Chris Whiteside's Blog

Jonathan Isaby at Conservative Home has an interesting article here about the current betting odds at Ladbrokes on constituency results at the coming election.

Ladbrokes have posted their betting odds for fifteen markets on the General Election here, including both total numbers of seats and odds for every constituency on the UK mainland.

Their odds effectively predict a Conservative majority of 33 and Jonathan has gone through the individual seats to see which party is the favourite in each and hence which seats are part of the projected 132 gains for a 33 majority. (The figure of 132 gains does not include a few which the Conservatives are already projected to have won as a result of boundary changes, but it does include Crewe & Nantwich and Norwich North which have been won in by-elections and which it would be a gain relative to the last election to hold.

In Cumbria Ladbrokes projects three Conservative gains from Labour which are (surprise, surprise)

Barrow & Furness
Carlisle
Copeland

They also have Workington as one of just three seats nationally which the betting markets regard as "too close to call between the Conservatives and Labour."

Frankly I think all four of these seats are going to be close. In all four, we had more votes than Labour in last year's county council election. Being ahead in local elections does not guarantee general election success, but is a reasonable indication, especially if you are more than 10% ahead and are taking council seats from your main rival (which we did in Copeland), that you have a genuine chance of winning.

No election is over until all the votes are counted: my team are taking absolutely nothing for granted. The safest bet of all, so far as the coming General Election battles in Cumbria are concerned, is that some of the election results in the county are going to be close.

Home Housing have withdrawn the consultation on proposals to charge tenants of Copeland Homes a "service charge" for gardening etc, following strong opposition from tenants and councillors. The charges will not ge ahead for now.

However, they have reserved the right to consult again on a similar proposal later in the year, so ths issue may rear its head again in the summer.

Residents of Whitehaven could be forgiven a sense of Deja Vue as Inkerman Terrace is closed again at the bottom end. (That is, the bottom of the hill, e.g. the Town Centre end.)

This time there is a diversion in place through Midgey for traffic heading to the A595.

The courts should and will decide whether the three Labour MPs and one Conservative Peer who are to be prosecuted over their expenses are innocent or guilty.

It is absolutely clear that the system of parliamentary expenses needs radical reform, and that some MPs have abused a lax system: they should be treated the same way that anyone else who behaved similarly would be.

That includes the presumption that any individual is innocent until proven guilty. British law is built on that principle - however much some politicians have been trying to undermine it - and it should apply whether the accused is an MP or a dustman.

Of course, it is highly ironic that a former minister in the present government, and two backbenchers who supported it, should rely on the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty when this government has not exactly been the strongest defender of that principle for others. That doesn't make the principle wrong.

One thing which nobody should be able to do is claim parliamentary privilege. That privilege is there to allow MPs to say what they think is true without being sued and to protect the privacy of constituents who have written to an MP. It is not there to protect any public servant, of whatever grade or party, from investigation of material evidence that he or she has been stealing from the taxpayer.

The MP for Copeland asked what looked like a planted question at Prime Minister's Question Time today. Both question and answer were misleading.

The question began with the statement that the Prime Minister is the only leader of a British political party who supports Nuclear New Build.

This is not true - David Cameron has said that he sees nuclear new build as having a role to play within a balanced energy policy.

The Prime Minister's reply started well, saying that he hopes all parties will support nuclear new build. Thus far I agreed with him.

But then he quoted the time - eight minutes past twelve - and suggested that as he understands it the current Conservative policy is that nuclear new build is a last resort.

That isn't the current policy - that form of words was dropped three or four years ago. Shadow Secretary of State Greg Clark has made clear that we want to see new nuclear build.

And incidentally, though the question looked like a plant the Prime Minister didn't even answer it. He responded to the point scoring which came before the question but his answer did not contain any specific mention of changes to the planning system, which the actual question was nominally about.

This sort of casual distortion of the policies of the Opposition in support of childish party-political knockabout is not in the interests of the nuclear industry or of employment in Copeland. If you want to encourage investment in nuclear new build you will not help to get it by undermining the pro-nuclear consensus.

Some people will discount Clare Short's evidence to the Chilcott Inquiry because she has long been an opponent of Tony Blair.

