Paul Flynn - Read My Day

Back to school

The news caused a great guffaw of laughter. The last MP, the PASC select committee would pay to advise on PR would be Lembit Opik. But he was named by Mike Grannatt of Luther Pendragon as the only MP they employed.

It’s no laughing matter now, because a PR paper checked whether any income had been declared. The Register of Members’ Interests are bare of any mention of the £2,400 Lembit received over the past three years. In cash said Luther Pendragon, by cheque said Lembit.

I know of no circumstances in which a sum of £2,400 should not be declared. It’s likely that the standards committee will investigate this and tells whether Lembit has transgressed.

But nothing silences the irrepressible Lembit. He is in revelatory mood to one Welsh newspaper with a morsel of exclusive breathless gossip about his current attempt to destroy his persona as a serious political figure. He revealed to an under whelmed reporter that in a new series he flaunts an unexpected reticence. He refused to propose marriage to his Cheeky Girl. What else will he refuse to do on live television?

Could this be part of Lembit’s slippery PR skills in trying to kill an embarrassing story with a juicier one. George Galloway produced such a coup at a press conference called to nail his for claiming conference expenses when he worked for a charity. He startled the press by confessing that at the conference he had ‘carnal knowledge of two women’. The hacks lost all interest in his expenses.

This time, Lembit’s non –proposal did not outrank the non-declarations.  Back to the PR training Lembit, with you as the student.

Statistics liberated

From tomorrow, politicians will not be in charge of statistics.

Gordon is giving away power. It was his idea a decade ago. It’s great news for Newport because the new wholly Independent Statistics Authority is headquartered in Newport.

Tonight the Authority was launched with a glittering reception in Westminster. The cream of statistics world was there including eminence grise Lord Moser. He ran the Central Statistics Office from 1968. He told the audience this evening of one Chancellor he returned some figures produced by his department’s statisticians with the comment ‘These figures are not compatible with my policies’. He had a sharp response.

In 1989 I had a letter from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saying it was unworthy of my to suggest that transferring the running of Newport’s Business Statistics Office to the Chancellor’s department was sinister. It was not my suggestions. It came from worried statisticians in Newport fearful that their objective work would be tainted with a political commentary.

Tomorrow’s launch will be the most significant moment in the long honourable history of British statistics. Free from all possible political interference at last.

Tory-free fairness

Room for change
Britain’s tallest MP has circulated all MPs with a tall order.

Daniel Kawczynski is usually obsessed with regurgitating the press releases of the farmers unions begging for more taxpayers’ cash to ladle into the direction of farmers. Now he on to a new tack.

He asked whether we as MPs do not regard the first past the post electoral system as the fairest way to elect MPs The assumption is that no system could possibly be better that the one that elected splendid people like us.

I reminded him that in the General Election of 1997 and 2001 more that 20% of Welsh voters voted Tory. The result was not a single Tory elected in our 40 MPs. Fair, Daniel?

Come trample
Are MPs becoming less territorial?

I recall with a shudder bitter denunciations 20 years ago of those MPs who ventured into other MPs territories to speak without advanced notice. One Welsh MP was reported to assert his constituency limits by cocking his leg up and marking the boundaries with his individual scent. Serious woe was dumped on the heads on any MPs who trespassed.

The Assembly Ministers generally still respect the tradition but Westminster Ministers are negligent. This weekend, the whole of Plaid’s AMs descended on my constituency for their conference. Good choice. But, I don’t recall any courtesy letters.

It does not matter. I am not territorial. All politicians are free to trample over my constituency any time they wish. Stop the notes and save the planet.

Skoda power
Must be a slow news weekend. The Argus report on my blog story on how I closed down the M4 on Friday was the best-read story on their news site.

Amazingly there were two non-malicious comments. Thanks. But, Sarah from Cwmbran marvelled that I have had the tyre and wheel changed when with MP’s expenses I could go out ‘ and buy a new Jaguar.’

You have been reading too many lurid stories Sarah. For the record the car is a splendid Skoda that I bought in 2001 and it has 130,000 miles on the clock. I hope to keep it for few more years yet

Someone else objected that I was not travelling by train. There are no trains at 5.00 am in the morning' But half of my journeys are by rail.

Yesterday evening, I had a very enjoyable meal with a group of friends to celebrate a family birthday. Proof that this expenses feeding frenzy may be  getting out of hand was the first optimistic bill that I was asked to sign. It was for £16,642.24.  Some mistake with decimal points (I hope).

