Rat Sandwich

Edwina Hart, the embattled Welsh health minister, had a warm reception when she visited Llandudno yesterday. According to today’s Daily Post, she was doorstepped by well-known Llandudno resident, Delyth Shotter, who complained that her son, Geoff, was required to travel to Cardiff next month for brain surgery. Mrs Shotter said that she was “really concerned about the distance and the accommodation for his family.”

Mrs Hart, seemingly missing the point, replied that “we need better facilities for families.”

Geoff Shotter’s comment summed up succinctly the concerns of North Wales patients over the neurosurgery issue. He said: “It’s a bind to travel to Cardiff. People in North Wales should be going to Walton... I’d rather have the best service up here than in South Wales.”

Mrs Hart’s tetchy response to the Shotters’ concerns betrayed the pressure she must surely be feeling. She accused critics of “running about like maniacs” and promised to “set up a panel of neurologists to review services.”

This is a bit odd. In early August, I received a letter from Mrs Hart, telling me that she “had asked an expert group to look at the best ways of supporting the provision of an all-Wales planned neurosurgery service”. It would appear from the Daily Post’s report, however, that the group has still not been set up.

Speaking as one of the maniacs, I must express some concern at this. We have already had a report from Health Commission Wales which advised that Swansea be closed. That report has effectively been rubbished. Now Mrs Hart is promising to set up yet another panel of experts to examine the same issue. Why does she think that a new panel of experts will come to any different conclusion from the last one?

Mrs Hart must realise by now that her neurosurgery plan, though no doubt playing brilliantly in her Swansea backyard, has gone down like a rat sandwich in North Wales. Surely now is the time for her Assembly cabinet colleagues to tap her gently on the shoulder and tell her to have a rethink.

Perhaps that task could be discharged by Ieuan Wyn Jones. His public utterances so far have been nil; maybe he can find the courage to say something to her in the privacy of the cabinet room.

A Man for his Time

Wall-to-wall coverage on TV and radio this morning of the tenth anniversary of Diana’s death.

Listening to the Today programme, I am briefly startled by the voice of Tony Blair delivering his “people’s princess” homily.

It all seems such a long time ago. Blair was then a young, fresh Prime Minister and able to come out with such a corny line without attracting the jeers that would surely have greeted it in his last years of office. The quavering, halting delivery now sounds utterly false, but it was believable in 1997.

Tony Blair was truly a man for his time. That was his genius.

That time, of course, passed, but so it does for all of us.

Visit to Walton

Visited the Walton Centre at Fazakerley today, where I met the Chief Executive, Chairman and Medical Director to discuss the Welsh Assembly Government’s plans for all Welsh elective neurosurgery to be carried out at Swansea or Cardiff. The journey there from Colwyn Bay took me one and a half hours, along dual carriageway roads.

Walton is a world-class medical facility, providing state of the art, integrated neurology and neurosurgery treatment. Over the course of a year, it treats about 600 North Wales inpatients and very many more outpatients. I have no doubt that the professional team at Walton are very anxious to continue the links their hospital has forged with the population of North Wales and I know from the very many messages I have received from constituents that Walton is very highly valued by those who have needed its care.

I was disappointed to be told that, so far, WAG has not communicated with Walton about its plans. The hospital authorities had to learn about them, second hand, from internet websites. This is quite unacceptable. Walton has been providing care to Welsh patients for very many years, and the very least WAG could do is keep it informed of its intentions.

Furthermore, it seems that Edwina Hart has not asked the Walton Centre to contribute to the further report that is to be delivered to WAG in October. That is an inexcusable omission, given the Centre’s unrivalled knowledge of the concerns of Welsh neurosurgery patients.

Having visited Walton, I am more than ever convinced that Mrs Hart’s proposals are entirely wrong; at best, they will result in massive inconvenience to North Wales patients and their families; at worst – and I choose my words very carefully indeed – they will imperil patient safety.

I fully intend to continue my opposition to WAG’s proposals and am boosted by the knowledge that the overwhelming weight of opinion in North Wales is with me.

There may yet be some hope that WAG can be persuaded to see sense on this issue. On today’s BBC Wales news it was quoted as saying that no final decision had yet been made, and that anyone who suggested the contrary was “scaremongering”.

To do that, of course, would be reprehensible; I will leave it to readers to decide whether Edwina Hart’s statement to the Welsh Assembly on 4 July leaves much room for any doubt as to her intentions:

“My overriding aim is to secure as many services as can be safely provided within Wales’s boundaries. Of course, there will always be rare conditions and highly specialist services that can only be supported by populations greater than the population of Wales. This means that, in order to get the best possible treatment, there will always be some patients who must travel outside Wales for the services that they require. However, where the Welsh population base is sufficient to support an in-country service, that is the way in which I wish to proceed.

“Therefore, in the case of adult neurosurgery, the approach that I now intend to adopt is one in which we will look as actively as possible at redirecting additional elective work generated inside Wales to the two centres at Swansea and Cardiff. I stress that I am talking here about planned operations; I have no intention of transferring emergency work from outside the area into south Wales. However, where patients know sufficiently in advance to be able to plan for the operations required, I think that planning can allow for that work to be undertaken within Wales, particularly where that may make the difference between having a Welsh-based service or the prospect of having to give up that service.”