Personally I disagree with Clare Short on a great many things, but at the end of the day, even if the timing of her resignation reduced its' impact, she did eventually give up a seat in cabinet because she strongly disagreed with the way the Iraq war was handled. Her explanation of why deserves to be listened to.

There are several number of contenders for the most damning bits of evidence so far given to the Chilcott Inquiry.

One would be Tony Blair's response to a question about the battlefield, short-range weapons which were referred to in the original intelligence source which suggested that Saddam could deploy weapons in 45 minutes. Short-range battlefield weapons are not usually referred to as Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Blair was asked if he understood the distinction and replied “I did not focus on it a great deal at the time”.

As John Rentoul points out, It is hard to imagine Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Clem Attlee, John Major or Jim Callaghan presented with anything like the 45 minute claim, and not asking questions like

“What’s this? What do we mean by it? Yes, but what kind of weapons? Where could they hit?”

Instead Blair, on his own admission, did not focus on such details. He should have.


But perhaps even more damning as an indictment of the way Britain's entry into the war was mismanaged came from Sir Michael Wood, principal legal adviser to the Foreign Office, who thought that going to war wtih Iraq on the information Britain had at the time was illegal.

He told the inquiry that someone at No 10 had asked, "Why has this been put in writing?", when he submitted a paper on the consequences of invading Iraq without legal approval.

That is not a question which someone who wanted to take the right decision should have asked.

The "Cumbrian Patriots" blog which is run by the BNP candidate for Copeland has had an article up for the past couple of days poking fun at a UKIP candidate who failed to spell the word "Britain" correctly.

Unfortunately for the BNP their item pointing out that UKIP can't spell came quickly on the heels of items which demonstrate that the BNP can't add up.

Just underneath the scan of UKIP with the wrong spelling, was a scan of a BNP leaflet which includes a quote attributed to their party's national chairman about how well they supposedly did in Copeland. A couple of posts before that the BNP candidate himself made a claim about the share of the vote which the BNP received in Copeland in last year's elections.

These claims are contradictory, and they're both wrong.

Griffin (or whoever drafted the statement which appears under his name) claims that the BNP got

"An incredible 19% share of the vote across the whole of the Borough of Copeland"

I suppose that is incredible in the literal sense that you can't believe it - because it isn't true.

Jefferson, by contrast, refers to "the rock solid 17%+ we received right across the Borough."

Not as far out as his national chairman, but still wrong.

In the European elections, the BNP polled 2572 of the 20275 votes cast in the Borough of Copeland, which is just under 12.7% - to put that in context that is less than half the votes polled by the Conservatives or Labour, and the BNP came in fourth behind those parties and their least favourite party, UKIP.

They did a couple of points better in the county elections, but didn't reach 17% let alone 19%.

Pete Whitehead estimated on the Vote UK Discussion Forum that the BNP got about 13.4% of the votes cast in the Copeland Constituency during the county elections. It's impossible to prove or disprove that because two county divisions are split between Workington and Copeland.

In the thirteen county divisions wholly within the Copeland constituency, the BNP polled 14.2% of the vote. In the twelve within Copeland Borough they polled 3250 votes out of 20593 which is 15.8% of the vote. That is some way short of a "rock solid 17+%."

I'm sure the BNP would prefer if the coming parliamentary election in Copeland were fought on the Borough boundaries - I'm sure Jamie Reed would too. But it won't be.

One of the funniest scenes in the Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister series was when Whitehall Mandarin Sir Humphrey demonstrates to Bernard, the minister's private secretary, how to make opinion polls give the result you want.

First he asks Bernard a series of questions to which most people would reply in the affirmative and which lead as a logical conclusion to support for the reintroduction of National Service. Then Sir Humphrey asks a contrasting series of questions, again to which most people would give positive replies, but this time logically leading towards the rejection of the same policy.

At the end of the first series of questions, Sir Humphrey asks Bernard "Would you support the re-introduction of compulsory National Service" and gets the reply "Yes."

At the end of the second series of questions he asks "Would you oppose the re-introduction of compulsory National Service" and a visibly astonished Bernard finds himself replying "Yes."

