill in the Lords at that time, she was emphatic about her safeguards, namely the requirement for a confirmed diagnosis of a terminal condition that would result in death within six months. In that debate at Durham University however, she was undermined by her seconder, a psychiatrist, who demanded that assisted death be available to anyone who wanted it.
Let’s be honest, there is demand for it. Of the 5000 or so suicides in England annually, only 400 have a terminal medical condition.

Dr Lehmens, Professor of Health & Law at University of Toronto visited Parliament in April to tell us that he regrets having been an enthusiast to change the law in Canada because expensive provision and adaptions for the elderly and handicapped are increasingly unavailable and patients are informed that instead they might consider applying for the assisted death.

In 2022 a 23-year-old woman had a medically assisted death in Belgium. In 2016, as a teenager, she had witnessed a bombing at Brussels Airport. She was physically unharmed but suffered PTSD.
Whilst the original intention of medical assistance in dying was to relieve suffering in death, it has become a means of avoiding suffering during life.

My argument is no more than one of the existence of a ‘slippery slope’. I make no apology for that, because I believe that it is a very steep slope  and very slippery indeed.

In 2018 the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims came up with this definition of ‘Islamophobia’ with the intention that it should be officially adopted and used for the purpose of identifying ‘hate crimes’:
“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”

Mercifully, the previous government rejected this definition out of hand. They were also lobbied by police chiefs not to adopt it. Unfortunately, hot on the heels of its announced revocation of regulations to safeguard freedom of expression in our universities, the new government is indicating that it will adopt and implement the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s definition

I should point that the designation of ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group’ does not convey any more authoritative status than that there are at least twenty self-selected parliamentarians (of both Lords & Commons) that share a ‘bee in their bonnet’ on the subject about which they’ve chosen to form their group.

The central weakness about this group’s definition is that it is manifestly absolute nonsense: Islam is a religion and not a race. It is comprised of adherents from many different races, in exactly the same way as is Christianity.
The central danger of defining a religion as a race is that any robust criticism of dogma or practice, then becomes a form of ‘racism’. In our free society where we have had a long tradition of, biblical criticism, it would be outrageous to exempt Islam, or any other religion, from the sort of critique to which Christianity has been, and remains subject.

As a Christian, I’m entitled to say that there are aspects of religion are a bit ‘wacky’ (though, surely, Mormonism has to be wackiest of all) and that people of any religion or none, have every right to say so, without receiving a visit from the thought police.

Thus far, the charge in defence of freedom has been led by the Sikhs who have written to the Government lobbying against adoption of the definition. They argue that they would no longer be free to teach the history of their own religious struggle and the martyrdom of their gurus at the hands of the Mughal empire as it expanded Islamic hegemony in the Indian sub-continent by military conquest.
I’m not convinced that they are correct, I very much doubt that their history lessons could fall within the scope and I think there are much more pressing dangers that might shield aspects of Islam from quite proper scrutiny. Nevertheless, the very fact that Sikhs are alarmed at the proposals is itself significant. Indeed, police chiefs lobbied against the definition because they were concerned about the impact it would have on community harmony.
It is a very bad Idea

I voted against the second reading of the Conservative Government’s Smoking and Vaping Bill earlier this year. I was challenged about my decision at the Hustings during the election campaign by my Labour opponent, who is a local family doctor. My reason for having voted against the measure is simple: I believe that adults should be able to make up their own minds about whether they should smoke or not, and it is no business of government to interfere with their liberty to do so.

Frankly, I thought the bill was absurd and would be unenforceable. It would have allowed some adults to purchase cigarettes and tobacco products, whilst denying that possibility to other younger adults: Some adults would have a right to smoke, but others would not.
 Had the measure become law, it would have provided a new bureaucratic overhead for each transaction at the tobacconist or other retailer’s counter.

Rishi’s Bill never made it to the statute book because Parliament was dissolved for the general election. The new Labour Government has made clear its intention to reintroduce the Bill with the same absurd distinction based on the age of adults.
In addition, it has trailed the possibility that it will include within the new bill, a provision to ban smoking in public places. In particular, it has pubs and other hospitality venues in its sights. This might have a significant damaging impact on the trade which is already experiencing a worrying number of closures.

