This week the Defence Secretary made a statement to Parliament on the progress of the war in Ukraine. The most sobering fact he mentioned was that Russia is taking 1100 casualties a day; is it no wonder Moscow intends to call up 400,000 new recruits in the next 12 months. Ukraine is under attack by a country with a very high pain threshold, and an immense reserve of fodder for the meat grinder that is Putin’s war.
As shadow minister for defence procurement I have been meeting industry representatives to discuss the requirements our Armed Forces have, both now (with a steady flow of weapons being gifted to Ukraine) and in the hypothetical but scarily likely scenario in which we ourselves are at war. The fact is, despite major increases in defence spending in the last Parliament and real improvements in the way we buy military kit, most military commentators argue we are under-manned and under-equipped, and that Whitehall still wastes money and hinders innovation. We urgently need to improve the way we supply and manage our Armed Forces.
This week was dominated by the decision by Labour to withdraw the Winter Fuel Allowance from the majority of pensioners. I am glad to say the Opposition put up a good fight against this measure, which will see over 17,000 of my constituents lose a support which for many makes all the difference between a harsh and a tolerable winter.
My other preoccupation in Parliament is getting fellow Tory MPs to back Robert Jenrick for leader. As his campaign manager I’ve been anxiously compiling lists of colleagues and trying to work out who they all support. Robert came top of the second ballot this week, which is very encouraging. Next stop, Party Conference at the end of the month.
I spent Friday and Saturday in the northern part of the new East Wiltshire constituency. In Chiseldon I met residents with an unusual problem - too much, not too little, attention from Thames Water, but the same baffling lack of communication. TW have erected a mighty scaffold above the river and parked a hideous ‘comfort wagon’ - a minibus with a toilet in it - outside the church, in which relays of workers sit and smoke fags; but nothing at all is being done with or at the scaffold, and no-one can find out from Thames Water what it’s all about. It’s been like this for six months. I will endeavour to penetrate the mystery.
Wroughton is a lovely village on the edge of Swindon but it has two problems of what we call connectivity: too much traffic and too little internet. One resident said he feels he lives ‘nestled on a race track’; local councillors Gayle Cook and Matty Courtliffe were able to reassure him they are meeting Swindon Borough Council to discuss this very topic this week. And the long saga of chronically bad broadband continues. As the rest of the country - now over 90% - has steadily received superfast internet the places without it are comparatively even more disadvantaged. I will carry on the fight for Wroughton begun by my predecessor Sir Robert Buckland.
Wroughton has a classic Norman church built on the site of a Saxon one. It is well-attended on a Sunday and ably looked after by parishioners. Showing me round, Nick Orman, the Treasurer, worried that Rachel Reeves may be about to scrap the VAT deferral scheme for listed buildings, which would clobber them and every church with an insupportable bill for repairs. Of course the right thing to do would be to exempt churches from VAT altogether, which since Brexit we would be able to do; but I fear Ms Reeves will go the other way, slapping the tax on even more of the things which don’t deserve it.
Nick wondered whether the original church was built to commemorate the Battle of Ellendune, fought hereabout in 825, in which King Egbert of Wessex defeated Beonwulf of Mercia. The battle permanently tipped the balance of power towards Wessex, which charged north, east and west as far Northumberland, Kent and Cornwall; a few years later Egbert was (though only briefly) King of all England. His grandson Alfred fought off the Vikings, and kept the kernel of British civilisation (Wiltshire) free and Christian. From that distant battle somewhere near this pretty place derives our nation and all its contribution to the world.