(A superb bit of scriptwriting and magnificent acting, BTW.)

Both Political Betting and Anthony Wells make justified criticisms this morning of the opinion poll question the Independent commissioned from ComRes and used to justify the front page subheading "Vote of No Confidence in Tory Economic Policies."

This conclusion seems to have been based on the reply to a question about whether respondents agreed that “Mr Cameron should be clearer over what he would do about the economy”

As Anthony Wells put it,

'The Indy have put this as a subheading on their front page, but frankly it’s a fairly pointless question. A good sign of a decent question is whether anyone can really agree with the opposite – and how many normal people would say “I think David Cameron should be much vaguer and less clear about his plans for the economy”?'

And as Mike Smithson says

'To anybody but the Indy’s headline writer “Being clearer” is a million miles away from “Vote of No Confidence.”'

Quite.

The headline on the front page of today's Sunday Times screams

"Gordon Brown: I will go on and on."

The story behind the quote, which you can read here, is that the Prime Minister has told colleagues he will refuse to quit as Leader of the Labour party after the general election unless that election results in a Conservative majority of more than 20 seats.

So Brown is effectively telling any voter who wants to see a change in the leadership of the Labour party that the only way to make certain of this is for the Conservatives to win a healthy majority.

This may be even less helpful to Labour than Margaret Thatcher's "I hope to go on and on" remark was to her - at least Mrs T had won three elections when she said it.

It is often said that "All political careers end in failure" and knowing when to step down is one of the most difficult decisions for any political leader. In my lifetime the only Prime Minister who went at a time of his own choosing was Sir Harold Wilson and the only Conservative leader in the past forty years who managed his departure successfully was Michael Howard.

As the saying goes, those who learn nothing from history are doomed to repeat it.

There are decent people in all political parties and, unfortunately, some who are less so.

I would like to see a clean campaign at the General Election - by which I don't mean that nobody should criticise their opponents but I do mean don't tell lies about them, or indulge in gratuitous personal comments about their private lives. Judging by events to date that is likely to be a vain hope.

However, just occasionally the worst offenders get caught. Frightening vulnerable groups such as pensioners and patients with scare stories of possible cuts is a low and wicked tactic if the person spreading the tales knows them to be false. I was not exactly pleased to read this story on Guido's blog of someone who was caught red-handed planting such a story. But I was certainly pleased that he didn't get away with this dirty trick.

Liberal Democrat activist Dan Falchikov was foolish enough to boast into his mobile phone while on the train about how he stirred up a rumour that had been picked up by the press about "secret Labour plans" for the closure of Kingston Hospital. Mr Falchikov did not realise he was sitting opposite the Mirror’s Kevin Maguire.

This sort of tactic is wrong had he been Liberal, Tory, or Labour. Let's hope his getting found out makes others who might have tried such things think again.

Spent this morning on the doorstep talking to voters in the village of Cleator.

A lot of people were out, but of those we managed to catch it was interesting that the same themes were emerging from conversations with people with very diverse backgrounds and general views.

The message was that government at all levels needs to concentrate more about the basics which affect people's everyday lives - roads, trains and transport, refuse collection, local health services, local planning decisions, flooding. We were given examples of how Central Government and the County and Borough councils should be employing common sense rather than a "tick-in-the-box" mentality to sort out these services, and told that funding should go on front-line services rather than overheads, bureaucracy, and politicians' salaries and expenses.

I'm grateful to all those who spent time talking with us and those who returned survey forms. They gave us the benefit of a lot of good sense.

Local and national leaders ignore messages like this one at their peril.

According to the "Politics Home" site, Jacqui Smith has told the ‘Straight Talk with Andrew Neil’ programme, that she is more likely than not to lose her seat at the coming election.

The progamme is due to be broadcast this weekend. You can read the Politics Home report "here".

I have been contacted by the All Party Parliamentary Group against human trafficking. They make a number of very strong arguments about the need to do more to protect the victims of this vile practice.

Two hundred and three years ago the House of Commons first voted to eliminate the slave trade. Three years ago Copeland council was one of those who marked that historic anniversary. The Royal Navy of this country hunted down and stopped the slavers. But a modern form of slavery has returned, and needs to be stamped out.

