David Cameron came under fire from the President of the Strasbourg Court in today’s Independent, here, in advance of a speech the PM is giving tomorrow setting out UK plans to reform the Strasbourg Court.
With increasing debate about the referendum on Scottish independence, it will be important not to neglect the impact on the rest of the United Kingdom.
I am a big fan of – and a subscriber to – The Economist. Whatever your perspective, it offers weekly food for thought.
So, I was surprised to learn in their Christmas edition that I support withdrawal from the EU (read the article here). The quote comes from a Sunday Times piece, where I spelt out the case for renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership – not withdrawal.
This week, in fairness, they published my letter correcting the error, and setting out why the context of the debate on Europe has changed since the 1990s. You can read it here.
In today’s Sunday Times, I have co-authored a piece with Matt Hancock MP on executive pay. Just because so many on the looney left bash the banks and other business bosses for the sake of it, it doesn’t mean there isn’t an issue about exorbitant executive pay.
With unemployment figures out today, showing 1 in 5 sixteen to twenty-four year olds out of work, I have published a pamphlet with the Center for Policy Studies (CPS), Escaping the Strait Jacket – Ten Regulatory Reforms to Create Jobs.
You can download the paper here, read my blogpost for Con Home here, access my piece for The Times here, or watch my video clip with the CPS here.
On Friday, I talked to students at Esher college, and took questions on my first 18months as an MP. As always, there were some excellent questions and a really vibrant debate – from local issues, to the Eurozone crisis and human rights abuses in Syria.
On Friday, I visited Feltonfleet School in Cobham, and was grilled by the School Council on life as an MP and my local and national priorities (pictured below). I was really impressed by their background knowledge, interest and curiosity – and look forward to seeing them at Westminster when they come up on a school tour.
To hear the brilliant historian Niall Ferguson explain why the West has lost its ‘historical mojo’ … click here.
Today, I applied to the Backbench committee for Parliamentary time for MPs to debate and have their say on the ‘rough justice’ being meted out to a rising number of UK citizens under our current extradition arrangements.
It was a cross-party application, backed by former Lib Dem leader Sir Ming Campbell and two Labour Chairs of the Home Affairs Committee and Joint Committee on Human Rights (Keith Vaz and Hywell Francis).
We’ll have to wait and see what the committee decides. I made the case for reform on the Daily Politics show today here.
Update: We have been granted a 3 hour debate in Westminster Hall on 24 November. It’s not the ideal result – we can’t vote on a specific motion – but a good first-step to building momentum for proper reform.
Having sat in for a large part of the debate, I abstained on the EU referendum vote last night. I support a referendum in favour of re-negotiation of UK membership of the EU, based on the common market.
However, I believe the proposed motion was flawed. Putting a 3-question referendum to the public splits the overwhelming majority of support for repatriation of powers (between the largest group who want renegotiation and those who want wholesale withdrawal). It creates a procedure that risks ‘no change’ with as few as 34% voting for the status quo. On that basis, I abstained.
I have consistently argued for a referendum on re-negotiation. For more detail, two recent articles I wrote for The Times and Sunday Times can be accessed here.