Category: National politics

Nick Melhuish, one of our Conservative Future members, was telling me on Saturday what a warm reception they had had when they were out canvassing on Saturday afternoon at Ealing Broadway station in the run up to the European Parliament elections on Thursday. He did have trouble though getting his head around the issues. Nick worked hard on the London Mayoral campaign this time last year and then he had all of the issues at his finger tips and knew all the arguments and counter-arguments. The same clarity evaded him this year.

Today the Sun nails the only issue and advises its readers to vote Tory on Thursday. All three major parties offered the British people a referendum on the European Constitution. Now only the Tories still promise a referendum. The EU finessed no votes in France (May 2005) and the Netherlands (June 2005) by coming up with the Lisbon Treaty (December 2007) that was indistinguishable from the constitution in every area that was substantial – only frippery such as flags and anthems were dropped. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have used the Lisbon Treaty as an excuse to renege on their 2005 election promises. Even after the Irish voted against the treaty in June 2008 the unaccountable EU machine would not let the constitution (by another name) die.

This is what the Sun says:

David Cameron promises a Tory government will hold a referendum on the Constitution if it hasn’t been enacted by the next election.

We want a referendum whatever stage this wretched treaty has reached. But realistically, the Tories are the only game in town.

The sooner that election is called, the better. Thursday offers us a real chance to make sure we get one.

Our advice to Sun readers? If you want your vote to count in Europe, vote Tory.

On Thursday, however fed up you are with MPs – and we know that MEPs are probably much worse, get out and vote and vote for the Tories. A good result for the Tories and a bad result for Labour may precipitate a general election and that would give us a referendum.

Today we hear that Joanna Lumley has come out in support of the Green Party. It all sounds lovely but it means that whilst appearing to be an apolitical campaigner for good causes Lumley is in fact probably quite leftish and she will be a happy bedfellow with the extremely left-wing Green Party.

I know it is unfashionable to use terms such as leftwing and rightwing nowadays but the move of Labour towards the contested middle ground has left the old left looking for a new home. Some have found it in Respect and for the forthcoming Euro elections the No2EU campaign. Others are hiding in the Green Party. I say hiding because they do not push leaflets through your door with the word socialist highlighted but it does not take too much research to work out that the Green Party is essentially a socialist party in all but name.

Alan Johnson is viewed by some people as having the potential to be the next leader of the Labour party. It is clear from his pronouncements on proportional representation today in the Times that he is only interested in the narrow interests of the Labour party and has no interest in what is good for our country. He wants to confuse people by mixing the issue of reforming the behaviour of MPs with the issue of reforming the electoral system. In doing so Johnson is showing his true colours. In the Times he proposes that we have a referendum on the Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) system of proportional representation proposed by Roy Jenkins.

In 1997 the Labour manifesto promised:

We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system.

Whatever happened to that idea? In 1998 Roy Jenkins produced the Jenkins report which proposed the AV+ system of PR for the House of Commons. It did not suit Labour (because it would have reduced their majority) and the whole idea was dropped. Twelve years later Johnson raises it again because he thinks it has the power to clip the wings of the next Conservative government. Does Johnson think we have no memory?

The AV+ system of proportional representation is not that different from the little understood AMS system used by the London Assembly in 2000 and then again in 2004 and 2008. That system has given us a BNP member and a number of Green and UKIP members and a toothless scrutiny body. Great. Nice one Alan.

The biggest challenge for our next government will be tackling our country’s out of control debt. There is no way that we need a watered-down, PR type Parliament to tackle this challenge. In 2005 the largest home nation, England, voted for a Tory government but had to submit to a Labour government willed by the smaller home nations. We need a large Conservative majority at the next general election to allow our next government to do its job. Johnson is not part of the solution.

The news has just broken that Michael Martin will announce his resignation this afternoon. Good. The expenses scandal, and it is a scandal of the most damaging kind, is the product of a generation of MPs who have not realised that the world has moved on. They all need to go and it is appropriate that Martin is the first to go.

