Published: Thursday 15th February 2018

It’s been a pretty torrid few weeks in Parliament, so I was looking forward to a few days in North Wiltshire. Here’s a flavour of it.

I was very glad to be able to persuade Lyneham’s Colonel Ed Heal that the planned Motor Car events on the old runway at Lyneham were deeply unwelcome, and risked damaging the excellent relations the Defence Technical Training College have with local people. I am not sure he needed much persuasion, and they will not now happen. I am glad that other events will continue on the base, such as essential training for our police, and I wholly agreed that the little Go-kart track could not be heard from any distance and should continue mainly as a recreation for the troops on the base.

Lyneham provides 800 civilian jobs, and makes a huge contribution to the local economy and way of life. Working with them harmoniously (as we always do) is vitally important. Just remember that we might have had a Theme Park, a jumbo jet refuelling depot, the main helicopter base for all three services, or a variety of other uses any of which would have been massively disruptive to the local area. We are extremely fortunate to have the Technical College, and indeed the REME Battalions which will be based there.

Then it was on to speak at the Swindon Chamber of Commerce lunch in the excellent Doubletree Hilton Hotel just over Junction 16 (but still in North Wiltshire). It all went well, and resulted in an invitation to speak to the Chamber in the PM’s constituency in Maidenhead in April. Hope Theresa approves!

A nip down the Motorway to Bristol, to attend the South West Board of the Conservative Party, and a final visit to my doctor’s surgery in Yatton Keynell completed a rather satisfactory circumnavigation of the patch. Surgeries in Calne and Royal Wootton Bassett yielded their usual spectrum of cases, some of which I am able to help, to some of which I have to admit defeat. (I hope it’s more than 50% of the former.) Launching the new 55 Bus Service in Royal Wootton Bassett High Street, a meeting in County Hall to do battle on behalf of a constituent whose house floods thanks to a drain whose ownership is disputed, a meeting with Green Square Housing Association to discuss myriad matters about decent social housing in the area; these and several other local events together with a general ‘clearing of the decks’ keeps my half-term week pretty busy.

Being away from the great affairs of State allows a bit of proportion to enter into one’s view of it all. With regard to both Brexit and Northern Ireland, frankly I wish they would just ‘get on with it ‘. And I am glad to have had just a little time off to do some reading and writing, take a few walks in the chilly early spring sunshine, and play with our new 8 week old puppy. Aww…

Published: Thursday 1st February 2018

I have never heard of the President’s Club, and am glad to say I have never been to any of their events, which sound distasteful in the extreme. I thought that blatant sexism of that kind had been consigned to the dustbin along with the Benny Hill Show many years ago; and of course I join others in decrying the disgraceful scenes which seem to have occurred at their fundraising dinner in London’s Dorchester Hotel.

But then again, strip clubs exist up and down the land; porn magazines are available on every top shelf; it is alleged that 27 million Brits access pornography on line and even tabloid readers pay for a share of it. There are all male clubs all over the place – the Rotary Club, Lions and Masons to name but a few. There are Working Men’s Clubs, gentlemen’s clubs in St James’s St and a few for ladies as well. Hen nights, for example, can hire ‘Bottomless Butlers’- which I will leave to your own imagination. It is also notable that not a single employee at the President’s Club Dinner has complained, and no-one would have known anything about it were it not for a couple of undercover newspaper reporters. So is it really right that the great Ormond Street Hospital has felt it necessary presumably to risk endangering children’s lives or wellbeing by handing back £500,000 in a fit of moral outrage over these shenanigans? Might the Devil’s Money not be put to good use?

Something of the same could be said about that other President, Mr Trump. I decry much of what he has said, much of what he stands for. He is vulgar, rude, juvenile; and I am certain that I would wholly dislike him if I met him. But Donald Trump IS the President of the United States, duly elected by his people. We have billions of pounds worth of trade with the USA, and close cultural and family ties (closer, in my view than those to many European countries.) They are our oldest and strongest ally, and their defence spending and intelligence services are essential to our National safety and security. What’s more we have always kept up reasonable relations with pretty disgraceful people over the years. President Ceaucescu of Romania’s State Visit springs to mind, and of course Communist President Xi of China was here in October 2015. Is it really right to cut off our noses to spite our faces because we find some aspects of President Trump’s life and policies distasteful?

In other words, rather than overwhelmingly self-righteous moral outrage (which is often designed to demonstrate what goody goodies we are as much as what baddy baddies they are) about some of these Presidential matters; is there not room for us to rise above it a bit? Can we not decry nonsense of that sort, take no part in it; look down our patrician noses at tomfoolery and stupidity and vulgarity. It’s a question of good taste and good manners. We don’t spit on the street, nor swear on public transport. We dislike people who do. But there is no law against it.

And sometimes, we would be wise to try to remember what is in our own best interests. So I think Great Ormond Street should hang onto the cash, no matter what its provenance. And I do think that Donald Trump should come to the UK in The Summer.

I just hope that I don’t have to meet him.

