Letter from Westminster 28th November 2011

Paul Maynard MP

House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA.

 

Dear resident,

Saturday morning was a curious combination spent in Sainsburys on Red Bank Road. I did a bit of a ‘Fareshare’ food drive, and a bit of a mini-surgery. More about Fareshare later. But doing a supermarket surgery is often a bit of a step into the unknown. Of all the people who stopped me, only two were ‘negative’ (insert definition here!) whilst the remaining, vast majority were nothing other than extremely pleasant and supportive. Of course, that doesn’t include all those who walk past giving you side-long glances that suggest if they did have a thing or two to say, it wouldn’t be entirely positive.

A few remarked that I was brave standing there. However, it is an important part of my job as the Member of Parliament to make myself available to the public in as many different settings as possible, and at different times – and if people have critical things to say, it is part of being accountable. It is always good to get feedback, and even the positive comments give me a little more encouragement to keep working hard. I am gratified how many say they enjoy reading the Letter from Westminster – and one gentleman even said he had taken up last week’s recommendation to try the cooked breakfast at Wyre Country Park and agreed with me! Not all locations or mechanisms work in terms of productive interaction, but clearly there is a place for the supermarket surgery every so often, and I am very grateful to both Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s for allowing me a space in their stores.

Sainsburys were also running, by complete chance, its national Fareshare drive to bring more food to those in need. Fareshare (www.fareshare.org.uk) is an excellent charity which is seeking to tackle some of the underlying effects of ‘hidden hunger’ here in the UK by gathering in unsold stock from the food industry nationwide. It ought to shock us – and it shocks me – just how many increasingly rely on food parcels in this country. And it isn’t always just about household income, as there can be many reasons underlying having recourse to a food bank. But we should set it against the amount of food waste in this country – not just the food we purchase ourselves, which we do not consume, but also the food that isn’t purchased in the first place. I am as guilty as anyone in that I sometimes find myself throwing away food because it has gone past its use by date without me eating it. Reading up on Fareshare is certainly make me think again about my patterns of food use. 

Fareshare plays a key role in providing that surplus food to charitable groups that can make use of it – from day care centres to hostels to breakfast clubs at schools. The regional depot for the North West is in Trafford Park – but I would also highlight the local work of the Fylde Food Bank run by Mr & Mrs Turner (www.fyldefoodbank.co.uk) who also do superb work across the Fylde Coast.  If you know of a local charity or organisation that may benefit from Foodshare, do let me know and I will get in touch with them.

This whole topic also tied in nicely with my visit to Boundary Primary School on Friday, where they are setting a superb example in terms of growing their own fresh produce on their available ground. Sadly, they haven’t been allowed a pig yet – a new case for me to work on! But I was struck by the energy and enthusiasm of their head Dayle Harrison – proof once again that school leadership is an important quality in raising educational attainment.

Slightly earlier the same day, I had a sneak preview of the new St Mary’s school building. It looks like the building site it is – at the moment – but the concept is clearly emerging, and it is clear just how excited the pupils are at moving in. We also had an excellent presentation from the pupils ahead of the Durban Climate Change Conference, so I shall be writing to Chris Huhne as promised.

Down in Westminster, I have been in and out of the Chamber as usual, speaking on disability hate crime this week. In advance of the debate, I met with the family of Gary Skelly, who you may have seen on the BBC’s Inside Out programme on Wednesday night. Gary was murdered just over a year ago in a disability hate crime, and last Monday’s programme was very, very powerful. They have set up a community group called FACE (www.facefacts.org.uk) whose website is well worth a look. There is coverage of the family here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-15815155 and I am sure you will find it (and the film you can access via the website) as shocking as I did. I still cannot believe that any human would find it acceptable to make someone ‘dance’ in order to have a cigarette from them – how degrading.  

 As well as that I was guest speaker at the Conservative Disability Group’s colloquium in London, as well as speaking at the Epilepsy Action Patron’s Reception (I’m Vice-President) at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace. As a by-the-by, and not that Her Majesty needs any advertising, but the souvenir shop is well worth a visit should you ever be in London. Of course, should you ever be in London, I would hope you stopped by the House of Commons first to see me!

So ends another thought-provoking week.