The intention seems pretty clear to me, but I will gladly apologise to Mrs Hart for any misrepresentation if she does indeed opt to retain a full range of treatments at Walton for Welsh patients and confirms that no North Wales neurosurgery patients will have to be treated at Cardiff or Swansea.

Can’t say fairer that that, can I?

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Have just realised that today is not only Wyn Calvin's 80th birthday, it is also this blog's first!

They grow up so fast these days!

Weird Science

In their pathetic, failed attempt to stem the tide of crime that is, to the despair of its citizens, now engulfing this country, Labour have increasingly put their faith in the science of genetics. As a consequence, this country now maintains the largest DNA database in the world – much of it taken from innocent people who would rather it were destroyed.

Given their enthusiastic embrace of DNA science, one might have thought that Labour would recognise the force of the analysis of the recent EU Treaty carried out by the respected think-tank Open Europe, which reveals that it is 96 per cent identical in substance to the EU Constitutional Treaty, which was rejected in referendums in 2005 by the electorates of France and Holland and then avowedly abandoned.

Not so. Only this morning, David Miliband, boy wonder Foreign Secretary, asserted before an audience of millions that the Treaty was different “in absolute essence” from the Constitution. Speaking, apparently in all seriousness, on the Today programme, Miliband said:

"We have not got a European constitution.

"Twenty-seven European heads of government all signed a document in June, after nearly two years of negotiation, saying the constitutional concept has been abandoned.

"I think that as Parliament gets to grips with the reform treaty that comes out, as they look line by line, they will see first that it is good for Britain, second that it is very different from the constitution in absolute essence, and third that the red lines, the key national interests in foreign policy and other areas of the UK have been protected."

Miliband is, of course, talking nonsense, which, being a bright boy, he knows full well. A quick glance at Open Europe’s analysis reveals the extent to which the EU Treaty and the Constitution are as closely related as David and his kid brother, Ed.

Labour’s general elecion manifesto in 2005 contained a very clear commitment on the Constitutional Treaty. It promised:

The EU now has 25 members and will continue to expand. The new Constitutional Treaty ensures the new Europe can work effectively, and that Britain keeps control of key national interests like foreign policy, taxation, social security and defence. The Treaty sets out what the EU can do and what it cannot. It strengthens the voice of national parliaments and governments in EU affairs. It is a good treaty for Britain and for the new Europe. We will put it to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a ‘Yes’ vote to keep Britain a leading nation in Europe.

The obvious question is why, if Labour in 2005 thought that the Constitutional Treaty was such a belting deal for Britain that they were prepared to “campaign whole-heartedly” for a “Yes” vote in a referendum, they are unwilling in 2007 to do the same for its 96 per cent sibling.

The answer, of course, is that they know they would lose.

So that's fair enough, then.

Happy Birthday, Wyn!

The incomparable Wyn Calvin MBE is, so The Times informs me, 80 years old today.

As a lad visiting Llandudno, I considered the highlight of my holiday to be a visit to the lost, lamented Arcadia Theatre, where Wyn Calvin topped the bill for season after season, often supported by such seasoned troupers as Clive Stock, Gwen Overton and Ted Durante.

Wyn was the master of the one-line put-down, suavely quelling any incautious heckler brave or stupid enough to put his head above the parapet. Indeed, Wyn’s put-downs were probably the main reason I went to see him; they were even funnier than his well-rehearsed stand-up routine.

Wyn styles himself the “Welsh Prince of Laughter”, but he is so much more. For years, he has worked tirelessly for charity; he is past President of the Variety Club of Great Britain and former King Rat of the Grand Order of Water Rats. Most importantly,Wyn is a great Welshman who has enriched the lives of many thousands of people, myself included.

So happy birthday, Wyn! "Thank you for the pleasure of your company!"

No Time for Spin

Jacqui Smith's career as Home Secretary got off to a promising start. I was present in the House when she made her statement on the Glasgow airport terrorist attack; she came across as calm and self-assured. I was reasonably impressed.

Her handling of the understandable public anxiety in the wake of the shooting of Rhys Jones, however, has been considerably less impressive. A Labour friend chided me gently last week for my criticism of her as “another talking head”; he said that she was still clearly shocked on Thursday morning by what had happened in Liverpool the previous day.

Well, that is true, and in fact I gave her credit for that. However, Jacqui Smith is also our Home Secretary and we are entitled to look to her for leadership at such a time.

Since Thursday, Ms Smith's performance has not, in all frankness, improved. She still talks, feebly and inappropriately, about “acceptable behaviour contracts”, which seems rather like applying a sticking plaster to the stump of an amputated limb.

More seriously, however, she continues to push the line that "statistics aren't a help but gun crime is down". Now, that is plain wrong, as Shadow Home Secretary David Davis has pointed out. Today's Sunday Times reports that Davis has written to Ms Smith drawing her attention to Home Office statistics revealing that “gun-related killings and injuries (excluding air weapons) have increased over fourfold since 1998”.

Quite properly, Davis has warned the Home Secretary not to repeat the mistake, made by most of her predecessors, of preferring spin over substance. Ms Smith would do well to heed the warning. David Davis is a formidable opponent whose intervention has resulted in the premature termination of more than one ministerial career.

No, honestly

Phone call about 11.00 a.m. It's BBC Wales, asking if I will go on their lunchtime show, to discuss the latest pronouncement of Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, as reported in today's Western Mail. I explain that the Mail is unknown north of Llanidloes and, so far as I can see, there is nothing on the Chief in the Daily Post today.

