David Ottewell's Politics

I think our MPs are excited about being back in Westminster.
First Ed Balls opens the Queen’s Speech debate like this:

Then Andy Burnham – quoting The Thick of It – describes Tory health policy as an ‘omnishambles’.
We can only hope that as election fever mounts, there will be more Malcolm Tucker-isms hurled across the chamber.

The government is still being hit by a raft of questions about its now-voluntary plans for ID cards for British citizens -a scheme to be piloted in Greater Manchester.
The latest batch was from John Leech, the Lib Dem MP for Manchester Withington.
In response, Home Office minister Meg Hillier has disclosed that:
a) Fees for cards for 2011 and beyond have ‘yet to be agreed’;
b) ‘Almost 12,000 people’ had registered an interest in ID cards by November 2;
c) 17 per cent of those are from Greater Manchester.
I make that about 2,040 people, or about 0.1 per cent of the Greater Manchester population. And the scheme is due to start later in the year.

Tony Lloyd, MP for Manchester Central, secured a debate about nuclear non-proliferation this week. You can read it in full here.
Mr Lloyd began with some startling statistics. He said:

there are probably 23,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, in the hands of nine countries

and:

we know of 25 occasions in the past two decades—perhaps there have been more—on which nuclear weapons material has been lost, stolen or mislaid.

Mr Lloyd went on to quote Senator Bob Graham, writing in a report by the US Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.
The senator said:

“The Commission believes that unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.”

Scary stuff.
In the course of his speech, Mr Lloyd mentioned two specific regions.
One was Egypt and Israel:

One thing that bedevilled the last review conference in 2005 was a belief on the part of states such as Egypt that the bargain that they signed up to had not been kept. Egypt worked hard to persuade other Arab states to sign the treaty, on the basis that Israel would be brought into the ambit of the non-proliferation treaty. Egypt felt, rightly, in 2005 that not only had that bargain not been kept, but there was not even any pressure to see how the issue could be moved forward. Interestingly, the present administration in Washington has said publicly and loudly to Israel that it must look at its role in signing up to the NPT. That will be so fundamental in moving the agenda forward if we want to persuade the Egypts of this world, and others, to take the NPT seriously.

The other was Iran:

A problem that has bedevilled negotiations is that we have not been able to generate the total commitment from the rest of the world to put pressure on Tehran in terms of its own nuclear system and say that it is unacceptable for Iran to move in that direction. We would shore up pressure on Iran if we told its friends and neighbours that its nuclear weapons system would be unconscionable.

All is not well in the Wigan Labour party.
Neil Turner and Ian McCartney are standing down. And all-women shortlists have been imposed to find two potential successors.
Now it emerges that local party member Ann Rampling has started a petition against the move.
She says anyone should be allowed to stand in order to get ‘the best, literally the best, for our area’.
It’s a bit of an embarrassment, certainly. And yet it seems that all-women shortlists are here to stay. Even David Cameron has suggested the Tories might have to start using them, too. Labour have already insisted on all-women shortlists across the region – not just in Wigan, but in places like Withington and Bury.
In principle, they seem a perfectly reasonable solution to a very real problem. Less than one in five MPs are women. That is not enough. It is not a perculiarly British issue – only 20 countries around the world have 30 per cent of more female representatives in parliament. Sweden and Finland lead the way. Even there, though, the majority of MPs are men (53 per cent in Sweden, 58 per cent in Finland).
And yet, it is a particularly crude form of social engineering.
It is one thing to apply a form of positive discrimination – to say that if a women and a man appear equally well qualified for a post as an MP, the woman may well have the greater potential because she has achieved what she has in spite of the apparent male bias in politics. I think this should be taken into account in the selection process.
That seems perfectly logical to me.
But an all-female shortlist is something else. Since it excludes a significant-sized group of people (i.e. men) altogether, it raises the possibility that the candidate chosen won’t be the best available, or even potentially the best available.
Well, you say, a male candidate can simply apply for a different seat. So he’s not being excluded completely. Maybe. But what if the seat he wants to go for is his local seat? Isn’t his commitment to that seat admirable? And what if that seat just happens to have an all-female shortlist?
Perhaps you simply say that the lists are a necessary evil. But if you accept that the end justifies the means, then doesn’t the same logic demand all-gay shortlists? All-disabled shortlists? Both groups are under-represented in parliament, too. Both could claim this has negatively affected them in terms of public policy.
Harriet Harman is already considering all-ethnic minority shortlists. But why shouldn’t these already be in place? Fewer than three per cent of MPs are non-white. Ethnic minorities make up around seven per cent of the population. So it seems the ‘female issue’ and the ‘ethnic minority issue’ are of approximately the same order, at least in percentage terms.
I’m not saying all-female shortlists are wrong. But I do struggle to understand their justification – other than that they fix the lamentable figures.

