China
Sir Henry Keswick - the quintessential taipan, chairman of Jardine Matheson, life-long Sinophile and deeply Conservative Englishman - died this month. He and his wife Tessa (who died last year) were good friends to me and to my Party here in East Wiltshire over many years. Henry was in my mind this week when the Prime Minister met President Xi and announced a ‘pragmatic’ new attitude to China. He would have approved - but the next day China comprehensively breached the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong by imprisoning 45 political opponents of Beijing. I mentioned Henry in the House (watch here), asking the minister what protections British businesses might enjoy in Hong Kong under the new pragmatic relationship… the answer was, not much.
Welfare and roads
In my capacity as shadow welfare minister I spoke in two Westminster Hall debates this week, on foodbanks (speech here) and benefits for blind and partially sighted people (here). These debates, in a side-hall with very little media attention, are good opportunities for actual discussion of the detail of policy.
Back in the main chamber (see here) I challenged the government on their abandonment of Wiltshire’s transport needs. Having cancelled the Stonehenge tunnel they seem to have walked away entirely, without any Plan B to address the chronic congestion both on the A303 and the north-south routes through the county.
It wasn’t me
I tend not to barrack and heckle in the House of Commons. The occasional jeer or ‘hear hear’, perhaps, but I don’t shout, even during PMQs when it’s like a Millwall game. Imagine my shock, therefore, when the Speaker fixed his gimlet eye on me during this week’s session - when Angela Rayner was stepping in for the once again absent PM - and threatened me with expulsion for making too much noise. It was the best I could do to splutter my innocence - ‘I never opened my mouth’, I said - but he wasn’t having it. In the end my neighbour confessed to having been the voluble offender, and the Speaker graciously apologised to me before the whole House. You can watch the entertaining episode here.
Farmers
Of course the main event this week was the growing rebellion against Labour’s tax on family farms. The almost incredible way the policy was developed, without Defra even knowing about it until the night before the budget, reflects the very poor model of government which is, I’m afraid, common to both main parties - albeit I doubt even the Conservatives would have done something so atrocious to rural communities. The deeper problem is that the elected government isn’t the ‘real’ government; the people with the real power are the permanent civil service and especially those in the Treasury. (The Ministry of Defence suffers the same impotence, by the way.) But ministers need to keep up the appearance of command, and so they are sticking to the plan to hit farmers with unaffordable death duties.
Tuesday saw a huge protest, in driving rain and cold, by farmers outside Parliament. A lot came from Wiltshire and I met a few in the shelter of Westminster Hall - see our conversation here. My Party and I remain resolutely opposed to the imposition of inheritance tax on family farms and if we can’t beat it in this Parliament, if we win the next election we will reverse it.
River, Road, Forest
I spent Friday in discussions about multiple aspects of rural life, including a chat with local resident Sarah Hanson and Charlotte Hitchmough from Action on the River Kennet on the bridge over the river in Marlborough, and a meeting with a big gang of villagers from West Kennet (and our local Police Commissioner Philip Wilkinson) to discuss speeding on the A4 and the ancient standing-stone-lined rat-run also known as the Avenue to Avebury.
And I visited the wonderful new orchard planted by Mark Yankovich in the Savernake Forest, on the spot, as it happens, where eight soldiers lost their lives heroically saving exploding munitions from a train in 1946. The explosions blew out the windows in Tottenham House and knocked the spire off St Katherine’s Church, but thanks to the actions of the soldiers only 200 tonnes of ammo went up, and a further 1,000 tonnes - and probably Marlborough itself - were saved.
Mark plans an accessible learning centre, restaurant, and more, so long as he can get planning permission to put some beautiful new buildings on the wrecked tarmac and desolated sheds of the old shunting yard, out of view of anyone, for a project that will benefit the economy, society, and environment of Wiltshire - but I am impartial on planning questions.
Rural crime
Our neighbour Kit Malthouse, MP for North West Hampshire, convened a meeting just over the border in Faccombe with Hampshire and Wiltshire police, plus local landowners and gamekeepers, to discuss the scourge of rural crime. Farming constituents regularly describe to me what they call the ‘rural terrorism’ perpetrated by criminal gangs who use intimidation, violence and the threat of violence to steal expensive equipment and poach wildlife - for the fun of it, and to supply the crazy online market for gambling on dogs chasing hares.
I learned at the meeting that some of the theft is committed by East European gangs who visit Britain for short thieving sprees to meet the demand created by sanctions on Russia. But with only a little coaxing from the elected politicians, the police readily admitted where most of the trouble comes from: Traveller sites.
What to do about it? Naturally enough there is no single, simple answer. But key to the challenge is ensuring the police are proactive in pursuing the rural crime that matters most (not just crime against ‘bats, birds and badgers’ as one copper put it); and that they robustly back up the main asset we have in the battle, namely local farmers themselves, and their staff, who communicate closely (‘Whatsapp is the best innovation in fighting rural crime I’ve ever seen’, said the police) but who need to know when their farm is attacked, the police will be there.
Kit is reconvening this group in the spring by which time I hope both Wiltshire and Hampshire Police Forces will be further along the road to effective collaboration with each other and with local farming communities.
Pub
I finished Friday in the Marlborough pub, with a few dozen constituents discussing everything from the farm tax, to traffic, to heat pumps, to social care.