The All Party Group's proposals, which I believe have a lot of merit, are


1. Establishing a UK National Anti-Slavery Day.

2. National Watchdog to coordinate all info and statistics from statutory and voluntary sectors and report to parliament once a year.

3. Proactive and dedicated Police Force on Human Trafficking - Pentameter initiatives should be automatic every year in every police force.

4. National Referrals Mechanism (NRM) to be administered by both government and non-government agencies.

5. National Network of Shelters for women and children victims of trafficking whatever their age. At the moment children go into local authority homes. These are not secure. The children may be located by traffickers, persuaded to leave the home and then re-trafficked.

6. Change in visa arrangements so that domestics brought into the UK to work for foreign embassy officials are free to seek other domestic work and not forced to return home.

7. An enhanced Guardian Ad Litem system for trafficked children. Someone specifically deputed to help them through the legal labyrinth and support them in form filling and other administrative tasks. There is already an extensively developed system for UK children but there is nothing for trafficked children.

8. Work Permits and Identity cards for victims of trafficking whilst they are resident in the UK. Giving victims the ability to work in the UK would encourage them to give evidence against traffickers without fear of being returned to the source country where they would be vulnerable to being re-trafficked.

This blog will be five years old in just under a month, making it one of the longest running political blogs, and far and away the longest running in Copeland. As I believe in genuine debate, I am pleased to see competition in ideas, and so I welcome the newest political blog in Copeland, which was set up three days ago by local MP Jamie Reed.

The "About" section of Jamie's blog currently (28th January) reads as follows:

"As soon as I can be bothered and time allows, I’ll put my details here. Anyway, I’m an MP…"

Jamie's second post, "The Weirdness" is about the groundrules for his blog, and here are some extracts:

"As political websites are often havens for the criminally insane, we need to lay down a few ground rules."

"Opinions and comment are both welcome of course, but there’s a weirdness/litigation/mental health threshold which I won’t allow comments to cross.

With this in mind, I’m off to enlist the help of a team of clinical psychologists to help me develop an editorial policy.

My house, my rules."



Now I would be the first to agree that it is up to the person running a blog what comments he or she accepts, and if someone wants to allow only comments from their own party, or which they agree with, that is their prerogative. Personally I find those blogs which allow people who disagree with them to post things to be more interesting to read.

Certainly all the top blogs - such as Political Betting, Iain Dale, Conservative Home, and yes, Jamie's friend and colleague Tom Harris MP - would be infinitely less readable without the wide range of people who comment on them.

Which is why I've allowed several councillors and activists from other parties (including Labour), and local residents who don't much like any party, to post things on this blog which are highly critical of myself, my team, or my views as long as they word their comments in a way which does not create a risk of legal action and is not grossly offensive.

There are now three blogs run by parliamentary candidates in Copeland, but it remains to be seen whether either of the others will permit the expression of a similar range of views and the omens are not good. One person who was recently selected as his party's PPC to stand against myself and Jamie has been blogging for 18 months or so, but I have rarely if ever seen anything critical in the comments on his blog.

And it would appear that when Jamie says "My house, my rules" he means that his opponents don't need to waste their time posting even friendly comments.

The day after Jamie set up his blog I posted a comment (under my real name, of course) along the lines of

"A friendly bipartisan welcome to the newest political blog in Copeland from the oldest one."

Life is far too short for me to get particularly worked up about the fact that Jamie or one of his staff blocked it. But if he's scared of comments like that, he's not going to get much real debate on his blog.

David Cameron has spoken of the pressing need to tackle the enormous debt which Britain is accumulating.

The UK was one of the first economies to go into recession, and is now the last big economy to come out - new figures are expected to show the first signs of economic growth after eighteen months of recession.

"Obviously this will be very good news, but let’s be absolutely clear what this means", Cameron said at his monthly press conference.

"Coming out of recession doesn’t mean that our debt crisis is over - far from it. Labour’s debt crisis is the biggest threat to our recovery. So we’ll only get this recovery right if we start right now on a proper debt reduction plan."

In highlighting the need to "get a grip of our debt crisis", Cameron used the analogy of a credit card: "the more we spend and the longer we wait to pay off our bills, the worse it can get".

