In the Thick of It

Had a meeting today with the Police Minister, Tony McNulty, at the Home Office, to discuss funding for the police Special Branch post at Holyhead.

The Home Office is housed in an ultra-modern building in Marsham Street, about half a mile from the Commons. The entrance is more like that of a luxury hotel than an office block and the upper floors feel like a top-end department store. It is just like the "governing mall" in BBC's "The Thick of It". All is air-conditioned calm, and it’s hard to believe that the Department faces a break-up because, to quote its own Secretary of State, it is unfit for purpose.

Tony McNulty is a combative character on the floor of the House, but today he was very courteous and helpful and promised to look again at the funding question. North Wales Police have had £100,000 cut from their budget for Holyhead, which is the third busiest passenger port in the UK. There is increasing concern that the port is used as a back door for illegal immigrants.

The issue was highlighted last week, when it emerged that police had stopped a van on the A55 expressway and found a number of illegals hidden in the back. They arrested them and then telephoned the Home Office for instructions on how they should deal with them. To their astonishment, they were told to give them a map showing the location of the immigration office in Liverpool and send them on their way.

This is sheer craziness and illustrates the extent to which the Government has lost control of the issue of illegal immigration. This week, David Cameron announced that the Conservatives in government will form a dedicated border police force to deal with the problem. It is a sensible proposal and I was disappointed that Labour’s response was to rubbish it. As if they had any better ideas.

It Really is Good to Talk

Last week’s Unicef report on children’s wellbeing made sombre reading, showing Britain at the bottom of a league table of 21 industrialised nations. Ironically and sadly, it was published in a week when the third fatal shooting of a teenager in South London demonstrated just how bad things can get when the fabric of family life breaks down.

The report’s findings will be analysed for a long time, but already commentators are coming forward with varying theories as to why the UK’s young people experience, both subjectively and objective, the lowest levels of wellbeing – or, put more starkly, the highest levels of unhappiness - in the developed world.

I believe a key pointer to the core of the problem is the section of the report headed “Young People’s Family and Peer Relationships”. Here, the UK, by a very long chalk indeed, achieved the lowest ranking overall.

There is no doubt that the pattern of family life has changed over recent years. Many more children are brought up by single parents, where financial and work pressures are magnified. But even in traditional two-parent households, increasing affluence has brought its own problems. Children often spend hours alone in their bedrooms with their PlayStations; microwave cookery means that families frequently eat their meals apart. People don’t talk to one another as much as they used to.

Whatever the cause of what is unarguably a crisis, it has to be addressed. Government – of whatever political colour – must take the lead. Government policy must encourage family life and the taking of responsibility for one’s own children. Too many children who featured in the Unicef report said that their parents “were not there for them when they needed them” or that they “did not make them feel loved and cared for".

Tellingly, the report also cited a relatively high percentage of young people who did not regularly eat their main meal of the day with their families. The importance of eating together was highlighted to me yesterday evening, when I attended a supper at St Paul’s church hall, Colwyn Bay. The event was hugely over-subscribed and more than 100 people sat down together, to enjoy an excellent meal and entertainment.

Most importantly, we chatted and we laughed; people of at least three generations, from toddlers to octogenarians, in a hubbub that filled the hall. We enjoyed just being together, and for that reason as much as any other, the evening was an enormous success.

Latest from Llanelian Road

Footnote to yesterday's post: the Seagulls drew 1 -1 with Stocksbridge. Still every hope of a place in this season's playoffs!

Blamerbell Briefs: Welsh Tories work hardest in Westminster

Blamerbell Briefs: Welsh Tories work hardest in Westminster

Recessional

The recess has come and gone in a flash. For those who think it’s a holiday, let me assure them that it’s not. This week I have visited farmers, urban businesses, the Environment Agency, a Local Health Board, a local authority chief executive and officials of the Welsh Assembly Government.

Before the week is over, I will see representatives of charities, hold a constituency surgery, attend my Association’s Annual General Meeting and watch Colwyn Bay FC thrash Stocksbridge Park Steels at Llanelian Road (if things go to plan). I will also attend a candlelight supper at St Paul’s Church Hall (bow tie de rigueur). I may even have time to get my hair cut.

Life in the constituency is so different from Westminster that you might as well be on a different planet. That is why recesses are so important. They remind those MPs who might be inclined to forget exactly why they are in Parliament. They put you back in touch with real people who are not obsessing about precisely when Tony Blair will finally go.

I’ll be glad to get back on Monday, because I love life in the House and the adrenaline rush I experience there; but I have had a great week in the constituency and, as always, I’ll be pleased to come home, sometime around 11.00 p.m. on Thursday night.

Nice one, Rodders

I have to admit that I rather like Rhodri Morgan. I know he’s on the other side of the fence and all that, but he contributes immensely to the gaiety of national life. He is one of the few politicians who are known simply by their first names. In that respect, he’s a bit like Maggie, although I’m not sure he would appreciate the comparison. Nor, for that matter, would she.

I have fond memories of Rhodri during my brief sojourn in the Welsh Assembly. First Minister’s Questions were always a surreal experience. Rhodri would deal with whatever googly was bowled at him with a stream of consciousness worthy of Joyce. It never made much sense, but it never seemed to matter.

Yesterday, Rhodri delivered a classic. Asked about the tremendously important issue of global warming, Rhodri replied, “If our climate in Wales is going to be more like Spain's or Southern California's in the summer, then Spain will be more like the Sahara. If that is the kind of climate shift we cannot avoid having by 2050, it will hardly be unhelpful to Wales."

In other words, Rhodri appeared to be saying that global warming was rather a good thing, because people would be eschewing the delights of Hammamet in favour of Porthcawl. It would be a golden opportunity for the Welsh tourist industry.

Needless to say, Rhodri’s response provoked outrage among the great and the good. He was accused of complacency and irresponsibility by an apoplectic spokesman for Friends of the Earth. In fact, he was guilty of neither; he was simply behaving like Rhodri. That is the sort of thing Rhodri Morgan does.

Next May, Rhodri Morgan will cease to be First Minister of Wales, because Labour will lose many seats at the Assembly elections. I know it will be a good thing, because Rhodri and Labour have not done much good for Wales. But, sneakingly, part of me will be a little sorry.

Because Rhodri Morgan is a nice man. In his own way, he has meant well and, from time to time, he has succeeded in entertaining us.

Bordering on the Ridiculous

Today we debated the second reading of the UK Borders Bill, another plank in the raft of Home Office legislation that Parliament will consider this year.

The Bill provides for more powers for immigration officers, approaching those of police officers. What the Bill does not provide for, however, is more immigration officers, without whom the extra powers will be pretty irrelevant.

Holyhead, which is the third busiest passenger port in the UK, has no permanent complement of immigration officers. This puts enormous extra strain on the Special Branch officers stationed there (whose own funding, by the way, has been cut back).

The problem of illegal immigration continues to grow, and this Bill is a rather feeble attempt to address it. We urgently need a dedicated Border police force; most European countries already have one. Until we are provided with one, the powers contained in the Bill will in reality be little more than window-dressing.

Your Time is Up

A pathetically weak and floundering performance by Tony Blair when interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme this morning. He appears to have given up the ghost; the old spark has deserted him.

Blair is now a huge embarrassment, not just to himself and the Labour Party, but to the country as a whole. Why can't he see that it’s time he went?