Nadine Dorries MP: We need tighter regulation of abortion

The undercover investigation by The Daily Telegraph which confirmed that abortions take place in the UK on the basis of gender alone was no surprise to those of us who have been campaigning for abortion law reform.

Abortion on the basis of sex selection is illegal. In fact abortion for any reason other than ‘continuation of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children in her family’* is illegal.

When agreeing to an abortion two doctors have to sign a statutory document to comply with the wording of the Act, ‘in good faith’. Some would argue that on that basis, almost every abortion which takes place in the UK is illegal. Do doctors really believe ‘in good faith’ that every abortion they carry out meets the criteria of the Act and more importantly, complete statutory documents to that effect?

The reality is, as evidenced by a former director of BPAS, Dr Vincent Argent (who gave evidence to a select committee investigating abortion on which I sat) that the statutory forms stock pile up in an office for a second clinic doctor to sign, who may never even have see the woman. The clinics ‘stung’ by the Daily Telegraph are now under police investigation and on Monday afternoon I have a meeting with the Metropolitan Detective Inspector responsible for the investigation.

One of the UK's largest abortion providers, BPAS, narrowly avoided police intervention after a centre manager, at the last moment, realised that a doctor had readily and willingly agreed to terminate on the basis of gender. Maybe her suspicion had been aroused by the undercover reporters? Abortion providers have been very much on alert over the last few months since the debate on counselling.

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Bruce Anderson: Which of these two budget speeches is Osborne more likely to deliver?

So what will the Chancellor do next month? What follows is an attempt to draft two alternative texts. It will be amusing to see if either of them bears any resemblance to the eventual outcome.

Version 1

" From the outset, it was clear that this Coalition government would be confronted by one of the gravest challenges in British peace-time history. Abroad, and in some of our most important markets, we were menaced by the crisis in the Eurozone. At home, growth was sharply falling while public spending was out of control. The national debt was already at dangerous levels and there would inevitably be further increases. Throughout their working lives, children yet unborn would face higher tax burdens in order to meet the interest payments. There was no alternative; taxes would have to rise while government spending was cut.

"That was our policy, and it is working. It has won the respect of the markets, which enables this country to enjoy very low interest rates. Most important of all, it has won the respect of the British people. No-one enjoys fiscal restraint. We British have never been a nation of masochists. But we have always been a nation of realists. The country knows what needs to be done, so the least the Government can do is live up to its responsibilities: take the hard decisions, make the tough choices and stay on course. There are, I believe, the first signs of recovery. But that is an argument for maintaining restraint, not abandoning it. Although I do intend to make a few marginal adjustments, my essential message today is; steady as she goes..."

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Andrew Lilico: The British government should not participate in legal torture

I write that headline.  I look at it.  It doesn't seem like it should be controversial.  Indeed, if I have written such a headline twenty-five years ago, readers would probably have expected the body of the article to contain some terrible revelation about police malpractice in Northern Ireland.  And yet, as a strange and disturbing reflection of our age, I am not not merely in a minority amongst the general population (who, I presume, would always have been happy enough to see some rapists, child murderers, terrorists and others tortured) but, oddly, even amongst the chattering classes.  Indeed, in such a minority that my view would be regarded as not merely wrong and extreme, but bordering on the unacceptable.

I do not believe that the British government should torture people itself or participate in their torture by others.  So, that means torture should not be legal, evidence obtained under torture should not be admissible as evidence in a trial, we should not deport people to countries where they themselves will be tortured, and we should not deport people to countries where others will be tortured into giving evidence against them.

I do not believe this on the basis of Britain having signed up to any convention and as such feeling obliged to play by the rules as a team player now we've signed.  I would oppose the British government participating in legal torture even were we signed up to no international conventions touching on torture at all.  Neither do I believe this on the basis that I contend there is any "right" not to be tortured - I don't believe in human rights at all.