He said that the Government’s promise to halve the deficit in four years has failed to convince all those who we need to have confidence in Britain’s economic future.

"A key part of any plan is at least some early action to show that you are serious in your intent. That means some reduction in public spending plans in this coming financial year."

"It is time they realised that it’s time to do the right thing", Cameron added.

Anyone who is still considering casting their vote for Labour should read this article in the Daily Mail by former lifelong Labour voter (and former editor of the Daily Mirror) Mike Molloy.

It's called "It would break my dad's heart but I'm voting Tory" and in the article Mike Molloy explains how he came to be completely disillusioned with the present Labour government.

This is not someone who was a fair-weather friend to the Labour party and has lightly changed his vote for the coming election. He writes


"I was brought up to believe the Labour Party was the best hope for ordinary people to make a better life.

The men I was taught to revere - Clem Attlee, Stafford Cripps, Ernie Bevin and Herbert Morrison - were people of the finest moral values who put their crusade for a fairer society before personal advancement."

But the article explains why he has come to the view that today's Labour government does not stand up for these values:

"Today, the hierarchy of New Labour has no such scruples; they shift and slide like desert sands depending on how the wind blows.

So I can only hope that my ancestors would understand when I vote Conservative at the next election. It was the hardest decision I have ever made.

Even though my disillusion began halfway through New Labour's second term, until recently I still could not think of myself as a Tory voter.

There was no instant conversion, just a gradual slide into complete despair at what has become of the Labour Party I love.

When New Labour came to power, I was confident they would change Britain for the better. Well, we all know how wrong I was."

The article concludes:

"The truth is that Old Labour principles of fairness and equality and support for the working classes seem to have evaporated under this Government.
Also, personal integrity among its senior politicians no longer seems to exist.

On the one hand, we have a former Labour leader in Tony Blair who disgracefully left politics as soon as he was out of favour, to make millions of pounds on the consultancy circuit as a result of his slavish devotion to George Bush and the war in Iraq.

On the other hand, we have Gordon Brown spending public money with the pathological calculation of the gambling addict who has bet everything on a last desperate attempt to win the coming election.

My decision to break with Labour would almost certainly break my father's heart.

But I hope he would understand - as all of us do - that the experiment with New Labour has ended in catastrophe and that this Government has wasted money like no other in history.

So I shall vote Conservative for the first time in my life.

And if David Cameron can lead a government that strips out the lies and slithery self-delusion that has characterised the performance of so many of New Labour's leading political figures of the past 13 years, then he might keep my vote."

Today, the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz/Birkenau murder camp, is Holocaust Memorial Day.

It is a day when we should remember both the depths of horror to which human beings can descend, and did descend during the Holocaust, and the heights which were reached by those who tried to rescue the victims of Nazi mass murder, sometimes losing everything in the process.

It is a day when we should remember the victims of all genocides, whether Jewish or Armenian, Serb or Croat, whether native American or African, whether Christian or Muslim or of any other religion, whether they came from Berlin, Rwanda or Nanking.

The oldest record of genocide I have recently read was contained in Thucydides "History of the Peleponessian war" while the most recent concerned events this year in the Sudan. Those who forget or deny the sort of mass murder which has happened far too often in human history have made the first step which can lead to such crimes happening again.

That's why we must never forget the Holocaust.

In the words of the famous poem, believed to have first been used by Pastor Martin Niemöller in a speech in 1946:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out.

Yesterday's new figures show the first signs of economic growth after 18 months of recession – the longest and deepest since the war.

Of course, the end of the Great Recession is good news – even though we were one of the first big economies into recession, and the last out. Now we are coming out of recession, Labour’s Debt Crisis is the biggest threat to our recovery. As the Director-General of the CBI said in The Times yesterday, ‘one of the troubles with the Government’s programme [of debt reduction] is that it’s long on aspirations and short on details, and it’s stretched out over the lifetime of two whole Parliaments.’

We can’t go on like this. We need change and a Conservative government to get a grip on our debt crisis. As any family with a credit card knows, the more we spend and the longer we wait to pay off our bills, the worse it gets.



