ConservativeHome's Platform

Maurice Cousins: We must prevail in Afghanistan

By Maurice Cousins.

While yesterday morning’s speech made by the Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth MP, must be welcomed for its honesty and the stating of the implications for Britain’s domestic security if we fail to make Afghanistan secure, it is unfortunate that the Government feels it even necessary to remind us as to why we are there in the first place.

As the British presence in Iraq is now formally over, the British public’s attention on our activities in Afghanistan is sharpening, particularly as the number of British troops killed increases.

According to a BBC/ ICM poll, taken in November last year, more than two-thirds of the UK’s adults want Britain to leave Afghanistan.

Even before the financial crisis, most Britons believed that the intervention in Afghanistan was a waste of money. They thought that the liberation of Taliban controlled Afghanistan was not our fight and that our interference in a “Muslim country” made Britain less safe because it made us a target for Islamist terror. But, if people are thinking this, it means that they are ignoring the historical build up to the conflict and misunderstand the threat posed to Britain by Islamist inspired terrorism.

So, why are the British armed forces in Afghanistan? On the 11th September 2001, nearly three thousand people (including sixty seven Britons) were murdered by nineteen Wahhabbi inspired Islamist terrorists from Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda. Ever since 1996, when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Bin Laden (who had been expelled from Sudan in the same year) had been a client of the Taliban. Al-Qaeda, with the blessing of the Taliban, were allowed to train and prepare for the 9/11 attacks whilst residing in Afghanistan.

Nick Herbert MP: Rural communities ignored by Labour are crying out to be heard - and the Conservatives have an agenda to revitalise them

Nick Herbert MP is Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Rural England has suffered a decade of disrespect by Labour.  Quiet communities have become angered by a Government which won’t even listen, still less give them a say.  Local services have been withdrawn, rural communities have been denied a voice, and power has been taken away from local people.

Yesterday, Jim Paice MP – the Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Rural Affairs – and I launched Rural Action, the Conservative agenda to revitalise our rural communities.  We are setting out solid proposals to empower rural communities, protect rural services, respect rural people and revive the rural economy.  And we are also launching a grassroots campaign, Conservative Rural Action, to promote our ideas throughout the countryside (also marked by this video posted on ConservativeHome yesterday).

Many of the challenges people face in the countryside are currently ignored because they are masked by an appearance of prosperity.  But 1.6 million people are living in rural poverty.  Motoring costs in rural areas are higher and public transport is thin on the ground.  And there is a serious shortage of affordable housing.

Labour has exacerbated these problems by failing to appreciate the social value of rural institutions such as post offices, village pubs and small shops.  1,400 rural post offices have disappeared since the year 2000.  There are now 200 fewer rural schools than when Labour came to power.  384 police stations closed in the shires in Labour’s first two terms.

Sajid Javid: The deep truth beneath Labour's green shoots

Sajid Javid has been a Conservative Party activist for many years and joined the Candidates List in May 2009.  He recently became the Director of a UK property development company, and was previously a senior Managing Director with a large European bank, specializsng in emerging markets.  He lives in London with his wife, Laura, and four young children.  In this Platform argues that Labour is deliberately overplaying the evidence of economic recovery and, as a result, failing to take the action that we so dearly need.

Watch out! The green shoots of recovery...here they come.  Flash Gordon has saved the day again.  Ministers are falling over themselves to tell us that the worst of the recession is behind us, and that we have begun to ride the positive gradient of a classic "V" shaped recession. They point to last month's National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) report which said that the recession hit its trough in March; the purchasing managers' index (PMI) for the services sector, which rose from 48.7 to 51.7 (above the critical 50 level that marks the divide between expansion and contraction - the first time since March 2008); and the recent Halifax survey that says that average house prices bounced back 2.6% in May.  Most of all, minsters say we shouldn't just take their word for it, just look at the financial markets' own judgement: the UK stock market has just had an outstanding quarter.