Entente terrible

Sarkozy's price

Behind the sycophancy and tomfoolery of Sarkozy’s visit was a threatening message that our gullible leaders have swallowed.

Carlo de Riva, chief executive of French state-owned nuclear company EDF, said British backing for renewables, would undermine nuclear power.

"If you provide incentives for renewables ... that will displace the incentives built into the carbon market. In effect, carbon gets cheaper. And if carbon gets cheaper, you depress the returns for all the other low-carbon technologies. [Like nuclear power]."

If other words, ditch renewables and embrace French nuclear. Our Minister responsible for nuclear and renewables made a ludicrous fantasy speech proving he is unfit to hold office. John Hutton was a member of same Government that said nuclear was not an attractive option four years ago. Now he has fallen head over heels in love with the nuclear folly of the French connection.

On renewables, Hutton is tepid because he believes the technology has not been proven It has been at La Rance. Nuclear has proved itself to be fantasy fool’s gold for 50 years. The list is endless.

The Thorp plant at Sellafield, which has never worked properly, is to be demolished at a cost of £600m. In the 1950s nuclear electricity was going to be too cheap to meter. How have our ministers been seduced.

The great British untapped energy resources available to us in greater quantities than any other European state is tidal. Hutton is cool on tidal; hysterical on nuclear.

It's a giant error.

The Best London Mayor...

The best mayor London never had

Illtyd Harrington gave his nephew a revealing radio interview on his fascinating life as the best mayor that London never had. He was also the best MP Merthyr never had. He lost the nomination to Ted Rowlands who held the seat for nearly thirty years.

He has had a long rumbustious life of uninhibited living at the heart of political life in London.

He was also part of Harold Wilson's kitchen cabinet and on the original lavender list for a peerage. He was removed. It was the days of accusations of Wilson’s reds under the beds. Illtyd’s father fought in the Spanish Civil War, which dammed him in the eyes of the security services.

He spoke movingly of his life long partner, Chris Downes  (left in picture) who died recently. They lived openly together as a homosexual couple for decades before the law ended the persecution of gay couples.  He expected to be the leader of the London County Council in an election with Andrew (now Lord) Mackintosh and the young Ken Livingstone who he described as having the morals of Nicodemus.

He was grateful for his mother's unspoken understanding of his life with Chris. At a family discussion on why Illtyd did not come home to Merthyr for Christmas, his mother explained that 'Illtyd has Chris, now.'

He was dragged into court on charges of fiddling £100 in council expenses. The case cost £250,000 and was dismissed in minutes, But it greatly damaged and upset him. At the time he was handling contracts for hundreds of £millions for London County Council. There was vast scope for corruption there had he been interested in accumulating money. Jim Callaghan as Prime Minister told him that the prosecution should never have been brought. Illtyd had no answer to his question 'Why didn't your Attorney General stop it?' Illtyd believes the motive for the prosecution ran 'very deep.'

When asked if was interested in becoming a member of the Welsh Assembly, he said  ‘I have no more fantasises, not even erotic ones.’

Closing the M4 down

Smash

That’s the first time I have ever shut a motorway down.

Not entirely on my own. There were two other drivers involved. I was driving down the M4 at 6.15 this morning between junctions 10 and 11.  As usual the traffic is light coming out of `London and it’s possible to complete the journey from Vauxhall to Newport in just over two hours.

Conditions were wretched with rain and spray. I was in the middle lane overtaking a lorry. I saw an object on the road in front on me but I could not avoid hitting it. There was a bang and the car veered out of control to the right. From the noise and uncertain steering, it was clear there was something seriously amiss. I hauled the car over to the left towards the hard shoulder.

The front off side tyre was ripped and flat and the wheel was a write off. The wheel had ripped right through the tyre. Another car pulled off behind me with the same flapping tyre problem. A third was parked 20 yards down the motorway.

The Highway people were on the scene within five minutes. They told me I was at marker 58. I summoned the AA because my hands are not up to getting wheel nuts off these days. Then all three lanes stopped on our side of the motorway at some point out of sight of where we stricken three were parked. They cleared the motorway of a, now battered, piece of concrete about the size of a breezeblock. 

My AA man arrived at 7.10, efficiently changed the wheels and led our three cars on a rolling start down the hard shoulder. If you were held up on the M4 this morning you now know there was a good reason for it.