Five facts about Labour’s Debt Crisis

· We’re borrowing money at a rate of nearly £6,000 every second - every five seconds, the Government borrows more than the average British person earns in a year.

· This year, we’re expected to borrow almost 14 per cent of our GDP – almost twice as much as when we nearly went bust in the 1970s.

· We’re spending more money on the interest on our debt than on almost anything else.

· We have the biggest budget deficit of any large economy.

· Last week, we had the worst public borrowing figures for any December on record.

Hat tip to Political Betting for pointing out this article in the current issue of The Economist about the bout of inflation Britain is suffering.

The article discusses how long-lived that bout of inflation is likely to be, but concludes

"Special pleading about temporary factors will count for little at the general election likely in May. The bungee-jump in prices gives electors another reason to vent their anger on Gordon Brown for the economic disaster over which he has presided."

By raising standards, improving discipline, increasing choice, and getting the best people into teaching, we will make sure that the poorest children get the best education, not the worst.

Last week the Conservatives announced plans to fast-track professionals into teaching to ensure the best possible teachers are in the classroom. It’s time we made our teaching the best. That’s why we’re committed to a comprehensive programme of reform to elevate the status of teaching in our country. We want to make it the noble profession – the career path that attracts the best brains, is well-rewarded and commands the most respect.

We will:

· raise the entry requirement for taxpayer-funded primary school teacher training from a C grade in English and Maths GCSE to a B;

· require graduates to have at least a 2:2 in their degree in order to qualify for state-funded training;

· pay the student loan repayments for top maths and science graduates for as long as they remain teachers;

· expand Teach First and introduce two new programmes – Teach Now and Troops to Teachers – to get experienced, high-quality people into the profession;

· give all headteachers the power to pay good teachers more.

I'm advised by a colleague who was there that the DECC Public Consultation meeting about the proposal to include Kirksanton as a possible site for nuclear new build yesterday morning was very well attended. About 350 people packed into Millom School hall. The meeting started at 10am and finished at about 1.20pm.

Most of the people there were from Kirksanton and Silecroft and they were strongly opposed to the inclusion of this site.

Issues raised included cooling water, infrastructure, and the fact that the proposal would require HM Prison Haverigg to be moved.

Dominic Lawson has a powerful article in today's Sunday Times called

Banning the burqa is simply not British

in which he criticises the badly-thought-through UKIP proposals to ban the burqa.

There are clearly some circumstances and jobs in which security, public safety, or the operational requirements of the job make it necessary for people to be willing to show their face - when producing a passport to prove your identity before getting on a plane, for instance. Someone who is not willing to show their face cannot expect to be appointed to one of those jobs or to access a service for which public safety would require an identity check.

This requirement is not racist or religious discrimination, and should apply to anyone, of any faith or race, whether they are insisting on wearing a burqa, motorcycle helmet, a hood, or a Darth Vader helmet.

But requiring people to show their face when there is a good reason is one thing: a complete ban on wearing a particular garment anywhere in public places or public buildings is another matter entirely.

As Lawson says, this country has evolved a "tolerant approach to open expressions of religious difference, which can be summarised by the phrase 'live and let live'.

"Christians in this country understand this well, which is why a ComRes poll last week reported that 85% of self-described Christians agreed that, whatever your faith, the law should protect the right to wear its symbols, provided they do not harm others."

Exactly.

David Cameron is right to regard cutting the release of carbon into the atmosphere as an important aim for all countries including Britain.

And this is one of two reasons why the overwhelming majority of Conservatives support the need for new nuclear build as part of the mix in a balanced energy policy, since nuclear energy does not depend on burning carbon compounds. (The other, equally valid reason why most Conservatives support new nuclear build as part of the mix is to diversify our sources of energy and thereby increase the security of supply.)

It is very easy - far too easy - to point to the severe winter we are having, and recent well publicised and irresponsible behaviour by some of the academic high priests of climate change, fall about laughing at the idea of man-made global warming, and forget about the issue.

Easy, but wrong.

Ignoring the evidence for harm caused by man-made carbon release would be most unwise.

