Last week John Glen, MP for Salisbury, and I spent a day at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) at Porton Down. Dstl sits on a vast campus comprising hundreds of buildings, some dating back to World War I and the first experiments with gas for the battlefield. John and I were briefed on the great range of work which Dstl scientists - 'from anthropologists to zoologists' – do to counter the various high-tech threats the UK forces might face. They respond to everything from terrorism to state-sponsored attacks in the UK including the Novichok incident, nearby in 2018. Every year Dstl experts also safely depose of hundreds of world-war-era unexploded chemical ordnance from old training sites and beaches around the country.
The UK faces a housing crisis, though it is arguable whether the problem lies in low rates of new building, or in excessive demand (driven largely by family breakdown and immigration), or in cheap money driving up asset prices and putting home ownership out of reach of young families. Whatever its causes, we need more homes in Wiltshire - and we are building them. For the last decade we have built more new houses than our share of the national demand, as I pointed out in a question to Michael Gove (see here) - but we still get developers gaming the system to impose inappropriate new developments in the wrong places, as is now happening in Coate Road in Devizes. We urgently need to stop this.
The Government is introducing a range of new housing initiatives including the abolition of leasehold; I spoke on this - and on ‘good’ leasehold, namely the model of neighbourhood ownership called Community Land Trusts, which hold great promise for rural housing - in Parliament (watch here).
A group of homeowners often overlooked in our debates, but comparatively numerous in Wiltshire, are the people who live on houseboats. The Kennet and Avon canal is home to hundreds of households who pay their bills like everyone else. I mention them because a number of boat dwellers have been in touch with me to complain they did not receive the help with energy bills that was promised to every household in the country. I visited a group at Caen Hill Marina, outside Devizes, one hot day last month and heard their, quite legitimate I feel, complaints about the discrepancies in the funding scheme; I am now pursuing this with the Government.
Sitting on the bench near me in my question to Michael Gove you can see Boris Johnson, in what I think was his last appearance in the Commons (‘for now’, as he said ominously in his resignation statement). So ends a long and unhappy saga, for which there must be an appropriate Greek or Latin saying that Boris himself would know. For anyone still keen on the topic, I wrote about the Privileges Committee report here.
The Rwanda policy divides opinion sharply. I strongly believe in it, for the simple reason I set out in the Commons (and also in The Sun) this week: unless you believe in open borders, there is a limit to the number of refugees we can take, and so you have to send people who arrive here illegally somewhere, and if their home country is not safe, that means somewhere else that is safe and will take them - somewhere like Rwanda. I was disappointed the Court of Appeal overturned the previous High Court ruling in favour of the policy, but I hope the Government will overcome their objections on the next appeal, at the Supreme Court. I suggested how, here.
In other Parliamentary news, I spoke on the Retained EU Law Bill (here), on mental health (here) and on government procurement (here). My work continues on the Treasury Select Committee, where we interrogate various experts, ministers and public servants to try to understand why the UK economy remains in such deep trouble, and what to do about it.
The grand strategy of interest rates, tax and industrial policy that occupy the Treasury are useful insofar as they create opportunities for the real sources of national prosperity: the entrepreneurs and business owners who make the wealth and the jobs. I am hugely inspired by the economy of Wiltshire. As I often say (forgive me if you’ve heard this one) Marlborough and Devizes were leading commercial centres until the Industrial Revolution took the jobs and the people to Swindon, Bristol, and further afield. The digital revolution is making these places, and all our villages, viable in the national and even global economy once again, with innovative new businesses popping up in farm buildings and small industrial estates, and in people’s homes.
Agritech - tech for farming - is of course an ancient Wiltshire specialism (a passing mention for the marvellous Steam Fair at Rainscombe House where my youngest son was delighted to buy a piston from an old tractor engine). Agritech has been greatly enabled by Brexit, not least with new freedoms to develop gene-editing technologies to enhance arable productivity. I asked the Prime Minister a question about this at PMQs, praising our local entrepreneurs (see here).
Not all is well in the Wiltshire countryside, of course. I have been trying to help the shoots affected by the ultra-zealous application of the new rules on licensing game birds - General License 43 - in light of the threat of Avian Flu. This threat is real: bird flu is a horrible virus, worse than Covid, and we really don’t want it getting into the human population via reared birds infected by wild birds coming in from abroad. But all things in proportion. The result of the denial of licences, as land managers have explained to me, is that the predators - foxes and birds of prey - that normally feed on pheasant chicks will prey on ground-nesting wild birds instead; we risk a devastation of the hen harrier, stone curlew and quail.
The other great rural tragedy of the moment is the state of the rivers, which regular readers will know is a preoccupation of mine. Last week I visited Bedwyn School to meet a class of children who’d had their planned trip to the Kennet scrapped because of fears over pollution and the threat to health. This week the boss of Thames Water, which manages the Kennet, stepped down. Profound changes are needed from top to bottom of our water economy, though it’s not so simple as saying we can just change the law to stop the sewage discharges. We need investment in pipework and more importantly in the nature-based solutions that restore the health of soil and water without the need for concrete and chemicals.
My time as an MP is fairly evenly divided between deploring problems and applauding the amazing things local people do. One brilliant local is Caragh Goodwin who since the invasion of Ukraine has been tirelessly organising convoys of aid to help that beleaguered country. On Tuesday at 6pm in Marlborough Town Hall she is hosting an event with a group of Ukrainians from Bakhmut who are over here to drive artic lorries back home, full of aid donated by local people. Do join them - info here.
On Friday I spent a very cheerful hour with the staff and residents of the Market Lavington Care Home, who were celebrating Care Home Open Week with a party in the garden. Here I am below with the wonderful manager Natasha Howard. The children from St Barnabas Primary performed some hilarious songs from their school play, directed by their headteacher Lindsay Clough; the wonderful String Beanz string quartet performed beautifully from under a gazebo; there were skittles, cake, and conversation. Some people only come here for a day or two, their last - this is a good and kind place to die. But others are hale long-timers, living for years among these gentle carers and their fellow old souls. Each one I spoke to, or their children or carers, had something fascinating to tell of past times. One was a water engineer, responsible for many sewers and treatment plants hereabout (‘you didn’t build enough, did you,’ I said). Another a distinguished photographer. A civil servant. All the people who made our country what it is, what we are so proud it is - and what we have such a responsibility to protect.