The argument that smoking outside might impact the health of third parties, particularly when it is often in a designated separate area, is pretty difficult to sustain.
Ministers, and many of our citizens, especially in the medical professions, strongly disapprove of smoking. The mark of a free society, however, is that -within reason- we tolerate things of which we disapprove. It is difficult not to believe that adults are to be forbidden from smoking in public, because other adults and the new government just don’t like it.

The Prime Minister’s stated rationale for making the proposal is based on the need to protect the NHS from having to treat a cause of so much avoidable death.
Given our socialised healthcare system, there is a logic for coercive control over the lifestyle choices of individuals which might place too great a burden on the medical provision that has to be shared for everyone.
Just reflect for a moment however, where this principle is leading. It is the thin end of a very thick wedge. It opens the door to interference with all sorts of lifestyle choices, what we eat, drink, and even what potentially dangerous hobbies we might be allowed enjoy.

Or, was the real purpose of this announcement to grab the headline, taking the attention away from other government woes?

For my own part, the most sinister action of the new government is its abandonment of the provisions to ensure that our universities uphold freedom of speech. It’s a preoccupation of mine and I’ve spoken at universities a dozen times about it in the last three years.
I accept however, that my constituents have more pressing concerns: my email inbox is populated, not by outrage about denying of freedom of expression, but concern about fuel bills because the new government has chosen to withdraw winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners.

The Government insists that this is because it has inherited the worst economic situation since the Second World War. This is rubbish. The worst inheritance -by a country mile- was in 2010,  when the Coalition Government arrived to a note from the outgoing Labour administration stating that ‘there is no money left’.
 On the contrary, political commentators continue to castigate Rishi for not having delayed the election until after the glowing economic data, including the fastest growth among the richest nations, -and which arrived after polling day- had been published.
I accept that there are all sorts of problems faced by the UK, which are common to all the developed nations, consequent upon the impact of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But being in government is about making choices.

The public finances were tight. There was no scope for a public spending spree. On the contrary, there was need for restraint and retrenchment. There was, however, no black hole. The new government could not have been taken by surprise: they had, in accordance with our constitutional conventions, access to the most senior civil servants from the beginning of this year – they were able to ask anything. The Office For Budget Responsibility audited the public finances just before the election, they reported no black hole.
Just four days before the Chancellor’s announcement about her discovery of the black hole, she presented to Parliament the Estimates for Public Expenditure, by law these have to be the best estimates of the public finances that can be had, signed off by ministers and the most senior civil servants. But no black hole was reported.

Of course, now there is indeed a black hole. That hole is one that the Government has chosen to dig itself, by giving in to public sector pay demands without any attempt to negotiate improvements in productivity. The Government has chosen to pay for this first, by withdrawing winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners. And second, by undisclosed tax increases to be announced in October.

The Chancellor insists that the pensioners who really need the winter fuel payments will continue to receive them because they are already in receipt of means-tested benefits.
In this respect she fails to understand the psyche of pensioners who, despite many publicity campaigns, do not claim the means-tested Pension Credit for which they would qualify.
Many pensioners on very modest incomes, regard their pension, quite properly, as something to which they are entitled because they always ‘paid their stamp’. To have to apply for a means-tested benefit however, presents a very different psychological hurdle.
Withdrawing winter fuel payments from these vulnerable pensioners is a choice by the Government.

It is our choices in life which define us, not our inheritance.

 

There is a parliamentary select committee for each department of state. Their purpose is to scrutinise policy and performance, as well as to consider -in expert detail- the problems and issues that each department is -or ought to be- addressing. These committees have powers to summon witnesses and evidence, and they can employ experts to advise them.
Membership of a select committee comes with an additional workload in terms of the reading and visits required in preparation for weekly evidence sessions, followed by lengthy negotiation over the contents of the committee reports. Parliament publishes attendance statistics for each committee. (I don’t often blow my own trumpet, but hey, nobody else is going to: So, for the entirety of the last parliament my attendance at the at the Work & Pensions Select Committee was an unmatched 100%.)