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Jill Kirby: If the Liberal Democrats can't govern like team players, there's little reason to vote for them

As Iain Duncan Smith and his Employment Minister Chris Grayling mount a robust defence of the government's work experience schemes, Nick Clegg is handing out the sweeties. Yesterday the Deputy Prime Minister announced a new £126 million initiative to bribe (sorry, incentivise) employers into finding jobs for 16 and 17 year olds with the worst GCSE results. The scheme itself is embedded in so much bureaucracy that the £2,200 per teenager offered to employers seems unlikely to be transformational. But it sits well with Mr Clegg's desire to be the nice guy, who always has some cash ready to soften the austerity of the government's programme.

Yesterday also saw a preview of the Liberal Democrats' latest party political broadcast, in which Nick Clegg emphasises that it's his party that plans to take the low paid out of tax. The older the coalition becomes, and the closer we move towards the next election (as well as a potential leadership challenge), the keener Mr Clegg becomes to differentiate “nice” LibDem policies from “nasty” Conservative cuts. So how is the good cop, bad cop routine working out for his poll ratings?

Not too well, according to the latest from Populus (in yesterday's Times) and the Guardian's ICM findings. Both pollsters note that Liberal Democrat support continues to fall and Populus finds that since last summer Mr Clegg's personal ratings have fallen most sharply amongst Liberal Democrat voters. As the Times's Sam Coates observes, this precipitate decline coincides with the period in which Mr Clegg has sought to talk up the differences between Lib Dem and Conservative policies. The tactic does not seem to impress Lib Dem supporters any more than voters at large.

ICM's poll questioned the public about the NHS reforms and found more dismaying results for Mr Clegg to digest: when it comes to the health service, his party is even less trusted than the Conservatives. Only 9% think the Liberal Democrats can be trusted “a lot” with the NHS, compared to the Conservatives 13% and Labour's 23%. The Deputy Prime Minister's claims to have extracted important concessions on the health bill, and noisy interventions by Liberal Democrat peers led by Shirley Williams, have either failed to impress or simply escaped the voters' attention.

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Stephan Shakespeare: Is Britain really run by four people? Of course not.

Political insiders love to speculate about which other insiders are really pulling the strings. Power is seen as an endless series of Russian dolls each packed inside the other, and at the core there's supposed to be a special group that is the true governing cabal. In The Spectator last week James Forsyth identified a new 'gang of four' called 'The Quad', who "decide all major matters of policy". Tim summarised the article here.

I'm sceptical. This isn't really how the world is made. A little before the 1997 general election I was having a drink with Michael Portillo, and feeling a bit philosophical I asked him, "As the Secretary of State for Defence, do you ever feel like a complete fake?" He stiffened, and asked warily, "What do you mean exactly?" I explained that when I became a headmaster, and stood in front of the school delivering stern or encouraging words, I always felt like I was just pretending my part, that I was still a schoolboy myself, and would soon be exposed. It must be even worse, I suggested, when you're supposed to be responsible for the nation's defence.

Portillo smiled: "Every time I walk into the Cabinet room," he said, "I look around for a door to another room where the real Cabinet meets. I can never believe this is really it, that this meeting I'm in is where we actually make decisions for the country."

We find it comforting to imagine that somewhere there's a secret place where clever people, genuine grown-ups, do the things that clever, genuinely grown-up people are supposed to do. Forsyth quotes a 'Downing Street insider' portraying 'The Quad' as the one place where 'adults' come together "to sort out the things that the children couldn't."

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Bruce Anderson: The Second World War was the key to the history of the EU and it still is

How can intelligent people behave so stupidly? If the Eurozone was trying to complete the destruction of the Greek economy while cheering on social and political instability, no-one could fault its strategy. On the assumption that those are not the goals, it is hard to find insults severe enough to do justice to the Eurozone's idiocy.