MPs were discussing Sri Lanka yesterday. They overran and had to break off for a vote before a summing up by Michael Foster, the under-secretary of state at the Department for International Development.
When they came back, Mr Foster said: “This is a little like playing Manchester United – you get a couple extra minutes when you play them…”

Sir Martin Doughty: passion for the countryside
Who says nothing worthwhile ever gets said in parliament?
Tom Levitt, the High Peak MP, this week gave a lovely tribute to Sir Martin Doughty, who died in March.
Sir Martin was a pioneer of conservation, and keen advocate of right-to-access to the countryside. He was also born in High Peak, and a former leader of Derbyshire council.
I can do no better than reprint Tom’s words here:

I may not be the obvious member of the house to speak about marine environments or coastal access, because we have neither coast nor marine environments in my constituency. However, High Peak is the philosophical home of the right to roam: we had the Kinder trespass in 1932 and the first open-access land designated under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, and we have more open-access land than any other constituency in England.
High Peak is the birthplace of the right to roam, but it is also the birthplace of one Sir Martin Doughty. Martin was my constituent, and he died of cancer earlier this year. I am sure that my right honourable and honourable friends on the front bench would acknowledge that without him, there would have been no Marine and Coastal Access Bill.
As the chair of Natural England, and of English Nature before that, Martin was largely responsible for working with various environment ministers… to bring the measure about.
Before Martin was involved in English Nature and Natural England, he was the chair of the Peak District national park and the leader of Derbyshire county council.
He was born and bred in High Peak and lived there his whole life. He lived and breathed the countryside and the natural world and explored it as often as he could with a passion and humour that was truly infectious. In the 20 years that I knew him, he was one of the kindest, most gentle and most principled people that I ever met. Everyone who came across him respected him and very soon loved him.
Martin was also a great socialist, who put principles into practice in a pragmatic, thoughtful and just way. A couple of weeks ago, 200 of us gathered on Kinder Scout on what would have been his 60th birthday. There were friends, neighbours, political allies and even some rivals, people from interest groups, government agencies, local authority leaders and two of my colleagues, my right honourable friend Alun Michael and my honourable friend Ms Smith, who are sitting either side of me tonight. We went not only to remember Martin, but to dedicate Kinder Scout in his memory – it was created the 223rd national nature reserve on that very day.
The ambition to create a national coastal path that is accessible to walkers, climbers and others where appropriate is sound and it is right, and it is Martin’s achievement as much as that of any other individual, although he was never one to claim the limelight. I hope that my honourable friends will consider calling all or part of it either the Doughty way or Martin’s way or something in his memory.
On Kinder Scout a couple of weeks ago, we sang to Martin’s memory. It will be of little surprise on the government benches that we sang ‘The Manchester Rambler’. I had the great privilege of meeting the author of that song, Ewan McColl, once, many years ago, and my constituency is mentioned several times in it. Ewan McColl was the press officer for the mass trespass in 1932 and Martin Doughty’s father was one of the trespassers.

Here’s a table I’ve cobbled together from new life expectancy figures released today. They show how male life expectancy has changed since 1991 in four boroughs.
Manchester is currently second bottom of a list of 300-plus local authorities in terms of how long a male baby can expect to live. (Only Blackpool is worse.)
Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster are at the very top. But it is the way the gap has widened that is striking:

Amazing how you can read a debate in Hansard from more than 100 years ago that reminds you of arguments still being had today.
On March 24, 1881, a contribution by Arthur Arnold is recorded as follows:

All these considerations could, he [Mr Arnold] thought, leave no doubt upon the mind of the house that the retention of Kandahar would place us in a position of permanent hostility to the Afghan people. In lieu of a strong and friendly and independent Afghanistan, which was a vanished dream, we should have, in consequence of the retention of Kandahar, an Afghanistan ever inimical to the British power, and full of suspicion and hatred against us; ready at all times, and in any manner, to be the friends of our enemies, and the enemies of our friends. No other conclusion was possible from an impartial study of the evidence submitted to the house.

A couple of months later, the foreign secretary said:

It has long been our practice to stay in touch with a wide range of Afghan opinion and with other parties interested in Afghanistan. These contacts have confirmed our view that the resolution of the conflict requires the establishment of a truly representative government in Kabul.

I make no political point here – and believe that insofar as history repeats itself, it is never an exact match. But it is a striking similarity nonetheless.

From Tony Lloyd, MP for Manchester Central:

I believed until this week that my parliamentary expense claims, submitted in good faith, were completely in order, a view not challenged by the House authorities responsible for these, the exposes in the Daily Telegraph or when my claims were put on line in July. However the audit process of the Legg Inquiry has now identified that through administrative error I was overpaid by £2,210 for rent on the flat I use in London. This was an error on my part and I remain responsible for it and I am grateful it has now been brought to my attention for rectification. I am making arrangements to return this money. I am inevitably deeply sorry for this and apologise for the upset this will cause to my constituents, friends and family. Sir Thomas Legg points out that a recommendation that an MP should repay carries no implication or innuendo about the conduct or motive of the MP. I am grateful for this comment. I can assure my constituents that I did not seek and would not seek to profit or claim unfairly from my parliamentary expenses.

The government today put out some provisional exam results, broken down by local authority, for 2008-09.
Here’s the local picture: