The Cornerstone Group

We had a debate on blasphemy on Tuesday in the House of Commons in which I made two or three points.

When I said we should not criticise Islam, I did not mean, of course, that there should never be any critical statements about it - or, indeed, any other religion. All religions should be able to weather considered critical commentary. What I was driving at were the kind of scurrilous or abusive attacks on the things held sacred by any religion, such as the portrayal of Jesus as a sexual pervert in the infamous Jerry Springer opera.

The failed prosecution of the BBC for blasphemy over this by Christian Voice was referred to many times in a wide-ranging debate, to which several Cornerstone members contributed.

It is quite clear that my colleague Richard Bacon was right to see this latest move by the Government as yet another step in their secularisation agenda.

Below is the Hansard account of my interventions.

Debate on Government amendment to Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Commons Hansard:

6 May 2008 : Column 638

Maria Eagle: These amendments abolish the common law criminal offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel. Following my announcement on Report on 9 January, and after a short period of consultation, the Government tabled these amendments at the Committee stage in the other place. These offences have now largely fallen into disuse and therefore run the risk of bringing the law into disrepute. The issue of what to do about them has been around for many years and has attracted considerable debate. As long ago as 1985, the Law Commission recommended that they be abolished.

The Lords Select Committee Report on religious offences, published in 2003, devotes a whole chapter to the issue. As I said on Report, it is high time that Parliament reached a settled conclusion on the matter. Today gives us an opportunity to do so. The last prosecution under these laws was in 1977, in the case of Whitehouse v. Gay News Ltd, and there has been no public prosecution under them since the 1920s. There have therefore been no cases since the introduction of the Human Rights Act in 1998. Given that these laws protect only the tenets of the Christian Churches, they would appear to be plainly discriminatory. I do not believe that abolishing the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel is anything to do with political correctness.

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): If this law is not being used, one might wonder whether it is doing any harm. One might make the point that its abolition could appear to be an erosion of the position of the established Church. There is a mismatch: people indulge

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in self-censorship of any criticism of the Mohammedan religion-rightly, because we should not criticise it-but they feel free to pour abuse and vitriol on, and make comedies about, Christianity. Getting rid of the blasphemy law sends a message that that is okay, but it is insulting to many Christians.

Maria Eagle: I do not believe that to be the case, and I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s analysis.

In its report on this Bill in January, the Joint Committee on Human Rights said:

“the continued existence of the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel can no longer be justified, and we are confident that this would also, in today’s conditions, be the view of the English courts under the Human Rights Act and the Strasbourg Court under the ECHR”.

The High Court’s decision on 5 December last year that the Theatres Act 1968 and the Broadcasting Act 1990 prevent the prosecution of a theatre, the BBC or another broadcaster for blasphemous libel would appear to have given further weight to the notion that the offences are, to all intents and purposes, moribund. That was the result of a case brought by the organisation Christian Voice in response to the broadcast of the play “Jerry Springer: The Opera”…

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David Howarth: As a Liberal, it seems to me to be objectionable, as well as sad, that people should look to the state for their sense of identity. They should not look to the Government or the law for their own sense of worth. They should look to themselves, their families and their other social relations. It is a deeply sinister idea that the state should help to create people’s identity. I realise that the Government frequently get close to that view in their debates about Britishness. That is a dangerous route to go down.

Mr. Leigh: So the hon. Gentleman believes that the state has no right to impose Acts of Parliament dealing with matters such as incitement to religious or racial hatred. He seems to be suggesting an ultra-Liberal point of view that the state has no role in that respect. Is that right?

David Howarth: Not at all. The state’s role is to prevent harm, but it must do so in a way that does not show favouritism to particular religious views….

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Mr. Leigh: In response to what the Minister said earlier, if Bagehot were here, he would argue that we should not keep something just because it is entirely rational. There is something symbolic about the law in question. It is to do with our culture and tradition, so it has value in that sense …

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Mr. Leigh: Is it not somewhat bizarre that pretty much everyone who has spoken in defence of the Church of England so far has been a Catholic? [Interruption.] Apart from one practising Jew.

Dr. Julian Lewis: Non-practising.

Mr. Leigh: Does not that say something about the competence of the established Church? …

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Mr. Bacon: The Minister said that the law would be used only in the most compelling circumstances, but did “Jerry Springer: The Opera” represent the most compelling circumstances? I have lost count of the number of times that I have sat in Committee and heard Ministers say that they will have a piece of legislation “just in case”.

Mr. Leigh: Ministers use that argument many times. There are tens of thousands of lines of legislation and laws that are never used, so why have the Government focused, laser-like, on this particular law?

Mr. Bacon: They have done so because it is part of their secularisation agenda.

The press conference yesterday almost became a fiasco.

To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t really expected anyone to turn up. So when I walked into a room full of cameras and journalists, it was a bit of a shock to say the least.

I arrived in the room just as a jobs-worth security guard from the Himmler school of charm and diplomacy, called the Palace of Westminster police to escort the cameramen off the estate.

It took a call to the deputy Sergeant at Arms to discover that we could audio record only. And the use of that would be what? In case I forgot what I said?

It appears the House of Commons’ authorities had decided that my press conference was OK for radio. But not TV.

Just who are these faceless people who occupy hundreds, nay thousands of offices in this Palace, which belongs to the people, and the representatives of the people?

Who are these nameless bureaucrats who tell  an elected MP sent to Parliament by the people, that I can’t film in a room which broadcasts committee meetings every day to the nation, from five permanent suspended cameras?

Who are these people sat in plush offices centred around the chamber whilst MPs walk miles to and fro each day, and camp out in corridors and the library; and by what right do they tell me that an event planned to launch a major campaign, aimed at amending legislation, cannot continue?

Someone who has a democratic right, a far greater right than any jobs-worth officious rude security guard, to be here.

Who has the right to run this place? Is it the people or the bureaucrats?

As it was we de-camped onto College Green.

Within seconds another security guard arrived. He asked me did I have a permit?

I said yes. I lied, we began.

Perhaps someone would now like to report me to the standards committee?

I am  going to hunt down one of the legal constitutional  brains over here.  I have rights and I am going to find out what they are and, make sure every other MP knows what they are too.

There should be a balance between the executive and the administration, however it appears to me that balance needs to be redressed.

As it was, despite the attempts by the House of Commons’ politeriat to thwart the day, it was a beautiful sunny day and worked out really well.

We had interlopers, the MP who is the Labour version of Evan Harris - Chris McCafferty - sent her husband and researcher along.

They were very welcome!

Click here to watch the Press Conference

Hansard: 28 April: Column 11: Questions to the Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Bob Ainsworth)

“Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): There is no prouder body of men and women than the British Army. What is it supposed to do for their morale when they read the unfair and uncomplimentary remarks about allowing the Americans to do our dirty work for us in the recent operation in Basra in Iraq? Would it not be better for their morale either to let them get stuck in or to get them out of that country, rather than chain them up in the airport against all the traditions of the fighting British Army?

Mr. Ainsworth: From the discussions I have had with our armed forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, broadly speaking they ignore what they read in the media and they know what the facts are. The fact with regard to Basra is that our forces are involved in a very similar way to the American forces. The American forces came down to Basra with the additional Iraqi forces. Our own forces are in Basra assisting the Iraqi 14th Division, which they helped to give the capability that it is now showing in its success in Basra town. Although we should not overstate our own role, the Iraqis would not be capable of doing what they are now doing in Basra if it had not, in part, been for the contribution that the British forces have made and continue to make. We should not run them down just because the press do.”

As usual with this Government, the minister’s answer sidesteps my point. Of course our soldiers have helped train and support the Iraqi army, and have done the excellent job we would expect of them. But to claim that we are involved ‘in a very similar way’ to the Americans does not stand up. For several months our troops have been semi-prisoners in the fortified airport while the Shiite militias make mayhem on the streets. And I rather take exception to the minister’s implication that I was running our forces down. In fact I was standing up for them. It may be they ignore what they read in the press when it is often so depressing, but it could not do them any harm to have more encouraging headlines. But the press are not in the habit of ‘running them down’; they are simply reporting the effects of our Government’s defence policy.

How many Labour MPs thought it would come to this? Many of them wanted Gordon Brown with a passion, preferring his more socialist approach to Tony Blair’s Third way ambiguity. Many of them thought he was too decisive and powerful to be stopped. Even the minority of loyal Blairites who privately predicted disaster before he was crowned did not have the courage to put up a candidate against him and expose the obvious weaknesses in advance, to spare their party and our nation the agony we are now living through.

Yesterday’s news was a new low for a government which lives by the news and is judged by the headlines.

We had 8000 teachers on strike, making a mockery of Labour’s claim to be the party of “education, education, education”.

We saw the Grangemouth refinery closing down to prepare for a strike over pensions, highlighting the immense damage the government has done to private pension schemes.

