The week after the Party Conference at which the Truss government began its slow then swift collapse, I went to the USA and Canada for six days - with my mother and a camera crew, as you do. Mum (aka Prue Leith) and I are on opposite sides of the debate about Assisted Suicide (her for, me against) and we both thought it would be good for our respective causes to give the public a proper look at how it’s working out in places where it’s already legal. Suffice to say I came home more convinced than I was when I left, that we don’t want to go down that route. Sadly my mum is still backing the campaign for a change in the law. But I think we made a good film, which will be on Channel 4 early next year.
Back in Westminster I was glad to join the Labour MP John MacDonnell, not normally a political soulmate, at a meeting to discuss the services available for people with eating disorders. We have a chronic shortage of beds with staff trained to help people with this awful and tenacious mental illness. There is a unit for people with acute ED at the Savernake Hospital in Marlborough, but you have be very sick indeed to get in there - and there are very few places for people to go through the long process of recovery after their acute stay. I have too many constituents who have suffered or are suffering the horrendous experience of a child in their teens or twenties with anorexia. I will work with John and others across Parliament to campaign for more support.
In Parliament last week I attended Jacob Rees-Mogg’s last outing as Business Secretary. Before he went I asked him whether the Government would do more to help the pubs and brewers who are having such a bad time at present. Wadworth, in Devizes, employs directly or through its tenanted pubs around 1500 people. Including their families, that’s four or five thousand people locally dependent on the success of this business. I spoke to Toby Bartholomew, Wadworth’s CEO, before asking my question and he told me that some of his tenants say their situation is more acute than during Covid. Our villages depend on their pubs to provide a hub for the community, and a sign of life in the local economy. So I hope the Government will either extend the energy bills support scheme, or cut business rates or VAT for pubs, or some combination of them all. My question and Jacob’s answer is here.
On Monday I spoke in Parliament on behalf of the many constituents who have written to me raising the question of injuries caused by the Covid-19 vaccines. The Government has a scheme set up to compensate people who experience negative effects, which is not exactly working very well. More widely I am concerned about the vilification of people who, far from being ‘anti-vaxers’, actually took the vaccine on Government advice and have found their lives upended. And I remain very unhappy with the decision the Government took last year - with my support I am ashamed to say - to sack care workers who declined the vaccine: with hindsight I believe this was wrong, and we should be saying so, and making restitution to the dismissed workers. I also continue to oppose the use of the vaccine for children, given the clear evidence that it brings them little benefit and may bring harm. I was glad to get an assurance from the minister that the Government is reviewing the vaccination of children. My full speech is here (and the exchange with the minister on child vaccination here).
On Friday Parliament debated two Private Members Bills that I am glad to say had Government support. One will provide an ‘asset lock’ on mutual funds, to make it harder to demutualise building societies (my speech is here). The other gives greater rights to people to seek flexible working from their employers (here). I appreciate that both these measures run counter to the economic orthodoxy that my Party is seen to stand for - the idea of the level playing field, where a free market in capital and labour creates the best outcomes for all. This is of course true, yet Conservatism also recognises the bumpiness of life, and the way that a supposedly ‘free’ market can exacerbate inequalities in power, and drive market concentrations at the expense of workers and consumers. I was struck by this quote in The Times this week by Maurice Saatchi, the guru of Thatcherism, which makes the same point. And so defending the capital accumulated by ordinary people in mutuals and coops from the predations of speculators, and helping people with young children or elderly relatives to hold down a job while caring for their families, feels to me right, and I’m glad the Government agrees.
This is relevant to the political turmoil we’ve been through. As I set out in a twitter thread the day before Liz Truss resigned, in my view our trouble doesn’t lie in the immediate decisions of this year’s ministers - including Liz’s decision to announce cut taxes on a scale which was paltry in the scheme of things - but in an economic and social model that goes back decades. Artificially low interest rates, an artificially strong pound, artificial money (quantitative easing), and social policy that imports cheap labour and leaves too many Brits on benefits, have brought us here.
I supported Boris Johnson all through his troubles as PM because, despite his flagrant personal weaknesses, he stood for the great realignment in our politics - the union of traditional shire Tories with Red Wall voters, all of whom share broadly conservative social and economic values. But I was glad he decided not to attempt a return last weekend. He may have won, and I fear our Party would soon have been in open civil war. It may yet, of course. But I believe we have in Rishi Sunak what the country needs: a sober, highly capable, highly honourable leader with a grasp of the economic challenges we face. I also believe him when he says he wants to honour the 2019 manifesto, and the realignment in our politics it stands for.
The future of the UK, and therefore of the Conservative Party, is not in further stoking the financial sector in the City of London, and hoping the heat spreads across the country. We need a strong City, but even more we need growth and prosperity in the regions, including in Wiltshire where we have such potential for the economy of the future: high-tech manufacturing, rooted in our traditional agricultural sector, which can also support a revival of the old-fashioned techniques of local food processing; plus all the commercial opportunities provided by our military links and the new industries of cyber, in which Wiltshire is strong. To make all this happen we need more skills, more housing, better broadband, more buses, and more incentives for investment.
I spent last Friday evening with 100 or so constituents in the Corn Exchange in Devizes, hosted by the local Food Bank, discussing food poverty. This is a real and rising challenge in our area. The excellent Suzanne Wigmore from Wiltshire Citizens Advice was there too, relaying some deeply distressing statistics about the degree of distress in our neighbourhoods. The answer lies, immediately, in getting the right level of benefits into people’s pockets; long-term, it lies in the economic and social transformation I have suggested above. And in both - for the short-term relief and as part of the long-term model we need - it lies in communities pulling together and helping each other.
Earlier that day I visited The Patch in Potterne, the old school house the village is trying to take over and turn into a centre for the community and a hub for home-working. This is the sort of initiative that gives me confidence our towns and villages have a future. I have written before about Potterne, suggesting (following Chandler) that it ‘was once a vast prehistoric midden, an open landfill of human waste, animal carcasses and potsherds (which probably gave the place its name) covering three and half stinking hectares’. I stand corrected by Bob Berry, Potterne resident, Morris Dancer, folk musician and founder of Wiltshire Folk Arts, who showed me round the Patch (above, to my right). Bob says the name comes from a local spring of ‘potable’ water. These days, I’m glad to say, Potternians can rely on the George and Dragon, a Wadworth pub, for their liquid intake.