Clearly, any signs of recovery are to be welcomed.  However, with good reason, many economic commentators remain sceptical of all this evidence.  There are some serious issues and uncertainties out there that remain unaddressed, and could so easily throw any potential recovery off track.  Instead of a classic "V" shaped recession, as Labour would dearly like us to believe this is, we could in fact head into "W" or even "L" shaped territory.

My fear is, since this Government has so clearly set out to win the next election through whatever lies it chooses, it will spin these "green shoots" as a full blown recovery and ignore the serious economic issues we still face.  Last week's shocking announcement that there will be no Comprehensive Spending Review is testament to that.  There will, sadly, be more dishonesty and and colossal irresponsibility to come from Labour, meaning eventual recovery will take far longer.

There are at least four key reasons to remain concerned.

Maurice Saatchi: These are our values

Lord Saatchi restates the values of the Centre for Policy Studies as it celebrates its 35th anniversary.

Two in every three voters gave their allegiance to “None of the above” at the recent EU elections. As we know, confidence in the political process has been replaced by disilluionsment and cynicism.

It need not be like this. There is an alternative. As Lady Thatcher is fond of saying, “Circumstances change, values endure”. So on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of its founding by Mrs Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph, the Centre for Policy Studies is proud to declare its values.

• A rising tide lifts all ships.

• A bigger cake means a bigger slice for everyone.  But first you have to create the wealth to make the cake bigger.

• Caring that works costs cash – the Good Samaritan shows that first you need to money in order to do the good works.

• Lower tax is good – for moral reasons, because it means more freedom and choice for individuals; and for economic reasons, because lower tax rates can mean higher tax revenues and more wealth creation.

• A smaller state is required; the Government is already far too big.

• A man or woman has a right to spend what he or she earns, to own property, to have the State as servant and not as master; that these are the essence of a free country and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.

• People are not numbers in a State computer; they should be seen as individuals. 

• Everyone has the right to be unequal.  No one, thank heaven, is quite like anyone else.

• The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build.

• The essence of mankind is the power of choice; the glory and dignity of man is that it is he who chooses, and is not chosen for.

• Human dignity resides in independence, individuality, self-determination.

Andrew Haldenby: Reforming quangos will strengthen the role of Parliament and help to restore MPs' credibility

Andrew Haldenby is Director of the independent think tank Reform.

There must be a general election coming.  Every time a politician mentions a good idea, their opponents leap onto exactly the same square of territory.  Invitations for today’s speech by David Cameron for Reform were sent out last Thursday.  On Friday, Liam Byrne, the reforming Labour Minister, briefed the Times that quangos were in his sights – indeed, he had sent letters to his colleagues “demanding an urgent review of all quangos to assess which can be abolished, merged with other bodies or taken back directly into their ministries”.

Quangos might seem an unusual choice of target.  After all they spend only 5% of the whole government budget (£35 billion out of £675 billion according to the Cabinet Office definition, which is itself arguable).   Given the fiscal crisis, why not target the big ticket items instead – benefits (over £150 billion), the NHS (£110 billion), education (approaching £100 billion)?

But the thing about quangos is that they show the problems in UK government in their purest form.  Taking on quangos means setting out the principles that will underpin the wider agenda of reform of government.

The most important principle is accountability, highlighted by David Cameron in a speech last week.  Reform described the lack of accountability of the civil service earlier this year (and advocated giving Ministers powers to appoint senior civil servants, making them democratically accountable).  Quangos are even less accountable than Whitehall. 

Donata Huggins: Why we should support parents who lie on school application forms

Donata Huggins is studying Chinese Language and History at the London School of Oriental and African Studies

I read with fury about the investigation launched by Ed Balls on Friday, into the number of parents who lie about where they live to secure school places for their children. The investigation stems from the recently dropped prosecution of a mother who lied about her address in an effort to get her son into a popular primary school in Harrow. Normally I have the utmost respect for the law, but on this occasion I cannot help but make a vigilante cry because the system is deeply flawed.