It could have been far worse.

Good news bad
A prize bit of doom invention in the Western Mail.

On the fair assumption that none of their readers ever get to the end of any story they put the truth in the final paragraphs.

Behold it’s a good news story about GPs in Wales. There are 165 GPs in training compared to less than 100 ten years ago, while the current GP vacancy rate is less than 1% – the lowest level in years.

“There are no major difficulties in recruitment and retention. Areas such as Rhondda Cynon Taf are reporting large numbers of applicants for salaried GP vacancies."

All very encouraging compared with past stories of valley communities stripped of their GPs.

Not for the Western Gloom. Their headline is ‘GP shortage may see NHS in crisis.’ The only substance for this fiction is another bit of empty self-serving self-promotion from the BMA.

This is not news. It’s news manipulation copied by lazy journalists who print whatever garbage is put in front of them.

Shameless

The Daily Mail verdict on MPs as ‘Shameless’ must be flung back in their faces.

Will the editor publish the home addresses of himself and his staff so the public can call in on them and express their views?

The reason for the delay in the publication of the expenses of 14 prominent MPs is to protect their addresses. Quite right too. Publication will happen but the risk of widespread publication of home addresses is serious.

One woman MP from the Midlands had bricks through her window over Kosovo and Iraq. Her car was stolen and torched in circumstances that indicated it was likely to have been a disgruntled constituent.

The children of another woman’s MP were harassed with a loudspeaker van outside her home bellowing 'your mother is mass-murderer' over the abortion issue. One of the children is six years old. The mother has been threatened with assault and rape by another constituent.

Another MP had a car torched outside his house. In fact it was a car belonging to his neighbour. He was also physically attacked by a mentally ill constituent.

In the early nineties Gwent Special Branch called to my home to say that an IRA hit list had been found in Limerick. My name was on it. The first six people on the previous list they found had all been killed. My family was plagued with doorstep visits by a mentally-ill man who thought nothing of calling at any time of day.

Every MP has similar problems. The obsessed, the fanatic and the mentally unstable are magnetically attracted to MPs.  Most MPs now live in their constituencies to better represent those they serve. They have the right to as much protection as possible to protect their home addresses. Again the tabloid press assumed base motives for every bit of news on expenses.

Lead by example, editors of the Mail and Sun. Publish your home addresses tomorrow.


Welsh (less than) Grand Committee.

The Welsh Grand held one of its, now rare, meetings today. It was once regarded as a substitute for a Welsh Assembly/Parliament. It was once common for a page of then broadsheet Western Mail and Daily Post to be devoted to the utterances of MPs. The St David’s debate has similar coverage.

That will not be the case tomorrow. Journalists can follow the debate from their offices so they may have been paying attention. But only one lonely soul representing the Argus turned up in the Press Gallery.

If there are no major rows at today’s ‘Grand’ the hours of questions and speeches will remain undisclosed to the nation.

Why bother continuing with a largely useless institution?

Ouch!

I was at pains to make clear in my debate yesterday, entitled 'Mission to Helmand' that I was specifically talking about the Helmand Province not the mission to the whole of Afghanistan. To make it doubly clear I began by saying

"This debate is not about the mission to Afghanistan as a whole, which received almost universal approval from the House and still does so. I am not opposed to that mission; I was not opposed to it originally. However, the decision to go into Helmand province was a terrible mistake and plenty of warnings were given to the House before that decision was taken.

I do not want our troops withdrawn from Afghanistan. There have been real advances in the country that are worth while and worth defending—improvements in democracy, in the education of women, and so on. Before the Helmand mission was launched in 2006 many of us took the view that our task was to defend such advances around Kabul and to consolidate them, but that to go into Helmand province would be to stir up a hornets nest."

Clear enough? Not quite. Surprisingly the local paper published an account of the debate. Inevitably, I suppose, the headline on the story was 'Afghanistan mission 'futile' - MP' . No doubt readers will write complaining and the paper will print the moans against the fiction that they created.

Carry on dying

In denial

No Kim Howells to answer my debate at lunchtime today on the Helmand disaster.

It was the lugubrious Bob Ainsworth, a relative newcomer to the Foreign Office. Happily he ran out of speech after complaining that I had not left him enough time. It gave me a rare chance to use the time he had left unused empty to reply to some of his major absurdities.

