Edward's Ramblings

Common Sense Prevails

2010-03-18T03:55:00.000-07:00

Catholic Care, a Leeds based adoption agency, yesterday scored a High Court victory against the law which would have obliged it to consider gay couples for adoption. The granting of this exemption is a perhaps surprising, but nonetheless welcome development and in my mind a clear example of common sense prevailing over political correctness. There have been cases of other Catholic agencies closing as a result of the Equality Act 2006.

Those who pushed for the agency to be obliged to consider gay couples for adoption will doubtless be disappointed. However, if gay couples wish to pursue adoption then there are other non-Catholic agencies which they can use. They must also recognise that at the very heart of Catholic Care lies its Catholic beliefs and therefore, had they been forced to follow the letter of the law they would have gone against their founding principles.

A Tax on Aspiration

2010-03-15T10:09:00.001-07:00

There is a piece in today’s Daily Mail reporting that Ed Balls, seen by many as Chancellor in waiting should Labour win the election, is pushing for a reduction in the threshold for the 50p tax rate. Since early last year those earning over £150,000 have been subjected to the 50p rate. However, Mr Balls now intends to include all those who earn over £100,000 per annum. This, the Treasury claims, would generate £1.13bn in tax revenue.

All this seems to suggest that the issue of tax will play an important role in the up coming election. Labour appear to firing out an early shot in an attempt to sweeten those on lower incomes. However, the idea that an increase in the amount of those paying a 50p rate would help the economy seems far-fetched under closer inspection.

Firstly, it is thought that up to two thirds of those currently liable for the 50p rate will avoid paying because they can afford to pay professionals to manage their money in a tax efficient way. Would they be quite so prepared to pay for these money managers if they didn’t stand to lose so much income in tax? Secondly, increasing the rate on high earners drives them out of the country, thereby deny the UK of the overall economic benefits that their wealthy presence brings.

The state of the UK’s budget deficit dictates that some fairly radical measures must be taken in order to reduce the burden. But even if all those liable for the tax ended up paying it, it would at best only produce a fraction of the revenue, the claimed £1.13bn, necessary to balance the books. That said, one can see why Labour are interested in pushing a “tax on the wealthy” agenda because the alternative, admitting to the cuts in public services that will inevitably have to be made after the election by whoever wins would hit their core vote hard. Surely, the way forward is to encourage a culture of aspiration where individuals and business are incentivised into as much wealth creation as possible, rather than the current state of affairs where they are penalised.

From 2010 to 2020, Prophesy or Daydream?

2010-03-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

Introduction: A sorry state of affairs

Recently I was day-dreaming about what I might write on the subject of the first ten years of a Conservative government, if it happens, of course, and if I’m still around in 2020. So here goes, but just in case some eager Labour party researcher spots this, these are mine and no one else’s musings and they are only that!

Taking power for the first time in 13 years, the Conservative government had its work cut out. First of all we had the attitude that we wanted a society built on freedom, responsibility and aspiration. Our aim, our commitment was nothing less than balancing the budget during our mandate. With Public Sector Borrowing Requirement at £175 billion and the deficit running to £848.5bn as of January 2010, the financial outlook was bleak. Our deficit was equivalent to 59.9% of total national output and we were determined to undo the damage New Labour had inflicted on our economy and our communities. The main task facing our new government was how to neutralise the risk of both the IMF and Moody’s downgrading our AAA credit rating and the associated devaluation of sterling. Alistair Darling ignored the demands to cut more, and faster, and so it was up to the new chancellor to grab the bull by horns. It was never going to be easy, but with swift and decisive implementation of the right policies in the right places, we were confident that we could bring about a fundamental change in the way we spent taxpayers’ hard earned cash, and the way this country was governed for the better.

Cutting back the public sector – the battle for Britain’s soul

The first thing the new Conservative government had to do was come clean with voters and publicly acknowledge that the public sector had become a great, greedy and financially unsustainable monster. Basic economics dictates that you cannot have less and less people in the private sector labouring under a huge financial burden to pay for the sky-high salaries, gold plated pensions and bloated administrations across the public sector from Whitehall to Town Halls. Therefore we held an emergency Budget within 50 days of taking office to set out a credible plan to eliminate in large part the structural current budget deficit over a Parliament. This led to the first step we took towards taming the public sector which was a progressive reduction in the deficit by freezing and reducing budgets. This was only implemented in 2011/12 so as to make sure that the economic recovery was cemented before spending was cut back. We insisted that Permanent Secretaries delivered the same level of frontline services whilst dramatically reducing costs by an overriding insistence on efficiency savings. IT projects were scaled back and projects piloted properly, back office functions shared and above all, complexity, particularly in benefits, reduced. As complexity reduced error and fraud was contained.

The public sector pay freeze for all those earning over £25,000, excluding those in the armed services engaged in active duty, caused great consternation and, as predicted, all sorts of threats and promises were made by wealthier public sector workers who’d had it too good for too long. Local authority Chief Executives were particularly vocal in their opposition. One of our greatest achievements was that we stood strong in the face of huge pressure from the unions and were able to deliver consistent reductions in the cost of the public sector to taxpayers, which also contributed a large amount to cutting public sector debt. Everyone agreed that executive pay in the public sector was out of control when we came into power, and so we took the step of guaranteeing that no public sector employee could earn more than the Prime Minister – their job may be demanding and important, but no one has more responsibility than the person running the country, and the public and frontline staff alike wanted to see an end to public sector managers earning far more than they were worth simply because they had become adept at exploiting a disorganised and bloated system.

A fierce battleground in the war to tame the cost of the public sector was public sector pensions. Early 2010 figures put council pensions liability alone at £53 billion, and with so many private sector companies seeing their profits exploded by the demographic time bomb, the Government had to drag the public sector kicking and screaming towards realistic, fixed contribution schemes and away from their unjust fantasy land of final salary pensions which had been gobbling up budgets and overburdening taxpayers. This was immediately implemented on all new public sector contracts whilst existing contributors were protected.

Another area that was overdue for the axe was the ever expanding quango state. 12 years of Labour government had created an inconceivably large number of these faceless, unaccountable and expensive bodies. The cost of these bodies to the British taxpayer was estimated to be £2.7 billion and rising towards the end of Labour’s reign, and it was considered that there were some amongst their ranks who were more interested in protecting their jobs than they were in performing any useful public service. Our long promised “bonfire of the quangos” took time to deliver. David Cameron stayed true to his pledge to make every single Semi-Autonomous Public Body justify their existence and earn their keep, and many were found wanting during the evaluation process and so were immediately disbanded.

Changes at home and abroad

The NHS was one of the biggest issues in the run up to the 2010 election. It had been an open secret across the medical world that the NHS was failing badly by trying to do too much, and therefore not doing certain things properly. All political parties had pledged to ring fence both NHS spending and the UK’s aid budget. Both policies were honoured. However, in the face of economic reality in the months after the election the Government ordered a Royal Commission on NHS productivity and the cost neediness of its aid budget.

Andrew Lansley’s team quickly came to realise that whether they froze the budget or not, the NHS had to become a lot more efficient in the way it spent taxpayers’ money. Thanks to New Labour targets, the number of non-frontline staff working in hospitals and surgeries across Britain had risen sharply in recent years, and up to 40% of NHS staff were managers, bureaucrats and pen pushers. The Tories realised that what taxpayers wanted, and what they thought they were paying for, were more doctors and nurses. When we started delivering more health professionals and cutting back on administrators, patient satisfaction increased, infection rates decreased and there was room to maintain the overall NHS budget and still deliver better quality frontline healthcare.

As for Aid, numerous reports had shown that the UK government’s distribution of aid was often not only ineffective in ameliorating conditions on the ground in some of the most deprived regions of the world, but could also be detrimental in that they did not employ the maxim that with donations come responsibility, and DfID funds were used for lobbying, advertising and sometimes downright dodgy administrations. The Conservatives took a more grassroots approach to aid, and only extended financial help to those schemes which could prove that they were making a real difference to people’s lives, had only minimal overheads and did not waste taxpayers’ money on swanky advertising campaigns in the UK when they should have been channelling funds into underprivileged communities on the other side of the world.

One area we felt it our duty to maintain was defence. After years of under investment in the armed services, we put our focus on getting our priorities straight instead of simply cutting the overall budget. In the run up to the 2010 election there were many stories of soldiers falling in battle due to insufficient equipment and a failure to invest in the correct technology to win the war and keep our boys safe. Even worse, while serving military personnel were moonlighting during their leave to buy proper body armour, Ministry of Defence bureaucrats were enjoying record bonuses. Like all other budgets the defence budget was frozen, but Dr Liam Fox wasted no time in re-orientating the Government’s priorities towards better equipment and protection for our troops and away from Whitehall.

The very specific situation in Afghanistan was causing an enormous drain on the defence budget. In order to remedy this on entering office we placed great emphasis on improving the political situation in the country and the diplomatic relationships between Pakistan and India by initiating talks between the relevant parties. These included some of the warring factions. Eventually this led to improved security within the country which in due course enabled us to reduce troop numbers, therefore saving money, whilst still maintaining our necessary presence with Special Forces.

Benefits – for families and communities

When the Tories took power, they found themselves with the unhappy inheritance of a number of nationalised and part-nationalised banks. The Labour government had felt the need to bail out a number of banks, but had been all too lax in ensuring that the banks kept their end of the bargain and extended loans and credit to hard-pressed families and the small and medium sized businesses that are the backbone of the British economy. The Conservatives turned this around, got tough with the banks and used them as a tool to put the town centre back at the heart of the economy. In 2010 it was estimated that three-quarters of the groceries bought in the UK in 2006 were purchased in one of the “Big 4” supermarkets, i.e. Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons. To try and change this and encourage free and fair competition for smaller, local producers, we introduced a number of policies. We encouraged local councils to create free parking on the high street, toughened restrictions in the planning act on the building of new supermarkets and also passed a Bill which required large supermarkets to source a percentage of their produce from the local area. Another key step was when we gave local authorities a new discretionary power to levy business rate discounts, allowing them to help local shops and services, such as rural pubs and post offices. This empowered local communities to decide what's best for their area, rather than being dictated to by a central government administration which could never fully grasp local needs and issues to the same extent.

Under Labour the size and scope of the welfare state had ballooned. Politicians of all stripes agreed that something had to be done to reduce the benefits bill, but most lacked the imagination or political will to implement the radical changes that our system so badly needed. The Conservatives had been saying for years that they wanted to get away from making people dependent on the state and encourage a far more self-sufficient, family oriented society in which people with the right work ethic could thrive and yet the vulnerable were still well looked after. Luckily, we were well prepared on this front. Building on the excellent work carried out by Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice, we integrated the Department for Work and Pensions far more closely with the Treasury and the Department of Health so that we could get to the crux of why we as a nation were spending so much, and yet improving so little. We froze all benefits except the state pension for 5 years, and targeted middle-class benefits for cuts. Too many people who could afford to live off their own income with no help from the state were receiving handouts which were adding billions to our annual expenditure. We knew this had to change, and started by making sure it was only the vulnerable and needy in society who received any benefits. We made work pay again by scrapping effective marginal tax rates for the poor of 96 per cent and we ended the couple penalty that left families worse off if the parents lived apart. Housing benefit was overhauled to give local authorities more autonomy to make sure they are getting the best value for money, and each claim for incapacity benefit was evaluated on medical grounds by independent doctors. These savings, along with providing tax breaks for married couples and encouraging a strong familial unit helped to reduce the effects of many of the social problems Britain was facing. We feel we have made a real difference to so many communities who found themselves in the quagmire of social disorder and apathy, and that taxpayers are getting better value for money, the vulnerable are receiving the attention they need and every child, regardless of background, now has a better chance of making a success of their life in today’s Britain.

A Taxing Issue

One of our key pledges in the run up to the election was to increase economic competitiveness. It was of great regret to all right minded people that so many businesses of all sizes were relocating to places where they felt they would get a fairer deal and would be allowed to hang on to more of their hard won profits.

We scrapped Labour’s proposal to implement a 50% income tax rate on high earners, after examining the evidence and realising that it would raise no meaningful revenue, would result in the flight of entrepreneurial talent that we so badly needed, and was more about political posturing than practical help.

There was a great desire in the Conservative party to make it easier to start and do business in our country. Even France, not a country known for its rampant capitalist spirit, had managed to create an environment in which it was quicker to start a business than we had. We turned this around and now enjoy one of the most efficient and entrepreneurial environments in the world. How did we do it? By cutting red tape and regulation, saying no to Brussels regulating our every economic decision, and encouraging those in our society with a get up and go attitude by not only extending preferential loans through our state owned banks as mentioned above, but also by giving businesses started between 2010 and 2015 a 5 year corporation tax holiday. We lowered corporation tax, lowered National Insurance contributions and made sure that no one in Britain would pay more than 40% income tax, no matter what their salary or pay structure.