I grew up, and still live for that matter, with my family in a council estate in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. My home, an ex-council house, sits on the far edge of the estate, on the dividing line of the local state school catchment areas. For primary school, I was allocated a place at my nearest school: a school right in the centre of the estate, where the pupils perform poorly. Only after a year-long battle with the local council did my parents manage to get me out of the school and move me to a better one in a different neighbourhood. Luckily the school agreed to take my younger sister on automatically.

When it came to applying for secondary school I missed my parents’ first choice of the ex-grammar school and my second choice of a school in the neighbouring town. I ended up at the ex-secondary modern school that performs poorly, which again is right in the heart of the council estate. The year my younger sister applied, our house was just included in the ex-grammar school's catchment area, covering a largely wealthy housing area. The difference between the two schools could not be more marked:

Ian Loader: Why penal reform should be a Conservative issue

Ian Loader is Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College.

This week, the Commission on English Prisons Today published its final report, following two years of enquiry. The report - Do Better, Do Less - argues that the English penal system has over the last decade morphed into a bloated, incoherent mess – bursting with record numbers and lacking any coherent rationale. It is this mess that a Conservative government may soon inherit.

The Commission – on which I was proud to serve – argues for a change of direction. It is time, its report says, for English society to stop bingeing on prisons, to radically scale back its dependence on incarceration as the path to social order. To this end, the report suggests breaking with national government interference and targets in favour of localism in criminal justice policy. It makes a powerful case for re-directing the prison budget towards non-penal, community-based methods of reducing crime and re-offending – an approach known as ‘justice reinvestment’. It argues for expanding the use of restorative justice – a justice innovation that is a proven success.

All this is underpinned by the new public philosophy of punishment that our society pressingly requires – what we call penal moderation. This urges restraint in how English society talks about and delivers punishment; calls upon us to recognize and reap the benefits of a minimum necessary penal system, and demands a criminal justice system which treats all whose lives are caught within it with human dignity. Moderation, we argue, is an idea whose time has come - one that fits a dawning era of regulated responsibility in economic and social policy.

Damian Hinds: Forget ID cards - it's the National Identity Register we have to worry about

Damian Hinds is prospective parliamentary candidate for East Hampshire.

Credit where it’s due.  The Labour spin machine has scored a rare double hit.  With the first they persuade the media they’ve had a change of heart on compulsory National Identity Cards, thereby neutralising an awkward issue.  With the second, they quietly speed up the introduction of the National Identity Register, thereby furthering the real underlying aim. 

As the Guardian reports, over 80% of people will find their way onto the National Identity Register as a result of applying for or renewing a passport (and will thereafter have a duty to notify the Register of changes in personal details or face a fine of up to £1,000).  Additionally, young people turning 18 are likely to find increasingly that a ‘voluntary’ ID Card is pretty much compulsory if they ever want to buy a drink, so they’ll get on the Register too.  At some point in the future when, say, 90% of people are on the Register, a government could easily decide that they now “might as well”, in the interests of efficiency, make the thing universal and compulsory.

The key debate is not, and never has been, about a plastic card.  It is about the National Identity Register (NIR) that sits behind the card.  The NIR is the daddy of all databases, which will allow (via everyone’s unique Identity Registration Number – in database parlance, the ‘index key’) the linking together of data held on us across the other 40+ public sector databases, existing, under construction, or planned. 

James Cleverly: How we are working to reduce youth offending rates in London

James Cleverly has been London Assembly Member for Bexley and Bromley since May 2008 and is Boris Johnson's Ambassador for Youth.

I was really pleased to read earlier this week on ConservativeHome the article by Humfrey Malins about Young Offender Institutions and his new pamphlet, Revolving Door.

He is completely right in his assessment of the current shortfalls in the youth justice system and has highlighted a number of areas crying out for improvement.  I am pleased to say that here in London we are all ready in the process of implementing a major plan to address many of the issues that Humfrey raises.