A government Minister on TV told us they were taking an active part in ensuring proper supplies of diesel and petrol to Scotland, whilst the same TV programme showed five out of six filling stations they visited had already run out of diesel, with some rationing of petrol.

Over in the City there was more news of the mortgage famine, preventing many young people from buying their first home. Ministers tell us helping such people is one of their aims.

News came of a leading housebuilder announcing it would not be starting work on any new housing sites, as demand was so poor. Ministers have spent the last couple of years lecturing us all on the need to build more homes, and trying to find greenfields they can insist we build over.

In the corridors of Westminster Labour MPs were heard asking if the PM and Chancellor’s climb down the previous day over compensation for some of the losers from Labour’s Income Tax rise was a “con”.

Ministers were still cobbling together some way of sending some money back to people they now admit they are overtaxing, but were unable to explain how much would be sent to how many on what date - and this is sorting out a problem created by a budget delivered a year ago.

The problem for Mr Brown is how to break this desultory cycle of bluster, incompetence and climb down. He wants to avoid looking like James Callaghan bedevilled by strikes, visits to the IMF and high inflation in the 1970s. Clearly the spin strategy this week has been to seek to isolate the 10p tax band problem, make the minimum concession to see them through the otherwise difficult vote next week, and then show resolution in the face of future rebellions. Unfortunately for the PM his backbenchers are suspicious, and will demand more detail before they finally settle the tax question. Meanwhile, the rebels over the ghastly 42 day detention policy have not gone away, and will have learnt from this that The PM does change his mind under pressure. Journalists are already circling the issue, looking forward to dramas ahead.

I enjoyed some of the BBC coverage of the strikes. With a hint of incredulity in his voice, one reporter said it was Labour voters (Meaning NUT members) striking against a Labour government. It was an interesting slip. NUT members were never all Labour voters, even in 1997. They are certainly not all Labour voters today! The left is watching as one arm of the Labour movement, the public sector Trade Unions, turns on another, the Labour party in office. It is not a pretty sight, and it is most disruptive for members of the public caught up in the consequences of the battle. Yesterday it was areas that voted strongly Labour in recent elections which were most affected. Diesel is in short supply in Scotland, and more teachers were on strike and more schools closed proportionately in places like Wales, where people had chosen mainly Labour MPs.

To recover from here the Prime Minister needs to change his character and approach. He needs to become more interested in the underlying problems and seek to solve them. The number one problem is people are short of cash to pay the ever rising bills - he needs to understand the damage tax poverty is doing to his reputation. To solve this he needs to lower taxes, which requires running a more efficient public sector. He needs to show more flexibility and more honesty in dealing with Parliament. Where his whips tell him there could be problems he needs to listen and adapt, rather than talking tough and then conceding. He should not conclude from all this that reform is impossible or undesirable. He should understand that public sector reform requires persuasion, strategy and tactical skill.

If you have enjoyed this week’s guest columns for Cornerstone you can read more on www.johnredwood.com

Teachers are on strike. Civil servants are on strike. University lecturers are on strike. The Grangemouth  refinery which supplies much of Scotland with oil products is on strike and closed down. The Labour government is taking us back to the wild 1970s, when workers resorted to strike action against a Labour government in a destructive frenzy, which kept the UK firmly near the bottom of any list of richer countries for investors thinking  of where to create jobs and do business.

I remember thinking how absurd strikes could be as a young University teacher. We were confronted by a student strike! Some of my colleagues saw it as extra holiday, some as a welcome opportunity to do some more research instead of teaching. One of my abler students  in advance of the strike asked if he could shift his tutorial from a strike day to a non strike day, as he was kind enough to think the tutorial of value but he wished to show “solidarity”. I explained that he had to face the moral dilemma. If he wanted to show solidarity he also had to show sacrifice - so I would not change the tutorial date. He asked if he could come to the tutorial on the standard date by the back gate so no-one would see. I said that was fine by me. He became an incognito strike breaker. The students were, of course, striking against themselves. There was no need to give any ground over whatever their issue was.

I finally decided to leave University teaching when an unexpected visitor turned out to be a Union organiser wanting me to join a Trade Union. It reminded me that University teaching, for all the diversity of Higher Education institutions in Britain, was in many respects a nationalised monopoly. The state was the principal paymaster  and in some ways the ultimate employer.  Governments were  likely to squeeze university pay in the long run, and were unlikely to welcome pay systems which rewarded individuals prepared to offer  better work or more energy in performing their tasks. I left for employment where I could negotiate my own deal based on what I could contribute to the organisation, working alongside others who would never dream of going on strike.