The earth's biosphere is a fantastically complex system, far too much so for any wise person to be as certain that we understand it as the hardliners on either extreme of the climate change debate would have you believe. And since any wise person would admit that we don't fully understand it, and the consequences of major changes in the world's climate could be very serious indeed, the precautionary principle should warn us that we should seek to minimise our impact on the earth's climate until and unless we have a much better idea of what the effects of our actions should be.

The large majority of scientists who have studied the evidence say that it suggests a 90% probability that human activity has contributed to climate change. That is short of the lowest threshold - 95% - which statisticians usually require before concluding that a particular test has given a clear result. So we cannot regard the debate as settled and it is not just undemocratic but irresponsible to label the minority who disagree as "climate change denialists" and treat them like people who deny the historical truth of Hitler's holocaust.

But 90% evidence in favour of the hypothesis that carbon release is causing effects which could cause enormous harm is far too strong for us to take the risk of not doing anything about it.

Global Warming is far from being the only harmful form of climate change, nor necessarily the worst, and is certainly not the form which there is strongest evidence that human-driven release of carbon is causing. That is the acidification of the oceans.

Scientists noticed some years ago that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was not going up as fast as known release of carbon would, other things being equal, have caused. Something was acting as a "carbon sink" and removing some of the carbon we are releasing.

One of these "carbon sinks" turns out to be the world's oceans. There is conclusive evidence that they are indeed absorbing some of that carbon. But this is not good news, because the absorbtion of carbon dioxide by sea water produces acid. And over the past half century the earth's seas and oceans have become measurably more acid as a result.

This has not yet had disastrous effects. But if it continues, it will. If the seas become significantly more acid, there will come a point when all vertebrate sea creatures and molluscs will be unable to extract the calcium they need to build their skeletons and shells, so they will die out. Should this process continue, everything in the seas will die, including the algae which photosynthesize a large proportion of the world's oxygen.

The consequence for many areas of the world if we kill all life in the sea would be devastating. It must not be allowed to happen.

So even if global warming turned out to be a complete myth - and the majority evidence does not support this view - it would still be important to curb the release of carbon.

This week the Conservatives are focusing on our party’s central task: to mend our broken society. The crime, the disorder, the drug addiction, the alcohol abuse, the family breakdown, the entrenched poverty, the educational failure, the sink estates – we can’t go on like this. We need change to put our country back on its feet.

To mend our broken society, four areas of policy will be subject to our unremitting focus: fixing the criminal justice system, school reform, strengthening families and stimulating social action in our communities.

On Monday, we published our plans for school reform. Yesterday, we published our plans to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour. Today, we are publishing our proposals to make Britain more family friendly.

We can’t go on ignoring the importance of strong families. They provide the stability, warmth and love we need to flourish as human beings, and the relationships they foster are the bedrock on which society is built. But under Labour, Britain is one of the least family-friendly countries in the developed world. They have ignored families for 12 years, and even today they have no new ideas for how to support families. Their one headline today – greater rights for grandparents – was first suggested by David Willetts at our Party Conference.

This will change with a Conservative government – Britain’s families will get our full backing. A Conservative government will:


· end Labour’s couple penalty in the tax credit system;

· recognise marriage and civil partnerships in the tax system in the next Parliament;

· take Sure Start back to its original purpose of early intervention, increase its focus on the neediest families and better involve organisations with a track record in supporting families;

· provide 4,200 more health visitors to give all parents a guaranteed level of support before and after birth until their child starts school;

· extend the right to request flexible working to every parent with a child under the age of eighteen, and introduce a new system of flexible parental leave which lets parents share maternity leave.

For more information, or to view the families section of our draft manifesto, please click here.

I have had my differences with Sunderland South MP Chris Mullin (Labour), but he has an excellent piece in today's Times here with advice for parliamentary candidates.

Extracts from the article:

"Make good use of the chamber. Which means listening as well as speaking. Only make a speech when you have something to say. A succinct intervention in a ministerial speech, delivered in prime time, is often far more effective than a speech delivered to a chamber that is all but empty. Don’t waste time scoring cheap points."

"Be warned. There is a good deal of pointless activity in politics. I urge you to minimise it. Do not confuse busy-ness with effectiveness. Above all, do not neglect your family."