Published: Thursday 8th February 2018

“Fit for the twenty-first century,’ and expressions like it, are aching clichés. ‘Modernisation’ for ‘modernisation’s sake’ is a self-fulfilling prophesy, and worthless. ‘New is Good and Old is Bad’ is as false as Orwell’s ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ in Animal farm. All of these things are camouflage for woolly thinking, or lack of real justification for a particular action, or often both.

So it was with the debate over whether or not to turf out the 9,000 people who work in Parliament for a period of at least 5 years, and at a cost of at least £4billion to put the plumbing right. It was passed by a painfully thin 16 votes, and I and most of my grown-up colleagues voted against it. It risks wrecking the whole mysterious ethos of Parliament which is the painstaking creation of 1000 years, replacing it with a bland modernism of the kind which is on display, for example, in the Sottish Parliament in Edinburgh and the European one in Brussels. Neither, if I may be so bold, are exactly best examples of brilliantly functioning legislative assemblies. Like it or lump it, and irrespective of who may be in power, the Parliament in Westminster works brilliantly well. It is the envy of the world. By and large it produces good law, and holds the Government to account. It works- and a radical rebuild risks wrecking it. They should make do and mend, as most people living in old houses do; patch it up over the long Summer Recess; make it wind and weather proof. But for heaven’s sake please don’t ‘modernise’ it. I actually rather liked the little robin redbreast flittering around during PMQs this week.  It did not harm; but the atmosphere-balanced, high security bubble which will doubtless replace it may well make such harmless episodes impossible.

I feel rather the same way about HS2, which I would have voted against this week had there been a meaningful vote on it. These vast infrastructure projects develop a momentum of their own, spurred on no doubt by an army of consultants, engineers, architects and builders who will make their personal fortunes out of it. But do we really need HS2? By the time it is operational, will we really want to speed down from the North of England to the South by train? More and more work can be done remotely and on-line with video conferencing and the rest. We are bringing in robots and artificial intelligence. Will they really feel the need to catch the 7.35 train from Crewe to London? I doubt it. ‘Build a railway fit for the 21^st Century.” Oh well, that’s all right then.

I have been hobbling round Parliament this week after a minor operation to my knee assisted by my old Scottish Cromach - or crook. It was made for my late Father in 1960 or so by Archie Ronald an old shepherd from Argyllshire. He spent the winter doing it, and it is as fine a piece of art as you could find anywhere. Show Cromach makers habitually fill in the little natural dimples in the sheep’s horn using wax, to make it look perfect. Archie Ronald refused to do that as he felt it would become a dishonest gift for a Scottish Minister.  So it is ‘sincere’ – which comes from the Latin ‘without wax.” Honest and old and true.

The Parliament in Westminster, our transport infrastructure, so much else about our way of life, would be so much better if we were guided by the Cromach - Honest and Old and True.

Published: Thursday 25th January 2018

It is right to be concerned about the collapse of Carillion, as it would be of any major employer and contractor to the Government. Of course we must do all we can to save jobs, and ensure delivery of the services for which they were responsible. Locally, everything from the management of Erlestoke Prison through to schools maintenance was in their hands, and the Government will do all it can to make sure that those services continue, and that local people employed by Carillion have as smooth a transition as possible to whoever it is who will be providing those services in the future. These things are always disturbing.

Yet there is also a lot of tosh being talked about it. HM Government had no responsibility for the management of Carillion, which it now transpires was sorely wanting. Their only role was as a major client, and perhaps they should have spotted some of those management failings to safeguard their own interests. But those who are alleging corruption, cover-ups, massive incompetence and the rest are trying to make political capital out of the worries and uncertainty of the people who are employed there. And those who are suggesting that the construction and management services provided by Carillion should instead be managed ‘in-house’- in other words run by civil servants and ministers – are in my view just plain wrong. There is little evidence that monolithic civil service led management would in any sense be better. Indeed it might well be worse since it would be the public purse bearing the risk under those circumstances.

Something of the same applies to the Private Finance Initiative deals, which were found to be uncompetitive in a National Audit Office Report last week. There were some terrible deals struck, especially under the Labour Government who saw PFI as an easy way to curry votes by providing buildings and services which would not otherwise be deliverable by the public sector. We here benefitted in Malmesbury, Abbeyfield and Royal Wootton Bassett academies, and in the brand new Great Western Hospital. It is hard to believe that any of them would have been built if they had been dependent upon public funds. The PFI structure enabled private finance and borrowing to be used to provide schools and hospitals, thereby relieving the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement. They were ‘off-balance sheet’ deals, which actually do have some merit if controlled properly.

The problem with PFI is that Ministers and the civil servants who advise them were so uncommercial and inexperienced that they agreed some terrible deals. The contractors were laughing all the way to the bank. But that should not undermine the perfectly sound principle which lay behind the deals - of seeking to get private funding into public services.

The Socialists always prefer nationalisation, state provision, in-house workforces and the like, which no doubt suits their own agendas. I remain firmly of the view that the profit-motive and private-sector business disciplines actually do a better job in providing high quality public services at an affordable price. So we must not let Carillion, nor the NAO Report lead to us blundering back to State Provision of almost everything. A glance at Socialist regimes around the world will demonstrate what a mistake that would be.