Places on select committees are allocated by an algorithm to ensure that they broadly represent the composition of the Commons itself.  Nevertheless, unlike business in the Commons chamber, the objective of each committee is not just to secure a majority, rather it is to reach a consensus. Each committee represents the whole House of Commons and a report of a select committee is undermined if it is not the unanimous report of the whole committee.
The Chairmanship of each committee is critical. It is a position suited to a highly skilled and authoritative person with the benefit of an established track record. Accordingly, the Chairman only has a casting vote in the proceeding of the committee and, in recognition of their workload, receives a significant increment to their salary.

Of course, strongly led select committees are not necessarily to the Government’s advantage: they often give ministers a pretty hard time.
As with membership, so with chairmanships: they are divided up between the parties on a formula mirroring the composition of the Commons. Essentially, the choice of which party gets which chairmanship however, is down to the governing party, with the exception that the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee is, by convention, always a member of the governing party, and the Public Accounts Committee is always chaired by a member of the Opposition Party.

Now, when I was first elected in 1997, both the membership and the chairmanships of select committees were controlled by the whips offices. It certainly suited the government to ensure that the chairmen of the select committees in its gift were in the hands of someone trusted to ‘toe the line’. I recall a couple of tremendous rows when the Blair Government nominated individuals who were clearly ‘unexpected’ appointments, substituted to replace incumbents that had established a formidable reputation for independence of mind.

When the Coalition Government arrived in 2010, we changed the system: both the chairmen and the members of select committees had to be elected and not merely chosen by whips. Each party had to elect their allocated number of members, but the chairman had to be elected by the whole House: To be successful a candidate would need support from well beyond their own party.
Where a party has such an overwhelming majority however, the new mathematics in the Commons potentially changes everything.

What I have found particularly surprising is that my support is now being solicited for the chairmanships of select committees by brand new Labour members who have never even previously sat on one. They are seeking to supplant senior party colleagues that established a reputation based on their record. Well, that’s democracy: We still have free choice between the candidates and their merits.

The ‘word on the street’ however, is that this novelty is being encouraged the by the Government whips in the hope that potentially ‘difficult’ and independent-minded chairmen’ might be replaced by ‘trusties’.
I can offer no evidence. But it would be a great shame if the reputation of robust select committees were to be neutered.

Many correspondents appear to have been mystified by my reference to the Riot Act of 1714 in this column last week Riot Act (desmondswaynemp.com) . I’ll elaborate: the historical context was a series of riots from 1710 onwards including the 1714 Coronation Riots, sparked by the arrival of our first Hanoverian George. All of which was made much more complex by a change of government from Tories to Whigs, High Church agitation, and the possibility of an alternative monarchy under the Old Pretender, James Stuart (son of James II, who was deposed in 1688).
The Act enabled the proper authorities to require the dispersal of any gathering of more than 12 persons within an hour of the proclamation, on pain of death!
The efficiency of legislating for a modernised version of that measure is that it relieves the police and prosecuting authorities of the difficulties in securing evidence of any criminal act, beyond merely being present at the scene, after the warning that everyone must disperse.

There are all sorts of tensions within our nation that politicians, Clergy, and communities need to address. But I believe that it is a mistake to discuss how they might be addressed, or who and what are the causes of them, in the context of the riots to which they may have been a contributing factor. To do so, in my estimate, is to come too close to explaining them as if they may be an understandable, even a predictable expression of social discontent. The mere inference of such causality has already got our own Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner into very hot water.
The proper and immediate concern is the one that the authorities have quite properly already taken: to respond with force and swift sentencing.
My contention is that this would be assisted in future, were we to legislate for a new riot act.

                                                                                   *

The alleged author of the original misinformation on social media, that the Southport murders were the work of an asylum seeker who had arrived on a cross-channel dingy, has been arrested and detained.  The key issue for any conviction will hinge, not on whether the information was false, but upon her intent -the mens rea.
Incitement to violence and disorder is a crime. irrespective of veracity of the information provided.
The Government’s suggestion that they might now reopen the distinction within Online safety Act between what is lawful and what may be harmful, strikes me as very unwise. Parliament invested a great deal of time and debate on this distinction, and the provisions of the Act are only now being sequentially implemented. Enabling governments to censor information that they deem ‘harmful’ though if falls short of ‘criminal’ is to provide a standing challenge to freedom of expression.