We upheld our pledge on inheritance tax, raising the bar so that it only kicked in once you had amassed an estate worth in excess of £1 million, and then lowering the rate to a maximum of 15% on any estate regardless of its value. We believe that by taking these steps we were sending a message to the British people that we would in no way unfairly punish those who sought to do right by their children by putting money aside so that they can improve their lot and achieve their dreams.

Conclusion: Nothing worthwhile is easy

Every administration has its critics, and there’s no doubt that not everyone was convinced we would have the courage of our convictions once we gained office, or even that those convictions were the right ones in the first place. As a party, however, I believe we can feel vindicated by the fact that we have turned around an economy on the brink of collapse, and made Britain a place in which people can thrive again. We have empowered individuals to change their lives, built communities, cut red tape, got the public sector under control and rebooted our flagging economy. With every bold step comes risk but as we look back over 10 years of Conservative government I am confident that we can say we delivered real change that has vastly improved the lives of Britons every day, and that is something of which we should all be proud.

An opportunity missed

2010-03-04T06:47:00.000-08:00

Although I am very pleased that there is to be a direct quick link from Lincoln to Kings Cross station, it angers me that the so called improvement in rail services from Lincolnshire are nowhere near as good as their predecessors thirty years ago. It seems silly to miss this great opportunity to restore the old Grimsby Cleethorpes to Kings Cross line via Market Rasen and Lincoln. Even if there were only one train from Grimsby to London in the morning and one which returned from London in the evening while maintaining more regular trains from Lincoln during the day it would be a great improvement. The restoration of the Grimsby Cleethorpes to London train line would be good for the local economy as well as general transport between Grimsby and London.

Diplomacy the way out of Afghanistan

2010-03-03T08:27:00.001-08:00

There was an interesting comment piece in The Independent on Sunday by fellow Cornerstone member and member of the Defence Select Committee Adam Holloway on the subject of Afghanistan and “Operation Moshtarack”. Unfortunately he paints a rather bleak picture of the current state of affairs, but also offers a four step strategy on how we can potentially turn the situation around.

As we currently stand, he says, our continued presence has created and continues to fuel the insurgency. This is demonstrated in no uncertain terms by the fact that roughly 80 per cent of the young men who fight for the Taliban will live and die within 20 miles of where they live. How they directly affect our security in the UK is questionable. These men are fighting what they see as outsiders, NATO troops and Afghanis from outside their region. They have no qualms with the UK apart from the fact that we have placed soldiers in their country. And the fact that our soldiers are in Afghanistan has become a rallying point for Al-Qaeda to strengthen elsewhere, notably in Yemen and Somalia. This is where the real danger from extremists lies, not the wide expanses of Helmand province.

However, if we are to make progress, as Adam points out, we must try to restore the goodwill we created in 2001 when we rid the Afghanis of the Taliban before we became distracted by invading Iraq. Then we can consider exiting their country which by then should be in a more stable position.

He suggests a strategy with four main components which broadly speaking are as follows; 1. Warn President Karsai that he will be replaced unless he changes his ways and starts running an uncorrupted, authentic government. This is essential for the Afghan people to place their trust in the democratic process; 2. Set up a process of reconciliation with all parties, warring or otherwise. Like it or not, they will all have a role to play when we are gone; 3. Place heavy pressure on Pakistan and India to move to resolving their issues. Elements of the Pakistan government would resent a pro-Indian administration, such as Karsai’s, so are happy to allow insurgents to mobilise on the Afghan border in Pakistan and maintain the chaos; 4. Move away from big armies towards politics. Al-Qaeda would be delighted to hear of larger troop surges as this leads to greater Afghan casualties, more reaction from the population and more perception of an occupation. This can only fuel the jihadists.

That the situation has come to this after the missions’ positive start in 2001 makes me glad that I voted against the distracting invasion of Iraq, but we are where we are now and as difficult as it sounds, we have to accept that the answer to the problem of Afghanistan ultimately lies around the negotiation table.

To read Adam's full article please use the following link. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/adam-holloway-an-end-to-steelyeyed-killing-machines-1905729.html

The Pope on Thought for the Day?

2010-02-25T06:50:00.000-08:00

The news that Radio 4 is in discussions with the Pope about the Pontiff appearing on Thought for the Day during his upcoming visit to Britain is most welcome. As one would expect, the programme’s producers consider the Pope to be the dream ticket for the show. Let us hope that both parties involved can dot the I’s and cross the T’s on the necessary agreement which would no doubt add to what will be an historic and wonderful visit.

A Pleasant Surprise

2010-02-24T03:25:00.001-08:00

The Children, Schools and Families Bill, which had its’ third reading in the Commons yesterday, has received a welcome amendment from an unlikely source. The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls has tabled an amendment regarding the teaching of sex education in schools, specifically with regards to contraception and homosexuality.

Originally the Bill proposed obligations on all schools, faith or otherwise, to teach children about contraception and homosexuality in a way that gave both sides of the argument. This ended the right of schools to opt-out of any type of teaching on either subject. However, it also prevented faith schools from explaining their faith’s position on the matter. What Mr Balls’ amendment does is to allow faith schools to teach on the subject “within the context and ethos of their faith”. In other words, for example, a Catholic school can teach that contraception is wrong, but they must provide its pupils with teaching about contraception.

This amendment is a fine example of common sense prevailing over the drive for political correctness and is the result of our long-term campaigning on the issue.
In a new and encouraging move Parliament has shown a willingness to work together with faith schools (who provide roughly one-third of the education in the UK) and been sensitive to their views.

Gordon's gone bananas

2010-02-11T03:47:00.000-08:00

It has been reported that Gordon Brown has taken to eating bananas instead of his favourite Kit-Kats in a bid to stay healthy in the run up to the election. This, coupled with his recent taking-up of jogging, hints that he has recognised the need to stay healthy in what must have become an increasingly stressful job.

Of course, the average life of a regular MP, with the regular meetings, long hours and frequent journeys to and from the constituency can also be stressful. And that’s even before the expenses scandal.

So to counter this, during the week come rain or shine (or, more recently, ice), I take a daily swim in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. I would wholeheartedly recommend this to the Prime Minister as an excellent way to start the day, even if my dog, William, doesn’t necessarily agree.

Debating the Equality Bill

2010-02-09T04:17:00.001-08:00

Last Thursday in the Chamber I had the opportunity to question the Leader of the House, Harriet Harman, on the subject of the Equality Bill. I asked her that since the Government are not now overturning their defeats on the amendments to the Bill, could we take it that the Government now accepted the principle that the Churches must be allowed to regulate their own clergy according to their own conscience?

This suggestion that the Government were running up the white flag on the issue did not go down too well with Miss Harman. She replied that they had “never sought to, or indeed even unintentionally, propose non-discrimination laws covering bishops, rabbis, archbishops or priests” and accused me of trying to spread a misapprehension.

This is all very well if it had been the case, but the fact that the Pope, who of course picks his words carefully, felt it necessary to make an unprecedented intervention on the matter demonstrates that this clearly wasn’t the case.

His intervention was in relation to the amendment that would end the right to freedom for churches to discipline clergy who act outside of church ethos. Of course, the Pope’s interest lies in the welfare of his clergy who should be allowed to run their own lives and space in the way they want and he is not trying to impose his ideal on anyone else.

So despite the fact that the government have been unable to accept defeat in this matter it is encouraging that their amendments have not been passed, not least for the Archbishop of York, who, had they gone through, would have been deemed not to have the freedom to carry out his own work according to his own ethos.

My Week

2010-02-09T03:32:00.000-08:00

Even after 27 years I love my job. I still get a thrill of pride and a sense of history every time I walk into the Chamber of the House of Commons. But it’s also the feeling that you can make a real difference on the issues that matter and that you can help people.

Last Monday I chaired the Public Accounts Committee hearing on Dementia. We were grilling Sir David Nicholson the Chief Executive of the NHS. Our committee has done a lot to bring Cinderella type services like Dementia and Stroke to the forefront of NHS thinking: Today I gave a hard time to Sir David on his promise to me, repeated ten times during the last hearing, that dementia was going to be a national priority. It may still not be one, but it is no longer the hidden disease.

On Tuesday I spoke in the Chamber on the Constitutional Reform Bill. I was the only MP arguing that a fully elected second chamber would only reflect the political classes and be stuffed with ministerial job seekers. The House of Lords is filled with experts. The few remaining hereditary peers do a good job and should be left alone. I predict that whatever the major parties say in public, in practice that are quite happy to leave well alone.

On Wednesday it was back to the PAC. We meet twice as often as any other committee. I am proud that in the eight years of my chairmanship working with the National Audit Office we have made recommendations that, having been accepted, have led to savings of £4 billion for the tax-payer. Today we were interrogating the heads of the Naval, Military and Civilian arms of the Ministry of Defence on the £6 billion black hole in their budget. With the NAO we have proved that either a major programme must be scrapped or commitments scaled back, otherwise the black hole will balloon to £30 billion or more.

In the evening I hosted a Cornerstone Group reception for 70 MPs and PPCs (Prospective Parliamentary Candidates). We founded this socially conservative Group seven years ago with just twelve MPs and now have over 30 parliamentary members and an active website. It was a great honour to have Margret Thatcher joins us. She is an inspiration to all who believe in core Conservative values.

On Thursday I returned to the Chamber to make interventions on a Private Bill to regulate Peddlers. A small group of us have used, shall we say, long speeches; filibustering is out of order, to ensure concessions to protect this ancient trade which has no powerful trade unions to represent it.

On Friday I had a busy day working in the constituency. I visited some impressive projects of West Lindsey District Council providing real jobs, not just training schemes, in forestry. We had surgeries in Gainsborough and Market Rasen. I think it is through these surgeries that MPs really can help people with their tax, housing and planning problems and I met with the headmaster of the Grammar school to promise to help his campaign to refurbish his wonderful school.

Do MPs provide value for money? That’s for you to decide. But there are only 646 of us overseeing one of the largest budgets in the world, £600 billion and half a million workers in the public sector would. Would things be any better if the bureaucrats had no scrutiny? I don’t think so.

Liaison Committee - 2nd Febuary 2010

2010-02-03T08:31:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I had the opportunity to question the Prime Minister on the subject of Defence, with particular reference to the MOD budget and the situation in Afghanistan, during the twice-annual Liaison Committee hearing.

Firstly, I asked Gordon Brown whether during his time as Chancellor he had put heavy pressure on the Defence budget which had led to not only a fatal delay in providing the money necessary for the procurement of helicopters, but the real possibility of resignations from senior officers. This question was with reference to the evidence submitted by Lord Walker (Chief of Defence Staff 2003-2006) and Geoff Hoon (Secretary of State for Defence 1999-2005) at the ongoing Chilcot inquiry.

To this he replied that the MOD where given an overall budget and it was up to the senior officers to use it as they saw fit. This answer was in contrast to Lord Walker’s claims that the MOD had been given line by line instructions on procurement from the Treasury.

I then questioned the Prime Minister on the briefings from his office to the press regarding Defence spending. Despite a recent National Audit Office report highlighting a black hole of £6bn in the MOD budget over the next 10 years (even if there is an increase in spending of 2.7%!) No. 10 had still put out that they would maintain both the spending commitments to Afghanistan and the delivery of aircraft carriers. So I put it to Mr Brown, did he accept that this black hole was there, and that, if so, he simply couldn’t go briefing the press on maintaining spending commitments if the money wasn’t there.

He answered that the Urgent Operational Requirements (UOR) fund, taken from the Treasury reserve, would meet the needs in Afghanistan.

However, he neglected to mention the MOD black hole, so I put it to him that if he planned to ring fence Health, Education and International Development (as he had stated earlier, under questioning from Peter Luff) what was going to be done about the £6bn shortfall.

He once again reiterated that Afghanistan would be covered by the UOR and that regarding the Defence budget, there would be a Strategic Defence Review in due course, a white paper and a debate about future defence commitments.

Finally, I pushed him on whether he was still fully committed to the procurement of the aircraft carriers. This he did confirm, but emphasised that the priority was to make sure that the mission in Afghanistan was properly financed.

Although perhaps not having always been the case, it was encouraging to hear the Prime Minister emphasising the commitment to Afghanistan as his number one priority. However, his acceptance that there would be a Strategic Review in due course demonstrated that his briefing of the press about maintaining defence commitments across the board was more about scoring political points. After all, one could promise a whole raft of spending prior to the election if one knows that there will be a Strategic Spending Review soon after the election.

Debate in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

2010-01-30T08:26:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday I spoke in the Chamber on the debate on The Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. The crux of the Bill, introduced by the Justice Secretary Jack Straw, revolves around measures designed to phase out, through a variety of different means, hereditary peers from the House of Lords. It also includes proposals for scrapping by-elections for hereditary peers.

As one would expect from the Chairman of the Cornerstone Group I am strongly opposed to the Bill. The logic of a democratic country states that we should have a democratically elected second chamber in tandem with the elected Commons, but if we put everything down to logic then the rich traditions and history of our country would be swept away. For example, the Royal family makes no logical sense, but they are part of what makes Britain great. As my Hon. Friend Gerald Howarth put it in the debate, “If they (hereditary peers) went, it would expose the monarchy as the only hereditary institution in the land. [Do I] believe that that would endanger the monarchy? I certainly do.”

