Gale's Views | rogergale

Gale's Recess View

August 2023

The timing of the General Election, the subsequent State Opening of the new Parliament and the debate on the King's Speech together with some over- hasty 'we need to be seen to be doing something' measures that the Government may well come to regret delayed the start of the Summer recess until the last day of July.

The break will, hopefully, have allowed new members the chance to re- group, establish parliamentary and constituency offices, recruit staff and set up procedures designed to deal with a growing backlog of constituency casework and correspondence. Political churn on this scale comes at a price.

Throughout the summer Starmer , his Chancellor Ms Reeves and the government have relentlessly peddled the '£22billion black hole' mantra in the clear belief that if you repeat a line often enough then people will come to believe it.

Oppositions are fully briefed by officials during the run up to the general election and unless the current Chancellor ignored all of the available information she was well aware of the Country's financial situation before taking office. She therefore stands fairly accused of simply preparing the ground for tax rises in the autumn budget while simultaneously assaulting the finances of some of the least well- off pensioners in the Country.

What the incoming government actually inherited was low inflation, a robust economy and some of the fastest growth in the G7 as Britain recovers from the effects of the pandemic and weathers the financial effects of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

While claiming that 'those with the broadest shoulders must bear the costs' Chancellor Reeves has, as reported last month , chosen to strip thousands of hard- pressed pensioners of their Winter Fuel Payments and other support while giving presumably ' narrow shouldered ' train drivers and other public sector inflation- busting pay rises.

Note, please, that it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, in one of her first actions, announced the cut in winter fuel payments. Curious, therefore, that with the clamour growing throughout the summer as not only Opposition and some Labour MPs but huge numbers of pensioners and the organisations like Age Concern that represent them look to winter fuel bills with increasing alarm , responsibility for this ill-advised policy should suddenly rest with Liz Kendall's Work and Pensions Department rather than with the Treasury. This is clearly a Chancellor who lacks the courage to to defend her own convictions.

What is known, I think, as a 'Hospital pass’.

The harsh fact is that the present Chancellor decided, and told the House of Commons on the record in 2014, ten years ago, that in office she intended to means- test winter fuel payments.

I have no problem with that asca principle. I have said for many years that it is a nonsense that Suzy and I, both of whom are still working and paying higher- rate tax, should receive a benefit that others who need help more do not. It is the manner in which this policy is being implemented that is deeply flawed. And to try pretend that it is a decision based upon economic necessity is wildly disingenuous.

Question: never mind the ‘ £22 billion black hole in the finances’ that the Nation’s Undertaker Sir Keir Starmer ( he does increasingly resemble one does he not?) keeps regurgitating. If his government had awarded realistic rather than excessive union - pleasing public sector and Junior Doctors pay rises how many pensioners’ winter fuel payments could have been preserved?

This was not the result of a ‘black hole’ it was a political choice made in Number Eleven Downing Street and endorsed by the occupant of Number Ten and that is a decision that tens of thousands of elderly people who misguidedly voted for them are unlikely to easily or readily forget.

****************************

It has also been the summer of 'small boats'. ' Breaking the business model' of the cross- channel people- traffickers was never going to be easy - if it was the last Government would of course have done it- but the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, is clearly finding it rather harder to even begin to achieve than she has anticipated.

There is no quick fix.

The Conservative Government's Rwanda Plan, now abandoned by Starmer and untried and untested, might have had some deterrent effect and notwithstanding my own moral and practical concerns was the only show in town. The Labour Party offered the electorate a ' we will do something' choice but had and still has no plan to bring illegal immigration to an end and no number of new or re-branded patrol organisations is going to crack what is certainly a very real problem.

That populist pressure group now known as 'Reform' and embellished with a handful of Members of Parliament that includes Trump's friend and Putin- admirer Farage has not put forward a single workable solution to control the relentless flow of humanity from the four corners of the earth via the European Union and France into Britain. Farage is going to find out that in Parliament credibility depends not on his innate ability to snipe from the sidelines but in the capacity to develop viable and practicable alternatives. Charlatans tend only to find friends in the company of other charlatans.

At a recent event in the constituency I was challenged by a 'proud' self- proclaimed Reform voter on the 'what are you going to do about it ? ' issue of illegal immigration. Setting aside the fact that we are no longer in government I threw the question back at him: the answer was ' well, send them back'!

Now I do not wish to revisit old arguments but when those of you who did so voted to leave the European Union you also tore up the Dublin Agreement ( Dublin 111 as it is known ) that was painstakingly negotiated under David Cameron's leadership and afforded EU countries the right to return asylum seekers to the previous safe haven from which they had just travelled. This 'benefit' of Brexit was widely explained and widely ignored during the referendum campaign.

While it is true that under Dublin 111 relatively few claimants were actually returned there is small doubt that the policy did act as a deterrent .That facility is no longer available and we may no longer legally ' send them back' as some continue to believe.

Neither is that canard that we should 'leave the European Convention on Human Rights ' the panacea that Reform supporters and, sadly, some Conservatives who ought to know better, seem to subscribe to.

I have had more than my fair share of dealings with the ECHR and there is no doubt that its scope has been broadened to embrace cases that should never have been allowed to fail within its remit but unless we wish to join the ranks of the pariah states, Putin's Neo Soviet Union and Belarus, or to make common cause with such appallingly populist political parties as Eastern Germany's Putin- supporting Alternatif fur Deutchland then we must learn to work within the ECHR and not resile from it.

I do not doubt that the autumn will see a resurgence of populism within the body politic of the United Kingdom. Once poison is in the system it is hard to get rid of but rid ourselves of it we must and although the Conservative Party is not at present in the ascendant it will, if it selects the right Leader, rise again. On that subject I may, as a vice- Chairman of the 1922 Committee, vote but not express an opinion or public endorsement. I shall, however, be taking a more than keen interest in the matter!

And with that we return briefly, to the House for a further flurry of hyper- active legislation before we rise again for the party conferences.