During the election campaign Boris made the reduction of youth crime a top priority and a number of us at City Hall have been working up policies to turn that commitment into reality.  Our recent policing successes in taking knives off the street through Operation Blunt 2 and reducing transport crime through our extra funding of transport police have been high profile, but we have also been working on a range of preventative measures in parallel to the policing initiatives.  These were published in November 2008 under the title “Time for Action”.

One of the key plans within “Time for Action” is called Project Daedalus and it specifically aims to reduce the re-offending rates amongst those in Feltham YOI.  We have negotiated with the MoJ, Youth Justice Board, London Councils and others to trial our plan in a 30-bed wing in Feltham YOI.

Shane Frith: Why you should support the campaign to amend the smoking ban

Shane Frith is director of the classical-liberal think-tank Progressive Vision. He has worked for Conservative MPs in the UK and National Party MPs in his native New Zealand.  He is a former chairman of the International Young Democrat Union, linking young people involved in centre-right political parties worldwide, including the Conservative Party.

As a non-smoker, I have joined a campaign calling for an amendment to the smoking ban to allow smoking areas in pubs and clubs. I joined Save Our Pubs & Clubs: AmendTheSmokingBan.com because approximately 50 pubs in Britain close every week, many harmed by the loss in trade caused by people drinking and smoking at home.

When a local pub closes, we all suffer – smoker and non-smoker alike.  Amending the smoking ban to allow smoking areas in pubs, or even allowing small single room pubs to choose between smoking and non smoking policies, will help many pubs to survive.

As a member of the Conservative Party, I support private property rights and surely publicans and patrons should be the ones who decide what legal activities are carried out in a local pub?  I was delighted that Greg Knight MP attended the launch as part of a cross party campaign – we had elected representatives from all three major parties in attendance.

Shane Frith is director of the classical-liberal think-tank Progressive Vision. He has worked for Conservative MPs in the UK and National Party MPs in his native New Zealand.  He is a former chairman of the International Young Democrat Union, linking young people involved in centre-right political parties worldwide, including the Conservative Party.

Humfrey Malins MP: Only comprehensive reform of Young Offender Institutions will cut re-offending rates

Humfrey Malins is MP for Woking and a Crown Court Recorder.

Today the Bow Group is kindly publishing my new pamphlet, Revolving Door. My experiences in the Courts over many years have made me increasingly concerned about the value for money of our Young Offender Institutions. 

The cost of a place in one of these is well over £30,000 per year and, in terms of re-offending rates, they are a dismal failure.  For example, 79% of 16 year-olds released from Young Offender Institutions in 2006 re-offended within one year, committing an average of 4.3 offences each. 

Of course, in reality the situation is far worse, because only perhaps 20%-25% of crimes are actually detected in the first place.  So in effect the taxpayer spends over £30,000, and in return is left with youngsters who go on to commit perhaps twenty crimes within a year.  Quite aside from all the moral and social issues involved, Young Offender Institutions provide appalling value for money.

Andrew Mitchell MP: Brown’s belated Iraq inquiry must probe reconstruction failures

Andrew Mitchell MP is Shadow Secretary of State for International Development and has recently returned from a visit to Iraq, where he observed for himself the work of DFID on the ground.

While everyone is rightly debating the structure and process of the long-overdue inquiry into the Iraq War, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the crucial question of how effective British aid and development efforts in Iraq have been.

The questions around our reconstruction effort are particularly disturbing. In the run up to the 2003 invasion, the Department for International Development was run by the anti-war Clare Short, who eventually quit the Cabinet in protest. Some observers claim that this set the tone for the rest of DFID’s work in Iraq. Many staffers resented the fact that DFID had to shut down its work in Latin America in order to fund reconstruction in Iraq. Some in DFID regarded the Iraq aid programme as an "ugly duckling", a politically-driven enterprise in a middle-income country, very different from DFID’s "home turf" of large, poor sub-Saharan African countries.