The history of the Lords demonstrates that what we have ended up with is an example of a great British compromise. As so often happens with the law of unintended consequences in our historical development, we have ended up with a pretty good system. We have found ourselves in the enviable position of having members with vast amounts of expertise, who have worked all their lives in the professions or in business and who are not politicians. They speak only when they have to speak and vote only when they feel strongly. In short, they do a good job. And we mustn’t forget that there are only 92 hereditary peers, a mere 13% of their total number.

If one looks for a precedent for an appointed second chamber one need look no further than Canada. Do we really want to follow their lead and model our second chamber on the least effective second chamber in the Western world? I think not.

I worry that if we did get to the stage where there was a fully elected Lords then it would be stuffed with inferior Members looking for ministerial office. After all, Parliament is already stuffed with people looking for ministerial office, so why would the elected second chamber be any different?

What this debate boils down to is the agenda of some to push for reform for reform’s sake. The House of Lord’s is an institution which provides an important balance for legislative process of Parliament. It does, and will continue to do, an excellent job and any reform of its entry procedure would not result in better legislation. The phrase, “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” comes to mind.

"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death"

2010-01-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

I have a tendency to read two or three books at once and have once again fallen into this bad habit. I am reading George Orwell’s 1984 once again and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (about the life of Thomas Cromwell) for the first time. The later is a study of the past, whilst the former was written as a study of the future that has now become the past.

Wolf Hall highlights the degree to which government, both Protestant and Catholic, peered into men’s souls in Tudor times, which was frightening.

1984 is not just a satire on Totalitarianism; it is satire on all dominant political thought processes. Nowadays, ours is a kind of vapid centralist social democracy which is utterly dominant in both the so called right and left parties all over Europe.

In 1984 when O’Brien is torturing Winston Smith he says:

“We are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury, a long life or happiness, only power, pure power.”

It seems to me that today many of the world’s leading politicians are less and less interested in ideology, in moving the world in the direction of their own choice. They are focused on power, but not power to do something, just to be.

To obtain an office, to be on the top table with the President of the United States, to have their name inscribed in the lists of Prime Minister, to be someone, not to do anything.

They are empty shells.

As O’Brien says:

“The object of power is power.”

Newspeak is famously the corruption of language to eradicate free thought. Political correctness is the modern equivalent of newspeak.

Modern leaders for instance unashamedly draw back from talking about immigration because is leads inevitably into a language which confronts political correctness.

Thus when the Right seeks to speak out on its favourite theme it is quickly deemed guilty of “thought crime”.

In 1984 any lie can become truth. Two and two can be made to be five.

Now in the modern consensus all conservative heresies are gradually consigned to the dustbin because an opinion pool from some focus group has deemed that any citizen that confronts the notion of social democracy is dangerous or idiosyncratic. In other words the only yardstick to live by is that society knows what is good for me, rather than living by my instincts of what is good for me and my family.

The main component seems to be that people have to believe in something because it is deemed to be good by the dominant politics speak for society and not for them and their families. For instance, when David Cameron bravely speaks out for marriage, a bucketful of invective is poured over his head which argues that because not all marriages are good, we can’t support marriage. He must have the courage to carry out his convictions.

Most people know that the modern state is fantastically wasteful and incompetent but it is somehow bad manners to rise up in intellectual rebellion and demand a bonfire of rules and regulations, a dramatic cut in spending and the return of our own money in tax cuts.

I think that many people would in truth, like to send their children to a privately run school. They cannot afford it because they would have to pay for education out of their highly taxed salaries. They are brain washed into believing that state schools, many of which provide a very mediocre education, are actually best for them and their families. This may be right, but not in all cases.

Many people would like to top up their NHS prescriptions or spend their last days in a private home or a private hospital. However, they think they should want to end their days in a mixed NHS ward.

Many people think that much of the money which they give to charity is wasted in incompetence and corruption and that actually this has been a great cause of the corruption of the ruling classes which has led to the ruination of Africa. But they dare not say so.

Most people like the thought of living in their own country, with their own culture and their own religion in the broadest sense, but they are brainwashed into thinking it is good to live in society where their traditional identities are gradually being forgotten.

Most people would like to believe in marriage and in God, but because they are told that God’s existence cannot be proved and that belief in Him can lead to intolerance and extremism they substitute religious obedience for some vague subservience to the good of society and liberalisation.

This attitude informs the debate on “global warming”. People are told that they should want to live next to a huge, ugly wind turbine. That they must give up their comfortable car because this too adds to global warming. Unfortunately global warming has become a constant crusade by the Left to impose a new, thoroughly painful ideology on us, when their old ones have been demolished.

Is it any wonder that if you look around Europe the Prime Ministers, whether left or right, are generally instantly forgettable suits.

Is it any wonder that there has never been a time when politicians and political parties in Europe were more moribund, and there are increasing calls for state funding to fill the vacuum?

I Believe

2010-01-18T04:57:00.000-08:00

Education

As the father of six children I am very interested in education. My wife and I have tried a mix of all types of education for our children; state and private, English and French, day and boarding, faith and secular.

I am not an educational theorist, I am only a parent. I believe that at the end of all this, no type of education is consistently superior to any other.

I do believe in the maximum variety of provision to suit all needs, skills and ambitions.

So my conclusion is clear. Head teachers, both in the private and state sectors must be free to run their schools with the greatest possible freedom.

They should be free to hire and fire staff in order to get the best.

They should be free to set wage rates to get the best staff, particularly where teachers are scarce, such as in the teaching of maths.

Head teachers should set their own curriculum and not be bound by a rigid national curriculum.

We should move gradually to a situation where they are able to decide on which pupils join the school and on the criteria upon which this is based. In fact, the overwhelming majority of schools should always be broad based in their ability range.

Eventually I would like to see a time when the money for a pupil’s education follows the pupil. Any pupil at any school should attract the same basic support from the state, with additional support for special needs according to a statement. This would have to be brought in gradually, starting in year R and building up steadily starting in deprived post codes. Naturally traditional HMI inspections would continue to weed out any incompetence.

I believe that if we break down the divisions between the independent and state sectors, if we set our schools free and if head teachers had to respond to parents, not government targets, then we really could have the best education in the world.

I Believe

2010-01-07T03:50:00.000-08:00

Social Security

If I am going to ask the people in my constituency to vote for me over the next four or five months, I think they have a right to know what I believe in and what I would like to see a Conservative government achieve.

I am delighted that the Party is focusing on aspiration and responsibility. Years ago during the last Tory government I wrote a paper entitled Responsible Individualism. I know that this is an untidy phrase but by it I meant empowering the individual not to be selfish and self centred, and by improving his lot to help society at large, particularly in education and social security.

I am a Tory because I believe in our history, our traditions. Some may argue that it was the eighteenth century rational enlightenment that was the cause of our liberal tolerant democratic society, but in my opinion so many of our institutions and our society as a whole grew slowly over centuries. It is important therefore to place an emphasis on our history and traditions if we are to keep developing as a nation.

I believe that reason, science and progress can march side by side with the personal reassurance given by religious belief and that religious participation (although worryingly in decline) and ethics has contributed to the undeniable advances against poverty. And it is the decline of religion that has made Western society a less happy place in terms of personal fulfilment and supportive family, despite the immense advances made against poverty. The point here is that despite the huge economic advances and the population being better off why aren’t people happier?

Despite this however, there has been a decline in the supporting structure of the family. Of course, families can take many forms and any one of them can be valid in itself, but for most people the model of a man and a woman making an honest attempt at commitment to each other for life is best. Tax and benefit policies should reflect this.

In truth tax and benefit policies on their own are not going to make people stay together, but they send out a message.

One thing is certain. Benefits can influence behaviour enormously for lower income groups.

If you are faced with marginal tax rates, greater than anything faced by the very rich, and you increase your earnings but end up receiving fewer benefits, leaving you less well off overall, then that is a powerful disincentive to work and aspire to self reliance.

For many years I have argued for a much simpler tax and benefits system.

One of the most successful benefits is child benefit. The level of fraud and error is minimal. This is because it is modest and non-means tested.

During the years of which I have been the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee we have published numerous reports outlining the worrying cases of fraud and error in the current system.

What a Conservative government must do is gradually simplify the system and reduce means testing. It will take enormous political will to implement and carry this out but given the £100 billion bill from social security, the harmful effects to the economy of not doing so would be harder to bear in long term.

Next week I shall share my views and beliefs on the subject of education.

From Leigh to You

2009-12-08T04:36:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a constituency parish newspaper. They posed some relevant and important questions so I thought I would take this opportunity of giving them a wider readership, through the Gainsborough Standard and via my website.

The first question referred to my ‘independent streak’ when voting against the war in Iraq and asked for my position about our role in the continuing conflict in Afghanistan.

I have always been opposed to the war in Afghanistan, but I believe that a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan must include clear, tightly drawn, realistic objectives that are regularly reviewed. I believe that Afghanistan can be stabilised if a reasonably honest government is established and tribal structures supported. I feel sure that this can be achieved with a much smaller allied force. The use of NATO special forces to train the Afghan army and Police force will be necessary, but it is inevitable that there will always be some level of insurgency in Afghanistan. A larger effort must be made in buying poppy crops thus compensating and appeasing the Afghan people and making them less likely to turn towards the Taliban. These objectives are, given political will and realism achievable. They would also bring great savings of British lives and money.

On the issue of abortion I was asked why I was in favour of its restriction or even its abolition?

My personal belief is that life begins at the moment of conception. An abortion is a premeditated act through which life is taken. As far as I am concerned the 24 week time frame in which it is possible to have an abortion is too long. My personal preference would be for twelve or fourteen weeks. I appreciate that this is unlikely and I will therefore push for abortions to be limited to eighteen weeks after conception.

On the subject of tighter control / restriction of the banking and financial sectors - would I support a future government’s attempts to restrict a free financial market?

I believe the decisions that led to the banking crisis represent a policy failure of historic proportions. We believe we now need deep, wide-ranging reform that matches both the magnitude of the crisis and the scale of the hardship inflicted on the British public. If we can bring stability to our banking system, and reward long-term returns over short-term bonus chasing, then we will have put in place a key foundation stone of an economic recovery.

A Conservative government will

• Abolish the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the tripartite regime it operated with the Bank of England and the Treasury

• Create a strong and powerful Bank of England with the authority and powers necessary to ensure financial stability

• Create a powerful Consumer Protection Agency that will bring together in one place the consumer powers currently split between the old FSA and the Office of Fair Trading

• Demand that banks set aside much more of their own money for their risky lending as a form of insurance policy

• Appoint a Treasury Minister with special responsibility for fighting our corner in Brussels so that European regulations are right for the City of London

• Ask the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission to conduct a focused examination of the effects of consolidation in the retail banking sector.

Further questions covered Europe, pensions, and the ‘broken society’ and I will write about those next week.

Edward challenges the Chancellor on efficiency in the Queen's Speech Debate: Business and economy - 26th November 2009

2009-12-08T03:45:00.000-08:00

I am just about to refer to the Chancellor, so, as he is leaving the Chamber, I hope that he will not mind if I take issue with what he said earlier this afternoon. My point relates to the very serious matter of the loan that was made to HBOS and RBS. I am not arguing with the principle that the Government wanted to keep it secret so as not to destabilise the markets; I am saying that there are clearly established protocols, whereby, when the Government decide to give an indemnity in secret-for instance, on a matter affecting national security-they must inform Parliament in confidence through the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Treasury.

There is a very good reason why. It is not my amour-propre, or that of the Treasury Committee Chairman, who is equally upset about the matter; it is because if I, as the Chairman of the PAC, had been informed of the matter, I would have told nobody. I would not have told anybody from my party's Front-Bench team or anybody else. I would, however, have discussed it with one person-and one person only: the Comptroller and Auditor General. He is the auditor of the Government, an independent figure, and he would have checked matters out and ensured that the whole thing was kosher. That is why he is there, and he would have done so in complete confidence.
Over the eight years that I have been Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I have been told in confidence of many instances, particularly concerning national security, when the Government have had to issue indemnity. I have never leaked a single thing. In the 150-year history of the PAC, no Chairman has ever leaked anything that has ever been given to them of that nature. It is a serious matter-that, contrary to all those protocols and conventions, the Government decided not to inform Parliament in confidence through the Chairmen of those two Committees.
Even more seriously, I believe that the reason why I was written to this week, 13 months late, is that the National Audit Office was closing in. The NAO's report on the banking support measures is imminent, and earlier the Treasury Committee Chairman spoke, on a point of order, in much stronger terms than myself. He said that he believed that the NAO was closing in and the Government decided that they had to release the information now, 13 months late. That is a serious matter, and I shall not let it go.

