Bob's Off but I Missed it

Bob Spink (Castle Point) featured in February's blog relating to Member's expenses. Only this week I realised Bob had become the third Conservative to lose the party whip after Derek Conway and Andrew Pelling.
Degsy Conway, you will recall, employed nearly his entire family in his Parliamentary office although quite what they did to earn the renumeration is not altogether clear. Derek is the only MP ever to resign to spend less time with his family. Andrew Pelling was "resigned" from the whip following a fracas with his wife last year, although charges of assault were dropped.
The reasons for Bob's departure are harder to discern. He raised the issue as a point of order during the budget debate and referred to "criminal and other irregularities" in his constituency.
Bob has been fighting his association who wish to de-select him and accusations about his private life abound. Say what you like about Bob Spink (and people do, often) he's certainly not idle, the day he took the hemlock, he laid 29 Parliamentary Questions. I confess I missed the entire episode as I was, that week, consumed by events at the Cheltenham Festival.
I've seen Bob Spink at work in the Commons and he comes across as someone from the Norman Tebbit school of tolerance and fraternity. In 2005 one of his election campaign leaflets included the following question to our former PM on asylum seekers, "What part of 'send them back' don't you understand Mr Blair?"
Anyone might now put the question, "What part of 'you're sacked' don't you understand, Mr Spink?"

Smoke Signals

James Brokenshire (Hornchurch) asked Drugs Minister Vernon Coaker this week how many trafficked children had been found to be working in cannabis factories. An important point - there is plenty of evidence to show there has been a huge shift in recent years from imported hashish from Morroco to home-cultivated cannabis. Vietnamese gangs have been behind a lot of it like they were in Canada. Vernon raised this point himself during the last Home Office questions in February hinting it was further reason for the Government to re-classify cannabis back to class B. And the answer to the question on trafficked children, um, just one actually.

Every Home Secretary seems to want to carry out their own cannabis review. The latest is at the PM's request. Announced in July the Government is likely to (eventually) make its decision public in early May after the disastrous local elections. The decision to return to Class B will be contrary to medical evidence and scientific advice provided by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The role of this independant body will, in the event, be totally undermined.

Cannabis will then be classed with amphetamines as a drug of equivalent harm. Many young people may like a smoke but would not dream of putting speed up their noses. The credibility of drug education messages will be lost at a stroke.

But the Government will say they will be sending out a strong signal about drug use. Except cannabis use has been in decline for 10 years. The police say they need the law strengthened to be able to tackle cannabis growers. Except the penalties for cultivation for Class C and B drugs are identical. The priority given to drug dealing is an operational matter for each force so the classification of the drug is irrelevant.

There is no issue today which better shows up Labour in a classic third term mode. They are pandering blindly to the popular issues but blundering about like some drunken hippo and making matters a whole lot worse. The fact that the Tories support them in this spliff enterprise should tell them something.

I swear it, by my beard

John Reid was known as someone not aversed to swearing at officials. Perhaps I was just lucky but whenever I met him he was extremely personable and polite. Maybe he liked my face, but he used to just sit in his big chair, smiling and sipping his diet coke.
But one colleague faced the full wrath of Reid over some criminal justice ballsup involving sex offenders. The confrontation inspired a general discussion in the local a few days later about swearing Ministers. After more than a couple of pints we had got it down to the top three which Dr Reid had just snuck into.
Riding high at number two was Charlie 'the Dome' Falconer, whose description of colleagues and senior officials would have shamed a Clydebank docker. But out on his own was Frank '%&*!' Dobson (pictured). It's hard to refer to any of the anecdotes without infringing both libel and obscenity laws but Department of Health officials still laugh nervously at the mention of his name.
Tony Blair knackered Dobbo's career, you will recall, by forcing him to stand as Labour candidate against Ken Livingstone for London Mayor in 2000 when Ken went independent. He knew, we all knew, he was on a loser and eventually came third behind Stephen 'Nobber' Norris. Faced with a Dobbo and a Nobber no wonder Londoners voted for Ken.
I only spoke to Frank once. It was a training seminar about the work of select committees and he was guest speaker. When Labour was in Opposition, a friend used to call him Shadow Minister for Calling-for-Public-Inquiries. I resolved to ask FD a question including the words 'public inquiry.' It was hardly a forest of hands at the plenary and soon enough I was chosen to put a question to the Father Christmas lookalike. I croaked, "I was wondering Mr Dobson, what happens if the work programme of a select committee co-incides with that of an ongoing PUBLIC INQUIRY, whether there is any particular protocol followed."
Frank breathed in, pointed his Uncle Albert beard at me, then pausing for a moment uttered, almost with relief, the words, "I haven't the faintest idea."