It is true that the Greeks are not blameless. The girl at the whorehouse door may be enticing; she is not forcing you to cross the threshold. "Economics" comes from Greek; there must be some modern Greeks who still understand it. Greece needs reform, which should start by banishing another Greek word, kleptocracy, from government. It needs a purge of public-sector waste and idleness. That said, you do not have to be an uncritical Keynesian to understand that austerity is not the sole answer. Greeks ought to be able to work, earn, spend, save, invest. At present, as Matthew Parris has written, Greeks can prosper everywhere except in Greece. That must be rectified. But this will require a new, realistic currency. What about Greece's Euro-denominated debts? Let us decide that the Greeks deserve one-third of the blame for borrowing so much, the Eurozone two-thirds for allowing them to do so - and find a way of adjusting Greece's liabilities accordingly. If you think that sounds too generous to the Greeks, pause for a second. They might be capable of servicing the one-third.

I suspect that something along those lines will eventually happen, but not before a further period of chaos: the further undermining of Greek institutions; the further degradation of Greece's public ethos. It is possible to impose a technocracy upon Italy, because large numbers of Italians respect Mario Monti and despise most of their other politicians. This will not work in Greece. Signor Monti can govern because he has, de facto, a popular mandate. That is not true of his Greek counterparts, and postponing elections would only make matters worse. I would not like to be the Eurozone officials who might be responsible for overseeing the Greek government. The last time that people from Northern Europe tried to do something similar, they were called Gauleiters and they could rely on the SS for personal security. This time, they will have a more sensitive name - but where is the protection? Perhaps that would be a way of stimulating the Greek private sector, if any Greeks would agree to serve as part of the protection teams, which would need to be large. It is more likely that the average self-respecting Greek would be found among the baying mob trying to break through the police cordon to get at the offices where the visitors were cowering. Any sensible Eurozone official might decide that it was time to encourage Greece's high-tech sector, and do his business from 2,000 miles away by conference call.

"Sensible Eurozone official": that must be the oxymoron's oxymoron. But why were they able to land their continent into such a mess? There is no escaping the answer. It all comes down to history, the War and national pride. Anecdotes and personal experience can often bring history to life. There are subjects on which you think that you are reasonably informed. Then you hear a story which sets off a transmission mechanism between the brain and the blood-stream and there is quickening.

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Nadine Dorries MP: Liberal Democrat MPs want to have their Coalition cake and eat it

Recess must have come as a blessed relief for the Liberal Democrat Education Minister, Sarah Teather. Just as people began to notice she hadn’t voted for the benefit cap, up went the Mace and she could take refuge in her constituency.

The reason Sarah didn’t vote for the benefits cap was that she was worried families would be forced out of their homes. Sarah: we all are, but Labour left a huge deficit which the people have to pay off and we are all in this together, remember?

Sarah knows full well that if she was really worried about the policy, the way to have dealt with it in a manner that was ethical and principled would have been to resign, not to absent herself from a vote only to return back to Parliament and her Ministerial job.

If Sarah had been a Conservative Minister she would have been told to resign or be sacked on the spot. Collective responsibility is how governments function, through good times and bad. You don’t get to pick and choose which policies you vote for. If you want that particular luxury the backbenches await, along with a much smaller salary.

However, it appears that Sarah’s one off ‘special abstension’ and Liberal Democrat members picking and choosing what to vote for may become a pattern of the future, a fact highlighted by David Cameron’s trip to France and the signing of the civilian nuclear power accord with the President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy.

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Bruce Anderson: David Cameron's speech yesterday was the best he has yet delivered. The Unionist fightback has begun.

Yesterday, David Cameron gave the best speech that he has yet delivered. It was in Scotland, in defence of the Union. Its quality rested on its strengths: rhetoric as a fusion of emotion and intellect. In proclaiming the transcendent importance of the Union, in committing himself to battle in the fight for the future of his country, the Prime Minister drew on deep feelings, passion and idealism. The conviction and the sincerity were heart-felt. Hardened hacks of my acquaintance, who have heard a speech or two in their time, were moved and misty-eyed. Suddenly, the beleaguered pro-Union forces have heard the skirl of the pipes and are ready to rise up and march and fight and roar.

