stouravonmagazine.co.uk
12 New Stour & Avon, April 22, 2022
Political round-up
All laws should be subject to scrutiny The Downing Street party penalties are a good example of what happens when laws are made without subjecting them to proper Parliamentary scrutiny. Even the Prime Minister seemed surprised that a short impromptu gathering in the Cabinet Room to celebrate his birthday was in breach of the criminal law. All this would have been avoided if the law of which he, his wife and others at the top of Government have fallen foul had not been enacted without any proper Parliamentary debate. There was no opportunity for the House of Commons to question or amend the detail of the regulations which created new criminal offences. No regulatory impact assessment was carried out, with the predictable result that absurdly disproportionate rules were enacted. As one of the few MPs who consistently voted against the lockdown
regulations, I sincerely hope that the lesson has been learned that never again should the Government bypass Parliament. In this instance the Government and its senior civil servants, truly, have been hoist by their own petard. l Difficulties encountered by MPs in holding the Government to account for its policies and actions do not only apply to legislation.
Are we ‘onshore wind supportive’, Dorset? Because if we are, there might be money off our electricity bills! How much? Not sure. Who gets the discount? Still working that out. How do you measure ‘support’? Erm… It’s this sort of well thought out, long-term thinking that made it in to the long awaited and long delayed Government energy strategy. We are suffering an electricity price crisis in the UK. Onshore wind is the quickest, cheapest way to bring additional generation onto the grid. It is not universally popular, so there is merit in the idea of incentivising local communities to accept it. Meanwhile, new nuclear plants take decades to build.
It may take a decade alone to figure out how to finance them. Whereas onshore wind turbines pay back the investment in six to seven years. We could put them up now, and take them down again once the nuclear plants are built. Along with backing more onshore wind, Labour would insulate 19million homes in a decade to reduce our energy consumption. Real action, now, rather than an abdication of both responsibility and opportunity. l Speaking of abdication of responsibility – what of the migration processing deal with Rwanda? Yes, we have a problem with asylum seekers and economic migrants crossing the Channel illegally and unsafely. Rather than work more closely with the
Christchurch & East Dorset CHRIS CHOPE MP
Health ministers in particular regularly fail to answer Parliamentary questions on time or at all, much to the chagrin of the Speaker. Many of these questions relate to the issue of vaccine damage and what national awareness campaigns are being conducted to alert the public to information from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The MHRA has confirmed that ‘In a minority of cases the risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefits’. Public information is needed to enable individual patients to assess whether their own circumstances and those of their children are such that the risk of having the vaccine outweighs the benefit. A related issue is that of access to the Vaccine Damage Payments Scheme (VDPS) for relatives of those whose deaths have been confirmed by coroners as having been
caused by the vaccines. My campaign on this has struck a chord with many who have suffered suspected severe adverse reactions and I have received many hundreds of letters and emails from across the country supporting my campaign for transparency from the Government and changes to the VDPS. l Let me finish with a ‘good news’ story. I recently visited the Ferndown premises of RCV Engines which manufacture engines for remote controlled vehicles. They are market leaders in this specialist area but were coming up against bureaucratic delays in obtaining export licences for some of their products. This was particularly galling when one of the countries involved was being supplied by a United States competitor without any problem. Following my intervention, this has now been resolved.
We should not be led by a law-breaker
Dorset Labour GREG WILLIAMS French to police the beaches and clamp down on the dingy peddlers, we’ve decided to outsource the problem to Rwanda and the Royal Navy. This is the reality of British foreign policy today. Unable to co-operate with our closest neighbour. Openly mocked by Russia. Devoid of any moral credibility.
Is this any wonder when we are led by someone who, after having lied to Parliament and eventually accepted that he broke the law, remains in office? The argument from Tory MPs that he cannot be removed because of the war in Ukraine is a ghastly misappropriation of that country’s suffering. Someone who obeys the law at home would have more authority in tackling breaches of international law. Britain changed Prime Minister during the First and Second World Wars and four times during the Afghan war. Johnson is not doing a good job at home nor abroad, and war should not be used as a shameful excuse to leave him in office. I’m sure, however, we’ll see that excuse from our local MPs.