So, what if the fake news on social media had actually been correct, what if the Southport murders had indeed, been the work of an asylum seeker?
The suggestion by a couple of my correspondents that, had this been the case, the violent public expression of anger would have been understandable, is utterly grotesque. The response of rioting to the tragedy of Southport is no more justifiable than would have been the case had there been any such public reaction to the monstrous murder in 1996 of 16 children by Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane. The radical depravity of mankind is equally distributed between all classes and ethnicities.
Divine intervention is our only possible redemptor in that respect.

The connection, now under investigation, between rioters and football hooligans may be instructive.
Some people just enjoy violent disorder as a form of recreation. They need little excuse.
The purpose of the state must be to provide a sufficient deterrent:  bring back the Riot Act.

Demands for the recall of Parliament are just ‘gesture politics’ unless there is something useful that it will do.
Here is a suggestion: legislate to reintroduce the Riot Act of 1714.
Once a riot is declared by the magistrate then everyone must disperse; merely being present thereafter is a serious criminal offence.
The miscreants could then be forced publicly to do hard labour in chain gangs wearing bright pink uniforms (another brilliant idea from Rwanda)

As the annual ballot for private member’s bills draws nearer, I find myself being lobbied by increasing numbers of constituents who have had ‘happy thoughts’ -as Winston Churchill characterised them- about new laws by which we might be governed.
My prejudice, on the contrary, is that we already have too many laws and that we should be taking time to repeal some of them rather than making even more.
Nevertheless, every year I obey the instructions of my whip and put my name into the ballot, then I hope like hell that, once again, I will be unsuccessful.
The unfortunates, who do come in the top ten, will be inundated with pleas from every good cause to sponsor a bill to address some perceived evil.

So far, this year’s most numerous entreaty, even before entering the ballot -let alone being successful, is that I sponsor a bill to address the existential threat to humanity posed by climate change.
We already have a the Climate Change Act 2008 and, as a consequence, we’ve cut our Co2 emissions more than any other leading economy. The reality is that UK generates less than 1% of the World’s emissions. Real impact impact on the problem now lies in the hands of the big emitters like the USA, China and India. No UK legislation, from either the Government or a private member, will have any leverage on what those nations do.

So, back to the Private Member’s ballot: Success gives the winners a small amount of parliamentary time. To proceed to the become law therefore, a bill has itself to be small -that is, of very limited scope, or it will run out of the limited time available to it, unless the Government were to step in and give it some of the Government’s own parliamentary time – in which case it is arguable that it is no longer a private member’s bill, but something that the Government really wanted done anyway.

There are only 13 sitting Fridays set aside for the Commons to deal with private member’s bills.
Most MP’s will be in their constituencies on those Fridays, with a long list of things to do. Nevertheless, we will receive entreaties from constituents, charities and other interest groups to go to Westminster on a particular Friday to support the bill they favour which is to be debated on that day.
I almost always decline.
The principal enemy of any private member’s bill is the shortage of time available. Opponents need not trouble themselves to vote against it – earning the opprobrium of all its supporters. All they need do is take up the time with lengthy speeches, even saying what a wonderful measure it is.
So, if you were an avid supporter of a bill, the last thing you would want to do, is to endanger its progress by turning up on its Friday and taking up some of its valuable time.

Hopefully I’ll be unsuccessful in the ballot again this year.

A number of constituents emailed enquiring why candidates for the Conservative Party Leadership, who -on the basis of media speculation- were expected to ‘throw their hats into the ring’, had not yet done so.
There are several possible answers. First, the speculation may have been misinformed. Second, the anticipated candidate might not have secured the required ten signatures from colleagues necessary for a valid nomination. It is always preferable to get the nomination sewn up first, then to announce your candidature, rather than to announce first, only to have to subsequently and ignominiously withdraw, having failed to get sufficient endorsements. Third, the potential candidate may have thought better of it and changed their mind.

