CentreRight

By Nigel Evans MP

Jack Straw’s recent comments on why he wants PR have left me somewhat stunned.

I’ve been the MP for the Ribble Valley (next door to his Blackburn constituency) for 18 years and not once have I heard Jack Straw flying the flag for proportional representation. He tells us his conversion has been brought about because of the expenses scandal. What utter tosh.

He argues unrest with the expenses scandal means we need electoral reform which will miraculously stop abuses of a squalid expenses system.

If there is something wrong with the expenses system then radical reform of that system is necessary, but this has nothing to do with how we vote. (It might influence the way that we vote or indeed if we vote at all.)

By Nigel Evans MP, who was until recently a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee

There is nothing like waking up to the Today programme to listen to John Humphrys berating some Government Minister for flagrant spending, or Jim Naughtie sticking the boot in on excessive banking pay and bonuses. It sort of makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.

The one area that they constantly overlook is their own pay. The BBC creams over £3,500,000,000 from telly watchers in licence fees. We have no choice to pay. If you have a receiver you must pay the tax. Currently it is £142.50, and rising.

The BBC is a national institution and makes some terribly good programmes (7 Ages of Britain for example). Its news coverage is second to none with its news web page the default page for many surfers.

I don’t come to bury the BBC, but I do want to see radical changes which will make it more accountable, and less predatory.

The Director General earns £816,000 whilst his deputy rakes in £513,000. The Director of BBC Vision bagged £536,000 whilst 382 staff raked in more than £100,000. (A quarter of them were on more than £160,000 and 58 managed to snaffle more than the PM).

By Nigel Evans MP

I am pleased to see that progress is being made to allow Members of Parliament to question Government Ministers who sit in the House of Lords, including Lord Mandelson. It is high time that the Executive was completely answerable to the elected Legislative.

At the moment, plans are afoot to allow MPs to grill Ministerial Lords in Westminster Hall. However I, like Speaker Bercow, would like to see this go further and for this to occur in the chamber of the House of Commons. The chamber off Westminster Hall is small for a start and also plays second fiddle to the main chamber. The Executive must be accountable to Members of Parliament and I believe that this will, in my opinion, enhance our democratic process.

Which brings me to another historic moment that I believe is a good thing for British politics. I am the Honorary President of the British Youth Council and on 30th October 2009, the UK Youth Parliament will sit and debate in the House of Commons. This is the first time that anybody other than MPs will have debated in that chamber. Such a move makes our parliamentary process more accessible and more tangible. It is a good thing that young people who are interested in politics will be afforded this opportunity.

The House of Commons is the people’s chamber not the MPs’ chamber. To that end, I would also like to see visiting Heads of State address both Parliament and the country in the House of Commons. I once saw Peter Kilfoyle MP address the Colombian Parliament from within, whilst the rest of our delegation also sat in. It was a tremendous courtesy despite the fact that Peter has never been described as a Head of State! Imagine the focus of attention should President Obama visit and address the UK and MPs from in front of the Speaker’s chair.

These ideas should not be seen as debasing Parliament. In a letter that I have sent to Speaker Bercow I have expressed my opinion that such changes would enhance the role that the House of Commons has to play in the political life in our country. Other people may have different views as to how to widen our democracy but I am glad that we have got the ball rolling.

By Nigel Evans MP

I had been involved in Conservative Party politics for ten years when, as a very green but uber-enthusiastic supporter of Margaret Thatcher and as a twenty six year old shopkeeper from Swansea, headed towards Brighton for our Party conference.

Little did I know what horror was about to unfurl at the main Party hotel, the Grand, during the conference. Twenty five years on, Norman Tebbit and his wheelchair-bound wife, Margaret, head back to the scene of that infamous terrorist attack to unveil a plaque in memory of the five murders and thirty four injuries. I meanwhile was lucky to escape unharmed.

For non-aficionados of Party conferences the main hotels are jam packed from 7pm on any given conference day until the early hours. I was at a table with my fellow Welsh Tories discussing what we had got up to that day and whether a teacher colleague of mine should put in to speak at the education debate which was taking place on the last day.

You could hardly hear yourself talk as people mingled in the bar area, moved around the hotel lounge, or shouted goodbye to old friends for another year as they headed towards the door.

At 2.54am I was facing towards the hotel window not far from the bar. I heard a muffled thud, saw glass sprinkling from the heavens (I thought it was water), and then a rather loud explosion, rumbling and the lights went out.

“Get down it’s a bomb,” shouted a journalist who had experienced the noise before when covering Vietnam. It was good advice. I was already on the floor and thinking to myself that I should keep down as another bomb might well have been planted.

What to do when you are faced by a Government that doesn’t understand simple rules of economics and borrows to fund grandiose and expensive public and ideological expenditure... well the Lib Dems’ answer is to introduce new taxes to fund even more spending.

Their new idea to take 4 million people out of taxation is to introduce a new tax on the value of homes over £1 million. Genius! (Irony).

So let’s have a look at the intended and unintended consequences of this little bombshell.

The intended consequence is to introduce a new stealth tax on big homes. It is intended to serve as an indicator that the lovely Lib Dems (irony again) want to help the poor and fleece the so called wealthy.