The idealism was palpable. At present, the Tories have one seat in Scotland. Mr Cameron, who can add one and nought, realises that it does not equal 30 (half the Scottish seats plus one). As long as Scotland is in the United Kingdom, it is harder for the Tories to win outright. Given the Conservative party's reputation as the proponent of a hard-faced, counting-house, anti-sentimental approach to politics, one might have thought that this calculation would be all that mattered to the average English Tory. Not a bit of it. In standing by the Union, even in adversity, in defiance of any narrow view of self-interest, English Toryism is vindicating its claim to be the true National party. I cannot commend this speech highly enough. Everyone should read it. It should renew and refresh every Tory's pride in his creed. It is an historic document.

But it is only the beginning. There is a deformation professionnelle which afflicts all politicians. They make a speech. Everyone applauds. So they assume that everyone will remember everything that they said. To put it mildly, that is over-optimistic. There is wisdom in the old adage. Tell people what you are going to say. Say it. Then tell them that you have said it. The Blairites understood the value of repetition, partly because they rarely had anything new to say. But any sensible politician ought to be willing to repeat himself until he is sick of his own words. Then, suddenly, someone will pay attention. "That's a good point. Why haven't you made it before?" At that stage, the politician must control his natural desire to explode with incredulity and wrath, consoling himself that the message is at last getting across.

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Andrew Lilico: "Civil partnership" vs "gay marriage" - Why does it matter what you call it?

Unlike many Conservatives, my position on gay marriage hasn't changed.  I've always been in favour of a legal form of gay marriage.  I've always regarded legal marriage as providing a convenient bundling of various contractual / legal arrangements - inheritance in the event of the death of a partner, next of kin for medical consultation, joint guardianship of children, and so on.  All that legal marriage does is to bundle together various contracts that one could make separately into one overall comprehensive (and thus more secure) contract.  I've never been able to fathom what good reason anyone supposed there was for denying homosexuals the legal right to bundle their contracts in exactly the same way heterosexuals have always been able to.  Indeed, since the giving and keeping of promises is one of the essential building-blocks of human society, it goes further than simplly being a matter of freedom for homosexuals - facilitating such promise-exchanges has always seemed to me to be one of the things society exists for.

Actually, my own view goes further and I don't see any good reason for preventing polygamists from entering into similar contractual arrangements.  People say that polygamous relationships intrinsically involve one-sided power relationships and are immoral and all kinds of virtually exact repetitions of the arguments people made against homosexual marriages.  If that's your opinion, then don't enter into a polygamous marriage!  But the issue isn't whether they are right - legal marriage has absolutely nothing at all to do with right and wrong (otherwise we would not marry adulterers).  Being legally married does not imply that the state approves of your relationship, declares you morally upright or something - any more than the state approves of your 125% mortgage or your pornographic magazine business partnership.  Being legally married simply means that the state recognises and stands behind your promise exchange, just as it stands behind other sorts of contract.

I find it a bit odd, frankly, having to write such things.  I thought we'd had this debate some time ago, and those on my side of the debate had won.  What are we debating about now?  Don't we already have a legal form of homosexual marriage - civil partnership?

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Jill Kirby: Vince Cable's choice for university access tsar shows why Gove should be given control of higher education

Do you remember these words, from December 2010?:

“I have a nuclear option; it’s like fighting a war. They know I have nuclear weapons... If they push me toofar then I can walk out and bring the Government down and they know that.”

Now look at this answer to a Select Committee on 2 February 2012:

“The task is to use the nuclear option with subtlety and that will be my role. If you say you never will touch the nuclear button then you don’t have a nuclear button so clearly I would be prepared to…”

You might think that these two speakers have much in common. Indeed the latter seems – whether consciously or not - to be echoing the former. No prizes for guessing that the speakers are – in this order – Business Secretary Vince Cable and his new protégé, the Vice Chancellor of Bedfordshire University, Professor Les Ebdon.