Yours sincerely,

 

Paul

01253 473071

16 Queen Street, Blackpool, FY1 1PD.

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Letter from Westminster 21 November 2011

Readers of certain tabloid newspapers may have been under the impression I was ‘on holiday’ last week. Far from it. Although Parliament was not sitting on Wednesday and Thursday, MPs were still out and about doing their jobs. If anything, I think I ended up working harder on these two ‘free’ days trying to catch-up on the backlog of things to do, emails and letters and everything else. I remained down in London partly to make sure I caught up on the piles of un-read reports on my desk – which in turn stimulate yet more things for my hard-pressed staff to deal with – and partly to ensure I attended the Board Meeting of the Prison Reform Trust, of whom I am a trustee. 

At the back end of last week, we were pleased to welcome the children of Langdales School to an interactive session on Kenya, and what life is like for children over there. My energetic impersonation of a Masai warrior dancing thankfully did not (literally) bring the house down, but it certainly meant the afternoon went with something of a bounce.

On the Monday, I was delighted to welcome the Tourism Minister to Blackpool along with the Business Leadership Group, councillors and others. John Penrose, the Minister, is the MP for a seaside town himself – Weston-super-Mare in his case – so he knows the challenges towns such as Blackpool and Cleveleys face. He made clear he was impressed with the changes that are occurring in the town, and the benefits investment in the Tower and the Winter Gardens, as well as the co-operation with Merlin, has brought. We also got a sneak tour round part of the Blackpool Dungeon, sitting in the pitch black being spattered by heaven knows what.

That meant a late arrival in London on Monday evening, but I thought it worthwhile as it can be so difficult to prise Ministers out of Whitehall to show them the real world that I didn’t want the Minister to miss the chance to see the progress we are making on the Fylde Coast.

Next day was a Seminar for the Transport Select Committee, fresh from its report on HS2. The topic was Sustainable Transport, and we heard from a number of academics about the ‘difficulties’ of encouraging people to change their transport behaviour. We heard, for example, that despite a £5,000 grant, only 768 have bought electric cars in the last year, yet we are establishing a national network of power-points to recharge them. A classic ‘chicken and egg’ policy problem. Do we invest in the power-points, and hope people buy the cars, or do we wait until the cars hit a tipping point, and demand for the power-points can become market-driven.

We (or rather me) also had a lively discussion about how to encourage more people to cycle as I reflected on the welcome some of the cycling initiatives in Blackpool have received!

Friday saw me visit Collegiate School, somewhere I know has undergone a renaissance under new head Cherry Ridgeway. Its results – and reputation – are soaring, and I was highly impressed by her no-nonsense approach. I also was greatly encouraged by her view that we should not have low expectations of children merely because of the difficulties they may have encountered in life – it chimes exactly with my view that we need to be ambitious and aspire to be the best we can be in life. Slowly but surely, the educational climate in Blackpool is improving, in my view. The Government’s focus on the quality of teaching is, in my view, crucial.

I then went on to Hart’s Amusements to meet with the owner Charles and other people with an interest in the Illuminations. I was encouraged by the desire to ensure the Illuminations are depoliticised as far as possible, and I recognise the need to ensure they have some long-term financial predictability. I know many have been concerned at reports that the Bispham tableaux may not be occurring for much longer, but I was reassured to hear that this has never been on the cards. It is a classic example of how the Illuminations can be victim of the local rumour mill!

I finished off with two hours on Saturday morning in Tesco’s Cleveleys, where some of you will have seen me. I actually had quite a few complementing me on the Letter from Westminster, so it ensures I know my time is well-spent crafting it. As is inevitably the case when you are in the public eye, not every encounter was so cheering … but I do wish people wouldn’t swear at me in front of the youngsters!!

What Would John Howard Do?

One of the problems of having a researcher called Boon is that I am always sending emails to Bono. Mistyped, I doubt he ever gets them, and I doubt he would like them if he did. I am actually quite surprised I haven’t seen him at one of these Occupy Wherever camps yet – you would have thought it was just his thing. I have yet to walk past the encampment outside St Paul’s. I don’t intend to. Like many, I have followed the confused decision-making of the Church authorities, the passion of the participants, and the controversy they have caused. I am still not entirely clear what they actually want – indeed, I am not sure I have identified what it is they don’t want either. Such lack of clarity need not wholly obscure their worthwhile message that people don’t think the ‘system’ is in ‘balance’. Insert your own definitions for those two terms.