I shall keep pursuing it, because this is why Parliament is set up-to protect the interests of the taxpayer and the people of this country. Occasionally Governments have to do things in secret and to protect the markets, but if they do they have to observe the protocols. They did not do so, and for the Chancellor to tell me yesterday that he was absolved from doing so by the Banking Act 2009, which by the way came into force months after the indemnity was given, is not good enough. I shall leave the matter there, but we must return to it.

Like all other hon. Members who have spoken, I want to express extraordinary concern about the fact that, as of 31 October, total public sector debt stood at £829 billion. That is 59 per cent. of total national output. My hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor made the point that there is now a very real danger that the ratings agencies-Moody's, Standard and Poor's and so on-may start to question the UK's ability to pay its debt and downgrade the triple A rating that we currently enjoy. That would make it more expensive for all of us to borrow. For the UK and for corporations, lower investment in the UK and higher unemployment could result, leading to a disastrous double-dip recession.

Let us forget party politics for a moment. There is no choice: we have to address the deficit. The Government tell us that they are, indeed, going to reduce the deficit by half by the end of the next Parliament, but they have offered only broad clues about what they intend to do, with hints at tax increases and spending cuts. They are only hints, however; there are few detailed policies. There was one detailed policy, which would have saved only £300 million, and that was a pay freeze for top public sector earners. That is £300 million; it is nothing. Surely the people of this country, or Parliament, must have some idea of what the Government, if they are re-elected, will do to try to deal with public sector debt of £829 billion.

I shall not get involved in great macro-economic arguments with any ideas that I might have; I shall go right down to the micro level. I have now chaired the best part of 400 PAC sessions, in which we have looked at Government efficiency, and one way in which we can climb out of this black hole-it is only one way in which we will achieve only part of the object-is to carry out Government programmes much more efficiently.

I am worried that if a new Government are elected in May, or even if this Government are re-elected, Ministers, for instance at the Ministry of Defence, will be under Treasury instructions to cut x per cent. off their budget. So, the number of new aircraft carriers may be reduced from two to one; there may be a question mark over the joint strike fighter; or the number of Trident submarines may be reduced from four to three. In other words, the MOD will get up to its old tricks of moving programmes sideways and delaying them. But what about the efficiency of the procurement executive? New Ministers will have to get to grips with that issue on day one, and they may have to bring in outside help. We cannot allow the public sector, particularly the civil service, to continue with layers of management which simply do not exist in the private sector.

The PAC has, I think, made some progress in the past eight years. We can make only so much, but we have identified proven savings-I wrote to the Chancellor earlier this week on the matter-of £4 billion. However, we have now gone further and identified another £9 billion that we can save without changing a single policy. I know that this is the detail of the debate and that it is not as exciting as the party political debate, but £9 billion is a serious amount of money and it can be saved. The savings have all been audited by the National Audit Office, representatives of which come to our Committee. If any of the recommendations we have made in the past eight years had been carried out, we could have saved not only the £4 billion, but another £9 billion.

I shall give a few examples. Some £1.4 billion could be saved by Departments sharing back-office services such as finance and human resources; and £2.5 billion could be saved by all Departments matching the level of staff cost reductions achieved by the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the Ministry of Defence. Even a relatively simple twist of the hellishly complex benefits system could save a staggering £110 million, which would be a start. If the whole of Whitehall matched the example of some Departments in reducing running costs such as those for accommodation and IT, more than £1.3 billion could be saved. There is more. Improving how the public sector contracts and manages construction projects could save more than £2.6 billion, and developing the commercial skills of those who wield the Government's significant buying power could realise potential savings of more than £700 million, through cannier procurement of goods and services. Better use of consultants-the Committee has done a lot of work on them-alone could save £400 million. That is £9 billion just there.

I am not making a sales pitch for the PAC. I believe that there must be a total change in attitude in the public sector; that Ministers and civil servants should assume that when they are spending public money, it is as if they are spending from their own personal bank accounts; and that the days of rapid rises in spending are now over.

Actually, in a way, the days of targets may be over, because targets work in a growing budget. Typically, in the past 12 years, the Government have come out with a worthy objective and required the civil service to carry it out. When that did not happen, the Government had to impose targets. It is going to be very difficult to impose targets on a shrinking, contracting budget. The Government are going to have to trust professionals and cap their budgets in the health and education services, and they are going to have to ensure that our civil servants and managers deliver services to the front line, and not cut them while protecting their own jobs. That is not a good enough attitude from our public servants.

A Welcome Grant

2009-12-02T06:23:00.000-08:00

In my role as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee I recently chaired a hearing into the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s campaign aimed at Promoting Participation with the Historic Environment.

One of the hearings witnesses was the Chief Executive of English Heritage Dr Simon Thurley. With my final question I took the opportunity to enquire about his organisation’s decision to cut funding for our historic cathedrals. Aside from the potential damage caused by a lack of funding this has caused our cathedrals to charge more for entrance and therefore potentially cause a reduction in participation.

Dr Thurley replied that English heritage was in the process of conducting a survey entitled The English Heritage Cathedrals Fabric Condition Survey 2009 which had the remit of deciding which cathedrals had significant problems and therefore needed help. The results of this survey were to be published on December 1st and he suggested, as I am a member of the Lincoln Cathedral Council, that I would not be disappointed.

Yesterday the results of the survey were announced. It concluded that despite our cathedrals having spent over £250m on repairs since 1991, it was still necessary to spend another £100m over the next ten years. Significantly Lincoln Cathedral was granted £250,000 for urgent work, and according to Dean of Lincoln, the Very Revd Philip Buckler, this money means “that the current works program can continue”.

I have spoken to the Dean and he has provided me with a breakdown of what the investment will be used for once it commences in the new fiscal year. It will be primarily used for work on the south side of the cathedral between the two transepts. Here the team of in-house craft and tradesmen will work on stone repair, refurbishment of the stained glass windows and roof and lead repair. They will also repair the damaged wood.

The announcement of the grant is encouraging and greatly welcomed. It is tangible recognition of the work which still needs to be done in order to maintain not only Lincoln, but the other sixty cathedrals in England for ourselves, and for future generations. After all, our cathedrals are our greatest architectural heritage. But they are still pathetically under-funded in comparison to some of our continental neighbours. For instance the French Government has just announced it is putting 100m Euros into its own Cathedrals. That said, English Heritage’s announcement is at least a step in the right direction.

Readers may be amused by the pathetic daub that I attempted of the Cathedral, which accompanies this article.

Letter to the Chancellor

2009-11-26T02:59:00.000-08:00

This week’s column is fairly heavy going I’m afraid but I hope you will stick with it. With the country’s financial position as precarious as it is I hope that this will illustrate that considerable savings in public expenditure are possible without reducing our vital public services.

In my capacity as Chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee I have written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, pointing out that recommendations from the Committee have led to savings of in excess of £4 billion over the course of the last two parliaments and that wider take up of the recommendations could reap far greater rewards.

The National Audit Office that is responsible to the Committee could and should work with relevant Government departments to identify even more savings attributable to the recommendations in specific reports. At the moment there is little evidence of the Committee recommendations being used as a spur to action across government despite the fact that they could be repeated in a number of areas.

My letter contains an appendix that goes into great detail; the savings can be broken down into five areas:

1. better financial management; 2. better information management; 3. reducing complexity and improving processes; 4. exploiting the scale of spend; and 5. improved outcomes.

In addition to setting out the financial impact that has been realised, I have included some examples of projected savings amounting to over £9 billion that could be realised.

I point out to the Chancellor how slow progress is in realising the savings we set out shows that the biggest challenge is translating aspiration into action. Our work has consistently shown over a number of years how efficiencies can be achieved in practice. The Public Accounts Committee are convinced that much more can be done and hope this summary provides a constructive contribution and inspiration for further action.

After all of our reports we get a formal government response. These do not pick up on the wider implications. I invited Mr Darling and his colleagues to drive the greatest possible savings from the Committee’s work by ensuring future responses explain what is being done to drive wider take-up of relevant recommendations, and to provide firm commitments of action where recommendations are agreed.
If ministers with responsibility for spending departments were encouraged to take forward the specific opportunities set out in the annex to my letter much greater progress could be made.

The full text of my letter can be viewed at the following link. http://edward-leigh.net/LettertoChancellor.aspx

Two Victories

2009-11-19T06:05:00.001-08:00

I went along to the Chamber and found out that the Government had run up the white flag over Lord Waddington’s free speech amendment on the Coroner’s and Justice Bill.

This is a great victory for free speech which in a democracy should be paramount.

In the evening I debated at the Oxford Union alongside the Bishop of Winchester and Jonathon Aitken. At a well attended debate we won by ten votes, 145 to 135, proposing the motion:

“This House believes that Britain needs a return of Christian Values”

Everything conceivable was thrown at us, even the slave trade. It was interesting that we didn’t talk about homosexuality, but our opponents were adamant that Christians are obsessed by it.

I just concentrated on the teachings of Christ; a better guide then the life of a most Christians since!

The following day I took the train on the long journey up to Durham to debate at the University’s Union. This time I was opposing the motion:

“This House would ban the Bomb”

Many of the arguments have changed little in the past forty years, except that we now live in an even more hostile world. Given the setting of the debate, it was perhaps a little surprising to once again emerge victorious.

Last summer I joined Peter Lilley and John Redwood in successfully proposing a motion at the Cambridge Union, praising the record of Lady Thatcher. This was possibly an even more unlikely result at a university debating society than at Durham.

Maybe this is a straw in the wind, that Conservatives can once again win debates amongst students.

From Leigh to You

2009-11-11T08:53:00.000-08:00

Clearing through some old papers last weekend I came across two old copies of The Times, one for Saturday 20th January 1996 and another for Friday 4th February 2000. I must have saved them for some particular reason though looking through them now I can't now imagine why.

Thirteen years is not a long time but it does make you realise how issues that seemed so vitally important at the time were not with the benefit of hindsight. I'm not saying that the ones I've highlighted were important, clearly they were to those involved, but here are a few that caught my eye.

The front-page headline from 1996 read "Maxwell brothers are cleared." Many of you will remember Robert Maxwell who was, for a time, a Labour MP, owner of the Daily Mirror and Chairman of Oxford United Football Club. I've no doubt that in those capacities he had some influence in the country's affairs but he is now but a footnote in our history. The headline referred to the trial of his two younger sons who were cleared following a long investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into the pension funds of his companies.

On the political pages one of the headlines states "Lilley orders clampdown to cut £730m housing benefit fraud." Peter Lilley was, in 1996, the Government minister for Social Security. Had that headline appeared in the paper's of today it would have surprised none of us.

In the 2000 edition I note that Manchester United were top of the Premier League followed by Leeds, Arsenal and Liverpool. United and Arsenal are still in the top four and Liverpool could still finish there despite a run of poor results, but Leeds fell on hard times a year or two later. But looking through the league as a whole things are still pretty much as you will find them today.

Elsewhere the paper incudes stories about the minimum wage, worries about mis-use of databases and a Government minister claiming that there was a whispering campaign against her.

The minimum wage story was an announcement by the then shadow chancellor Michael Portillo that a future Conservative Government would not reverse the minimum wage legislation. That remains our policy by the way, and the minister concerned about the whispering campaign was the late Mo Mowlam. Interestingly enough the letters column contained one from one Alistair Campbell - Tony Blair's press secretary - denying that such a campaign existed!

Change the name of the worried minister to whoever Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson have in their sights and the story could be running this week

As regards databases - there are now thousands more of them open to mis-use. This Government alone has created scores of them, all containing the most personal information about us and, over the years, managed to lose laptops, disks and memory sticks containing far too much of it.

If you have any thoughts on today's political issues I can be contacted at the House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA or in these postal strike days email me at leighe@parliament.uk

The Right must continue to make the case for real reform

2009-11-05T03:41:00.000-08:00

In all the furore over Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, the voice of the moderate right has had little chance to express itself.

The first truth is that the Labour government itself has given a tremendous boost to the BNP with its immigration policies. The careful controls such as the Primary Purpose Rule which had controlled immigration under successive Conservative Governments were torn up. There has in the last twelve years been an unprecedented wave in immigration of over 2 million people. One report I read this week suggests that in the not too distant future our population will reach 77 million.

A cap is needed now on immigration.

In case anyone thinks there is something racist in this I would argue that the uncontrolled eastern European has long been a problem, much as I love Poles and their work ethos.

Even the Conservative asylum policies, designed to admit small numbers of political refugees, were a problem. Within the last twelve years these rules have been abused.

The second boost to far-right parties has been a general sense of hopelessness engendered by our increasingly rule based, regulation driven, politically correct society. We should remember that Britishness is primarily about freedom from the state. We are the only country in Europe never to have been a police state or had one imposed on us. Again a new Conservative government must have the sort of bonfire of controls that the Conservative government of 1951 initiated.

The third boost to the extremist policies has been the moral relativism of mainstream liberal thinking. Politicians are frightened of proclaiming an ideal because it may not be attainable by everybody or because they themselves fall short of it. An obvious example is marriage. It may be difficult for people to commit themselves to each other for life, to bring up children, but that does not mean it is wrong or that in acknowledging the fact we are attacking alternative lifestyles.