The Romans had a military punishment called decimation. The word is misused often but its original use was for a punishment of legions that either showed cowardice in battle or were mutinous. One in ten were killed to buck up the remainder. Whether it is by deselection or by voter action against incumbents who think that they can cling on at the next general election we need to see something like the one in ten MPs who have committed the worst expenses fiddles cleared out.

David Cameron has been making a lot of the right sounds and indeed has reminded Tory constituency associations that they have the power to deal with bad eggs. There is a grass roots move in the Labour party to get their NEC to do the same thing in the Labour party. Apparently 175 councillors and Parliamentary candidates have signed a letter urging the NEC to act. Their words are pretty withering:

We are writing to you to register our protest at the conduct of many Labour MPs, ministers and cabinet ministers in allowance and expense claims funded by hard working British taxpayers during the tenure of this Parliament. We are also gravely concerned that the Party Leadership has failed to take charge of a critical situation on an issue so fundamentally defining to the character and reputation of our Party, its supporters and activists.

Unsurprisingly I couldn’t identify any Ealing names on the list. Our Labour lot are not known for their freedom of thought.

Similarly the LibDems grassroots are on the warpath.

I have just written the letter below to my MP, Virendra Sharma.

You can do the same. Just follow this link.

I have just spent 20 of the most tedious minutes of my life listening to speaker Martin’s statement on MPs expenses. The upshot of it was “I am ploughing on regardless”.

Martin has come to symbolise this whole scandal. It became clear from the points of order raised that Martin’s statement was inadequate. In response to a point of order from LibDem MP Susan Kramer Martin made it clear that it was a matter for the government as to whether Douglas Carswell’s motion of no confidence in the speaker is debated and voted on tomorrow.

So Martin’s fate is in Gordon Brown’s hands. If Brown does not allow a debate and a vote then he will rightly become the centre of the storm. Let’s see how brave Brown is!

Today the Labour Party have come out with a typically mendacious party political broadcast. It is shot through with Gordon Brown’s dividing lines. One of Labour’s actors, “Tina”, says:

David Cameron would cut a £160m from crime-fighting budgets right now, that is the equivalent of losing three and half thousand police officers, how can we afford to take this risk?

At their Cameron knocking website cameronsconservatives.co.uk they go on to say:

David Cameron wants to cut public spending this year – in the middle of a recession – by £5 billion. Most departments including the Home Office would be restricted to a smaller, 1 per cent, real increase in their budgets this year. For the Home Office, that would mean having £160 million less this year in the middle of a recession to spend on fighting crime and protecting the UK’s borders.

Since January, the Conservatives have failed to set out exactly how the Home Office would be expected to reduce its spending in this way in the middle of a recession. But £160 million is the equivalent to the cost of employing 3,500 police officers.

It really is not hard to work out how to take £160 million out of the Home Office budget right now without touching a single front line crime fighter. Just have a quick look at the 2008 Home Office Departmental Report. Here are a few facts and figures:

• Administration budget for 2009/10 £419 million – seems like a good place to start
• Home Secretary’s private office staff – 69 people
• Communications Directorate staff – 171 people
• Human Resources – 468 people
• Accountants – 655 people
• Total Home Office headquarters staff – 3,182
• Number of civil servants earning over £100K – 37 people

You can see their run rate on consultancy spending here – about £130 million a year.

Let me at them.

Today the Tories hit the front page of the Telegraph and the Prime Minister raised himself “to apologise on behalf of all politicians, on behalf of all parties”. Frankly I don’t think he has any right to talk for all parties. He might have apologised for his MPs on Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday. He might have apologised for Jacqui Smith’s behaviour weeks ago – he might have sacked her.

Brown might have apologised for allowing Speaker Michael Martin to preside over this mess. He might have apologised to Heather Brooke for the way Parliament has wriggled and squirmed to keep this information out of sight. He might like to explain why Martin is still in a job. He might like to take the strong line on misbehaviour that David Cameron took with Derek Conway from whom he withdrew the whip, effectively banishing him from the parliamentary Conservative group and precipitating his resignation.