As a practising Catholic, I find the eternal question that the campers seem to pose of ‘What would Jesus do?’ an interesting one also. And a valid one. I have always believed that doubt is an essential component of faith. If we don’t continually challenge ourselves about our beliefs, be they political or religious, then those beliefs slowly wither like an unwatered plant. So placing myself in the position of Jesus, and asking what he would have done, is not without merit. The answer may be a controversial one. Did he not turn the money-lenders out of the temple, and tell a rich man he would find it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven? Did he not also advise us to render to Caesar what is due to Caesar? In the end, faith is a personal matter, and such decisions are matters for our own conscience.

But to ask the question what I as a Christian should do as an MP is a useful challenge to merely blindly following – not that loyalty itself is not without its virtuous merits. It has helped me rationalise my position on a wide range of moral issues that I have confronted – and made me think through why I oppose such disparate interventions as the death penalty or euthanasia. But those are moral issues.

Far harder to rationalise in this way are the supposed ‘simpler’ policy choices.

In such situations, might I recommend asking “What would John Howard do”? He remains a hero of mine. He won four elections in a row, and didn’t do so by accident. He did it by recognising that the secret to building a conservative majority in Australia was to be seen to govern ‘for all of us’ (his 1996 election slogan) and to be ‘relaxed and comfortable’ about the country he sought to govern, and inculcate such a ‘relaxed and comfortable’ feeling amongst the electorate.

If we are to govern alone post-2015, I would argue we need to start cultivating both of these concepts now, and understanding the John Howard template far better than we do now – a topic I will come onto in future blogs.

In his Australia Day speech of 2006, John Howard said:

“Today I want to locate this nation’s sense of balance at the centre of the modern Australian achievement and to explore its character. The balance in our economic life between the public and the private, the balance in our national identity between unity and diversity, the balance between history and geography in our global strategy, and the balance in our politics between rights and democratic responsibility.

Balance is as crucial to a well-ordered society as it is to a full human life. It should not be mistaken for taking the middle road or splitting the difference. Nor does it imply a state that is static or a nation at rest.

Quite the opposite. A sense of balance is the handmaiden of national growth and renewal. It helps us to respond creatively to an uncertain world with a sense of proportion.

Keeping our balance means we reform and evolve so as to remain a prosperous, secure and united nation. It also means we retain those cherished values, beliefs and customs that have served us so well in the past.

The great struggle of Australia’s first century of nationhood was to reconcile a market economy with a fair and decent society. At the start of the 21st century, we have found a healthier balance in our political economy between public and private – one in keeping with the times and the contemporary character of the Australian people.

We encourage individual achievement and self-reliance without sacrificing the common good. We value our independence and chafe against bureaucracies that deny us choice and the capacity to shape our daily lives. Yet we are determined not to let go of the Australian ethos of a fair go for all.

The permanent challenge for Australia is to avoid the extremes of big, overbearing government on the one hand and laissez-faire indifference on the other.”

Just reading this makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It is, to me, the ultimate statement of conservatism. That philosophy of ‘balance’ must be ever-present. Without it, we shall fail to win again, just as we failed to win outright in 2010. This is not just the balance between rights and responsibilities which Labour harped on about so often. Nor is it some middle-of-the-road excuse for avoiding what are seen as ‘tough choices’. If anything, it is perhaps the more difficult path to take, since it risks satisfying neither the big-statists nor the nascent faux-Tea Partiers in this country. It may be the road least travelled on the centre-right these days, but it is still the right path.

John Howard’s political strategy is one I believe we have a great deal to learn from. I decided to deliberately depress myself over the weekend. I still own the set of notional constituency results for 1992 based on the 1997 boundaries which Rallings & Thrasher of the University of Plymouth’s Local Government Unit computed. I could bore you with a detailed critique of the methodology, but those days are thankfully behind me. The ring-bound volume, picked up in the Norrington Room of Blackwells all those years ago after weeks of waiting, is slightly battered and bruised, having been much consulted in the intervening twenty years. But it is also electrifying.

It was fascinating to see that in 1992, the notional Conservative majority for the then Blackpool North & Fleetwood seat was over 7,000. The Conservative vote was only just shy of 30,000. Admittedly in a slightly smaller seat, I could only manage just over 16,000 – and I doubt I was entirely to blame! Falling turnout has not only afflicted the north of the Fylde Coast – I am sure one could point to similar statistics across the country.

But even if we compare it with the latest notional results computed by the Guardian for the newly proposed seats, Blackpool North & Fleetwood sees Conservative support at only just over 24,000 – in a slightly larger seat.