The unintended consequence is that the value of people’s homes is to be taxed when no capital value has been realised. All sorts of homes in the South East and elsewhere find themselves falling into this bracket because that is the way property prices have soared.

Many elderly widows or widowers find themselves already being squeezed by council tax and have to find thousands to fund huge local government spending. Now they would have the home upfront revenue tax (or hurt for short) to find.

There would be more regular valuations and more bureaucracy to meet. People would be penalised for improving their homes or putting on extensions or conservatories and the view from your home would be put at a premium.

The value of the house is only worth something when the house is sold or rented. Those with inherited properties often find themselves asset rich but income poor and many would be forced to sell the family home.

The real solution is to properly grapple and attack the spend, spend, spend mentality that has got us into this problem in the first place. David Cameron is going to tackle the problem from the right end. No politics of envy, just the politics of equilibrium.

Think of the fun the Lib Dems could have in taxing all sorts of other things with any value in it …like the value of your car, the value of your holidays, the value of the contents of the home… oh, the list is endless, and so is the capacity of the Lib Dems to spend our money.

By Nigel Evans MP

Today I met with several farmers from the Ribble Valley who expertly updated me on the state of farming in our area… and it is pretty tough.

It’s bad enough trying to make ends meet with the job itself, but then the dead hand of Brussels and London interfere to make it worse. More expensive regulations are seen as the answer to almost everything, but these new regulations like the nitrate vulnerable zones, could mean farmers going to the wall in greater numbers than the 2 a day presently.

Like a lot of these measures they start from good intentions, but the unintended consequences are dire.

It’s almost as if our political masters sat down and said what actions can we take that could bring a vital and historically important industry to its knees…..and then served up what has befallen them for the past few generations.

Farmers are also caught in the headlights of the immense supermarkets and food processors. Farmers do all the essential work but in return are denied a fair whack for their work.

Milk is an excellent example. We import the stuff into the UK but could produce much more of our own. Many farmers are receiving less than the cost of production for their milk. They are even facing enormous amounts of imports of cheese from Ireland and other countries.

When I was last in a supermarket I noticed “fairtrade” coffee and “fairtrade” tea or bananas from developing countries but no “fairtrade” on the one basic dietary item that is turning many of our dairy farmers into a development status all of their own.

What is happening is an exodus of dairy farmers from the land, followed by the refusal of new young entrants to come anywhere near an udder. The UK is now in the midst of a 40-year low on the production of milk. If the trend continues this will have a disastrous impact on our countryside and the rural way of life. It will rob urban dwellers of their Sunday jaunts to remote and pretty villages made alive by a living and working farming industry.

There are many other problems that are berating the industry from electronic IDs for sheep to passports for cows, and from missing ear tags on animals that could cost the farmer dear, to feed stuffs rocketing - along with fertiliser prices going through the roof.

Sheep production is dropping at the rate of 3% a year, begging the rarely asked question over food security. People look at over laden shelves creaking under the weight of boundless supplies of food without ever asking the question: what would happen if something dramatic happened which simply dried up supplies? Turning to farmers to step into the fray would be somewhat ambitious as most of them would have shuffled themselves off to more lucrative employment… perhaps in a quango.

The current system is failing them and consequently will fail us. Now is the time to ask what swift action is needed to breath new life into farming?

I am a mighty defender of the free market, but in this case the free market means the freedom for one group on one side of the equation to dominate the others. The cost structure and regulatory burden is simply mind blowing.

Maybe, just maybe, we should try something different.

By Nigel Evans MP

Last Saturday I stood on the fifth floor of a building three miles from lauch pad 39a at the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. It was almost midnight. I could clearly witness the illuminated space shuttle Discovery through a clear, warm evening.

Sitting within the belly of the shuttle were seven astronauts, including my friend, Nicole Stott. At one minute to midnight, she, and six other crew members, majestically thundered into the sky. It was powerful and awesome... and not without considerable dangers.

Few people will ever forget the disintegration of the shuttle Challenger in 1986. Seven astronauts perished that day. Seventeen years later Columbia’s seven astronauts perished on its way back.

It was a heart-stopping moment to witness and feel the vibrating roar and crackle of the biggest firework show on earth, but with seven frontiersmen and women strapped on board the appropriately named Discovery STS 128.

Their destination was the international space station. This giant meccano set orbiting our earth almost sixteen times a day was started in 1998 and will be completed in two years' time (eight years late… and well over budget at $100 billion).

I cannot but be excited by the achievement of erecting this most mobile of mobile homes 220 miles above my head. The privileged crew get to see a sunrise and sunset every 92 minutes. Jet lag takes on a whole new meaning in space.

So does going to the toilet, eating, sleeping, writing, exercising, moving, er... well just about everything involves thinking and floating out of the box.

On my return to the UK, my excitement was hardly contained as I shared my experiences and thoughts with anyone too slow to escape my mouth. It was as if I had just returned from Mars myself.

My meetings with NASA officials and astronauts had inspired my brain into thinking that what we are taking all too much for granted is nothing short of miraculous. A miracle made possible due to the enormous drive, imagination and deep pockets of the USA.