Category Archives: Blog

Helping the arts

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Not at Parliament today as not needed for the chamber and have two local commitments. First of the day is a meeting with the Director of the Mountview Theatre School to see if there are ways that I can be of help in their aspiration to combine on one site and to draw some synergy with the Chocolate Factory – an artists colony next door.

We reminisce – well I do – about my first contact with the Theatre School when I was about 8 and was understudy for a production they were putting on – ‘The Innocents’. I remember it so clearly – and spent years thereafter hankering to be an actor. Happily for me that didn’t work out and I became a designer.

What my love of theatre has done though is give me a great belief in the arts and entertainment. And I will always want to promote entertainment, arts and culture as it breathes life and fun into life.

At lunchtime, and in the blistering heat, I am at the ceremony to open the Therapeutic Network at Canning Crescent. Horrifically and short-sightedly – Haringey saw fit to close the two mental day-care hospitals in our borough. Campaigners – after a two-year battle – have succeeded in getting this service (in different form and much smaller) re-opened. Hurrah. Great occasion – but very hot!

ID cards

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Breakfast meeting with a briefing from Liberty on ID cards. Won’t rehearse the arguments here – but am sharing platform with Tony Benn and George Galloway on the subject next Wednesday. Of course we will all be on the side of the angels and against ID cards – and almost certainly so will the audience. But delighted to be involved in fighting what I regard as one of the most outrageous attacks on civil liberties in my lifetime (and it’s a long list to choose from – control orders, removal of right to trial by jury, loss of freedom of speech…).

I have been shocked by the ravages of Labour on the very heart of all the things I believe in. It’s even worse close up in Parliament.

At the Lib Dem Home Affairs Team meeting – the news is that Evan (who was going to lead on the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill next week) is now going to have to address a health conference. As Alistair Carmichael (Deputy Shadow Home Secretary) can only do the Tuesday – I will have to lead on it on the Thursday. It’s fine – I have never even attended a Bill Committee – but I am sure by next Thursday I will know it all – I will have to!

Into Prime Minister’s Questions. It is fun – but I am not attempting a question as yet. A couple of ours bob up and down trying to get called – but the whole half hour passes without a Lib Dem being called at all. Is this fair? It’s up to Mr Speaker basically – and I guess we just didn’t catch his eye.

In the evening, we new MPs, the Lib Dem intake of 5th May ’05, meet at the National Liberal Club for a dinner – partly to get to know each other but also to examine what we have seen, heard and experienced so far with our own party.

It was quite an exciting evening with challenging contributions from each new MP around the table. We form about a third of the Lib Dem parliamentary party – so a substantive grouping – and plenty of thoughts about how we want to see things turn out.

Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill

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Yesterday there was a press conference at which a cross-party representation of us politicians who are against the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill and a sprinkling of the famous names in like mode were gathered to launch our preferred amendment.

The Bill goes into its second reading today and the argument lies at present in the legislation having unintended consequences. Those unintended consequences being attacks on freedom of speech and the use of the legislation to attack religious opponents.

So, present amongst others were Rowan Atkinson and Ian McEwan. Fine words were spoken. Couldn’t have wished for better exponents of what is called the Lester Amendment. This changes the Bill to ‘incitement to religious hatred as a proxy for racial hatred’.

But today the Bill has its second reading. I am on the front bench as I will be one of two taking this Bill through Committee Stage next week. And just as with Violent Crime Reduction – I need to know all the arguments. So I take notes for hours – and hours.

It is a good debate – but whilst I think Labour know it’s poor legislation and doesn’t deliver the intentions behind it – I think they feel they must drive it through. No doubt they will be looking for a way out of this mess.

I am relieved for one hour to go and have some food – and I go to the Members Dining room. You are only meant to sit on your ‘traditional’ table – i.e. a particular table where members of your party always sit. At ‘our’ table are a group of Lib Dems who I join. Amongst them is John Hemming, one of our new MPs from Birmingham who has so recently received huge amounts of publicity for his private life. He had given a brilliant quote – “all my children are love children” – and handled it pretty well given the circumstances.

Violent Crime Reduction Bill

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Big day – as ‘my’ Bill (the Violent Crime Reduction Bill) is getting its second reading today. I won’t have to lead on the floor of the Commons as our Shadow Home Secretary, Mark Oaten, will do that. But I will have to speak and get a grip on the debate so that when I lead for the Lib Dems as the bill goes through its committee stage I will know what I am doing and where the debate is.

(If you’re wondering what second readings and committee stages are, there’s an explanation of how laws pass through Parliament at www.libdems.org.uk/parliament/legislation.html).