Bob is wrong about the allocation of time. The decision is mine, as the caller of the debate, to decide how to use the 30 minutes allocated. With the experience of vacuous ministerial replies in the past it was generous of me to allow him ten minutes to reply. I could have left him 30 seconds. As usual he stuck to his civil service brief that was blinded by denial and oozed lazy optimism.

I challenged the Minister to tell us about anything that has gone right in Helmand. I dug up the original quote from then Defence Secretary John Reid in April 2006 on why we went in,

"We are in the south to help and protect the Afghan people construct their own democracy. We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction."

We fired 4,000,000 shots in a single year. From 'Three years', the mission is now expected to last anything up to 38 years. At the start of 2006, 5 British soldiers had died, now it’s 89 with 339 seriously wounded.

On drugs we have gone backwards. From a 60% increase in one year and a 17% the following year, the Province of Helmand now produces more drugs than any country – including Colombia. The British taxpayer has coughed up £250 million on drug clear up that has increased the import of heroin and reduced the price to the lowest it has ever been.

In 2007, at least 6,000 people died in the conflict across Afghanistan, mostly in Helmand, of which approximately 1,400 were civilians. At least 500 of these deaths were directly attributable to NATO forces, mostly in air strikes.

This is no way to win hearts and minds. The USA is trying to bomb the Afghans into democracy. Everyone sensible confesses that there will be no military solution. Without winning hearts and minds' the mission is truly an endless one.

Kabul now closely resembles Saigon before the final disaster in Viet Nam. In Kabul there are 10,000 NGO workers and thousands of diplomats swanning around in bullet proof land cruisers from meeting to reception, from reception to party. All are spending vast sums of public money – mostly on themselves and achieving very little. As in Saigon, the Allies comfort themselves with kill lists of the claimed dead Taliban. Sadly most of these incidents do not differentiate between Taliban and innocent civilians.

The Minister's reply demonstrated no grasp of reality. It was carry on bombing for the USA and carry on dying for our soldiers and the civilians.

Avanti populo

Jack Straw's announcement of war powers and other constitutional changes is welcome.

Votes before going to war is a major change. Most advanced democracies have such rules already in their constitution. I reminded Jack  this afternoon that before Canada committed their 2,500 troops to the conflict in Helmand, they had a full debate in parliament and a vote.

In a non-urgent situation, we have committed 7,900 of our soldiers to the same hell-hole without a debate or vote. In the spirit of his statement, I asked him to assist in holding a debate now retrospectively on the vital decision. His reply was not unfriendly. He said he would pass the suggestion on.

My companion on the green benches Gordon Prentice asked if the constitutional changes would include an amendment to bar those who are resident abroad from sitting in our legislature. Gordon has a bill that would bar the Belize and Monaco residing Lord Ashcroft and Lord Laidlaw from sitting in the Lords. If only. Jack was not optimistic.

Iraq Truth?

The excuse for not having an inquiry into the mistakes and lies that dragged us into the Iraq War is that it would be unsettling for the troops.

That argument has shrivelled now the troops are parked in the departure zone of Basra Airport. Yes, they are doing work training the locals troops but they are not involved in the bloody conflict that is under way today in Basra City.

My select committee (PASC) has thought of initiating a parliamentary inquiry of our own. That is a credible alternative. To vote for an Inquiry tonight would mean walking through another Tory Lobby. That would be the second in a fortnight. I don't think I'm up to that.

Poetry pleas

A writer in today's Guardian urged MPs to replace maiden speeches with maiden sonnets.

He is correct. Ourthought and ambitions are elevated but our words are pedestrian. Why should MPs not rise to a striking metaphor and a cunning simile? To set an example, I quoted from the beloved englyn on Welsh National War Memorial that roughly translates. 'For his country he gave his oath, over the sea he went to die'. It's much better in cynghanedd.

Dros ei wlad y rhoes ei lw

Dros for fe droes i farw.

The apostle Phoebe

Revelations
This has been an odd Easter.

Thanks mainly to Channel Four, I know several surprising gobbets of information about Christianity that I never knew before.

There is a gospel by the Apostle Thomas. It was not included with the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John gospels because some of his stories are a bit far-fetched. One said that the child Jesus behaved like a fairy and used his divine powers to change his fellow children into goats.

