It sounds insincere when politicians say this but it really is a privilege to do this job, and not (or not only) for the glamorous bits. The ordinary stuff an MP does is actually more fulfilling than the ceremonial and public part of the role. For instance I had to miss HM The Queen visiting Prospect House hospice in Wroughton a month ago, because the Assisted Suicide Bill committee was meeting in Parliament that day. But instead I had a proper visit of my own, without any pomp, last week, and once again found it inspiring and (given the work they do) oddly joyful (see here).
Likewise GUL, the equestrian centre for learning disabled people (pictured above), on a farm near Shrewton; and next door Appleford School for children with dyslexia and associated learning difficulties. I visit these places to enquire how government policy affects them (the National Insurance rise clobbers everyone, the 20% VAT levy targets independent schools); I come away impressed and gratified that we have such people, and such organisations, quietly serving our communities despite, not because of, what the government does.
Speaking of government policy, Wiltshire farmers were up in Westminster with others from across the country last Monday to protest against the Family Farm Tax. I popped out to show my solidarity and make a noisy video, wearing a flat cap and holding a borrowed dog (here).
I was at Marlborough Town Hall last Friday night - Valentines Day - for a very special dinner in aid of Marlborough Kids Meals, an initiative of the Mayor Kym-Marie Cleasby; I didn’t get the memo about black tie but I had a great time, including in the ceilidh. More here.
Most of my week was spent on the Assisted Suicide Bill committee, which has now begun going through the Bill clause by clause, debating and deciding on amendments and clauses. Janice Turner has a good write up of the first week’s work here. My more partisan summary - detailing how the Committee (a majority of which supports the Bill) refused amendments to make it safer by protecting vulnerable groups; and how eventually the Bill’s sponsor Kim Leadbeater admitted you could get an ‘assisted’ death for the sole reason of saving your relatives money - is in a short twitter thread here.
I also did Question Time, the BBC politics panel show, in the northern town of Northwich, was as little fun as you’d expect if you were a Tory MP. The audience were the self-selected politically-interested, and yet they seemed deeply disenchanted with politicians of all parties. The panel’s radicals of left and right - George Monbiot and Matt Goodwin - had the easy task of attacking all mainstream parties equally; but they weren’t all wrong in what they said. We have a profound malaise in our democracy and strong medicine is required to cure it; only conservative medicine will work, in my opinion.
Unrelated to that - i.e. not because I may be out on my ear at the next election, though I may be - I visited the Jobcentres in Andover and Devizes this week. I am the shadow welfare minister. These, like the hospice mentioned above, are curiously happy places. Staff are universally positive about Universal Credit, the combined benefit brought in by Iain Duncan Smith a decade ago, which now directly incentivises work rather than welfare. The problem is the robust conditions attached to UC for unemployed people mean that many have migrated themselves onto sickness benefit UC instead, which carries no conditions to seek or take a job and, once you’re on it, you’re more or less set for life on an income higher than you may be able to get in the labour market. The Government is promising radical reform to reduce the unsustainable increase in sickness and disability benefits (the predicted increase alone in the next five years is bigger than our entire annual defence budget); I wish them well.
Shrewton is a village on Salisbury Plain just west of Stonehenge, on an extension of the Packway which runs through Larkhill. This road, and the main A360 through the village from Devizes to Salisbury, are choked with traffic displaced from the A303. The long-fabled Stonehenge tunnel project was going to relieve this nightmare at a stroke, with a great bypass to the south; but Rachel Reeves has claimed the cash for this to pay a bonus to train drivers. I met with 50 residents or so in the village hall, and took away a series of mitigations large and small to help alleviate the problem. Traffic - speeding, plus congestion, often from HGVs - is the bane of Wiltshire life. I will push as hard as I can for the Government to acknowledge that the cancellation of the A303 upgrade demands some mitigation of the chronic traffic problems our villages endure along the main route to the South West.