But first I have lunch with the Evening Standard lobby correspondent. He seems really OK. Have worked with lots of journalists from the ES and they have all been great – so far.

Then (barring quick press conference on the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill) off to the chamber for the debate on the Violent Crime Reduction Bill. Basically this bill tries to address the twin rising problems of alcohol and weapons. In a typically Labour way – some of it is right, but some of it is gesture ‘tough on crime’ politics.

For example – there is a proposal to stiffen the laws around the manufacture, sale and carrying of imitation firearms. I totally agree with the general intent of this. However – the bit on carrying states that the sentence will be raised from 6 months to 12 months. So I make an intervention whilst Charles Clarke (Home Secretary) is introducing the proposals to ask why a 6 month stiffening? What work has been done to estimate the reduction in carrying that that particular length of sentence will deliver?

Basically – it’s all speculative says Charles. Hmm – not an impressive way to make laws! (You can read the exchange in Hansard).

OK – so what would I have done to establish this before guestimating an addition to the sentence? I would have first established how many people had been done for carrying and what sentences they had (in fact I have a Parliamentary Question down on this). I would have gone back to them to survey whether they had any idea of what sentence was on the books, how much of deterrent it was, etc.

Anyway – the main area of disaster in these proposals is the plan for Alcohol Disorder Zones. If there is a lot of drunken, abusive and criminal behaviour in a particular location, the Local Authority and the Police will have the power to create an area where all those inside deemed to have alcohol as their main trade (a minefield in itself) will have eight weeks in which to produce an action plan and improve. But if they don’t – a levy will be imposed to pay for extra policing.

Fine in principle – polluter pays. Love it. But – good landlords will be treated same as bad (and probably move to a better area). The area will get a name as a ‘no go’ area – and people (consumers) will stop going there. Property values will plummet. And so on.

So – sounds a good idea at first – but not thought through. But as I say – the thrust of the Bill to get a grip on the British malaise of drinking yourself to oblivion on a Friday night is right. But as ever with Labour – there is no other side to the equation: examining why people drink themselves stupid, why it is a status symbol to carry a knife or a gun – and so on.

When the great reforming legislation on drink driving and wearing a seatbelt came into being – the Government put immense resource behind the message it was sending out about irresponsible behaviour. The resource was both in enforcement of the legislation yet also the huge educational and advertising campaigns that accompanied the change in the law. Labour is still shallow in its intent and will. Right message – lack of real depth to deliver change!

And I said so in my speech!

Fairs and fetes

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First event of the day – meeting with parents from Campsbourne Infants and Junior schools.

Second event of the day – Highgate Summer Fair in Pond Square.

Third event of the day – over to St Martin de Porres primary school in Bounds Green for to their Summer Fete. Introduce myself to head and agree to come back and do something with the children.

And last event of the day – opening the Inderwick Road street party. On what was a baking hot day, the fire-fighters from Hornsey Fire Station had come with an engine and were shooting a hose high into the air – with a herd of children running in and out of the spray with squeals of absolute delight.

One of the organisers, Maggie, pulls me into her house to meet 10 Chinese policemen and women who are over here from Beijing to learn about crowd control and public order in time for the Beijing Olympics. I am unclear why they have come to Inderwick Road Street Party to learn about public order and crowd control – unless there’s something about the denizens of Inderwick that the powers that be know and I don’t!

At around 4.15pm I am given the microphone to open the party – which I do. I warn the gathering hordes of the Chinese Police presence vis a vis crowd control – to hoots of laughter. And it’s on with the show – with fancy dress competitions, barbeques and bands until late in the evening.

I leave after about an hour and go home to enjoy a late bit of sunshine in my garden.

Surgery

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Surgery all day at Wood Green library. Today the range of issues was quite extraordinary, including tackling the US government to try to get an international student loan for a fantastic bright young girl who has won the opportunity to go to an American university. To battle!

The prison population

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I co-host a talk by American Author Michael Jacobson on downsizing prisons, who has a new book out. He has run jails in the US and argues that the costs of expanding prisons to take ever more prisoners takes money away from services such as education and health – and so causes more crime rather than cutting it.

I listen to my co-hosts (Labour and Tory) ramble on about how they believe in education, training, rehabilitation and how prison and punishment are not the way forward.

As someone said to me afterwards – how I restrained myself from having a go at them was a miracle! Having just emerged from an election with the most outrageous attacks on me/us for being soft on crime because we believe you need to do more than just lock people up – how they had the balls to pretend they believed in all of the stuff Lib Dems believe in was extraordinary. Both Tory and Labour did nothing but bang the authoritarian drum on this during the election. But conveniently left their drums at home for this event!