In order to make sure the ancient prophecies were fulfilled two of the gospels invented list of ancestors from Joseph to King David. One list has 24 names, the other 42. None of the names are common to both lists.

There were many female apostles, including Phoebe, Clarissa and Lydia, Julie, Dorcas and Junia. The early church was so male chauvinistic and as the victors write history they tried to obliterate their memories. Successfully in my case.

The apostle Thomas went forth and established a Christian Church in Karela in India in the first century. Missionaries from Europe destroyed all their sacred books later to replace the local Christianity with the Western version.

In the first years of the first century the Apostle James, the brother of Jesus, was the head of the Church that saw itself as a part of the Jewish religion. The claims of Peter as head of the church were later inventions to shore up the myth of a separate Christian Church from the time of Christ.

Two mis-translations have produced confusion. The word for a young woman was translated as virgin and applied to Mary. The word to hand over was mis-translated as betrayal and branded Judas as the ultra evil.

Why did no one ever tell me these things?

Divine truth
Is the embryo hysteria over?

Delighted to hear the voice of sensible thinking Catholicism on the radio this morning. Jim Devine MP is the successor to Robin Cooke. He was briefly a PPS but he resigned rightly to vote against the absurdity of Trident.

Today he said that as a good Scottish Catholic he would be voting for the embryo bill. His background is in health and he values medical research above the strictures on the church, which are based on a wild exaggeration of the bill’s purpose.

There are no strict rules on which votes are conscience votes. No consciences were allowed to intrude on whether we went to war in Iraq.  That was a three line. If MPs feel strongly they will vote against. 139 Labour MPs did. I doubt if anything like that number will oppose the embryo bill.

Feeding the beast
A non-constituent has suggested that I publish my expenses. I’m not tempted – especially as most of them have been published for four years now and they are pretty boring. The present auditing process will be expanded but MPs would be foolish to anticipate the reform that is now underway.

The media who have deliberately misled their readers to create sensational stories.  Those MPs who have published details were all pilloried for their pains. You can't win.

There is an attempt by one newspaper under FOI to publish more details of Welsh MPs expenses. The view of most MPs is that this will only be 'feeding the beast’. The fairest way forward is to publish details of all MPs expenses simultaneously. That will be done soon. They will not be half as interesting as the lurid stories suggest.

Sehr gut

Is web translation now so easy?

Tracing back someone who had ‘hit’ my website, I was astonished to see a year’s blog translated into German. My primitive German is not good enough to know whether the following conveys the right message of Saturday's blog. Anyone know?

Am Dienstag, den Brown-Sarkozy Liebe-und verpflichten uns zu einem neuen Akt der atomaren Wahnsinn.

Sie wird von ihren Erinnerungen tilgen die 73 Milliarden britische Pfund kosten, um unsere Kernkraftwerke Vermächtnis. It’s Omerta too for MOX  Es ist auch für die Omerta MOX - die anderen warf £ 473 Millionen von Steuergeldern Kassa-und hinterließ uns eine gefährliche nukleare Transport Dilemma.

Voting Catholic ?

Embryonic threat
Wise and foolish bishops proclaimed their mixed messages for Easter.

Archbishop Rowan Williams had some thought provoking advice on the brevity of life and the futility or materialism. But Cardinal Keith O’Brien had a wild rant on Frankenstein babies.

Fairly, Lord Winston accused O’Brien of misleading the public with ‘lying’ statements. The row is futile. The bill will sail through the Commons with a majority of at least 200 even if some Catholic MPs vote against or abstain.

Amendments put down in the Lords pressing the Catholic views were overwhelmingly defeated. They are claimed to be 64 voting Catholic MPs out of 650. As with contraception not all  the Catholic MP s will agree with the church’s advice.

Others will judge it right to vote on behalf on their constituents not on the basis of their personal religious views. After all, none of them stood as ‘catholic’ candidates in their elections.

It would be foolish for the whips to try to browbeat MPs. The determined will vote with their consciences whatever the whips say. That was the view I gave to the whips two weeks ago. The common sense of the majority of MPs will ensure that this sensible timely measure is passed.

We have progressed since Galileo Galilei. The days when any Church could frustrate the advance of science have gone.

Unregulated Regulators
It’s not just our own drugs regulatory authority the MHRA that is held in contempt. The current edition of The Readers Digest hammers the American equivalent the FDA.