Respect the Dead

Chris Mole (pictured) member for Ipswich, raised a question on 27 February with the PM about the DNA database. The issue was raised in the wake of the successful prosecution last month of Steven Wright for killing five women in Ipswich. In reply, Gordon Brown referred "the murder of these prostitutes." On reflection Gordon may have wished to re-phrase that. They were five young women who got involved in drugs and resorted to selling sex to fund their addiction. They paid the ultimate price for their risky lives when one of their clients turned into a vicious killer.

To label these murdered women as simply 'prostitutes' demeans them and insults their grieving families.

The question itself called for "a proportionate and effective database of DNA [to be] sustained, not just one that records people convicted for violent and sexual offences?" Gordon reeled off the impressive figures of 450 murders and 640 rapes solved by DNA profiling last year.

But there was a problem with the question. The DNA database does not include any profiles for thousands of known sex offenders - it only includes details of sex offenders after 2004. All those on the sex offender's register between the year it was established 1997 and 2004 are not captured. So had Steven Wright been on that list for a sexual offence he would not have been caught by DNA testing. The Government were going to address this loophole in 2005 but they ran out of Parliamentary time before the election. There are some provisions in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which would allow them to make the necesary change - but there is no indication yet they see this as a priority.

Raving Mad

I don't know if East Anglia is the centre for Raves in Britain today but you'd be forgiven for thinking it. There is regular regional news coverage of huge police actions against dishevelled groups of party-goers. From the editorial the audience are clearly meant to be reassured by the sight of riot police surrounding a village hall, but often the impression I get is of a heavy-handed and disproportionate response to a pretty minor problem.


Michael 'the Blood Donor' Howard as Home Secretary brought in some pretty draconian laws under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 when the popularity of raves had already started to wane. They even tried to define rave music as "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats" a classic from the HO lawyers. This legislation allows the seizing of equipment, generators etc and anyone refusing to leave can be arrested for public order offences, obstruction or trespass. More than enough police powers to poop the party you would have thought.

But one of our local MPs, Christopher Fraser (SW Norfolk) wants yet tougher laws and has his own Private Members Bill, the Criminal Justice (Raves) Bill. He addressed Parliament last week about "how devastating raves can be for farmers, local residents and the surrounding environment and wildlife". But then he offered hardly any evidence or examples.

He would like to introduce two new offences: "of organising a rave, and of transporting sound equipment for use at a rave". For a start, these Bills almost never make on to the statute book, secondly it would be impossible to bring these vague wishes into a from you could call legislation. If it were an offence to transport such equipment the police would be empowered to arrest anyone buying a new sound system from Currys. Nevertheless Mr Fraser's Bill gets its second reading on 6 June he was supported by another local MP Bob Russell.

The fact that the Government did not bother to send a Minister to respond shows this law is going nowhere.

Diego Garcia - A Thickening Plot

The plight of the Chagos Islanders may sound a little like the title of one those Ealing comedies with Terry Thomas and Dennis Price but it has proven to be a decidedly murky and shameful experience for the British Government.

You probably recall reading somewhere about the 2,000 or so Islanders of Diego Garcia (the Chagos people, or Ilois) who were forcibly pushed out of their remote Indian Island paradise in 1960s to make way for a US air base.

Of course in those days there was threat of nuclear war and less care taken with the human rights of the indigenous people's of Britain's minor territories. But now, we, as a nation, are able to face up to our responsibilities and right those colonial wrongs. Except in this case we aren't. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office are holding the same line on this matter they held in about 1965 which could be caricatured as the man in the white suit and pith helmet resting his boots on the local natives.

The Islanders, to their credit, have mounted a substantial campaign for compensation and rapatriation and won several rounds of legal battles in the High Court. The FCO lawyers maintain their "all along time ago, let sleeping dogs lie, etc ."