The BBC journo then refers me to the report as transcribed in icWales. I will set it out verbatim, acknowledging fully the WM copyright:

THE uniform of one of Wales’ four police forces is about to become the first to bear the Red Dragon.

North Wales Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom is considering imitating forces abroad by putting the Welsh flag on as a shoulder patch.

His officers controversially wear black T-shirts and combat trousers.

Mr Brunstrom said last night, "In the USA the police often wear the Stars and Stripes or in France the Tricolour.

"But in Switzerland or Germany the flag or coat of arms of the canton or land respectively is worn, rather than that of the nation state. It looks the business.

"At present we have a simple badge with the officer’s number or rank.

"I’m planning to add the Ddraig Goch (Red Dragon), which really does look fantastic.

"But wandering the maes at the National Eisteddfod a week or so ago I came across what to me is a winner, on a boy’s rugby shirt – the Dragon, but with the words ‘Gwlad, Gwlad’ next to it.

"A real statement that ‘Dyma Gymru’ (This is Wales). So, we have a choice to make."

Looks the business? For once, words fail me.

I explain that I have an appointment presenting awards to Prince's Trust students. I can't make the broadcast and, in any case, I don't feel there is anything I can say. It's too bizarre.

I feel desperately sorry for North Wales police officers. Just what have the poor souls done to make their top brass so determined to dress them up like extras from Mississippi Burning?

Our Problem

Everyone this morning will be appalled by the news of the fatal shooting yesterday of an 11 year-old boy, Rhys Jones, in the car park of a pub in Croxteth, Liverpool. According to early reports, the killer was another boy, said to be no more 12, who rode up to Rhys on a BMX bike and shot him three times.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was interviewed about the killing on this morning’s BBC Breakfast programme. Whilst giving her credit for no doubt being shocked, she nevertheless came over pretty poorly, talking about the need for more “unacceptable behaviour contracts”, and so on. She was just another talking head.

When a sub-teenage boy is shot in the streets of one of our great cities in broad daylight by another boy of similar age, something pretty dreadful is wrong. And the truth is that there is something wrong with us, as a country. We all have experience of gangs of what are now inevitably called “feral youths” hanging around bus stops, late into the night. Mostly, they are no more than a nuisance, but sometimes they are worse. For the most part, we do little or nothing about them; we pass by on the other side.

Police can be given more powers (and I am sure that they will) and unacceptable behaviour contracts and ASBOs can be doled out, but until we address the structural problems within our society, I remain doubtful whether things will improve.

We are now experiencing the latest phase in the process of the disintegration of social cohesion that has been going on in this country, under governments of both stripes, since at least the last war. We have to recognise the process first, and then do something about it. Government can facilitate the healing process (which will in any event take many years) but all of us must play our own part.

In Liverpool, that means that someone who knows, or suspects he knows, Rhys’s killer should immediately tell the police.

Bufo Cambrensis

Next week, I am visiting Walton hospital to discuss with its medical director the Welsh Assembly Government’s lunatic plans to treat elective neurosurgery patients from North Wales in Swansea or Cardiff.

Over the past two or three weeks, a considerable head of steam has built up behind the campaign to reverse the proposal; even Labour Assembly members have voiced opposition, including Karen Sinclair, who called her own administration’s policy “unsustainable and unacceptable”.

Strange, then, the silence from elected Plaid Cymru members, particularly those in North Wales, whose constituents are most likely to be disadvantaged by WAG’s plans. There has been not a squeak from Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones, for example, whose constituents will face a round trip of least ten hours to be treated at Swansea if his Labour cabinet colleagues get their way. Of course he can't complain, because he and his Plaid colleagues are bound by the principle of collective cabinet responsibility. No doubt they nodded in supine agreement while Edwina Hart unveiled her hare-brained scheme.

Plaid Cymru have sold their birthrights for a mess of pottage. They have a few Plaid bums on the back seats of Assembly ministerial cars and, in exchange, are prepared to remain cravenly silent while Labour deprive their constituents of a life-saving service.

Plaid may be enjoying the trappings of some sort of power now, but they will live to regret their shameful toadying to Labour. People have long memories, and, come the next election, rural North Wales voters will remember voting Plaid, getting Labour and losing essential services. They won’t repeat the mistake.

Result!

The power of the internet is truly awesome.

Yesterday’s blog contained an account of the public meeting at Rhos-on-Sea, held to express opposition to the plans to locate a mobile phone mast outside the ancient parish church of St Trillo.

First thing this morning, I received a telephone call from a representative of Ericsson. He told me that they had been re-evaluating their network and had decided to not to proceed with the Rhos mast. They had a roaming agreement with Orange, and intended to see if that would be sufficient for their purposes. They were not abandoning their consent for the mast (which they had obtained by default, as a result of Conwy planning department failing to deal properly with the planning application), but he promised not to take any further action on the proposal without letting me know first.

To say I am delighted would be an understatement. This was an entirely inappropriate proposal and the local people were appalled by it. It is good to know that sometimes the big boys do listen to the concerns of the little people.

Nothing's Sacred

Spoke this evening at a public meeting in Rhos-on-Sea, called to protest at the proposed siting by Ericsson of a mobile phone mast on the highway immediately outside the ancient parish church of St Trillo. The meeting was packed – at least 100 local people – all rightly incensed at the proposal.