I think this is my 9th Conservative Party leadership contest in 28 years a member of the parliamentary party. In only one of them have I backed the winner from the outset of the official contest.
On this occasion I have signed the nomination of Mel Stride. I accept that there are other candidates with great strengths under whom I would be pleased to give support from the backbenches. (I have no desire to return to the frontbench having spent 11 years there in opposition and 6 years there in government.) Nevertheless, I regard Mel as the most experienced candidate because he has been a Treasury minister, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and -In my estimate most important of all, and unlike any of the other candidates – he has been a whip.   I regard experience of the whip’s office, the nuts and bolts of managing the ‘wolf pack’ that is the parliamentary party, as being extremely important, particularly in opposition where you have no ‘payroll’ on which to rely or other preferment that you can offer.

Have some sympathy however, for whomsoever wins this contest.
I served two Leaders of the Opposition as parliamentary private secretary over six years. Leading the Opposition is the worst job in politics imaginable, particularly when a new government has been elected with a large majority. That government has all the initiative and all the interest of the media and ‘commentariat’ is focussed upon it. Nobody takes much notice of what the Leader of the Opposition has to say, unless it turns out to be something stupid, in which case they will make a meal of it.
There is little money to afford heavyweight support. And it is always much harder to ask the questions at the weekly match with the Prime Minister than it is for the PM to answer them: The expectation is that you must address the big issues of the week, otherwise it will be thought that you are ducking them, and on those questions the PM will have been briefed to the eyeballs with the full resources of government.
You will have your own record in government traduced and thrown back at you, and you will be humiliated when some daft comment by one of your colleagues is quoted back to you.

I wish Mel the best of British…but whichever candidate wins, I hope they know what they are letting themselves in for.

 

I made my position clear in this column Electing Party Leaders (desmondswaynemp.com) when I argued that ordinary political party members should not choose the leaders of their parliamentary parties. The choices that they made, overturning the choice of their MPs, were disastrous for Labour with Jeremy Corbyn and for the Tories with Liz Truss.

Party Members should never have been granted that power. Nevertheless, taking acquired rights of members away from them is rather more difficult. Conservative Party membership is already increasing in response to the prospect of electing a new leader.
Changing the Party’s constitution to remove the membership vote would be controversial and would take some time to deliver, if indeed the two thirds majority from the members is a realistic prospect.
I fear that we are stuck with the existing system for the present. Perhaps in the medium-term we might placate members by reversing the current arrangements to allow the membership to have a role in thinning out the candidates, but to let MPs have exclusive choice between the final two candidates.

A number of Conservative supporters and former supporters did suggest to me during the election campaign and afterwards, that the division of right-of-centre voters between Conservative and Reform should be healed by somehow engineering the election of Nigel Farage as the Leader of the Conservative Party. I do not think there is the remotest possibility of this happening, nor should there be.
First, the suggestion is based on the false assumption that that those who voted for Reform were formerly Conservative voters and that the swiftest way to ‘repatriate’ them would be to engineer a Farage Leadership. Undoubtedly, the intervention of Reform turned a Tory defeat into something of a ‘wipe-out’ but is quite mistaken to believe that the collapse in Conservative votes was principally the work of Reform, and that therefore, an accommodation with it would repair the damage.
 Lord Ashcroft’s polling suggests that only one quarter of those who voted Conservative 2019, but who abandoned the Party on 4^th July, voted for Reform. The rest either stayed at home, or voted Labour, Lib Dem and Green. That polling bears out my own experience on the doorsteps.

Second, it is just pie in the sky. There is no such deal to be had.
Somehow, I find myself on Farage’s mailing list. He emailed last week clearly indicating his belief that Conservatives are a spent force, that he aims to first destroy, and then to replace them. And to that end, he is already focussed on the next phase of the endeavour: the council elections next May.

Third, the very idea is grotesque, that Conservatives should embrace a man as leader, who, when asked to name the politician he most admired replied that it was Putin.
He has become an apologist for the invasion of Ukraine; And he is the most enthusiastic devotee at the shrine of Donald Trump – stepping forward to defend even Trump’s most egregious excesses.
Were such a leadership a possibility, and mercifully it isn’t, nothing could be more calculated to bury Conservatism for the foreseeable future.