There have been real tensions between DFID and the military on the ground in Iraq. They subscribe to fundamentally different visions of the meaning of development and reconstruction. The military tend to focus on quick results and physical reconstruction. DFID tends to focus on long-term capacity building in the central government. Both approaches have their merits and demerits. But there is a sense that the two models have failed to be joined-up in Iraq.

Liam Maxwell: The State must give us back our data

Liam Maxwell is a Councillor and the Lead Member for Policy and Performance at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. He is the author of It's ours - why we, not government, must own our data, which is published today by the Centre for Policy Studies.

Since 1997 the Government must have got through at least £140 billion on information systems in a naïve belief that if you spend enough the men in white coats can make government more efficient. At the moment the cash burn rate of IT is £16.7 billion a year, that is more than 1% of our entire GDP and much higher than any similar country. It is also, according to Andy Burnham no less, almost 50% more than we spend on drugs in the NHS.

A recent study showed that only 30% of commissioned systems work. Budgets get broken by ludicrous amounts.  We all know about the NHS supercomputer and the Offender Management System, but here’s a new one just out from the NAO: the Department for Work and Pensions want to get more people to use their online customer system.  More than half of their customer-base can use the internet and yet  after huge spending the take-up was  – to use the National Audit Office's words – “tiny”.

Out of the 142 million contacts with the public, only 340,000 (about 0.25%) used the online services. What a waste. Why do they get it so wrong?

Adrian Blair: This Armed Forces Day we must commit to delivering adequate medical and psychiatric support for our veterans

Adrian Blair is Research Secretary of The Bow Group.

Today is Armed Forces Day.

Most people reading this would agree we have a moral obligation to help soldiers who have risked everything to lead a normal life afterwards. However, a new Bow Group paper by Ross Carroll, Stuart Carroll, and Julien Rey reveals how far the nation is from that ideal. Falklands hero Simon Weston told them Britain “is good at honouring its war dead, as this costs little… it’s not so great at honouring its war living.”  After reading their paper, it’s hard to disagree.

By conducting in-depth interviews with veterans of several conflicts, Carroll, Carroll and Rey reveal deeply inadequate medical and psychiatric support for veterans, inferior to systems in Australia and the USA.

Britain only has two dedicated treatment centres for service personnel (in Selly Oak and Surrey), to cover a veteran population of four to five million. So the main treatment burden falls on the NHS. Yet although the Government claims to have extended priority NHS access to all veterans (not just war pensioners), it’s not clear what that means in practice, and 71% of GPs and 76% of veterans are still not aware of it.

In addition to physical injury, psychiatric disorders among those who have served in combat are common.  Because disorders resulting from active service often don’t become clear for many years, and are unlikely to be self-diagnosed, the key to providing effective help is ongoing monitoring and support following active service.

That’s where the NHS really falls down: NHS psychiatry services are naturally geared towards the needs of civilian society. The NHS isn’t designed to provide the sustained support and follow-up that is essential for veterans.

Given these failings, it is not entirely surprising that around 2,500 ex service personnel sleep in homeless facilities in London on any given night (there are no adequate UK-wide figures), and 8,000 are currently in prison (close to 10% of the prison population).  Thousands of others are leading lives that are anything but normal, thanks to the lack of an adequate veteran support system. 

One Iraq veteran told the authors:

“Serving my country has been worse than a personal credit crunch for me. I have lost two houses, one career and one relationship from it, and sustained more health problems than I can count.”

The next Conservative government will face many dubious calls on an over-stretched public purse. The veteran support action plan in today’s Bow Group paper is emphatically not one of them. Indeed there are few better uses of public money.

Nicky Morgan: The real hunger for investment in the NHS, Mr Brown, can be found on hospital meal trays

Nicky Morgan is the prospective parliamentary candidate for Loughborough.

The recent debate over future public spending levels has missed at least one point.  All of our GDP can be “invested” (to use Gordon Brown’s preferred terminology) in our public services.  But if the money isn’t used in a way which improves standards and, in the case of the NHS, quality of care it is all, frankly, irrelevant.