So this reinforces the achievement of Sir John Major, who managed to persuade 14,000,000 people to vote Conservative in 1992. Blair in 1997 could only manage 13,500,000 – and Major in losing managed 9.4 million. In 2010, David Cameron achieved 10,700,000.

Yet Sir John is frequently derided now as the man who led us to cataclysmic defeat in 1997. We forget he also led us to a pundit-defying victory in 1992 – and won the most votes ever. Clearly he did something right.

Maybe I have been in politics for too long, but the moments when the hairs stand up on the back of my neck seem to get fewer as the years go by. But one instance when it did happen, on the day the election was called, when I was as high as a kite, Mr Cameron stood outside County Hall, with the Palace of Westminster in the background, to speak of the ‘great ignored’. This struck a chord in terms of how I have always viewed my role in politics – concerned that the interest groups which don’t shout loud enough don’t get heard, even though what they have to say may be just as worthy. John Howard would have thought of the ‘great ignored’ as those who weren’t part of the ‘intellectual universe’ inhabited by the Labor elite in Australia. And I would say the same is now the case here in the UK.

John Howard poses a challenge to the Conservative Party that we must live up to if we are to do ourselves, our members and our supporters justice. In future blogs, I will look more closely at what John Howard’s methods actually represent in 2011 in the UK.

Making the world a better place

It is very rare as a Member of Parliament to feel that you have individually made the world a better place. So when it happened this week, I felt entitled to a slight degree of pleasure. Being an MP is not the joyous whirl of self-importance many assume it is – rather it is an endless slog. I liken it to a vocation. You’ve either got it, or you haven’t. And if you lack a sense of public service, it isn’t the role for you.

I have always been clear that I never wanted my politics defined by the fact I had cerebral palsy. My interests and passions range much further than that rather obvious topic. But I have equally been aware that, as an MP, I couldn’t escape the fact that for many people – rightly or wrongly – I was a role model, whether I liked it or not. They switched on their TV and saw me ‘being’ an MP and realised that they too were now allowed to aspire.

So there has never been a problem with maintaining an interest in disability issues whilst not overly-focusing on them. But there has been one issue which captured my attention, somewhat to my surprise, and that is disability hate crime.

As part of that, I was shocked to learn that whilst hate murder committed because of race, religion  or sexual orientation will get a minimum sentence of thirty years, a murder committed on the basis of disability hate can only receive  the standard minimum of 15 years.

Why? I can’t answer that one.

In 2010, the Government agreed this needed to change. But they didn’t put amendments to the latest Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (henceforth referred to as LASPO). This was disappointing. I felt a chance had been missed to right a wrong. I see no justification why disabled people should be considered ‘less’ of a victim than some other group. If hate crime legislation is to be taken seriously, and if disabled people are to have confidence that their complaints will be taken seriously, then this disparity needed to end.

I was not alone in thinking this. The All-Party Disability Group agreed, and numerous MPs of all parties agreed. A key proponent of change was Stretford & Urmston MP Kate Green. Although a different party to me, I have always had nothing but the greatest respect for Kate, even before she became an MP. In those days, she was best known for running the Child Poverty Action Group. Whilst I may often disagree with her conclusions – we are different parties, after all – she typifies the sort of evidence-led, analytical approach to policy-making which I feel most at home with. Between us, we agreed to put down an amendment to LASPO – and since Kate had been on the bill committee, I felt it made more sense for her to propose and me to second.

So the day for debate came, and various parliamentary scheduling reduced the time available to debate all clauses. Kate launched in, setting out a cogent case. I intervened to get my support on the record. Then, in a move I haven’t seen before, the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Ken Clarke intervened to say that although drafting problems meant they couldn’t accept our amendment (I look forward to learning what they were!), they would be moving an amendment when the Bill returned to the Lords.

Result.

So maybe politicians can make the world a better place. Instead of being the usual cynic I sometimes fear I am, just for a few hours I may allow myself to be a little  more optimistic!

Social Tourism not about holidays for the poor, but about early intervention and imagination

Twelve months ago I had never heard of ‘social tourism’. Now, I can’t seem to get it out of my head. Readers may well wonder what the hell I am on about – let me point them towards the All-Party Parliamentary Group I chair on the topic which has just published its report, available at http://www.fhaonline.org.uk/news_story.php?id=110&mpid=9.