The fourth boost for the far-right, and most difficult to talk about, has been the squeamishness of mainstream politicians in dealing with Muslim extremism, not just the terrorist but the cultural variety. I make no secret of my admiration for Britain’s Jewish community. Muslims should learn from their example. Jewish people here have kept their religion, (if they want, of the liberal or orthodox variety) they have kept their identity, but they have chosen to integrate. They have become more British than the British; they have contributed enormously to Britain’s cultural, intellectual and business strength.

I admire Islam, its spirituality and its values. But Muslims who choose to settle here, and they are most welcome, must see themselves primarily as loyal Britons, not just in the sense of citizenship but cultural sense as well.

The last boost for extremist parties has been the lack of radical intellectual vigour in the mainstream ones. There are too few back-benchers on the opposition party and too little encouragement given to radical ideas which appeal to the party loyalist. I recently attended a Conservative county wide dinner. I was the only Conservative MP there. This doesn’t matter much, but what the party should be worried about is that there were only 40 people there. There were 2,000 journalists at the party conference but only 1,500 delegates. To break through you need ideas coming up from below. You must inspire your activists.

Back-bench MPs and MEPs who come up with new ideas should be encouraged. I am not saying that the leadership should adopt all there policies, just that we need a debate about them.

Let me give a few examples. First, localism. If we really believe in this should local authorities not be given the tax licensing powers, for instance through local sales tax being set free from central government.

In the education world we must trust the professionals. Schools really should be set free. Heads should be entirely free to set the curriculum, hire and fire staff and select and expel pupils as they wish, as happens so successfully in the private sector. Parents should be able to able to buy into the private education sector with a discount equivalent to the cost of state education. I say this by the way as a parent of a child in a comprehensive school.

The NHS is not a religion. People who have contributed all their lives as tax-payers should be able to top-up NHS care with private care or private medicines if the NHS can’t provide them with what they need. Pensioners should be allowed to claim tax relief for private health insurance (the policy of previous Conservative governments) and this should be extended as circumstances permit. I say all this as someone who has to rely exclusively for himself and his family on the NHS. At present I can afford nothing else.

We must continue to be explicit about the state of the public finances, acknowledge the need for cuts in the public sector and unveil efficiency programmes. Much progress has been made in this respect. For a long time people like me, who argued for breaking free of Labours spending plans, were called dangerous extremists who would cost us the next election; who says that now?

And of course when we take power we need a referendum on our relationship with Europe and ensuring our national sovereignty.

And so the list goes on. We need radical ideas from the grass roots. We need of course to capture the middle ground but politics needs to be fun as well!

From Leigh to You

2009-10-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

The Public Accounts Committee that I chair publishes around sixty reports each year. Some hit the headlines and others have a more limited appeal to the general media though they are often reported in detail in specialist magazines. This week’s was very much in the Premier League as reports go and I was inundated with requests for interviews.

Understandably so since it concerned the equipment and support given to our Forces in Afghanistan.

The Committee found that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has had some successes in providing support notably, the delivery of life-saving medical treatment at the front line, but in other areas the process is creaking.

New equipment has mostly performed well but the serious downside is that problems with reliability have sometimes emerged only after the kit has actually been deployed.

The process of getting equipment and supplies out to our forces is undeniably a demanding one but the fact that the MOD continues to fail to meet its own supply chain targets is of concern. The Department must improve its logistic information systems so that it always knows where stocks are and can fully track through the supply chain their movement to our troops.

Iraq and Afghanistan have presented considerable operational challenges for the MOD. Long distances between both countries and the UK, as well as the lack of direct maritime access to Afghanistan, complicate the transporting of personnel and equipment. In addition, undertaking operations in these countries means coping with difficult environmental conditions - harsh and varied terrain, extreme temperatures and dust. In Afghanistan, the pace and intensity of operations continues to be high against a determined enemy threat. The support the Department provides to forces deployed on operations is crucial in enabling military capability.

The provision of medical support, including life-saving treatment at the front line, has been a success. This is reflected in the increasing number of survivors following severe battlefield injuries.

The provision of pre-deployment training is responsive to changing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and theatre commanders are confident of its quality. But pre-deployment training is constrained by a number of factors, particularly the shortage of equipment to train with and delays in replicating Middle Eastern environments. The proportion of soldiers who are not training with their units before deploying is increasing, passing risk on to theatre commanders.

The majority of equipment procured has performed well in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

There have, however, been shortages of spare parts. Parts for the Merlin and Apache helicopters are in short supply, and cannibalisation of helicopters to support the fleets deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed to an 11% shortfall in helicopters available for training and to support contingent operations.

The Department has not met its supply chain targets for the delivery of stock to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since July 2007 only 57% of demands made in Afghanistan and 71%made in Iraq met the supply chain targets. Measures to improve this performance, including action to increase the proportion of routine stocks that are delivered by surface transport. Despite progress, the Department's logistic information remains inadequate.

I opposed the deployment to both Afghanistan and Iraq but the Government having taken that decision must improve on the present situation.

From Leigh to You

2009-10-15T02:48:00.000-07:00

The Party Conference season has come and gone and for many of you it will have given an opportunity to assess the state of the parties in these last few months before the General Election.

Without wanting to be too political all I would say is that my own Conservative Party showed themselves well aware of the magnitude of the financial mountain to be climbed and set out a clear path towards restoring our financial health.

It was a message that, to some extent, we don’t wish to hear but I am a firm believer that the public must be made aware of how serious a position we are in. The current deficit is projected to be between £175 and £200 billion next year. This is totally unsustainable.

Unless you have hours of spare time and the inclination to watch the BBC Parliament channel all you will see of the Conference will be glimpses of the main speaker winding up each session. But to get a real feel for the mood of the Party and the debates that quite rightly go on within any party you need to be there in the bars, restaurants and most of all in the fringe meetings.

The Fringe provides an opportunity for pressure groups, think tanks and the media to arrange debates and ‘Question Time’ style events. Some feature the front bench spokesmen, others outside speakers and backbenchers pushing their particular concerns. All in all it’s a rich mix.

The Cornerstone Group of MPs, of which I am the co-chairman, held a meeting that was addressed by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt. Rev’d. James Jones.

It’s always refreshing to hear an address that links politics and morality. Without a moral foundation our politics is much the poorer.

The Fringe includes meetings that are aimed at highlighting some of the many problems governments must grapple with. There are disability groups, animal welfare organisations, trade associations and so many more.

But now parliament has returned and it’s back to the serious business of holding the Government to account.

As ever I’m keen to hear your views, please email me at leighe@parliament.uk or writer to the House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

How Gordon Brown changed the subject when I asked him about public spending cuts

2009-07-16T05:40:00.000-07:00

This morning in the Liaison Committee I questioned the Prime Minister about spending cuts. I was not surprised by his evasive answers, but it was somewhat depressing to hear the usual combination of stonewalling and red herrings.

I note that a report by the Centre for Cities think tank says that some of our cities are so dependent on public sector jobs that they will soon face “significant cutbacks”. From 2011 to 2014, they say, around a quarter of a million jobs, and maybe more, could be lost. It is not cheering to learn that two thirds of the 1.2 million new jobs created in our cities under this administration are paid for by the tax payer.

What this means, as the report makes clear, is that many cities are economically dependent on vast injections of government spending.

Below is an edited paraphrase of my encounter with the Prime Minister, of which a full transcript is not yet available.

EL: Should there be an open debate about where cuts should fall?

GB: Our first priority is to get growth and employment into the economy and therefore there is a need to spend now.

EL: I know that one shouldn’t believe everything that one reads in the papers, but what about the Sunday Times article which claims that senior civil servants are drawing up plans for cuts of up to 20% in public spending?

GB: I agree that one shouldn’t believe all one reads. The article is ridiculous. We’re only 15 months into a 3 year spending review and we’re not sure of the future so we can’t choose which departments to cut at this stage.

EL: Peter Mandelson has recently made comments that cuts will be necessary within the public sector. Given that he is in effect your right-hand man do you agree with him?

GB: I would emphasise to you our plans for asset sales and efficiency savings. It would be wrong to say in July 2009 what cuts may be needed in the future and where they need to be.

EL: How much are we spending this year in Afghanistan?

GB: £3 billion, on top of the defence budget.

EL: But, for example, in 2002 we spent £19 million buying up poppy crop in Afghanistan. Is there a cost benefit analysis of the progress made in Afghanistan? And regarding the renewal of Trident, will there be any cost-saving reduction in that programme?

GB: We have identified £9 billion in efficiency savings across all government departments within back room services in order to get money to front line public services. [Also reiterated that there are to be asset sales but didn’t specify which assets.]

EL: Not everything can be paid for by efficiency savings.

GB: The families of our soldiers in Afghanistan won’t welcome news about cuts when their boys are out fighting.

EL: With respect Prime Minister that isn’t relevant to the question.

GB: We have made announcements on tax increases and also on reductions to capital spending.

2009-06-23T09:09:00.001-07:00

Expenses

2009-06-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

Anyone interested in finding out about my expenses for 2004-08 can check the details on www.parliament.uk

Jack Straw tilts at windmills over Iraq invasion

2009-03-03T09:02:00.000-08:00

I took Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to task in the House of Commons last month about the Government's decision to withold from public scrutiny the minutes of the Cabinet's discussion of the decision to invade Iraq. You can read the Hansard record of my intervention below:

Commons Hansard 24 Feb 2009 : Column 165

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): Is not the Secretary of State tilting at false windmills? He knows perfectly well that no sensible person wants to reveal all Cabinet discussions and no sensible person wants to curtail honest discussion in Cabinet, but does he not agree with the commissioner and the tribunal that this is a special case? Surely the people have a legal right to know the legal basis of a war in which up to 600,000 people have died. This whole thing stinks.

We are not trying to curtail discussion. What we accuse the Government of is the absence of any proper discussion of the Attorney-General’s statement and advice. We want to have answers now, and so do the public.

Mr. Straw: That is the hon. Gentleman’s opinion, and it was also—although slightly more carefully put—the opinion of the majority of the tribunal. However, if the hon. Gentleman refers to paragraph 88 of the tribunal’s decision document, he will see that the minority expressed what was essentially the view that I have taken: that

“Exceptional cases may create an exceptional need for confidence in Cabinet confidentiality to be strong.”

Essentially, the hon. Gentleman is arguing that the more important the issue, the less significant should be Cabinet confidentiality. I do not accept that argument.

Let those people stay! – why Iraq's Christians need a province, shared with other minorities

2008-12-18T04:01:00.000-08:00

Last September I became one of the first British MPs to visit Northern Iraq since the invasion in 2003. There I saw and heard for myself the plight of this amazing community of persecuted Christians, known as the Assyrian-Chaldeans.

Being one of the most ancient Christian communities in the world, they still speak a form of Aramaic – the language in which Jesus himself preached the Gospel.

I was lucky enough to get a slot at the last minute for the last Tuesday of Westminster Hall debates this session, as another MP had pulled out. People of faith might say this was providential. At any event, it enabled me to make the case for government action to help the beleaguered and persecuted Christian minority of Iraq.

We had an interesting debate, attended by the Shadow Foreign Office spokesman, David Lidington. I spoke about my experience of visiting Iraq and meeting victims of what I called an ‘anti-Christian pogrom’:

[Commons Hansard: 16 Dec 2008 : Column 26WH]:

'It was emotional and moving to go into the ancient villages in the Nineveh plains and visit ancient monasteries that have been there for the best part of 2,000 years. I saw the tomb of the Old Testament prophet Nahum and read what he wrote thousands of years ago:

“Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.”

How extraordinary that those words are still true today and that those people are being scattered and persecuted.

When I went to the Nineveh plains, what struck me was that there was a sense of security in those ancient, entirely Christian villages. I met many displaced people who had come up from Basra and Baghdad to settle in the Nineveh plains, and I heard some absolutely heart-rending stories. I met a young girl who had lost her parents and her sister—they were murdered. I met a widow who had lost her husband and was now caring for a disabled son. Her husband was murdered in what can only be described as an anti-Christian pogrom. A quiet, cool and collected lady was sitting there listening to the appalling stories, and she finally came and told us her story. Her husband was a deacon. On the way back from church, he was killed—he was blown up by a bomb—and then her daughter disappeared. At that stage, she broke down and burst into tears, and we could not carry on the interview. We subsequently heard that she had never seen her daughter again. Imagine the anguish of that lady: she lost her husband, who was killed in a roadside bomb, and then her 18-year-old daughter, who disappeared and was probably murdered.

Those are just three of the many terrible stories told by ordinary people who have no interest, and have never showed an interest, in politics. They just wanted to get on with their lives in the suburbs of Baghdad but have had to flee to what they consider to be a kind of safe haven in the Nineveh plains.'