This is one of the finest churches in North Wales; its tower is unique, topped by a turret known as the Rector’s Chair, whose function was to hold a brazier which would be set alight as a warning if marauding ships were spied. To position a 15 metre mast outside this ancient and beautiful edifice would be nothing short of sacrilege.

I intend to continue the campaign against the mast, even though planning permission for it was granted by the default of the local planning authority, which failed to deal with the application within the statutory 56-day period. A mast in such a location would be an utter atrocity and I am determined that Ericsson’s appalling plans receive the widest possible publicity.

More Madness

Unspeakably depressing news that Learco Chindamo, who stabbed Philip Lawrence to death in 1995, is to be allowed to stay in the UK when he is released from prison, possibly as early as next year. His lawyers have argued successfully that to deport him to his native Italy would – yes, you guessed it – breach his human rights.

The Home Office, to give it credit, has decided to appeal against what appears to be an incomprehensible decision by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal.

According to his counsel, Chindamo is “a reformed character who is unlikely to offend again”. Personally, I would prefer not to give him the benefit of the doubt. It is hard to see that to deport this profoundly unpleasant individual to a friendly European country with democratic institutions under the rule of law can in any sense be an infringement of his rights.

I will refrain from making the obvious comments about the rights of the brave man whose life he so viciously cut short and those of his devastated wife and children.

Jeff Hawke

I was fascinated by this article in today’s Times. A company called Rok Comics has launched a service that sends comic strips direct to mobile telephones using MMS technology. The legendary Dundee firm of D C Thomson also apparently intends to get in on the act, recycling old strip cartoons from The Beano and The Dandy.

What particularly pleased me, however, was the news that Rok has started beaming the Jeff Hawke cartoon strip to mobiles. Jeff Hawke was a staple of my childhood. It appeared in the Daily Express from 1955 to 1974 and was years ahead of its time.

Hawke was an RAF pilot of the future; the strips chronicled his odyssey through space and his encounters with the most outlandish alien life forms imaginable. Beautifully and atmospherically drawn by Sydney Jordan in partnership with William Patterson, who provided the words, they were among the most intelligent sci-fi comic strips ever produced, significantly better than much that was published in America, the home of the genre, at that time.

Hawke dealt intelligently with moral issues in a futuristic setting and was often astonishingly prescient. In 1959, the strip portrayed a memorial stone on the Moon, recording the first manned landing on “August Fourth, Earth Year Nineteen Hundred Sixty-Nine”. Neil Armstrong in fact set foot on the lunar surface on 21 July, 1969, just two weeks earlier.

Jeff Hawke is still popular in many European countries, Italy in particular, but I thought it had been forgotten in Britain. I am now seriously tempted to subscribe to the Rok service; at £10 for 100 strips, it looks a real bargain.

Bless Thine Inheritance

Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, today confirmed that Inheritance Tax (IHT) will be one of the first targets for reform under the next Conservative government. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, George said:

“Want to help people who work hard, save throughout their lives and want to leave something for their children? Then take the family home out of inheritance tax altogether…

“Inheritance tax was designed to target the very rich but these days they are able to avoid paying it altogether by hiring expensive advisers.

“Increasingly, it is ordinary homeowners who now find they are paying inheritance tax and the reason for this is simple. During the past ten years, Gordon Brown deliberately made sure that the rise in the threshold at which you start paying the tax did not keep pace with house prices.

“It is a classic stealth tax which is buried in the small print, of the kind we have come to expect from him.

“The result is that the number of people paying inheritance tax has doubled and Scottish Widows recently calculated that up to four in ten households could soon be liable for it.”

George is absolutely right; Gordon Brown’s unremitting use of the cynical device of “fiscal drag” means that increasing numbers of people of moderate means are being caught in the IHT net. And it is not only the IHT threshold that has been kept deliberately low; the annual gift exemption of £3,000 has remained unchanged since Labour took power in 1997.

I know from speaking to people throughout Clwyd West that IHT is one of the most loathed of all taxes; it is a charge on assets that, more often than not, have been built up through a lifetime’s savings from income on which tax has already been paid. It diminishes the ability of people to leave their assets to their families, friends, the dogs’ home, or to whomever they wish. It is the ultimate exit charge.

Exempting people’s homes from IHT will go a long way toward reducing the impact of this unfair tax and George’s announcement will be greatly welcomed by millions of people up and down the country.

Predictably, Labour are already crying foul; they obviously fear the electoral attractiveness of such a policy. Alistair Darling, Chancellor in name, but in practice emasculated by Gordon’s last budget, which made policy commitments for the next three years, lamely called the announcement “a lurch to the right”.

It is actually nothing of the sort; it is an approach that will offer increasing numbers of ordinary people the opportunity to dispose of their hard-earned assets in the way that they, not the government, see fit. It will keep more money in the economy and will, therefore, generate more wealth for our country. It will, in short, give people more freedom.

And that will be a very good thing indeed.

Monkey Business

I have just added to my links list a new blog that has appeared over the last few days: Monkey with a Blue Rosette, apparently penned by the eponymous simian, who lives in a tree in Ludlow and has a fondness for bananas and things Cymreig.

It’s about the most eccentric and amusing political blog I have read in a long time; give it a gander.