We learnt yesterday that, contrary to weekend news reports, the Prime Minister feels unable to prevent Mr Cable's choice of Professor Ebdon as the new head of the Office of Fair Access (OFFA). This is despite the recommendation of the Business Select Committee that Mr Ebdon should not be appointed. If Mr Ebdon gets the job, universities failing to comply with OFFA's social mobility targets will, as he made clear to the Select Committee on 2 February, risk being fined or having their funding withdrawn. This is the so-called “nuclear option.”

Mr Cable and his choice of university tsar have more in common than a taste for explosive hyperbole. Both appear to be convinced that the reason why Britain's most academic universities do not take as many students from poor backgrounds as from middle class homes is the inability of universities to reach out to clever students from failing schools. Neither seemed to have grasped that the purpose of university selection committees is to maintain the highest possible standards at their institutions by selecting the students most likely to benefit from the education on offer. And in their desire to bring financial pressure to bear on universities who fail to advance social mobility, Mr Cable and Mr Ebdon are ignoring the single most important reason why Britain's most academically demanding universities do not have an intake representative of all social classes: the failure of our comprehensive school system to keep pace with the academic standards of grammar schools and fee-paying schools.

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Stephan Shakespeare: Voters approve of U-turns - if they bring politicians back in line with the public

Last week ConservativeHome caused a political furore by urging David Cameron to drop the NHS Bill, arguing that it does little to genuinely reform the health service but would damage the government's reputation and thereby weaken its ability to fight successfully for genuinely radical causes.

As a consequence, there was only a tiny bit of attention on the merits of the bill but intense focus on the internal forces lined up against each other. It therefore became necessary for the Prime Minister's office to reassert vigorously that he was determined to face down the critics and stick with his policy (even though Downing Street had apparently briefed against it a few days before.) This brings two points to mind:

1) It seems of overriding importance to political leaders to show that they cannot be made to change their minds in response to criticism, as this might make them appear weak. Much more than other species, politicians feel heavily invested in their earlier decisions, even when those decisions were the result of uncomfortable compromises. When politicians do change their minds (which happens very frequently) they invariably strive to show that they haven't actually done so. But why? I can think of no occasion when a leader bowing to public opinion thereby appeared weak to that public. Quite the opposite, voters tend to like it when leaders change their minds to agreement with them, seeing it as a reassuring sign of reasonableness. (We mainly admire conviction when it accords with our own conviction; mostly, we do not admire Bob Crow, for example).

If the Bill does end up proving too unpopular (I don't say it will: like most people, I haven't a clue whether it is in fact an excellent and highly necessary reform package or a heap of minor measures), the government can always decide to ditch it and can even turn that moment into a pro-NHS triumph ("we have listened to doctors and nurses", etc).

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Andrew Lilico: Religious toleration is about how religions tolerate

Religious toleration has been in the press again recently, with the Advertising Standards Authority banning the claim that "God heals", the Cornish hoteliers losing their appeal against a fine for discrimination, and pre-council meeting prayers being banned.  Many of these discussions seem to me to arise from an error so early and deep in the way people think about these matters that it is not even noticed: we have come to assume that religious toleration is about how religions are tolerated.

If we start from this assumption, and then deploy standard British ideas about impartial treatment before the law, we get the following kind of result: if we are to act fairly, impartially and consistently, then whatever principle we apply to the toleration of, say, witch-doctor practices and beliefs must also be applied to Anglican practices and beliefs.  So if we want to say that witch-doctors should be forbidden from claiming they can cure your cancer by reciting some incantation unless they have scientific evidence of the efficacy of their incantations, then Christians should be forbidden from claiming that God's healing can come if you pray for it unless there is scientific evidence of that.  Or, again, if we want to avoid having the start of council meetings being delayed by Wiccan spell-recitings or councillors deterred from attending meetings by being subjected to blood-curdling threats disguised as pseudo-Islamic prayers, we have to say that council meetings should not commence with prayers.