An example of this is the case raised with me by Loughborough resident, Mr L, whose wife died in a Leicester Hospital recently.  Mr L and his family are incredibly stoical about the turn of events.  But the reason they feel so let down by the NHS and want lessons to be learned is that Mrs L didn’t receive sufficient help to eat.  Mrs L was unable to sit up on her own and therefore could not eat and drink without assistance.  Over time she became malnourished and dehydrated which caused further complications.  How can we expect patients to recover from surgery or ill health if they are not eating or drinking enough or anything at all?

To try to improve the situation a meal chart was started so that Mrs L’s food intake was monitored. Needless to say it was not filled in.  Meals arrived and were then taken away uneaten.  Despite persistent efforts by the family to raise the problem no one seemed to question this and to try to find out why she was not eating. 

On the same ward another patient I have spoken to lost 3 stone during her stay at around the same time. This is a common problem.

Mark Field MP: How US-China relations could fatally wound the globalisation project

Mark Field is MP for Cities of London and Westminster.

If we are to understand the broader reasons why the global economy has unravelled so swiftly, we need to examine the crucial relationship between the world’s biggest economy, the United States, and its eastern pretender, China. This relationship has for many years driven globalisation and has the potential now to wound that same project fatally. For a decade or more, the United States (along with the UK) has pursued a model of growth based on debt-fuelled consumption, the cash and cheap goods provided courtesy of China. Pursued to its limits, this relationship has become dangerously unbalanced, the myth of its sustainability brutally uncovered as the complicated financial mechanisms that hitherto propped it up, dramatically collapsed. The West’s position in the world may never be the same again.

In the 1970s and 1980s, various legislative changes allowed Wall Street to access a huge new source of finance which it sought to invest to maximum value, encouraging corporations to invest globally and exploit new markets. Alongside this came a ‘hollowing out’ of the US manufacturing industry as companies looked abroad for cheap goods and labour. Whilst the working classes of America were invariably the losers of this deal, politicians made the case that the benefits to the US would outweigh their collective plight. New employment would be found in services, technology and the like, workers would be ‘re-skilled’ and the vulnerable would be caught by the welfare system.

Timothy Kirkhope MEP: The allegation that the new European Conservatives and Reformists group will be marginalised in Brussels is nonsense

Timothy Kirkhope is leader of the British Conservative MEPs.

On Monday, Conservatives announced that we have achieved the necessary number of MEPs and nationalities to form our new anti-federalist, centre and centre-right mainstream grouping in the European Parliament.

The announcement brings to an end a search that William Hague and I began over three years ago, following the undertaking David Cameron made during his campaign for the Party leadership.

For me, our announcement underlines a vital political point.  David Cameron is a man who delivers on his commitments.  The contrast with Gordon Brown, especially on Europe, could not be clearer.

We have a great deal to be proud of with this new Group. With 55 MEPs already, we will be the fourth largest group in the Parliament.  I am confident that more MEPs will join us in future, some in the relatively near future - Mark Francois and I are continuing to work hard in negotiations on this front.

We will have a number of positions of influence within the parliament. We anticipate the Group will have at least one Vice-President of the parliament and a committee chair.  We will have a number of the coordinators (Whips/spokesmen) in the committees, meaning we will be in a strong position to take on some high-profile reports passing through the parliament. We will also sit on the top table of the parliament - the Conference of Presidents - where a number of important decisions are taken about the day-to-day functioning of the institution.

Andrew Morrison: The case for more devolved powers for Scotland and England

Andrew Morrison works in Glasgow as qualified accountant, where he is a Conservative candidate for the city council elections.

Recently, the Scottish Parliament – better known as Holyrood – celebrated its tenth year of existence.  Across the board, Scots are content that the establishment remains and the Conservatives have adjusted rather well to devolution in both Scotland and Wales – as the Conservatives’ topping the polls in Wales at the elections for the European Parliament showed.