At the High Court, Sir Sydney Kentridge QC, for the Ilois, said there was no known precedent "for the lawful use of prerogative powers to remove or exclude an entire population of British subjects from their homes and place of birth" and described the treatment of the Chagossians as "outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards".

So to Foreign Office questions on Feb 19, Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock) asked
FCO to "take account of the mood of the House" (i.o.w. we all know the game's up) in respect of the Chagos islanders and ensure "this wrong [is] remedied".

Junior Minister, Meg Munn gave a ghastly reply straight out of Sir Humphrey's handbook of Civil Service obfuscation. She referred to a "2002 feasibility study" which concluded "a lasting resettlement would be precarious ... and would entail substantial open-ended contingent liability". Ugh.

The Foreign Office had a way round these pesky court rulings. The British Indian Ocean Territory (Constitution) Order 2004 laid before Privy Council has effectively overidden the High Court decision and has again taken away all rights from the Chagos Islanders without even a whiff of consultation. The only hope appears to be when the US base shuts in 2016.

Then on Thursday, Foreign Sec 'Brains' Milliband gave a rare FCO Commons statement (Home Sec seems to do two a week). Apparently the relentless denial in the face of gathering evidence about US rendition flights over British airspace was not sustainable. Milliband had been tipped off by 'Condy' Rice the US had been using Diego Garcia to re-fuel on CIA rendition operations from somewhere to Guantanamo. All this had happened without British knowledge and was of terrible embarrassment to the Government underlining how very uneven the special relationship had become under Bush/Cheney.

If McCain wins in November we shouldn't expect the US military presence to be winding down anywhere. Although the Chagossians would be able to live alongside the base, it is doubtful the US relishes locals observing their clandestine comings and goings.

Brown's Stiff, Cameron's Cocky

I saw Gordon Brown's performance at PMQs on Wednesday and he has certainly improved but then again he started from such a low base. Labour MPs still grimace when they remember "I've only been in the job five days," Vince Cable's Mr Bean line plus the noticeable nervous hand-shaking of their PM.

Brown was unable to command the audience when it mattered most. Cameron found it pretty easy from their first encounter and won their contests several weeks in a row sometimes with a trouncing. Gordie was left to scowl in bitter embarrassment like the boy from the comprehensive whose unwordliness was uncovered by the clever-dick, urbane public schoolboy.

He was also not listening to colleagues about his 'stiff' manner. Something's changed, he's a bit more relaxed, less eager to prove he remembers that part of the brief.

On Wednesday Cameron first wished Gord a happy 57th birthday. We waited for the joke - 57 'varieties of excuse for failure' or something. But no gag. Dave used half his six questions on the loss of a DNA data disc sent by the Dutch police which had been serving as a coffee coaster somewhere in Home Office for a year. It was an easy goal for Cameron but he only just scambled the ball over the line. Brown having the last word was able to goad Dave about why he didn't raise Northern Rock.

Gord then made a bit of a joke himself. Neil Turner, member for Wigan referred to a recent investment from a Chinese firm in his constituency which would yield a thousand jobs. Gordy had been speaking to Premier Wen yesterday, and added off the cuff, "I must confess that I did not specifically raise the question of investment in Wigan; I now regret that." OK so it's not quite Russell Brand, not even Russell Harty but it gave the Labour side a welcome laugh. His backbenchers are a bit like the guests at a wedding who feel for the father of the bride who's speech is going pretty badly; one pretty average joke can bring the house down.

Dave came back on Northern Rock as predicted and asked why Freedom of Informantion Act would not apply. Even I (a self-confessed financial thickie) realised such commercial matters as a bank's financial plans cannot be divulged on request as easily as 'how many pencil sharpeners are there in the MOD'. Brown was able to revert to Iron Chancellor mode dismissing Cameron out-of-hand for 'indulging in student politics.'

The Governments Brown grew up with were Wilson and Heath, a time when we when we referred our party leaders as 'Mr' not so much out of deference but out of respect. He feels he is much the same - he constantly refers to ' getting on with the serious business of Government' and is frustrated by the fact that not everyone can see Cameron as he does, a toff playing to the crowd.

The Conservative Leader is never short of material after so many embarrasments from the Government but he rarely seems to make the most of them these days. William Hague regularly bested Blair when times were very hard for the Tories, he'd do well to take some advice from colleagues as well. Cameron does the arrogant mocking very well, over time it may wear a bit thin.