My rather bleak conclusion in this column last week Tens of Thousands May Have To Die (desmondswaynemp.com) has prompted some robust emails from both the supporters of a ‘free Palestine’ and those of a ‘greater Israel’.  Which rather re-enforces my prejudice that neither side is ready for the level of compromise required to reach a peaceful settlement.
It strikes me that there are four possible scenarios:
First, a continuation of the status quo with occupied territories, the absence of a Palestinian state, together with the consequential economic disadvantages,  intermittent terrorist outrages, intifadas and bouts of open warfare.
Second, The rather unlikely triumph of Israel’s sworn enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, resulting in genocide and the complete replacement of Israel by ‘Palestine’.
Third, the equally unlikely possibility of a single secular state embracing both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as the Arab Israelis.
Or fourth, a two state solution, which is the objective of UK, European, and US policy, with Palestine and Israel both enjoying full statehood and living side by side.
These last two possibilities would require historic concessions of enormous magnitude on both sides. Compromises would have to be territorial and economic. They would be painful and neither side could be wholly satisfied. It would require leadership of enormous courage and vision, neither of which has been in evidence for many years.
Hence my bleak conclusion that killing will continue until there is a willingness to compromise and the leadership on both sides to embrace it.

I recall Maggie’s magnificent and dogged determination to secure our annual rebate from the European Union when Brexit wasn’t even a distant dream. Equally, I recall Tony Blair’s gullibility in giving half of it back again in return for what turned out to be …absolutely nothing.
I consider the ceding our sovereignty over the Chagos Islands by this present Labour Government to be a much greater error of enormous magnitude.
We have given away something that we owned and controlled, in return for a promise that we can continue to use it as before, but from now on, we’ll have to pay handsomely to do so.
Furthermore, we have done so by handing a vitally important strategic asset to a country which is in a growing partnership with one of our principal adversaries, to the consternation of our greatest ally.
What on Earth were they thinking of?
The scent of weakness rapidly spreads: Argentina is now salivating at the prospects for the Falklands, as is Spain over Gibraltar.

My email inbox has registered another spike in correspondence over the situation in the Middle East.
If largely falls into two categories. First, those for whom Israel can do no wrong. Including some evangelical Christians who share a bizarre (and quite unscriptural) belief that Jesus will not return until ancient boundaries of Israel are fully restored.
Second, those who believe that Palestinian violence is entirely justified by Israeli intransigence, and many of whom come dangerously close to suggesting that the very existence of Israel is the source of the problem.
Though my correspondence does not reflect it, my prejudice is that a majority of my constituents  share my own ability to see it from both sides.
When, as the UK minister responsible for our Palestinian outreach, I challenged the Government of Israel on what I considered to be their disastrous stewardship of Occupied Territories (which included the bulldozing of schools paid for by UK taxpayers), I believed their policy to be a calculated effort to prevent the two-state solution which was the very objective of our own policy. When I put this to Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and Chief Negotiator, our meeting ended abruptly.
Equally, over the years, we have seen the rare opportunities for a long-term settlement squandered by aspects the Palestinian leadership. The resort to terrorism has only reaped greater suffering on their own people and set back negotiation further.
When Hamas launched their pogrom last October they could have been in no doubt about the whirlwind that they would reap. Hamas now claims that their objective was to re-energize the prospect of negotiations. I believe they knew exactly the destruction that would follow and that their real purpose was to radicalise a new generation. Something in which Israel appears to be obliging them.

Tens of thousands may have to die before either side is ready to make the level of compromise necessary for peace.

After hearing reports on Radio 4’s early morning Farming Today programme, about the difficulties farmers have been having registering poultry in accordance with new regulations. I decided that I’d better get on with it, rather than end up being fined.
I didn’t experience the frightful computer problems that I had heard reported. Nevertheless, I resent the absurdity of having to register my one surviving hen (alas, nature is red in tooth and claw).
I can understand that government might need regulate large commercial undertakings, but there is something rather Orwellian  about a state that wants to keep tabs on those of us who keep a few chickens in the garden as a hobby, or for eggs at our own breakfast table.

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.