I finished by mentioning the inspiring words of Canon Andrew White, the immensely courageous Anglican Vicar of Baghdad. 93 members of his congregation have been killed just in this year alone, but his church is still expanding:

[Commons Hansard: 16 Dec 2008 : Column 29WH:

'… when someone asked him what kept his congregation going, he said that it was love between the members of his congregation.'

Anybody interested in reading the full Hansard text of the debate can find it on the following link.

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm081216/hallindx/81216-x.htm

Once you get to the page, just click on ‘Christians in Iraq’ at the top of the screen.

Let our head teachers get on with their job

2008-12-10T08:26:00.000-08:00

Once again, the National Curriculum is to be changed, according to a review by Sir Jim Rose, the former head of inspections at Ofsted.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_7770000/7770469.stm

Why can our political masters not learn an essential truth? You can’t micro-manage education from the centre.

Head teachers just need to be given the power to organise their own curriculum, hire and fire their own staff and admit and exclude their own pupils - as their professional judgment informs them.

Parent power will then ensure that schools prosper, as happens in the independent sector.

The very idea, of course, of giving people that much freedom is anathema to this Government.

Sex and the family here and abroad – lessons from the home and the pulpit

2008-11-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

Fellow Cornerstone MP Philip Davies secured a fascinating debate on Sex Education last Wednesday. Faced with the well-worn argument that as Holland has the sixth lowest rate in the world of teenage pregnancies and as Dutch children get told all about sex in primary school, so if we want to get our rate - the world’s second highest - down we should follow the Dutch example, he came up with some telling counter-arguments.

The strongest was perhaps the fact that Italy, which has an even lower rate of teenage pregnancies than Holland, has “almost no sex education in its schools”. But, as Philip also pointed out, Italy and Holland do have some important things in common: the family unit is stronger and divorce is much less frequent than here. Children in Holland are five times less likely to live with a single parent than here.

UNICEF says the UK is now the worst place for a child to grow up; and of course, as Philip reminded us, our welfare system, with its fast-tracking of housing applications for teenage mothers, positively encourages many to see pregnancy as an escape-route from an unhappy home.

So we in the UK could learn much from the Dutch and Italian attitude to the family.

But could we also learn something from America – not from their rate of teenage pregnancies, which at the top of the world league, exceeds even our own - but from a certain clergyman?

‘From the pulpit, evangelist sends out call for more sex.’

That was the recent headline in my International Herald Tribune:

'And on the seventh day there was no rest for married couples. A week after the Reverend Ed Young challenged husbands and wives among his flock of 20,000 to strengthen their unions through Seven Days of Sex, his advice was – keep it going' …

“This is not a gimmick or publicity stunt”, Young said. “Just look at the sensuality of the Song of Solomon, or Genesis. ‘Two shall become one flesh’ Or Corinthians: ‘Do not deprive each other of sexual relations.’"

After mature consideration, Cornerstone’s steering group has decided not to advise David Cameron to make the Rev. Young’s suggestion a central plank of Conservative Party philosophy!

But now that recession and depression is upon us, perhaps our lives will become less work-focused and hectic. Undoubtedly, married couples in England work harder, stay longer at work and have less time for each other than they should.

Cornerstone believes that economics, indeed politics itself is not the answer to everything.

I am amused that often the most ambitious politicians, when asked what was the happiest moment of their life answer “The birth of my first child” – a simple joy available to the poorest and least powerful in society.

Cornerstone believes that, ultimately, home life, community and shared tradition are much more important than any of the economic theories swirling around the Pre-Budget Statement.

The Jewish refugees from Hitler – a model for immigrants today

2008-11-26T05:24:00.001-08:00

Edward Leigh MP
I was very struck by the moving testimonies this week from Jewish survivors of the Kindertransport which saved their lives as they were plucked from Germany in 1938. I’m a great admirer of the way that Jewish immigrants settled into this country, and they should be a model for all immigrant groups.
One of them, who became a successful businessman, John Silbermann, born Manfred, put it well when he said: “What worries me is that at the moment we have an element of immigrants who want to change the country: keep your religion by all means, keep your identity, but don’t try to make the country conform to your standards. We all accepted Britain as it was. We didn’t try to change it. Our duty was to become British.”
This is the right balance. People of Muslim faith are very welcome here. Their religious devotion can be inspiring and their values in many cases preferable to those of an increasingly chaotic secularised Britain. But they need to want to become British and accept our British way of life and our tolerant, easy-going outward-looking attitudes.

The challenge now for the Conservative Party

2008-11-26T05:23:00.000-08:00

Edward Leigh MP

Thank God, Cameron and Osborne renounced Labour’s spending plans last week. We were like passengers who had to decide what’s more dangerous: stay on the runaway coach or leap off and risk a broken leg?

Well, now we know. The coach is careering full-tilt over the cliff, and if we had not jumped off and been given a few bruises by the establishment commentariat, we would now be heading for political oblivion. The scale of Government borrowing projected for next year, £118 billion, is staggering; more than we’ve ever let ourselves in for in history: around £4,682 for every household in the country.

What point would the Conservative Party have had if we had endorsed this? What purpose would we serve? For months, no, years, we on the Tory Right have begged our leadership to steer our own course. Ours is a party of fiscal rectitude or it is nothing. As for the cut in V.A.T., we can argue that’s the worst thing to do. We must oppose it. Who can argue against the fact that high marginal tax rates have destroyed the working-class culture of thrift and work?

If tax cuts are needed now, thresholds should have been raised to take people out of paying tax altogether and encourage them back into work, to spend their money as they have to.

How will it help the poor to give them a few pence more off consumer items they don’t need?

As for the promised tax rise for the “rich” – i.e. people who create wealth – this all adds up to a picture of a return to the Callaghan years.

I firmly believe the corner is turned and the Conservatives are on the way to victory. We now have to work out how we’re going to achieve the same outputs for a lot less spending. This is an enormous challenge for an incoming Conservative government. We need to work on it now.

Let’s break out of our religious ghetto

2008-11-24T11:39:00.000-08:00

Edward Leigh MP

I like to read foreign newspapers. It puts our own affairs into perspective. I was in Italy a few weeks ago, and was amused to see that apparently Silvio Berlusconi was the architect of global recovery. There was no mention of Gordon Brown.

When I buy French newspapers I find Nicolas Sarkozy is Bush’s right-hand man and Gordon figures nowhere. Recently I have been getting the International Herald Tribune every day. Needless to say, there is no mention of George Osborne’s travails. The truth is that he is a clever hard-working politician who is not (yet) in power. No story there. As for “yachtgate” – a guy who is in opposition receives no money from a Russian billionaire – the biggest non-story of all time!

I notice this week however in my Herald Tribune that the Queen of Spain has been criticised for an interview she gave. Apparently she was less than fulsome on gay rights. Immediately, the roof fell in and she has been caricatured as another embittered conservative Catholic. No mention here of all her sterling good work over many years.

I do think, though, that religious people need to be wary of being caught this way. The enemies of religion like to caricature believers as homophobes obsessed with divorce and abortion. We should not allow ourselves to be positioned this way. It is religious people who run AIDS centres; who care for the poor; who oppose wars.

But religious people need to break out of their ghetto and explain how religion can enlarge the mind, make it more, not less, tolerant, more aware of the needs of others. As important as some of these traditional issues are, there are many more important. For instance, our belief that wars - whether in Iraq or elsewhere - seldom solve anything.

Has science made religion obsolete? –

2008-11-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

Edward Leigh MP

This week I spoke at my old university Durham, opposing the motion “This House believes that Science has made Religion obsolete”. We won the vote. It’s done by acclamation there, which is not very scientific! But here’s the speech:

First we should be clear what we are talking about. I believe that you can be both a scientist and a theist. I oppose this motion. This motion is not “God does not exist”. It is, in effect “Science explains everything”. It doesn’t. As Albert Einstein said: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

In other words, science can explain the How; it tells us about the What. It cannot explain the Why. Some scientists therefore conclude there is no Why, because science cannot tell us about it, rather than seeing this as a limitation of science.

Take the example of a court of law: the forensic evidence – the science – can tell us a lot about what happened, and how it happened. But it cannot tell us the motive – the Why – always an important item of evidence.

Similarly, John Lennox in his book God’s Undertaker uses another example to illustrate the same thing. Aunt Matilda is baking a cake. Science will be able to tell us the ingredients used to make the cake, but it will not be able to say why she is making it (for her nephew’s birthday).

The question of the existence of God, from a rational point of view, is a topic of philosophy, and has been for several thousand years. It’s not a topic of science.

The question of design in nature is a philosophical question, not a scientific one, again from a rational point of view.

But even if you don’t accept this, if you think that there is no way that reason can be used to point to the existence of God, then you must at least accept that it is a question of faith. Science cannot disprove, or prove, the existence of God. God, and our belief in him, are questions of faith. That is my personal position.

I am a religious person who has throughout life grappled with an absolute, certain belief in the existence of God. However, I find value, great value, in religion and its practice. I find that if I make a leap of faith, things come right; they fall into place.

I call myself an “assumist”. I just have to assume that God exists. I cannot prove it, or disprove it.

Mary Midgley, a philosopher and a non-believer, puts it this way:

Belief or disbelief in God is not a scientific question, a judgment about physical facts in the world. It is an element in something larger and more puzzling – our wider worldview.

She attacks what she calls “scientism”, a belief that science explains everything. Clearly it cannot.

Religion is seen by many as the enemy of science. It should not be. Religion is, and should be seen as, an attempt at explaining the unexplainable; science as a way of proving the provable. Religion and science are not enemies. They are fighting different battles on different battlefields.

Pope Benedict in his Regensburg address went out of his way to defend science, and to promote a rational view of religion. Of course, religion can always be attacked by praying in aid some of its promoters. But I am a creationist, in that I believe that there must have been a Prime Mover.

As Pope Benedict put it earlier this month to a gathering of scientists at the Vatican:

In order to develop and evolve, the world must first be, and thus have come from nothing into being. It must be created, in other words, by the first Being, who is such by essence.

As Shakespeare’s King Lear says, “Nothing will come of nothing”. But I do not believe that the earth was created 6,000 years ago. Revelation does not tell me this; nor does my reason. By the way, 40 per cent of US scientists – people who make their living by science – agree with me; 45 per cent do not believe in God. So scientists are more divided than any of us.

Rather than the caricature of God drawn up by Richard Dawkins – a facile and bigoted alien – I am more attracted to Einstein’s vision:

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe forms my idea of God.

I am not asking you students seeking new worlds and knowledge to believe in God or not. I am only asking you to have an open mind. Constantly struggle to discover the truth. It will take a lifetime. Seek the truth. Keep an open mind.

Reject this arrogant motion.

I leave you with C.S. Lewis:

If Naturalism is true, every finite thing or event must be (in principle) explicable in terms of the Total System.

Remembrance and Resurrection

2008-11-16T11:47:00.000-08:00

Edward Leigh MP

I have just been watching the Remembrance Day Parade, the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War. How unbearably moving it was to see the last three survivors at the Cenotaph. Difficult not to shed a tear at the thought that, of the five million who served, only these three amazing survivors are left.

November 11 was also the feast-day of St Martin of Tours. In the summer we stopped by at Tours for lunch. The Cathedral is fairly modern. Incredibly, St Martin’s tomb (he was born a pagan about 316) was lost and then found again by a local antiquarian in the nineteenth century. The old Cathedral had been destroyed, and by careful research he worked out where the high altar might have been and discovered it.

A true tale of Resurrection.

Martin, of course, was the soldier in the Roman Army who gave half his cloak to a near-naked beggar. “I was a stranger and you made me welcome, naked, and you clothed me, sick, and you visited

Dying Well

2008-11-14T05:53:00.000-08:00

Edward Leigh MP

Parliament has once again this week been discussing “assisted dying”, i.e. euthanasia.

I don’t want to go through all the arguments, just give a couple of personal experiences.

I met recently with a patient suffering from Alzheimer’s. I was looking after him in a hospital ward for a short time. I can’t say where. Or who he was. True, I could do nothing for him. Everything I told him he forgot within a couple of minutes. But he did so much for me. He seemed so angelic, at peace, even holy.

I was profoundly moved. The simplest, most intimate tasks to help him seemed so important, and he said one thing that has stuck with me: “What I can’t stand is cruelty.” I suppose supporters of euthanasia would argue his life was fulfilling no purpose for himself. I doubt that, but even if that is true, it was fulfilling something very important for his carers and his family.

My second experience was with my mother. By the last three months she had no physical quality of life whatsoever. She could not even move in her bed, let alone out of it. She was in pain. If euthanasia was available, as she only thought of others, she might have said: “I am only a burden, now is the time to end it.” But what a tragedy that would have been, because she read and talked to the last, and died peacefully and within a day, of pneumonia, with her family around her. There were no agonising decisions to take. It just happened.

Of course every experience is different, but the very old have so much to teach us. Everyone accepts that the most poignant moment of all the Remembrance Day parades was when 112-year-old Henry Allington tried and failed to stand up to lay his wreath.