Don’t let anyone use the current MPs’ expenses scandal as a justification to look again at MPs’ salaries. MPs’ salaries are perfectly adequate – the large number of capable people wanting to be MPs (up until now at least) and the lack of people leaving the profession voluntarily demonstrates that this particular labour market is working fine. They need to quietly get on with their jobs for the next few years like the rest of us who won’t be getting much of a pay rise for a while.

MPs’ (and Lords’) expenses need prompt reform. The Additional Costs Allowance is an invitation to corruption and needs to be swept away. Let MPs rent modest furnished second homes if they live more than an hour away from Westminster and can demonstrate that they maintain a proper first home. By all means pay the bills on the second home. That’s it. The landlord pays for maintenance and furniture. No food – we all eat.

I have been stunned, as has anyone with the remotest interest in politics, by the revelations in the Telegraph over the last couple of days over MPs expenses.

The real hero behind these stories is Heather Brooke, a freelance journalist and freedom of information campaigner. You can see a link to her “Your right to know” blog on my blog list on the right of this screen. That link has been there since I came across her in late 2007 when she got in touch with me in relation to the work I did on the Congestion Charge finances. You may have seen her Dispatches programme on the tele recently.

I am totally disgusted that the response of the House of Commons authorities has been to shoot the messenger. Malcolm Jack, Clerk of the House and Chief Executive, wrote in an e-mail yesterday:

The advice which I have received is that there are reasonable grounds to believe a criminal offence may have been committed in relation to the way this information has been handled. Having informed Mr Speaker I have today made a report to the Metropolitan Police, asking them to consider the matter.

It would have been rather better if he had talked about reform and punishing the wicked. I was reassured to read in the Telegraph this morning that the Met’s Sir Paul Stephenson has said the Met should focus on “serious crime” rather than being “dragged into party political games”. I hope he tells Jack to bog off or even better that he considers the more serious crime to be the expenses fiddles not their leaking. Twice the Commons have been ordered to publish these receipts, once by the Information Commissioner and once by the High Court (read all about it on Heather’s blog). No jury in the country is going to convict the person who leaked the receipts even if they stole the files and sold them to the highest bidder.

For the last two days it has been Labour figures who have been getting a roasting. There will no doubt be more stories about Tory and LibDem figures to come not forgetting the continuing scandal of Sinn Fein MPs who think it is OK to claim expenses and salaries but not actually turn up for duty. Although the Tories and LibDems will have some embarrassments they have been noticeably better than Labour who do seem to be particularly venal in their claims. For instance all but two Tories voted against the £10K communications allowance (and one of those was Quentin Davies who later defected to Labour), see previous posting. I am sure though that there will be some longstanding Tory MPs who have been misbehaving. I hope that they are sent into the wilderness by David Cameron as was Derek Conway. It was telling that Harriet Harman referred to Conway twice yesterday on the Today programme. I hope that senior Labour figures get the same punishment that he did. Having the whipped removed and being deselected as a candidate in the next election is the only sensible approach to the worst offences. David Cameron has not been outspoken enough on this issue in my opinion but he has been on the side of the angels. He has proposed the following measures to tackle this issue so far (list taken from ConservativeHome):

• MPs living within a reasonable distance of the Commons should not be able to claim.
• MPs who co-habit could only claim once.
• Mandatory annual public declarations by MPs justifying designation of primary and additional home.
• MPs would not be able to claim for stamp duty, TV bills, furniture or decorations.
• All claims and receipts must be published online within 28 days. Receipts would be required for all claims.
• The abolition of the £10,000pa Communications Allowance.
• No Conservative MP with a grace-and-favour residence should be able to claim the second homes allowance.
• MPs’ staff should be employed centrally by the House of Commons.
• Greater transparency on remuneration from second jobs and tighter controls on ex-Ministers taking jobs.
• Independent spot-checks and audits of expenses.

If you want to get some insight into the £500 million a year that gets spent by Parliament take a peek at this piece I did for ConservativeHome yesterday.