Incitement to religious hatred

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10.15 on a Wednesday morning is the Lib Dem Home Affairs Team meeting. We all gather – Mark Oaten (Shadow Home Secretary), Alistair Carmichael (his deputy), me – (police, crime and disorder), the Lords Home Affairs team, staff and – today- Lord Lester as we are discussing the Equality Commission Bill going through the Lords that day.

I am still not one hundred percent convinced that we should have a single Commission that bungs together race, gender and disability into one body – but before we have a Single Equality Act. To me it is cart before horse – and smacks more of the Government’s desire to lessen the ability of the three current Commissions to lobby them successfully.

The other main legislation at the moment is the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill. The idea is to tackle discrimination against Muslims in particular, but its provisions are likely to cause them more harm than good and stir up a whole raft of other evils. The increasing emphasis on bringing religion in line with race in terms of legislation is dangerous.

When I was Chairing the Stop and Search Implementation Panel of the Met Police Authority (until a few weeks ago) it was beginning to creep into that agenda too. There was a move to suggest that because of the increasing number of stops on Muslims (or more accurately those who looked ‘Muslim’) the police should introduce religious monitoring.

The initial reaction of the Met and the Labour members of the MPA was to jump to and deliver this to rectify the blatant discrimination that was being perpetrated against Muslims. But I fought it (amongst others) as the wrong solution to the problem – and moreover a political solution prior to the General Election.

I had the Home Office in to give some of their evidence on the research they had been doing into this area. It was very interesting – as Muslims in the North of England were dead against it – as opposed to Muslims in London. Many of the religious groups were dead against it – unsurprisingly. Jews and Sikhs who have both been persecuted through the ages for their religious beliefs made it quite clear that they did not wish to have to reveal their religion to anyone.

Anyway – the point I am making is that these are tinderbox times – and all of us in the political maelstrom had better be careful that we do not create a monster that destroys us. I know – dramatic language – but I am extremely concerned about religious freedoms, rights and free speech – which I regard as the tenets of a civilised and peaceful society.

Later at the Parliamentary Party meeting we have the hustings for Chair of the Parliamentary Party. It is the first time this has been contested – as in previous years there has only been one candidate. The result is the challenger (Paul Holmes) wins, defeating the incumbent (Matthew Taylor).

A typical Tuesday

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Off in the morning to the Vodafone shop in Muswell Hill Broadway to join Muswell Hill Mothers Against Masts. Vodafone had gone ahead and turned on their controversial new mobile phone mast. Now – the mothers continue to protest and I support them. We need legislation which will give local authorities the power to reject applications on the ‘precautionary principle’, such as where such applications are sited near vulnerable members of society.

We do (nearly!) all use mobiles – but precaution near the most vulnerable seems a good compromise to me.

The surveyors working with Vodafone have contacted me since the meeting to say that they believe there is less danger near to masts. I will meet them. I think their argument is going to be that a mobile phone (which is much closer than a mast to an individual and so the impact of its signal on the individual is much stronger) will emit less when it is near a mast – so conversely (and counter-intuitively) the user will get less exposure if they live near a mast as the mobile phone in their hand will be emitting less – because it is nearer a mast and so having to work less hard. But of course mobile phone users have choice about whether or not to have them, switching them off etc. Someone who has a mast put in near where they live doesn’t have that choice.

Then off to Haringey Council for a briefing about school places. This was one of the main local issues I talked about in my maiden speech.

Pressure from parents who have not been able to get their children into any of the top three preferences has worked to a degree. Expansion is now taking place in the Muswell Hill and Crouch End areas – and thank goodness there was an election coming up to focus the efforts and kick the Labour-run council out of its past complacency on the issue. Without the political pressure that forces action when lost votes are looming on the horizon, it may very well not have happened.

Then a summer garden party at Kekewick House. All care homes should be like this. The garden is gorgeous – and we are celebrating the new summerhouse, which is gorgeous too and will allow residents to sit in the garden all year round protected from the weather. Tea and scones go round – and it truly is an idyll for elderly care.

Round off the day with a meeting with Harriet Harman to discuss constitutional affairs – for which she is the Minister. I believe we should be doing more to safeguard postal voting against possible fraud. During the election many people were actually scared to vote by post because of the reported level of abuse. As to the Government’s long promised ‘review’ of electoral reform – I get the feeling they want to kick it into the long grass in real terms. If there was fair voting for Westminster elections – 36% of the vote would not give them the sort of power ‘first past the post’ has just delivered. Christmas and turkeys I’m afraid.

Later am hanging around waiting for vote on the Lottery Bill second reading – when the debate fizzles out and there is no vote that night so can go home around 8.30pm – early night!