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Bruce Anderson: He's not back at square one but Cameron has lost many of his NHS gains

Tim Montgomerie has made a powerful case. In Opposition, David Cameron almost succeeded in neutralising the NHS as a political issue, and a chronic negative for the Tories. Even so, a wise Tory government would surely avoid raising the salience of health matters. Despite de-toxification, Tim thinks that this is bound to work to the Labour party's advantage - and it is not as if the voters were demanding radical reform. So, in the favourite phrase of that shrewdest of Tory Whigs, Robert Walpole, "Quieta non Movere". For the benefit of his squirearchical neighbours, Walpole would translate that as "let sleeping dogs lie".

There is an irony. Tim is a Christian. Although the least priggish of men, he does believe in grounding his political beliefs on moral foundations. Yet here he is, abandoning any attempt to see the health debate in moral terms and resting his argument solely on political expediency.

The Prime Minister disagrees and will not back down. He too made a powerful case, in yesterday's Sunday Times. He reasserted his own personal commitment to the NHS. When he does that, he is always persuasive, because his views are based on experience and come from the heart. He insisted that the NHS needs to change in order to improve. At its best, it is outstanding, but it is not always at its best. There is waste and too much is spent on bureaucracy. Mr Cameron used some impressive statistics. "If we were as good in England at treating cancer as the average European country, we would save 5,000 lives a year". "In Labour's last year there was a 23% increase in management costs and the number of managers grew six times faster than the number of nurses". On one point, we can be certain. Whatever the political implications, Ministers are absolutely sincere in their desire to see a better health service, which would still be free at the point of use.

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Andrew Lilico: We've been focused on the wrong sort of health reform

The Editors have made a little noise with their call for the health bill to be dropped.  My view on the matter remains much as it has been for many years: we've been focused upon the wrong sort of health reform.  Past governments, Major's, Blair's and now Cameron's have sought to enact supply-side reforms - by "supply-side" I mean they re-organised how healthcare is supplied.

There are, of course, good reasons for seeking supply-side reforms in any sector - management re-organisations and continuous improvement programmes to increase quality and reduce costs are valuable in any industry.  But they are of no interest to customers.  When I buy a car, I couldn't give two hoots what is the management structure of Ford or General motors, what productivity-enhancing techniques have been agreed with the unions, what are the flexible working practices, the mechanisms for establishing profit centres, the key performance indicators used to assess business lines and the like.  None of that matters to me one jot.  Of course, these things have an impact on me, in the sense that they affect how reliable and how costly is the car I buy.  But that is an indirect stake.  I have no direct stake in these matters at all.

Similarly, when there is some supply-side reorganisation in the health service, patients and potential patients have no direct stake in them at all.  They don't care about them "commercially", as it were, in their capacity as consumers.  They care about them only "politically" in the sense that they have views about the political cased offered on either side.  To put the matter more concisely, they care about such reforms as voters, but not as patients.

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Ruth Lea: The Government cannot afford to be today's Mrs Jellyby, sending money abroad while British families suffer

Development aid to India, about £280m annually, is becoming increasingly controversial. Concern began when Indian billionaires started to buy British companies and India embarked on a space programme. But Pranab Mukherjee, India’s finance minister, really set the cat amongst the pigeons. He recently declared “we do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development expenditure”.

Following on from this bombshell it emerged that Nirupama Rao, India’s (then) foreign minister, had suggested in 2010 that India shouldn’t accept any more DFID aid because of the “negative publicity of Indian poverty promoted by DFID”.  But British ministers had apparently responded by saying they had spent so much political capital justifying the aid to their electorate, that it would be embarrassing if India just “pulled the plug”. So India is apparently accepting our aid, regarded by many Indians as patronising, unnecessary and counter-productive, in order to help DFID to save face.

Mr Mukherjee’s comments came to light when the Indian Government appeared to be opting for French fighter-planes rather than British, as if to add insult to injury. There have been howls of outrage. But we really should be listening to India’s politicians.

DFID shows uncanny similarities to Mrs Jellyby in Dickens' Bleak House. She was obsessed with her African project to the considerable detriment of her long-suffering family. DFID wants to be a leader against global poverty, irrespective of whether others follow or, more amazingly still, whether the recipients want our charity or whether the British people wish to pay for it.

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