I suspect that there will be those who read this report who are as unaware of the concept as I was before I met the Family Holiday Association who prevailed upon me to seize the idea and run with it. This general lack of awareness has to make those of us who participated in this inquiry humble in our aims. We are but a starting point. We aim to build the foundations on which much will subsequently be erected. There must be recognition that raising awareness of what we are talking about, and placing it on the political agenda, are crucial objectives before we can go any further.

 There is no getting away from the fact that one of the most immediate themes to emerge from our evidence is the term ‘social tourism’ itself. It confounds people on first hearing it, as it did me. Whether the subject matter discussed in this report will still be referred to as ‘social tourism’ in a few years is open to worthwhile debate. At this early stage we are using the terminology we have available to us, but we must not be overly concerned if this changes over time.

One of the most fascinating things to come out of the inquiry was the myriad of stakeholders engaged in activities that they themselves would not describe as constituting ‘social tourism’. In a sense this report is about shining a spotlight on what is out there now, not about creating something new from scratch. Just try the following websites – the Sandrose Centre for Bereaved Families in Cornwall (www.sandrose.org.uk ), the Holiday Homes Trust (www.holidayhomestrust.org) or Vitalise (www.vitalise.org.uk).

That attracted me to this endeavour over a year ago was the way in which the issue represented an overlap between social policy and tourism policy – two personal interests of mine, and two that matter greatly in my constituency. As Karen White, a Rochester head teacher who gave evidence to the enquiry said “For some of these children, their whole lives are dependent on the State handing out money and, in order to break that culture, you need to create the aspiration”. I think you could almost summarize a life’s mission in that one sentence.

But what made an even greater impact on me was the following contribution:

MS WHITE: One of the things that I found really fascinating when I went there [her current school] is that our families in Medway and certainly the families in my school, or a lot of them, are unbelievably insular and they do not travel. One of the projects that we have got going which we start next year through the Family Holiday Association is actually about visiting our own environment and using that because Rochester is a huge tourist area and you would be amazed at how many of my children and their families do not go the mile down the road to Rochester to be at the Dickens Festival or whatever or go to the dockyard, which has a fantastic museum, because their parents do not understand those, they do not always understand the value of those and they are also incredibly expensive at times and it is something that they cannot afford, so, whilst we live in an area where you can access all of those things, the parents stay very close to home because that is where they feel safe and they do not have the confidence to travel. I was fascinated because, when I was in Hackney, we had parents, and you can go across London and look at all the sights for nothing on the bus, but they do not do it. I had parents who would not go out of Hoxton Market. The vicinity they live in is 500 metres in each direction and that is as far as they go, and it is about security, it is about safety and it is also partly about, “Those things aren’t for us. We’re not the right social class. We don’t do museums, they’re not for us, they’re for the middle‐class people who live in the nice houses up the road”. When you actually investigate this and talk to the parents about it, they will tell you that, that those things are not there for them, so it is about upskilling parents to be able to value taking their children off on these experiences and then being able to use that experience when they are there, asking the right questions, engaging with their children, talking about it and then bringing that back, so we do a lot of work with the parents, and we are planning to do more work with the parents, about what makes a good visit”. 

Often, social exclusion is dismissed as a ‘left-wing’ invention. But Karen White’s experience is testament to the reality. It isn’t quite poverty, or lack of education, or any thing you can put your ‘policy finger’ on and flick a switch to reverse. But it is about building up confidence and capacity to be full participants in society. I was disappointed the Times headlined their report “Free holidays for the poor” since that is such a simplistic analysis of what is actually a profound and subtle application of the theory of early intervention. No-one ever said social policy was easy, and I can’t claim to be surprised  at how many have sought to dismiss these ideas on initial consumption.

The breadth of the scope is reflected in the variety of stakeholders who submitted written and oral evidence. For witnesses and evidence takers, regardless of whether they were coming at the issue from a social policy or tourism perspective, everyone involved has consistently sought to ground their views in as strong an evidence base as possible. It would be naïve to not address the fact that we are living in constrained economic times, with no giant pot of money at the Government’s disposal. What this report has tried to do is put forward a range of ideas grounded in the evidence we have collected that will not necessitate vast sums of Government expenditure.

Finally I would like to take the opportunity to thank all those who made the inquiry possible, especially my parliamentary colleagues Bob Russell, Tony Baldry and Anne Marie Morris. It required a great deal of time, effort, organisation and cooperation from many people and organisations. This report is the result of all that hard-work. Now we have to make a concerted effort to take the ideas contained within the report forward to a broader audience. After all this is merely the beginning of a long process.