Professor Kenneth Calman – a very highly respected, unaffiliated figure – chaired the Commission which was set up to redress the problems encountered in the first decade at Holyrood.  The Commission made a strong case for Westminster taking some powers back, devolving some other powers away to Holyrood, and most definitely the case for closer co-operation rather than the ongoing petulance of both Labour and the Scottish Nationalists.

For just about everyone in the Union, the elephant in the room is the funding arrangements and the Barnett Formula.  As a Conservative, I believe an organisation charged with the responsible job of representing the people has the responsibility to show it is spending the people’s money sensibly.  My biggest criticism of the Scottish Parliament – one shared by others in the United Kingdom – is that the policies implemented by Members of the Scottish Parliament has no impact on the tax revenue received by them because it is supported by the UK-wide Treasury.

Likewise, there is no incentive to rejuvenate Scotland’s underperforming economy because that will not translate into a direct boost in tax revenue.  The Economist once compared MSPs to ‘teenagers living on an allowance’ – a comparison I always found rather unfair on teenagers, because at least certain types of behaviour is expected from them for that allowance: nothing can be expected of MSPs for providing them with funds – the money must be handed over no matter what.

Dr Teck Khong: The flaws in the NHS must be addressed by rebuilding it from its very core

Dr Teck Khong, a Leicester GP and a forensic physician for Northamptonshire Police, is on the Conservative Party's approved list of parliamentary candidates. Here he reiterates the key elements of a new health system which he first proposed at the 2003 Policy Forum on Health.

The debate about NHS funding does not really concern the average citizen when he or she is in good health and needs no medical attention. Funding constraints only come a real problem to the patient who desperately needs treatment that makes a difference to whether he or she can walk again, maintain or return to employment, do all the normal things that are taken for granted by a healthy person, or avoid premature death and enjoy life with loved ones. It is also a conundrum when a doctor is compromised in what he or she knows by professional instinct should be done in the best interests of the patient. For the doctor, anything less is an assault on his or her conscience and a subversion of integrity.

Devolution notwithstanding, it is important to ensure uniformity of access to medical services and compassionate care for all UK citizens. To maintain such equitable standards, there has to be deep and fundamental changes, some of which have not been properly addressed.

In the process of acting as the procurement agency for treatment primarily through the engagement of professional services, the government has progressively increased and vastly distorted this remit. It has created immense administrative structures that lack coherence and efficient management with the twin consequences of massive waste and poor results. How could a Strategic Health Authority justify the metamorphosis of one Family Practitioner into six Primary Care Trusts over a 20-year period when it would not invest in a neurosurgical unit for the same region?

Pamela Singleton: The Marine Bill does not go far enough if you want to continue watching, catching or eating fish

Pamela Singleton is a veterinary surgeon and is on the Conservative Party's approved list of parliamentary candidates.  She argues that the Marine Bill needs to designate 30% of UK waters as 'highly protected marine reserves'.

The Marine and Coastal Access Bill will have its second reading in the House of Commons next week, on 23rd June. The aims of the Bill are broadly to conserve fish stocks, regulate planning of the marine environment, and to create a walkable route round the English coast. (Scotland has its own Marine Bill.)

Having a marine bill is extremely important to everyone who enjoys traditional British fish and chips (most people I know), it is important to environmentalists, and it is important to those of us who simply enjoy spotting wildlife. Did you know that you can see Bottle Nosed Dolphins from the coast in Cardigan Bay, Wales? Standing on land you can go and watch the BNDs - as they are known locally. One of the world’s largest onshore Gannet colonies is on Bempton cliffs in Yorkshire. I have seen 10,000 puffins in the air at one time in Pembrokeshire, and the fierce Great Skua in Shetland.

The British coast provides a wildlife spectacle, but it is fast disappearing.

Many seabirds have failed to breed in recent years. The causes are multifactorial though include a lack of enough sand eels, food for many spectacular seabirds. Climate change is thought to be partly responsible for the depletion of this tiny fish, but overfishing of this vital part of the food chain has also contributed. Our seabird cities could become ghost towns.