Bloomtown

This afternoon, I helped judge the annual Glyn in Bloom contest. Mercifully, the rain held off for long enough to allow us to complete our marking and present the prizes at Llys Elian before everybody sped away to watch the Liverpool – Chelsea match. Congratulations to Bryan Jones, Andy Jones and everyone else for their efforts in organising the event.

Colwyn Bay has a long and proud tradition of success in floral competitions. This year, it won the Wales in Bloom “large town” award, its town hall won the “public building – frontage” prize and St John’s church came second in the “public building – frontage and grounds” category. Tan y Coed Gardens and Fairy Glen, Old Colwyn, came first and second in the “community and conservation improvement schemes – small” section and there were also honours for Parkway sheltered housing, Woodcroft care home, John Braddock and Mary Bamber convalescent home, Colwyn Bay Hospital, and Cadwgan Surgery.

Flowers mean a lot to the town, so it was with some concern that I heard recently that the Welsh Assembly Government may be reconsidering its support for Wales in Bloom in future years. I sincerely hope that this is not true.

An Afternoon with Lil

Photo courtesy of Cllr Phil Edwards

Sara and I spent yesterday afternoon with members of the Colwyn Bay branch of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, who were carrying out a charity collection in Rhos on Sea.

Highlight of the visit was a trip on the Rhyl lifeboat, the Lil Cunningham, whose crew put the Mersey class boat through its paces, including two rescue exercises.

I had a long chat with the crew members, who are all volunteers and on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They told me that the Rhyl boat, whose operational area stretches from Llanddulas to the Dee estuary, had been launched in response to distress calls more than 60 times over the last year. The boat is about 15 years old and is due to be refitted in a few months, which will see it through to the end of its operational life. It will then have to be replaced; the present cost of an equivalent boat is about £2.5 million.

These men deserve everyone’s respect. It is one thing to go for a trip around Colwyn Bay on an afternoon in August when the sea is like a millpond; it must be wholly different to launch into a howling gale in the middle of a December night; I certainly wouldn't wish to do it. The lifeboats are a prime example of a voluntary organisation carrying out a vital public service with superlative efficiency. We simply couldn't do without them.

The RNLI receives not a penny from the government; its entire operating budget is provided by public subscription. I asked one of the crewmen if he felt that the taxpayer should be giving at least some support to the Institution; without a shred of irony he replied, “No way. The last thing we want is the government sticking its oar in."

Mark Tami - an Apology

I appear to have incurred the wrath of Alyn and Deeside Labour MP, Mark Tami, which, readers will understand, is a terrible thing. I must hasten to offer a suitable apology.

Enfield lad Mark is normally a placid enough cove, sitting with the Welsh contingent in the rearmost of the Labour back benches, and usually raising not a peep, save to utter the odd “hear, hear” when Gordon is at the despatch box. Hitherto, the only time he has stuck his head significantly above the parapet was in September of last year, at the time of the failed Brown putsch against Tony Blair, when Mark, along with a few fellow bag-carriers, resigned his position as PPS (in his case to “Red" Dawn Primarolo, then Paymaster-General).

As a reward for being marched up the hill, only to be marched down again, Mark was appointed an assistant whip by Gordon this summer, after he acceded to the Labour throne. Though unpaid, the position appeared to please Mark, who, one might have thought, would have then reverted to his customary docility.

Not so. It would appear that Mark has been reading my blog (for which I must feel duly flattered) and my posts about the follies of over-regulation and general healthansafety pottiness have raised his hackles beyond endurance, to the extent that he has written about me on the Welsh Labour party website.

According to Mark, I am an “extreme rightwinger”, who is attacking “our basic rights”.

Steady on, Mark. I have to admit I am a bit right of centre (the fact that I am a Conservative MP should have given you a clue), but I can’t say I have ever wanted to attack anyone’s “basic rights”. In fact, being a Tory, I am, on the whole, rather in favour of the rights of the individual and opposed to the overweening power of the state.

Nor have I ever, as you appear to be suggesting, sought to deny women “equal rights in the work place”. Indeed, I can’t see that any of my blog posts could ever be interpreted that way by anyone who is remotely fair-minded.

What I do feel, however, is that a lot of the regulations that have been imposed on us, year on year, by your government, are probably unnecessary. I feel that regulations should be regularly audited and, if they are of no real benefit, should be scrapped.

I must acknowledge, however, that as a Brownite socialist, you probably don’t agree with me. Indeed, you probably applaud yesterday’s announcement that the requirement to provide Home Information Packs is to be extended to the sale of all three-bedroomed houses from September. I happen to believe that this piece of legislation is pointless, amounting to an additional tax on house selling, and may very well damage the housing market. You, on the other hand, no doubt feel that it is a jolly good idea. That is part of the reason you are a socialist. You like regulations. You like the idea of the government bossing people about. As a Conservative, I don't.

Anyway, I do hope that this little disagreement won’t spoil the excellent relationship you and I have enjoyed until now. I am truly sorry to have upset you by saying that we have probably got too many regulations in this country. In future, I will try to keep my opinions to myself, so that you can go about the important business, undistracted, of whipping your colleagues on a pro bono basis.

Answers please, Gordon

With Gareth Jones of the FUW

Spent today at the Denbigh and Flint show. It had poured with rain all last night and much of the field was a quagmire. Nevertheless, the Barboured and booted crowd turned out in their thousands to support the rural way of life at what is undoubtedly a time of crisis.

Just after lunch, I held a meeting with members of the Farmers Union of Wales, still upset by the blow dealt them by the foot and mouth disease outbreak. They were particularly concerned that neither Defra nor the Welsh Assembly were offering any information as to how soon animal movements and exports might resume if no further incidents are reported. The next six weeks or so are the most important time of year for the livestock trade and the uncertainty was clearly worrying them sick.

It is indeed fortunate for Gordon Brown that the FMD outbreak took place during the parliamentary recess. However, that won’t last forever, and he had better brace himself to explain how it came about that British livestock farming has been brought to a standstill by what appears to be a breach in biosecurity at either a Government-operated or a Government-licensed establishment. The agricultural community demands and deserves a straight answer.

Don't Hold Your Breath

Plaid Cymru Welsh Assembly member Leanne Wood (of whom see this blog passim) is becoming inordinately excited by the wily Alex Salmond’s proposals for a referendum on independence for Scotland. With touching naivete, she is hoping for much the same to happen in Wales.

Writing in today’s Western Mail, Miss Wood enthuses:

“Within the next few months, a national convention will be established by the Welsh government, so that a conversation can begin on our future as a nation. The referendum will be held before 2011 and we are very pleased to have the support of all four main parties in Wales for a successful outcome.”

A referendum on primary legislative powers was, indeed, something that the Conservatives consistently pressed for in Westminster during the passage of the Government of Wales Bill. We pointed out that nobody had ever asked the people of Wales whether they wanted such powers to be devolved to Cardiff. We thought that was wrong. Peter Hain and the Labour party resisted our calls, however, and the Bill, providing for limited primary powers to be conferred on the Assembly on a piecemeal basis, was duly enacted. It remains a constitutional chimera, demanding to be legitimised by popular mandate.

When Miss Wood’s party decided, somewhat shabbily and contrary to its pre-election assurances, to prop up what it had formerly described as a “failing Labour administration”, it exacted a commitment “to proceed to a successful outcome of a referendum for full law-making powers under Part IV as soon as practicable, at or before the end of the Assembly term”. Hence, no doubt, the reason for Miss Wood’s exuberance.

I don’t think, however, that she should hold her breath. Despite the deal her party has cut with Labour, the fact remains that no referendum can take place, under the terms of the Act, until Peter Hain, the gatekeeper to the legislation, is good and ready. And Peter won’t be ready unless and until he thinks that a referendum can be won.

Indeed, Peter made his position very clear in evidence to the Welsh select committee on 24 July. The relevant exchange reads:

Q1274 Mr David Jones: Secretary of State, the principal objective of the Wales Office, as set out in your Report, is to maintain and improve the devolution settlement. We know that the coalition which your Party has forged recently in the Assembly with Plaid Cymru has promised a referendum on the devolution of primary legislative powers pursuant to the Act at or before the end of the current Assembly term. Are we to understand, therefore, that if any such application is received by you, at or before the end of this term, you will be granting it?

Mr Hain: That is an ambition of the agreement signed between the two leaders, now the Minister and Deputy First Minister of the Welsh Assembly Government, and endorsed by respective Parties. I cannot anticipate the translation of that ambition into practice on an exact date. It is no secret that I have always said, and I have not changed my mind though if there is progress on realising that ambition then obviously I will have to take account of that, I think it is better for the first stage of the Government of Wales Act 2006 to bed down the extra powers provided for under both the Order in Council process and then, in parallel, the framework powers, which will give considerable extra power to the Assembly, and its capacity to deal with those extra powers has yet to be tested. I would have thought we needed a period to see how that beds down and see what the case is for going for full law-making primary powers, rather than to set a date in advance artificially. Having said that, I have always been a supporter, as everybody knows, of full law-making powers, so it is not a question of being an obstacle to this, it is just a question of pursuing this very cautiously, step by step, and not settling in advance and saying "We are going to meet that date, come what may," even if actually public opinion in Wales and, vitally, the necessary degree of cross-party consensus is not ready for it.

Q1275 Mr David Jones: Clearly, your colleagues in the Assembly have decided that date is going to be at or before the end of the current Assembly term. Therefore, if an application were made to you at or before the end of the term, would you be inclined to refuse it, under any circumstances?

Mr Hain: As I say, if that is the case then there will be a changed circumstance, an entirely different circumstance from the one I have anticipated up till now. I will not be an obstacle to anything, but I would want to be satisfied, as well as, I would have thought, all Government-supporting MPs, because we would have the responsibility for taking it through, that the conditions were right for winning this referendum. Remember that I was one of the leaders of a campaign, along with your Committee Chairman, the 'yes' campaign, and we went into that campaign with a two-to-one lead in the opinion polls and we came out with a tiny majority, a wafer-thin majority. Neither Plaid Cymru supporters and members nor Welsh Labour supporters and members will want to go into a situation in which we are not very confident of winning a referendum, because there is no point in calling it; there is no point in calling a referendum to lose it. Obviously, there is not any point in calling a referendum to lose it. You call a referendum when you think the necessary political agreement is there and the necessary public support is there, in which the people of Wales say, "Well, this is the time when we want to make the next step to full law-making powers."

Cut through the Peter-speak and the answer is clear: Peter isn’t going to be bounced into calling a referendum if he doesn’t want one. And now, and for the foreseeable future, he doesn’t. End of.

So Leanne Wood and her party had better calm down and get ready to explain to the people of Wales just how they came to be duped into becoming the stooges in what Andrew Davies and others are now routinely calling “the Labour-led Assembly Government”, when they could be occupying pole position in an anti-Labour coalition.

20:20 Vision?

During my brief tenure as a member of the Welsh Assembly, I became acquainted for the first time, to any great extent, with elected politicians from other parties. Previously, my experience had been confined to the Conservative party, in which I had spent years inching slowly up the ladder. In 2002, however, much to my surprise and in the most extraordinary of circumstances, I suddenly found myself translated to Cardiff Bay, where I was in close proximity to people I had formerly regarded as the enemy.

On the whole, I found my political opponents relatively unremarkable. Most were courteous and welcoming when I arrived, and I remained on good terms with them until I left in April, 2003.

Some were indisputably people of stature. There was the genial Dafydd Wigley, certainly the shrewdest political operator Plaid Cymru has produced, who was always unfailingly kind to me. There was Phil Williams, a nice, eccentric man with a brain the size of a planet, with whom I shared a love of jazz. And there was the impish Peter Law, a fine orator who became a friend, years later, when we both took our seats at Westminster.

One or two members of the other parties – extraordinarily few, really – made it clear that they didn’t like Tories and were just plain rude. It didn’t bother me, and I’m pleased to say that, one way or another, they have now all left the Assembly. I needn’t say who they are, and there are no prizes for guessing.

I can’t say I remember much about Huw Lewis, the Labour Assembly member for Merthyr Tydfil. He was a quiet, inoffensive chap, who said little and smiled less. He always struck me as rather deep, a bit of a loner, but never a troublemaker.

Over the last few weeks, however, Huw has demonstrated a previously unsuspected self-assertiveness. He was a vocal critic of the Labour coalition with Plaid Cymru and lost his deputy ministerial position. Today, he has taken his disaffection still further, by launching a ginger group called Wales 20:20, aimed at reassessing and reconstructing the Welsh Labour party. According to Huw, Welsh Labour “is simply not fit for the purpose of winning Assembly elections”.

Huw has published a pamphlet entitled “Winning for Wales: Remaking the Welsh Labour movement for Government”. It makes interesting, if rather plodding, reading. It underlines the extent to which Welsh politics have changed, even in the rock-solid areas such as that which Huw himself represents. According to Huw, “Rarely now do you hear ‘we’re all Labour here’ when you knock on a house with more than one generation living there – assumptions can no longer be made about ‘Labour areas’.”

Huw is right; politics have changed, but the change is not confined to Wales. The fact is that people are no longer politically tribal; just as they are prepared to switch banks, electricity suppliers or insurance companies, so are they prepared to switch parties. No party can rely on an unswervingly loyal voter base. David Cameron has recognised that, and rightly, too.

Huw’s decision to rock the boat has already ruffled feathers within his own party; Paul Flynn has accused him of talking “cobblers”, and no doubt he will be subjected to more criticism in the weeks and months to come.

Who can say whether anything will come of Wales 20:20? It may cause an earthquake within the Welsh Labour party, but on the other hand it may prove a damp squib. The latter, I suspect. I do, however, urge readers to take a look at Huw’s pamphlet, if only for the insight it provides into the Byzantine organisation of the Labour party, an institution manifestly obsessed with forms, structures and processes to the exclusion of all else.

Take this, for example:

“I would hope that we could build on the elements of policy development that did prove successful last time around, but adding some real teeth to cluster meetings and policy forums; developing these into a formal Regional Policy Network, based on the five electoral regions in Wales. Regular reviews of the policy recommendations coming out of the Regional Networks would give a genuinely substantial role to the AM/MP Contact Group and utilise the legislative experience of both sets of politicians in a proactive and constructive way.”

Cluster meetings? Policy forums? Regional Policy Networks? Contact Groups? What sort of dystopian political universe is this? And what sort of politician would regard it as some sort of utopia?

Only the roundest of roundheads, I fear; never a cavalier.

Fool's Errand

Back in the Pleistocene era, before I became a politician, I used to do a considerable amount of criminal defence work in the courts of North Wales. One of the more tedious aspects of my job was the need to visit defendants held at the Risley remand centre, near Warrington. The round trip to the centre from my office in Bangor used to take the best part of a day. The journey was especially difficult in the summer months, when the stretches of the A55 that had been built were scarcely less clogged than today.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and little has changed. Remand prisoners now tend to be held at HMP Altcourse on Merseyside, but for solicitors, probation officers and families visiting them, the journey is just as long and the A55, though complete, tends to be choked with traffic all year round.

Last year, the Welsh Affairs select committee conducted an inquiry into Welsh prisoners in the prison estate. In its report, published in June, the committee identified a need, long recognised by legal professionals, for a prison in North Wales. The report recommended:

42. If the criminal justice system is to work effectively in North Wales, provision needs to be made for prisoners on remand. Under the current arrangements much time and energy is devoted by legal and probation staff travelling to visit remand prisoners. Prisoners are subjected to long journeys to attend court hearings which are then often delayed by late arrivals. It makes little sense to invest in new court facilities in Caernarfon if remand prisoners continue to be held at prisons in North West England and need to make a journey of several hours to make a court appearance.