They say it’s lurching from one disaster to another, the 102-year-old agency learns of dangers too late and then moves too slowly to remedy them. Instead of depending on the FDA, Americans are doubting it -- and for good reason.

The greatest concern is here and in the USA is drug safety. FDA's financial dependence on pharmaceutical company user fees has led FDA leadership to regard industry-rather than the public--as the agency's clients. “The consequences of this mindset can be measured in hundreds of thousands of preventable tragedies, including deaths,” claims the magazine.

The complaints made mirror precisely the unhappiness here with the MHRA. They are 1. Pressure from industry ($400 million in user fees buys influence, if not control); 2. Safety of new drugs (neither companies nor FDA systematically monitor adverse drug effects after approval); 3. Sloppy record keeping); 4. Conflicts of interest (advisory committees); 5. Muzzled experts (Dr. Andrew Mosholder- SSRI-suicide finding; Dr. David Graham-Vioxx-heart attack risk;  Dr.Rosemary Johann-Liang- Avandia cardiac
risk..)

It’s very encouraging that a mainstream publication has taken up the cudgels on behalf of patients against Big Pharma. When will it happen here?

Bewitched by the Nuclear Pied Piper

Starry-eyed
On Tuesday the Brown-Sarkozy love-in will commit us to a new act of nuclear insanity.

They will obliterate from their memories the £73 billion UK cost to clear up our nuclear power legacy. It’s Omerta too for MOX – which threw away another £473 million of taxpayers’ cash and left us a dangerous nuclear transport dilemma.

Joyfully Brown will embrace another nuclear dream based on new generation of nuclear power. Gordon and John Hutton are as starry eyed about the promise of ‘new nuclear’ as past generations were about the past nuclear electricity that promised to be ‘too cheap to meter.’

The word ‘nuclear’ is the irresistible Pied Piper lure to those who are scientifically illiterate. Will anyone paused to look at the evidence of ‘New Nuclear’. The French persuaded the Finns to build the first one in their country.

The Finnish Government ordered its Olkiluoto station it on the promise that it would be cheaper than renewables. That idea is now in tatters. It’s already two years late in its construction.  Put another way, a 54-month project still has 44 months to run after it has been going for 36 months

The full cost of the project was initially projected a €3bn. The total cost is currently  standing at more than €4.5bn and rising. In early documents, the company referred to employing a total of about 2,000 people on the site. The number is already 2,600.

Will any small voice be raised on Tuesday to ask, if ‘New Nuclear’ is better than the past financial basket-case of old nuclear why is the French station in Finland over-manned, 2 years late and over budget by £2 million?

Cherished ugliness
Phew. That’s a relief!

The London based 20th Century Society recently made a request to Cadw to list the dreadful Bettws Comprehensive Scholl building as a good example of the Brutalist design style. It could then be preserve for posterity to marvel at our stupidity.

Good Brutalism?  It represents the lowest point of the clumsy, ugly concrete invasion that blighted the urban landscape in the sixties. Many were car parks. They all looked like car parks. It was an artistic perverse extravagance to be enjoyed by self-indulgent consenting architects in private.

Bettws never worked artistically or educationally. Concrete cancer is eating it away; the bulldozers will do the rest. All Newport will celebrate.  The Welsh Assembly Government have refused to list this  horror.

If the 20th Century Society wants to preserve monumental monstrosities, chose one nearer to where you live. London, isn‘t it?

Obvious, really
Leafing through the ‘God Delusion’, I sympathised with author Richard Dawkins complaint that all the media interviewers on his thoughtful book asked the same irritating question. They always do.

" Don’t you agree that the worst atrocities in recent history by Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein were committed because they were all atheists?"

After a while Dawkins found the put-down answer. ‘No it was because they all had moustaches.’

Hail and farewell

The weather was treacherous this afternoon.

After several hours of continuous sunshine, I decided it was safe to brave the biting wind and walk along the splendid Ridgeway at Newport’s Allt-yr-yn.

I had not got far when this ominous cloud appeared. Time to retreat to my car to hide from a vicious hailstorm.

Global warming?

Unfair attacks

Full knowledge

Television coverage has made the Ghanaian Ama Sumani familiar to us all. We are naturally saddened by her death. But much of the angry hostile reaction is based on superficial impressions.

The person I trust is her MP. In my view Alun Michael has been unfairly criticised. I have known Alun for 30 years. For ten years we shared a mortgage. He is Blairite Labour: I am Heritage Labour. So we do not see eye to eye on everything. However I trust him absolutely.