"Some colleagues do relatively little in the House and instead spend every waking hour searching out constituents with problems in order to create the illusion of activity. I advise against this. In any case, it makes very little difference as to whether or not you will be re-elected. Remember, one of the main functions of a backbencher is to hold the executive to account. Something we do imperfectly."

"Finally, respect your opponents. Remember, we have the good fortune to live in a mature democracy that, for all its imperfections, is vastly superior to most alternatives. We are not actually trying to kill each other. It is only an election. One side will lose. One side will win. And the loser will live to fight another day."

Hat tip to Iain Dale who drew the article to my attention.

Copeland Borough council's January meeting took place in Whitehaven this afternoon.

This was the least controversial and shortest meeting for some time. Some highlights and lowlights:

1) As mentioned in a previous post, the meeting began on a sad note with a minute's silence in memory of Maggie Chadwick, the chair of NHS Cumbria, who died a few days ago after a short illness.

2) The long-awaited website to keep people in touch with the redevelopment of West Cumberland Hospital has finally been launched. The URL is www.buildingyourhospital.ncuh.nhs.uk.

I asked the leader of the council if it would be worth contacting the NHS Trust to ask if there is anything the council can do to help and support the submission of the final business case, and she agreed to do so.

3) A number of councillors - including myself - have been getting phone calls from Copeland Homes tenants who have been getting letters telling them that they may have to pay a service charge in addition to their rent. The figure quoted in the letter is £2.50 per week (though I have been told that this is only "indicative".)

There is considerable concern among councillors about the way this has been handled. Council representatives on the Copeland Homes Board were not consulted about the proposed charge.

I had already queried this through council officers and it sounds like I was not the only councillor asking questions: it was agreed this afternoon that those inquiries should continue with the weight of the Full Council behind them.

4) I asked about the Sustainable Communities Act, which will be the subject of a separate post.

5) It was noted that Whitehaven Swimming Pool has worked with DCMS and Sport England to obtain £215,000 of funding for improved changing facilities. The plan is to replace the existing and aged single sex changing rooms with unisex facilities. However, unlike the way a certain council of which I used to be a member treated Westminster Lodge swimming pool, there will be consultation with residents and customers before the plans are finalised. This is due to happen this month.

6) Following on from this we asked about the proposed Millom Swimming Pool and asked who is invited to the planned Stakeholder meeting on 5th February.

We were told that this is a closed meeting with the North West Development Agency and that the Leader of the Council would represent Copeland Borough Council.

I was a little concerned about this. The Swimming Pool Project has cross party support in Millom, and the great majority of elected representatives from Millom at Town, District, and County levels are Conservatives - I hope that both parties will be represented in discussions on how to secure funding for the project.

I attended the Millom Neighbourhood Forum at the network centre, Millom School yesterday.

The main item on the agenda was the "Managing Radioactive Waste Safely" (MRWS) process, on which there was a presentation by the leader of Copeland Council and Cllr Keith Hitchin.

Other items discussed included the future of Millom Community Hospital. The timetable for the proposed redevelopment and improvement for the hospital has slipped a bit, and the previous decision that the new services to be provided can best be done on the existing site is being reviewed. Nevertheless the project is still going forward.

There was also a short presentation on the "Together We can" event due to be launched at the March forum and run from 1st to 5th March which will provide an opportunity for the public to put forward ideas to improve public services or the local environment in Millom.

During a presentation on the plans for a swimming pool in Millom, the forum heard that the public consultation had received strong support, that a design is being put forward, and that there will be a stakeholder meeting on 5th February which is intended to move forward the process of obtaining funding.

I was shocked to learn at the start of this afternoon's Copeland Council meeting of the sudden and untimely death of Maggie Chadwick, the chair of NHS Cumbria (formerly Cumbria PCT) who died a few days ago after a short illness.

As a mark of respect the council stood for a minute's silence in her memory.

Before her appointment as chair of NHS Cumbria Maggie had been principal of Furness College.

I will remember Maggie as one of the architects of the change in policy which gave community hospitals in Cumbria a brighter future, and she worked hard and positively to support all forms of healthcare in the county.

Our thoughts are with her family at this said time.

Rest in Peace.