Gaudium etsi laboriosum (“Joy in spite of hardship”).

Four services, one desire

2008-11-12T03:03:00.000-08:00

Edward Leigh MP

I went to four very different church services over the last ten days. The first was at Polzeath in Cornwall, where we stayed for the weekend during half-term.

This had been an old Methodist chapel. Everyone was most welcoming. The service couldn’t have been more “modern”. “Happy-clappy”, my wife would say, although it was in fact very restrained. Not even a Bible-reading. But the most interesting thing about this church is that it’s called the “Tube Station”. The altar is in the shape of a surfer’s wave! The entire back of the church is taken up by a coffee-bar. Indeed, the church is a coffee-bar during the week. Before its transformation the church‘s congregation was a mere handful. Now it regularly attracts 100 people during the summer.

The lesson: Christianity has to get out of its ghetto and find people in their interests. In this case, surfing. But Christianity can still stay true to its roots.

On Monday I went to a normal (i.e. vernacular) daily service at the Brompton Oratory. I like the Mass there, traditional, no frills, no sermon, over in twenty minutes. It was All Souls’ Day and there was a second and third Mass of the day, the latter in Latin according to the Tridentine Rite. One forgets how soothing the old Low Mass was. The priest with his back to one, no verbal audience participation. Just an encounter with the Eucharist.

On Thursday I was in Christchurch Priory for evensong. A glorious Anglican church, steeped in majestic architecture, but very simple prayers. One of the great gifts to world civilisation is the Anglican tradition of evensong. I always ask my agent to let me go to evensong in Lincoln Cathedral. He rarely lets me. He says the schedule is too busy. But one’s life should never be too busy to go to evensong in one of our cathedrals.

On Sunday I was in Gainsborough Parish Church for our Remembrance Sunday service. I’ve been going most years for the last 25 years. By about ten years ago, the congregation was dwindling and I thought as memories faded so would the service fade away. But recently there’s been a revival of interest as a result of our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The large Georgian church was packed. The service was very moving, with superb singing, particularly the prayers. Previously a bit formulaic, this time they were good, with a background of the chant “Peace I give you/Peace I leave you./Be not afraid”, almost like a Taize chant.

Religion, then, is not an abstract thing. It’s immensely calming and reviving within life. So let Richard Dawkins spend his millions on plastering buses with signs saying “There’s probably no God”.

The insistent desire to meet Him and be close to Him is deep within most human beings – within all of us, the Church maintains. When we are thirsty we can drink, when we are hungry, we can eat. But why should so many of us hunger for something that doesn’t exist? And why should this hunger produce so much of the greatest art, music, poetry and architecture?

Maybe the very obsessiveness with which Dawkins denies God’s existence is a sign of the effort required to suppress such a deep human desire.

He exists for me, at least in my own mind, and perhaps on that Dawkins and I can agree.

Opportunity for Cameron

2008-11-04T08:58:00.000-08:00

Brown’s new line of attack is an opportunity for David Cameron

Edward Leigh MP
For obvious reasons, people have been looking at polls in America in recent weeks. As for polls in this country, one for Comres found last week that 58 per cent of voters say the Government should deal with our current crisis by cutting taxes.
And it seems Labour is listening. Last Thursday the Chancellor himself not only said he would not put up taxes but that he wanted to put money into “people’s pockets” to help them weather the recession.
Apparently Labour MPs are urging him to use extra borrowing to give tax relief to poorer workers in next month’s Pre-Budget Report.
One may not approve of the extra borrowing at a time when the Government is so far in the red, but to propose any tax-cut at all at present is an obvious ploy to outflank us Tories from the Right.
Crude maybe, but effective.
Gordon Brown has recently taken a new tack. He used to say David Cameron was “PR not PM” – all style no substance. Now he says he’s a right-wing “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.

But I think this is healthy for our politics. It enables us to clarify the outlines of what we stand for, and give voters a clear choice between two distinct visions of what is best for our country.

In the current financial climate, one way to play to our strength – to show that being “right-wing” is actually the best way out of our current troubles - is to make the case for smaller government.

All over Europe, other governments are bleating after Brown the Keynesian shepherd.

We should show that wolves have their virtues.

The Embryology Bill

2008-11-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

The Embryology Bill – treating human beings as spare parts

Edward Leigh MP
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill had its Third Reading in the Commons last Wednesday, and we on the pro-life side breathed a sigh of relief. The Government’s disinclination to have further debate on abortion amendments gave us a crumb of comfort that at least the abortion law would not get any worse in the immediate future. And Northern Ireland was spared having our abortion regime imposed upon it.

But the Bill is still horrific. As I said in the House, commenting on the philosophy at its heart: “I believe that human embryos are emphatically not just blobs of cells; they have the entire genetic make-up of a human being.” That is a matter of scientific fact, but also of wonder. It is perfect matter for a meditation on the astoundingly delicate intricacy of our biological creation – whether or not one believes in a Creator.

“I believe not that they are potential human beings,” I added in the Chamber, “but that they are human beings with potential. … There is something very dangerous”, I warned, “ in what we will undoubtedly do today. We are making ourselves less than human, in a sense, by viewing one part of human creation as a thing, a spare part” …
“Of course,” as I continued, “[early embryos] are microscopic—a grain of sand—and that is perhaps why we can view them as a spare part. However, when I thought of them as a microscopic grain of sand, as it were—as something that was not in any way recognisably human—I was reminded of this passage from Dostoevsky. In addressing the brothers Karamazov, the prior of the monastery says:
“Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”’
A blog is not the place to go into detail about a complex Bill, but consider its proposals on “saviour siblings” created to provide tissue for a brother or sister; for IVF children expected to grow up under the legal pretence that their mother’s female partner is in fact their “father” (a law which Humpty-Dumpty could have made); that animal-human hybrids and chimeras may be created just to keep scientists’ options open.

This list is not exhaustive, but any one of these will be a grotesque violation of human dignity at its most vulnerable. So this Bill is unprecedentedly anti-human. It seems to be founded on a tissue of lies about our true nature. Some of its provisions clearly strike at the roots of our natural family bonds.

These wartime lines by Louis MacNeice, seem strangely prescient:

I am not yet born; O hear me,Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.I am not yet born; O fill meWith strength against those who would freeze my humanity, … would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me.Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.Otherwise kill me.

(Prayer Before Birth, 1944)

The Bill goes back to the House of Lords this Wednesday (22), for peers to review it. Let us hope and pray that its opponents in the upper house can at least, to adapt St. Thomas More’s words, "so order [it] that it be not [so] very bad."

Tomorrow I will propose ways for the Conservatives to take the fight more effectively to Labour.

The Most Outspoken Speaker

2008-11-04T08:47:00.001-08:00

St Thomas More, MP: the most outspoken Speaker

Edward Leigh MP
I will not condemn any other man’s conscience, which lieth in their own heart far out of my sight.

Sir Thomas More

Thomas More, who was declared by Pope John Paul II to be patron saint of statesmen and politicians, is a man all MPs should celebrate, whatever their religious convictions. It is to him that all members of Parliament owe an eternal debt of gratitude, for it was he who, as Speaker, won for us for the first time the right to freedom of speech in debating any subject. This is nowadays known as ‘parliamentary privilege’. Because of him, we can, in Shakespeare’s words from King Lear ‘speak what we feel, not what we ought to say’.

Thomas More really is a saint for our time. One doesn’t need to descend into hagiography to see him as a fine example for all politicians. Of course he had his faults. After all he was a successful lawyer and politician. Is it possible for anyone to rise in our professions without any blemish? Nor do we need to go to the other extreme and dismiss him as a narrow-minded bigot and burner of heretics. True, he did burn some, as his modern-day detractors keep reminding us. But to condemn him for that is to take him out of his context and his century when religion was central to everyone’s life and government was a kind of theocracy. The authorities felt they had to enforce orthodoxy. Before we get too critical perhaps we could recall those modern-day magistrates who enforce laws against racist comments on the grounds that the equilibrium of society is upset by them. Or consider the laws against Islamist preaching that inspires terrorism. Heresy was then seen as a threat of that order and worse. In Germany an uprising inspired by Protestant notions, known as the Peasants’ War, led in More’s lifetime to terrible bloodshed.

But enough of this carping. The true genius of Thomas More’s memory and why he is immortalised is because he stood up for what he believed in. In a sense his stand and that of Fisher is all the more extraordinary because what Henry VIII was proposing was not so outrageous. After all it was considered one of the greatest disasters that could befall a nation for a girl to inherit the crown. Henry knew that if Mary was to succeed him and marry say the heir to France or Spain, England and her freedom would literally be her dowry. The sensible course for Catherine would have been to retire quietly to a convent after failing in her most important job of providing a male heir. Only two great public men, More and Fisher, stood against the notion that England must have a male heir. Their obstinacy in the face of all their peers is glorious. No doubt too the prospect of execution concentrated the minds of many of their friends, and the fact that alone of all the courtiers and bishops More and Fisher refused to renounce their beliefs even if it led to the scaffold has ensured that they are remembered when all the others are forgotten.

One last canard should be laid to rest. It is alleged that More wanted to be a martyr. In fact he used all his lawyerlike skills to put off the evil day. One is left with the inescapable conclusion that he was just a sincere man who could not renounce his religious beliefs for a political, even a national, convenience. Why can we not delight in and applaud him and hold his memory sacred?

Recently More has become more topical as once again the state starts to impose its morality on the churches in order to stop what it sees as discrimination.

At the heart of Henry VIII’s great matter was an issue concerning marriage and the family. This is not the place to debate the merits or otherwise of the Blair government’s insistence that the Catholic Church open its adoption agencies to gay couples. Suffice it to say that Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham came out with a Fisher-like statement that needs preserving for posterity:

Those who are elected to fashion our laws are not elected to be our moral tutors. They have no mandate or competence to do so. And the wise among them would not wish it either.

In the context of the dispute the Archbishop of Canterbury famously declared that ‘Rights of conscience cannot be subject to legislation.’

But there’s a broader reason why modern politicians should celebrate the life of Thomas More. We live famously in an age of spin. But we are more worryingly in an age where Parliament is remarkably quiescent to the executive. Most MPs appear more interested in the dubious delights of office than in speaking their minds. Perhaps this has always been so, but at least in the past there were more MPs of independent means. Now more and more MPs have had no career outside of Parliament. They have little alternative earning power, no second career, and often no managerial experience, so becoming one of the Queen’s Ministers is their only real chance of making a mark.

Very few - in fact only two - men in public life, More and Fisher, were prepared to stand up for their beliefs against Henry VIII. Sadly very few today are prepared to stand against the orthodoxy of their own parties. That’s why more and more people are becoming bored, disillusioned and apathetic about politics. It seems to make no difference. All the parties seem much the same.

More shouldn’t then just be the patron saint of politicians. He should be the patron saint of politicians who are prepared to sacrifice ambition for what they believe in. He is then very much a saint for our time.

The above text is an extract from ‘St John Fisher and St Thomas More – the bluntest of bishops and the most outspoken Speaker’, a chapter by Edward Leigh and Alex Haydon in English Catholic Heroes, published last month by Gracewing. It is available via the publisher’s website on the link below.

http://www.gracewing.co.uk/

You can also order by telephone on 01568 616835

2008-11-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

David Cameron delivers the goods

Edward Leigh MP
Congratulations to David Cameron on his party conference speech. His best yet. Solidly right-wing, it could have been delivered by Margaret Thatcher. I loved the bits on marriage, sound money, strong defence and respect for the law. Some of his lines on political correctness and the nanny state were really stunning. Gut Conservative stuff.

This is not meant to carp, but there are areas where we need to develop our policies a bit. First, our leading politicians, Labour and Conservative, talk too much about themselves. Statesmanship is about ideas, not celebrity.

Second, Heathrow is one of our greatest international business assets. We do need a new fast railway line, but we need also to allow Heathrow to remain the biggest international airport in the world. International travellers won’t want to take even a high-speed railway to a regional airport for their interconnections.

Next, top marks to Michael Gove for our new education policy of widening school provision. The reasons why independent schools work is because they are allowed to do what they want. Heads in the state sector must be given the same freedoms, to hire and fire, and also to choose what pupils they want in their own schools. In fact, if heads were given such freedoms, most schools in the state sector would change little in the academic range of their pupils, but they would evolve immeasurably for the better.

Then, we need to be sharper on the NHS. It is not a religion. Most of us pay thousands of pounds in tax for it during our lives and then have no rights when we get ill. For a start, people must be allowed to top up their NHS provision if a drug is withheld because of cost.

Both in education and health we need to end the rigid divide between state and private. Which is why we need education vouchers and tax relief for private health insurance.

Cut Loose

2008-11-04T08:34:00.001-08:00

Now is the time to cut ourselves loose from the Government’s “spend and borrow” approach

Edward Leigh MP
As Gordon Brown said in his Conference speech on Tuesday “There’s a lot to be serious about.” This was put over as a jocular way of celebrating his famous dourness. But whilst he went through a brief mea culpa over the 10p tax fiasco, he was content to lay all the blame for our current economic problems on the volatility in international markets.