The four different groups of workers on strike today all have the same grievance at base: they think the government is too mean. The Grangemouth workers will gain the most attention, because their conduct will visibly and quickly inconvenience a very large number of people in Scotland and will soon disrupt other businesses trying to work there. They will be an international advert to footloose industries and investors to avoid Scotland as it descends into industrial anarchy. The University teachers will have the least impact.

The Grangemouth strike is about the closure of the final salary pension scheme to new employees. It is a late example of a wave of pension fund closures brought about by the government decision to tax pension funds. The sad collapse of many final salary schemes is an all too predictable consequence of Brown’s high tax policies, and yet another route by which this government is driving people into tax poverty.

The teachers will only be striking in some schools, through the actions of just one Union. The strike ballot produced a minority vote for the strike allied to widespread abstention. The teachers are right that their pay award is below the increase in the Retail Price Index, but wrong to think that they are being treated badly in comparison to most workers. The majority are settling for pay awards below the current rapid rate of inflation, and below the rate of increase of the RPI. The whole public sector, including MPs, has to accept that the government has overspent and over borrowed, and now has to rein back. We should all expect a period of falling real salaries and wages as the government struggles to adjust after its excesses. MPs voted for a lower increase for themselves  than recommended by the Pay review body.

It is sad that relations between the state as employer and its employees has reached this sorry impasse. Private business now experiences far fewer strikes, as employers have learnt to keep talking and to take the interests of their staff more seriously than they used to, and employees have learnt that if you strike in a  competitive business you may damage the company to the point where there is no longer a job for you. The public sector is meant to believe in  providing a public service. You enter it knowing that in times of expenditure restraint all have to make a sacrifice. It is a pity the Labour government made such a mess of the finances, and a bigger pity that a Labour Education Secretary cannot get on with the NUT.

At least Labour Ministers do  not have to worry about the Opposition’s view on this. When Conservatives were in power Labour MPs were always tempted to support strikes and strikers and to side with them. The Conservative Opposition today is united in condemning strike action. It recommends to all the strikers to talk and to  use democratic protest, whilst returning to  work. It advises the government to listen, and to see what it can do within the difficult financial constraints its budget mismanagement has created.

This government just doesn’t get poverty. Rather, it begets it.

The government thinks there is child poverty and fuel poverty. Today - and next week in Parliament - the pressing issue is tax poverty.

Poverty is a shortage of income for people to pay the necessities and have a decent lifestyle. There are three ways of tackling it.

The political parties all agree the best way is to create a climate in which the economy generates enough well paid jobs, so people can go to work to earn what it takes to afford to keep themselves and their dependents.

They agree that for some, it is necessary to take money from the many to give to the few who cannot find or hold a job.

The third way would be for the state to let people keep more of their money, instead of taking so much from them in tax. If those on lower incomes paid less income tax they could afford the fuel bills and could manage the food and housing bills without requiring a benefit top up.

The government is hoist on its own targets to cut so-called child poverty. It is a curiously misnamed set of targets. Practically all children are poor. We have legislated to make sure they remain so, as we believe we should prevent children under the age of 16 from working for pay to take them out of poverty. (Please note, I support the banning of child labour!) We also usually prevent children from inheriting or receiving larger sums from relatives with property and money  to give them an independent savings income which they control as minors. This government wishes to take this approach further, by preventing 16-18 year olds from entering full time work for pay without an educational component, something I do not support. I want 16-18 year olds to have opportunities for more education if that is what they want, but I do not favour compulsion.

What the government means is it wishes to cut parent poverty. That’s a good thing to want to do. I also want to cut it, along with cutting poverty for childless couples and for single people. The government’s determination to tackle parent poverty has led it into the dangerous political quagmire of abolition of the 10p tax band, offering compensation to some parents through benefits and tax credits, whilst taxing single people and childless couples more. Transferring money from one group of low income earners to another is not what a lot of Labour MPs came into politics to achieve. It is certainly not what I am about. I want to tackle the low net incomes of all.

Today there is a summit on fuel poverty. Yes, the fuel bills are spiralling upwards. No, there is nothing in the short term the government can do about the ever higher oil, gas and coal prices. Yes, the fuel companies have to pass on most of the increased costs of fuel to them. Yes, that will make them unpopular and the objects of political diversionary attacks.