While I have no knowledge of this case other than what I have read in the press, I know the full details of hundreds of other cases on immigrants in my constituency.  MPs are obliged to study all the tribunal papers of cases that we take up. However we cannot use any of the personal details in public debates. It’s frustrating when fair-minded people are outraged by apparently callous decisions when more information would set the decision into its proper context. Of course, it's never possible to pass on confidential information.

Alun Michael writes today

“I can confirm that I am satisfied that the case was fully and genuinely reviewed and I saw considerable detail about the case on which their decision was based.”

Reading between the lines, I sense a situation that I have been on in many occasions. Alun is a thorough conscientious MP who has worked tirelessly to assist refugees and asylum seekers to enter the UK. It’s typical of him that he did everything that was possible to help this lady. He writes,

“I asked about treatment in Ghana and was told that it was available. I understand that finance was made available by the British authorities for her initial treatment and that voluntary donations were made available for her subsequent treatment. That is why I have refused to criticise the authorities, when asked by journalists to comment on the case, since I believe that the authorities did deal with the case sympathetically, humanely and in accordance with the facts of the case.”

These are brave words in the face of a gale of angry denunciations from people, some of who should know better. A quiet word with Alun may enlighten them. I am sure the Welsh media has presented this sad case on the basis on the full information that they had. Inevitably the sad facts are seen as a callous act by unsympathetic officials. This is not my experience after dealing with hundreds of cases. Our country’s welcome and support for asylum seekers, refugees and migrants is fair and generous, matched only by the Scandinavian countries.

The media often mis-leads by sensationalising the limited facts known to them into a faux scandal. When the choice is whether to believe in the version of events as reported by the media or that of the conscientious compassionate local MP of unquestioned integrity, I believe the MP.

Backbench Joy

As a hard-bitten cynical veteran MP, I thought nothing would surprise me. Backbench speeches are of very limited value, I have always said, and my expectation of their influence is very limited.

Last night I had an e-mail that started,

"I took my son and daughter up to London on Thursday and we popped into the Commons.  My daughter is 14 and is interested in politics; she reads The New Statesman and The Spectator and has had a letter published in the former.   However, she has decided whilst she is interested in the ideas behind politics she wouldn't like to become a politician as she wouldn't want all the smoozing and hypocrisy involved in 'fitting in' (I'm afraid she is a natural rebel).  

The bill being debated was on social security and we came in whilst the conservative member was opposing the bill.  It was a bit boring, I'm afraid and my 12 year old son fell asleep.  My daughter however followed the speech and seemed interested.  Then you stood up. What a difference!  You were speaking with passion, with experience, with examples and stories and, it seemed to us, the whole debate 'woke up'.”

Those of us who are interested in social security know that the subject is of interest to few people and rarely reported. What is uniquely gratifying about this e-mail is that the lady and her daughter were interested in the subject. Usually these speeches  are guaranteed to send the press and public stampeding out of the galleries. All the journalists have mortgages (which they report in detail) but none are on Income Support. Their pensions are a long way off, so why bother reporting the subject?  The letter continues.

" €œEverything you said seemed important - from the 59 billion excess in the NI fund, to the poverty facing pensioners (something close to my mother's heart), to (what I thought was crucial) your point that MPs are presented with a bill in a 'take it or leave it' format - symbolising the decline in democracy in this country. My daughter is once more considering whether she might want to become an MP.  In discussion afterwards however, we got talking about the life of a backbench MP.  I said that it was often those with the most intelligence and integrity who became back bench MPs but that it must be very frustrating.  You understand what needs to be done, how best to do it, you feel passionate about your cause - BUT you can't influence the government.  Or if you do, it is occasionally in small doses.  You also get sidelined and dismissed because you are not driven by power and ambition.   We were both wondering how you manage being a backbench MP

I also wondered if there were any pro-democracy organisations in the UK campaigning against the increasing centralisation of power in this country.  This is something I feel passionate about.”

Well is there any such organisation? I have written back giving the writer directions to some of the thousands of words I have written about the role of backbenchers. The e-mail has left me purring with pleasure. Any time in the future when I am tempted to pack it all in, I will take it out the bouquet file and be reinvigorated by it. I hope the young lady maintains her interest in politics and builds her ambitions.

The parliament of tomorrow will need her.