This will not do.

Not when the finances of the government he heads and whose purse-strings he held for the last decade are in their current parlous state. Government borrowing is at record levels. A few months ago the Chancellor was predicting he would borrow £120 billion over the next four years. Now he is saying he needs an extra £20 billion. £7 billion will be needed next year alone. Meanwhile the budget deficit is over 3 per cent of GDP. That is the worst figure of all industrial economies, excepting Hungary, Pakistan and Egypt[1]. After fifteen years of global growth. That is nearly three times the EU average. As a result, the European Commission has initiated disciplinary proceedings against the UK.

So perhaps Alistair Darling was not exaggerating very much when he said we could be facing the worst downturn for 60 years.

Last summer he warned us of the need to tighten our belts, invoking the dangers of a wage-price spiral reminiscent of the 1970s.

But as Prime Minster the reputedly prudent Gordon Brown still wants to spend like a renaissance prince on the public sector. This at a time when the Governor of the Bank of England has had to write to his Chancellor about the inflation rate soon rising to an expected peak of 5 per cent; when unemployment has risen by 81,000 between May and July, to 1.72 million, and the prices of food, petrol and utilities have all risen massively.

The OECD’s economic outlook report says the Government’s options for coping with the crisis are limited by its own profligacy. It speaks of “excessively loose” fiscal policy in past years of strong growth. Now, it says the deficit will climb “significantly above” 3 per cent of GDP, so risking a breach of the sustainable investment rule next year as net government debt shoots towards 40 per cent.

On top of all this, the Prime Minister’s latest wheeze is to provide free nursery places for all two-year-olds. On the basis that there are 600,000 two-year-olds in the country, that is likely to cost over £1 billion. His socialist reflexes react to hard times with yet another hand-out.

And now Ed Balls promises free school meals for all primary school children. It has been widely reported in the press that this will end up costing around £1 billion a year.

We have before us the appalling prospect of an incoming Conservative Government being forced to put up taxes in 2010. We cannot be the victims of a scorched earth approach to public spending. It would be disastrous if an incoming Conservative government had to raise taxes. As Bush senior and John Major found, Conservative governments that raise taxes long-term are dead Conservative governments.

We Conservatives must now cut ourselves loose from the ball and chain of Labour’s tax-and-spend approach. We should do this by making a concerted intellectual case for why spending must not be allowed to increase any further; indeed, why it should, where possible, be restrained.

Part of our historic role as a party should be to manage the public finances with prudence and thrift. We should be explaining now how we are going to deliver public services more efficiently and with greater value for money. As long as the economy grows over a cycle it is still possible for a Conservative government to deliver lower taxes and better public services, and this case must be made – and made now.

To this end, I welcome the recent announcements that George Osborne is currently reviewing our spending plans, and that he will set out the results of this review next year.

I also look forward to what he will say at the Conservative Conference today. It is understood he will set out the Party’s plans for gradually reducing the share of GDP consumed by government. That is also a very positive development.

But above all I hope he makes it crystal clear that we Conservatives cannot be tarred with the brush of this Government’s woeful wastage of taxpayers’ money.

[1] The Economist June 2008

Save the Language of Jesus

2008-11-04T08:31:00.000-08:00

Politicians must act to save the language of Jesus

Edward Leigh says that only an Iraqi Christian province can preserve the Assyrian Church
I have just spent a memorable week in northern Iraq as a guest of the Assyrian Christians, becoming the first British MP to visit these people in the lawless land north of Mosul since 2003. When we think of Christianity here in the West we conjure up an image of cosy medieval churches set in green fields with polite elderly congregations, or perhaps majestic cathedrals. What I saw in Iraq was a reminder of Christianity in its raw early form.
Here are the last speakers of Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ. Here I saw the tomb of the Old Testament prophet Nahum, with its Hebrew inscriptions on the old stone walls. This prophet’s brief book describes, in somewhat lurid terms, the overthrow of Nineveh. It is the Lord’s vengeance upon the Assyrians as the enemies of God’s people. Ironically, the words he applies to the pagan Assyrians could now be applied to the Christian Assyrians of Iraq: “Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.” If they continue to be evicted from the Nineveh Plains, where they have always lived, then their language too will fade away.
Then there is the suffocating heat, unrelieved in Ramadan by even a glass of beer, the undercurrent of violence and oppression, the small flat-roofed houses, the bare ancient churches devoid of any ornament and the ancient liturgy.
I heard some harrowing tales of Christians being killed and kidnapped in Baghdad following our invasion. I am even more certain I was right to vote against an invasion which has caused so much misery for minorities in Iraq.
I spoke to a number of displaced widows who shared their tragic stories. One woman told that her husband had been kidnapped and a $15,000 ransom demanded. Although she paid, her husband was never returned and is presumed dead.
Another widow’s husband had been killed by a bomb and she has been left to care for their son and two daughters, one of whom has Down’s Syndrome. Another told me that her husband had been killed by a roadside bomb in 2006, while he was returning from church. A few days after her husband’s death her daughter was kidnapped. At this point she started crying uncontrollably and we had to end the interview. I later learned that her daughter has never returned and is presumed dead.After this I spoke to a young Christian woman who lost four of her family members in 2004. When she lived in Baghdad Muslim extremists had put leaflets through her family’s letterbox, calling the Christians “pigs” and telling them to leave or be killed. A few days later they attacked her house and killed her parents and sister. One of her brothers disappeared and she believes he returned home while the killers were still there and was kidnapped. There is no news of her missing brother and he is presumed dead.
Sometimes I find British politics inward-looking and petty. When I go to places like northern Iraq I feel new life coursing through my political veins and I am determined to stand up for these minorities. This decimated community is under pressure from many sides. Over 700 Iraqi Christians have been killed since 2003 and half have left Iraq, leaving perhaps about 400,000 Christians in Iraq. Over 95 per cent of them are Chaldo-Assyrian, the descendants of the Assyrians of Old Testament times. They are the indigenous people of Iraq, with a continuous presence in that land for over 6,000 years. Today, probably more than at any other time in their long history, the Assyrians are in grave danger of disappearing altogether from their ancient homeland.
The average Iraqi faces many risks but Christians are exposed to even more: they have to deal with the additional threat of attacks from Islamic extremists, who want to drive them out of Iraq, kill them or force them to convert to Islam; attacks by insurgents who mistakenly view the Christians as close allies of the “Christian” West; abduction by kidnappers who think that the generally well educated Christians are more wealthy than other Iraqis; and having large areas of their land – and many of their houses – misappropriated by neighbouring Kurds in what appears to be a systematic attempt to take over Christian-owned land and drive Christians out of the Kurdish region. At least 58 Christian villages have been partially or wholly misappropriated by Kurds.
I visited many during my stay and was told by the Christians how their land and houses and sometimes even their sources of water had been taken by the Kurds. In every case the Kurdish authorities failed to ensure that the misappropriated property was returned. In some cases it has even been the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) who had seized it. For example the KDP office at the Christian village of Kany Masy was built on Christian-owned land without the owner’s permission. In the area under Kurdish Regional Government control an environment of impunity prevails, where Christian-owned property is viewed as “up for grabs”. The KDP is even encouraging Kurds from abroad to come and settle in the region as part of their systematic attempt to Kurdify the entire area and squeeze out the Chaldo-Assyrians.
While there is no danger of the Sunnis, Shias or Kurds vanishing from Iraq, there is a risk that this may soon happen to the Assyrians unless their security situation improves and they receive much more support. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that Christians made up 36 per cent of Iraqi refugees in Syria, although they only comprised about four per cent of Iraq’s population - further evidence that Christians suffer disproportionately.
The West, particularly the US and Britain, must step in to protect the last remnant of a Christian minority in Iraq, lest they go the way of the Jews, who were all evicted. We need to give them their own province in the Nineveh Plains. We need to warn the Kurds that continued encroachments of their land will not be tolerated. Iraq’s leading Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM) have long called for a self-governing province to be established for the Chaldo-Assyrians, situated in and around the Nineveh Plains, as these lands form part of the Assyrians’ ancestral homeland and are still heavily populated by them.
The ADM have received the highest number of votes from Iraqi Christians at elections, indicating that their call for a province is supported by the majority of Iraq’s Christians. This province would provide better security for Christians and encourage many Iraqi Christian refugees to return and live there. If the Assyrians do not get their province then the KDP will probably eventually annex the Nineveh Plains to Kurdistan and the Assyrians will soon die as a nation.Edward Leigh is the Conservative MP for Gainsborough. Readers can help the Christians of Iraq by sending a cheque to the Assyrian Aid Society at 36 Crossway, London W13 0AX. Readers may also write to their MP, urging them to contact the Foreign Secretary and ask the Government to give more support to Iraq’s Christians, including support for the Chaldo-Assyrians' request for a self-governing province.
This article was published in the latest edition of the Catholic Herald (October 3).

John McCain – Giving people “the opportunity to reach their God-given potential”

2008-11-04T08:28:00.000-08:00

Edward Leigh MP

The Palin bounce

One swallow doesn’t make a summer of course, but an Obama victory no longer seems a safe bet.

The Palin phenomenon is obviously having an effect. In front of the cheering crowds of Republican supporters who interrupted her speech to chant or whoop every few minutes, the moose-hunting “pit-bull” was clearly in her element. She lapped up the applause with a broad grin. Old McCain looked slightly uncomfortable with the same experience. But although his speech was never going to have the novelty value or the star-quality of Palin’s tour de force, it struck me as an excellent expression of true Conservative values.

A touch of Churchill

His tribute to his mother, who, “96 years young”, was in the audience to hear him was to British ears perhaps a little cloying. Nonetheless, her belief “that we’re all meant to use our opportunities to make ourselves useful to our country” showed that his patriotism was something he’d taken in with his mother’s milk. It was perhaps a conscious reframing of JFK’s “Do not ask what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” McCain developed the patriotic theme throughout his speech, saying of his support for the troop-surge in Iraq at a time when it was highly unpopular: “I’d rather lose an election than let my country lose a war”. There was a touch of Churchill in that remark. My own opposition to the Iraq war is well-known, but I respect those who differ on principle.

McCain of course continued the themes his running-mate had launched into in her speech, including the determination to get rid of big government: “All you’ve ever asked of your government is to stand on your side and not in your way” - a soundbite memorable for its simplicity, a speechwriter’s triumph.

Other themes which I warmed to were his approach to education: “We’ll help bad teachers find another line of work….Empower parents for choice!”, and energy independence: “We’ll drill now!”

Pure Cornerstone

But it was when he started on a quietly passionate litany of “We believes” that I was most enthused:

“We believe everyone has something to contribute, and deserves the opportunity to reach their full God-given potential.

We believe in lower taxes, spending discipline and open markets.

We believe in rewarding hard work and risk-takers, and letting people keep the fruits of their labour.

We believe in a strong defence, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench.

We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans.

A government that doesn’t make choices for you but lets you make choices for yourself.”

If you change “Americans” to “the British”, I could happily have delivered that section of the speech myself. It is pure Cornerstone.

Of course it was inevitable that McCain would return to the theme of patriotism at the end. The contrast of his war record with Obama’s lame disclosure that he once considered military service but decided against it as the Vietnam War was coming to an end was bound to play to McCain’s strengths. And, whatever your politics, the fact that he resisted the temptation to get out of a wretched jail early on account of being an admiral’s son is an impressive signal of character. So when he said that after the experience of being supported through torture and imprisonment by the encouragement of his fellow-captives and comrades-in-arms, “I wasn’t my own man any more, I was my country’s”, it was no mere speechwriter’s soundbite. It rang true.

As did his statement that “nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.”

He may lack Palin’s pizzazz, but, like her, John McCain has the great virtue of authenticity. His experience, both military and political should also count for something. His character has clearly been tested in the crucible of his Vietnam ordeal.

The race for the White House just got a lot more interesting.

Sarah Palin - putting the Government on the side of the people

2008-11-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

Westminster politics had left me feeling a little jaded as the summer recess came upon us.Then the other day I watched Sarah Palin’s address to the Republican National Convention, accepting her nomination as running-mate to John McCain.Now I feel absolutely reinvigorated.Palin’s heartfelt defiance of the East Coast liberal elite and its media cheerleaders will resonate with many voters in this country.With fierce pride she stood up for ordinary “small-town” people.Millions of them in Britain are yearning for relief from the expensive burden of Labour’s big-government approach.Palin’s desire to “put the government … back on the side of the people” was clearly spoken with utter conviction.Her record of cost-cutting during her time as Governor of Alaska bears this out.And her celebration of her marriage and family - while admitting that it “has the same ups and downs as any other” - was heartening.She spoke movingly of her Down’s syndrome son - “ a perfectly beautiful baby boy”; in Britain doctors pressurise women to abort such children. But as a Christian pro-lifer she would never consider doing so, any more than her teenage daughter will abort her grandchild.If she was a British politician, she’d clearly be a natural member of Cornerstone!