43. Given the difficulties created by the lack of custodial facilities for remand prisoners, both for prisoners and the agencies working with them, we recommend that custodial facilities to accommodate these prisoners be provided in North Wales as soon as is practicable.

Last week, the Government published its response to the committee’s report. It said that it “understood the committee’s recommendation” and added:

“The strategic priority, at present, for new prisons in Wales is being assessed. This assessment includes the request for sites to be identified in North Wales for possible inclusion in a future building programme. The date set by the Government for final consideration is the end of August 2007. At the moment no sites in North Wales have been assessed as viable… The North Wales Criminal Justice Board has recently written to local authorities to ask for sites for consideration.”

So the Government expects North Wales local authorities to come up with a site for a prison by the end of August. Just like that. Not asking much, really, is it?

The task is, of course, impossible. This is clear from the evidence given by Mr Peter Brook, corporate director of HM Prison Service, when he appeared before the select committee on 31 October, 2006. An interesting exchange reads as follows:

Q59 Mr David Jones: I take it that you have to adhere to the normal planning process when making applications for planning consent.

Mr Brook: Yes.

Q60 Mr David Jones: There is no question of fast-tracking. There is no mechanism whereby you can bypass the normal planning process.

Mr Brook: We do not bypass the normal planning process.

Q61 Mr David Jones: Secondly, there is also the practical question of land acquisition. It is all very well getting planning consent for a new prison but you have to acquire the land on which it is going to stand. Do you have powers of compulsory purchase? If so, do you exercise this?

Mr Brook: No, we do not have. Part of the review we are doing is on where land is that we can purchase. It is finding plots of land that are potentially for sale or are for sale, or are for lease. Lease is another option, although it is not really suitable for a long-term prison.

Q62 Mr David Jones: That presumably could protract the process.

Mr Brook: Yes.

Q63 Mr David Jones: Fairly considerably in certain areas.

Mr Brook: Finding sites is a very long, protracted process generally.

A very long, protracted process. Well, of course it is. It takes years to find a site for a new supermarket; how much longer for a new prison?

The truth is that it is virtually impossible to find a suitable site for a new prison by 31 August, as the Government knows full well. So why is it dissembling? Why is it wasting the time of local authorities by setting them such a futile task?

Why not simply admit that it has no intention whatever of providing a prison in North Wales and that it expects lawyers, probation officers, and everyone else concerned with the justice system in this corner of the country to continue to undertake the long and tedious trek along the A55 for many years to come?

Lounging Lizard

The silly season never fails to delight. Two weeks ago, we were all spellbound by the Sun’s scoop of a Great White shark having been spotted off the coast of Cornwall.

Never to be outdone, the BBC has come up with this story of a crocodile named Godzilla that has escaped from a circus in the Ukraine. Visions of a 75-foot saurian trashing the streets of downtown Kiev are soon dispelled when one reads that the scaly fugitive is only one metre long - hardly big enough to make a decent handbag - and is scared of humans. A fuzzy picture shows it resting timorously on a rusty boat.

The story has an air of exquisite bathos reminiscent of the spoof Times headline dreamt up by the late Claud Cockburn: "Small Earthquake in Chile. Not many Dead."

Bright Idea

The office I share at Westminster with my colleagues Stephen Crabb, David Davies and Daniel Kawczynski is in St. Stephen’s Tower, one of the oldest parts of the Palace. It has many advantages: it is close enough to the lobbies to ensure that I can vote quickly after a division is called; it is spacious and comfortable and it has wonderful views of Westminster Abbey and the Victoria Tower. On the whole, I like it very much.

It does, however, have a couple of downsides. First, it can be very noisy, particularly when all of us are talking on the telephone or dictating. It is also rather dark, which makes it important that all the lights are working properly.

Every week or so, all the offices in the House are inspected by an efficient man with a clipboard, to make sure that the fixtures and fittings are in tip-top condition. A couple of weeks before the recess began, he called when I was working at my desk and asked if everything was in order. I pointed out that one of the lightbulbs in the central light fitting had blown and needed to be replaced. He said he would see to it.

Good as his word, he returned the following day with a couple of maintenance men. There was some discussion, after which he told me that the bulb could not be replaced immediately. The ceiling was marginally too high for them to use a stepladder; they would have to erect scaffolding over the weekend.

“Health and safety, you see, sir,” he said, almost apologetically, noting my quizzical look. I might have expected it.

I have already blogged about the healthansafety fascism which is making life in this country increasingly difficult. Last month, it put paid to the Llandudno donkey derby, but other examples of its excesses are legion. Healthansafety is making the convenient living of one’s day-to-day life increasingly difficult. It has engendered paranoia on a national scale, fuelled by claims farmers and aggressive lawyers. In short, it has made Britain a considerably less pleasant place to be.

As may be gathered from the foregoing rant, I feel very strongly about this issue. I was consequently delighted by reports in today’s Sunday Telegraph that John Redwood’s economic competitiveness policy group, due to report this week, is likely to recommend, inter alia, a thoroughgoing review of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

There have been immediate and predictable howls of outrage from the left. A spokesman for the TUC said that "plans to repeal the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act go further than any plans Margaret Thatcher had to reduce protection at work” – a remarkable comment, given that the plans have not yet been published.

All nonsense, of course. A proposal to review the