Yet if you buy fuel for your car or van, for your working vehicle or for the delivery vehicle to your home, more than two thirds of the rip off price is tax. The energy companies are great tax collectors, taking money from poor and rich alike for their product, only to hand over lots of it to the government. People could afford even today’s high bills if they kept more of their own income. The government’s removal of the 10p tax band undermines everything and more besides that it is trying to do to alleviate fuel poverty. There would be no fuel poverty for the many if taxes were cut.

I believe the best anti poverty programme you can have is cutting taxes. Under this government, far from playing Robin Hood and taxing the rich to pay the poor, as socialists would like, the government is playing Sheriff of Nottingham. It is taxing the poor to give to the new rich, the Chief Executives of the ever expanding state, to the well paid bureaucrats, to the legal advisers, the management consultants, the spin doctors, pollsters and focus group masters, to the computer contractors and the PFI/PPP providers who cluster attentively around Labour’s great public sector money making machine. Labour even wants to add the political parties to the list of those who deserve more tax cash from the poor to sustain their expensive habits. There are just  not enough multimillionaire footballers and movie stars to take the money off, especially when they can leave the country at the very whiff of higher taxes on their fabulous incomes.

If the government were serious about tackling parental poverty and fuel poverty, if it understood that it needs to tackle single person and childless couple poverty as well as pensioner and parent poverty, it would curb its own insatiable appetite for cash for the grandees of the public sector. It would cancel or seek value from all those consultancy, research, financing and  management contracts that festoon in the profligate public sector. Ministers would curb the Ministerial drinks cupboard and cut back on the air travel.

So come on Labour. Put in place a real anti poverty programme. Understand poverty is a shortage of spending power for anyone who is poor, whether they are young or old, single or married, with or without children. It is bad news for anyone suffering from it. The best and quickest way to get more people out of it is to lower taxes. That means reining in the excesses of the multilayer government and the quango state.

I am a green. I do not want too many greenfields and green gaps between settlements built over in England. I like to be able to breathe clean air,swim in a clean sea, and gaze into clear water in streams and rivers. I understand the need to curb our appetite for burning too much energy, and to find cleaner and better ways of travelling, making things and heating and fuelling our homes.

My latest car is 50% more fuel efficient than the one I drove six years ago. I have put in a condenser boiler at home. If we ever get hot days - and we didn’t last summer - I open the windows rather than ordering an air conditioning unit. In the endless cold days of this spring I usually reach for another jumper rather than turn up the heating. I try to do more things on web and phone to cut down the travel. I turn the lights off when I am not using the room.

When I work in my public sector office, many of  these sensible approaches to energy is possible. The lights stay on all day and night in the corridors, whether people are there or not, whether it is bright outside or not. I cannot open the windows if it is hot or to change the air. I cannot control the heat that flows in winter or the cooler air that circulates in summer. The system carries on burning energy whether I am using the room or not. Across Whitehall lights blaze and heating systems belt out the warmth regardless of use. Control systems are rudimentary or not personalised.

The public debate seems to be dominated by people who hate the car and ascribe a disproportionate part of the problem to people who drive, only surpassed by their hatred of air travel. They favour trains and buses, as if they in some miraculous way produced no dirty emissions and were carbon free. They ignore the role of the domestic heating boiler, the electricity to power domestic appliances and the huge amounts of energy used by government and other office based activities.

It is time we had some sanity in the debate, based on realism about the relative importance of the different ways we use energy.

When I last drove into  London I kept a record of my fuel use. I travelled 31.1 miles on the M4 at a good average speed, consuming just half a gallon of diesel - or 61.1 miles per gallon. I then had to travel 8.1 miles on main road within London. These roads  have been messed up with lane closures, perverse traffic light programming, road works and many other obstacles. My mpg halved to 32.4 so I used a quarter of a gallon to go just 8.1 miles. On a busier day it could have halved again.

It shows just how important having uncongested roads are  for curbing wasteful use of fuel and limiting emissions. I was , however, probably using less energy in the car than if I had stayed at home with my heating full on - I turned the heating off whilst I was away.

It is the second half of April, yet many people still have their heating systems blasting out the heat because it has been so cold outside, with frosts at night, even snow and hail. We need a programme of adjusting our heating and ventilation systems to the new reality of dear and scarce energy. It is high time the public sector showed some leadership by seeking to improve its own control over and use of energy. At the moment its use is wanton. We feel it in our tax bills.