CentreRight

Nothing to do with me Guv...

...the defence of the machine apparatchik down the ages. The first instinct: self-preservation. The second, self-satisfaction. Complacency mistaken for competence and command, and authoritarianism for authority.

Personified today by the Home Secretary, on Marr. Marr did a decent interview, but didn't ask the obvious question (unless the clip's been edited): "Home Secretary, are you not astonished that the police told the Speaker, they told the Mayor, they told the Leader of the Opposition, but they didn't tell you?"

But at least she made an appearance. Macavity Brown said he wasn't there and then went to ground.

The government is drowning on this. Campbell and Mandelson are either away or are losing their touch. There's no grip, no recognition of the widespread alarm and anger in and outside Westminster about Damian Green's arrest and the searches of his home and offices; both that it happened at all and the over-bearing manner in which it was done. In her interview Jacqui Smith admitted that Damian Green's activities in holding the government to account are wholly legitimate. So he did nothing wrong, and she  still won't apologise. She could have tried to reassure; to acknowledge that this is an unprecedented situation; that she understands how genuinely and deeply concerned many people are about this; that she will act. She chose bluster and self-defence.

Listening to what she said, I think Dominic Grieve is right: she knew more than she's letting on. There was a studied ambivalence in some of her answers.

"Nothing to do with me Guv, I'm just the Home Secretary" She is not up to her office. May she be gone soon.

The Kashmir connection

Paul Goodman MP blogs from Delhi

I wrote yesterday that parts of the Indian media are claiming that responsibility for the Mumbai atrocity lies with the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.  This is now the consensus view here - and also in Britain, as far as I can see.    

It may be wrong, or at least not the full story. There's more than one suspect for an operation planned and executed in such terrifying detail.  Lashkar has links to Al Qaeda, which has a track record of carrying out carefully choreographed terror assaults.

A key difference for Britain is that Lashkar's focus in Pakistan is on Kashmir, in the east, while Al Qaeda's is in the west and in Afghanistan.  This has significant domestic implications.

Welcome to their world

Rod Liddle notes in passing in today's Sunday Times the words and phrases not used by the BBC in its continuous coverage of the Mumbai attacks: Islam, Islamist, fundementalist, Muslim, jihad etc.

Similarly, some of Channel 4 News's coverage exhibited such a state of denial that I thought a couple of times that maybe I had misheard. The killers, announced Jon Snow at the top of the show, showed a "wanton disregard for race or creed".

Excuse me?

Snow later wrote on his daily email : "I suppose the nearest parallel would be the school killing at Columbine, near Colorado".

Thankfully Charles Moore had a riposte to this moronic observation in yesterday's Telegraph.

'No! The Columbine killings were isolated actions of two young minds disturbed. They were not the product of a paramilitary, worldwide, politico-religious ideology,' he wrote. ' After Columbine, websites of international religious organisations were not buzzing with conspiracy theories to excuse the killers.'

Damian Green's arrest severely undermines democracy

I am usually very cautious about comparing incidents in this country with those in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. I work with dissidents from countries like Burma who have experienced the very worst possible violations of human rights. I have met people who have endured the barbarity of North Korea's gulags. I have looked into the eyes of women from Darfur as they told their experience of being gang-raped. For those reasons, I do not usually like to compare human rights issues in Britain to the violations of basic human rights in other parts of the world. Indeed, I am a critic of the Human Rights Act because I believe it demeans and undermines basic human rights.

However, the arrest of Damian Green has caused me to reconsider that rule. The fact of his arrest, and the way it was conducted,  would be no surprise in Burma, China, Cuba or Zimbabwe, but should never, ever happen in Britain. Unless there is something I and most other people have completely missed, how on earth is it that a democratically elected senior opposition spokesman and Member of Parliament can be treated in the way he has been? How is it that his homes can be raided, his correspondence - including personal love letters with his wife - searched, and his emails suspended? What crime has he committed?

Terror in India

Paul Goodman MP reports from Delhi.

In London, counter-terror police are dealing with a Conservative MP.  In India, their equivalents are dealing with the Mumbai horror.

I'm here with Dominic Grieve, Pauline Neville-Jones and that old friend of India, Peter Luff, to discuss bilateral relations, trade, community cohesion (over a million people of Indian origin live in Britain) and - sour irony - security.  We were due to stay in the Trident Oberoi.

Dominic's flying back to help pursue the absurd but sinister arrest of Damian Green - a close call, but the right one.

It's too early to make a full assessment of the Mumbai atrocity.  But I'll risk one observation.  Parts of the Indian media are claiming that responsibility lies with Lashkar-e-Taiba - whose focus, unlike Al Qaeda's, is on Kashmir.  If true, this has considerable implications for UK security and cohesion policy, to which I may return.

What will follow over the next few days isn't a diary, but a series of snapshots - one man's view, and no doubt contestable.  I'll open with three quick points:

(1) The Mumbai outrage is being described as "India's 9/11".  Yes and no.  Yes: there are mass casualties, and the attack was aimed at a financial centre.  No: 9/11 was the first modern mass casualty assault on the U.S mainland, but India's used to big terror attacks.  Over 80 people were killed in Jaipur last May; over 40 in Hyderabad the previous August.  Terrorists assailed India's Parliament in 2001.  It was claimed to us today that more lives were lost to terror in India during the last three years than in any other country save Iraq.

(2) The terror threat in the UK has a narrow focus.  Dissident republicans and neo-nazis aside, the menace comes from those who claim violence in the name of Islam.  In India, the focus is wider.  There's separatist violence in the north-east, Maoist Naxalite violence in the east and south, caste and religious violence - the recent killings of Christians in Orissa involved both factors - and other communal violence, such as the Hindu-Muslim murder cycle in Gujarat.  And that's before we even get on to terror groups claiming violence in the name of Islam, or the tragedy of Kashmir.

(3) This wider focus - based on differences of region, living standards and caste - helps to explain why India is reluctant to concentrate its anti-terror response on any single challenge.  Will this change after Mumbai?  And are India's challenges easing or worsening?  More later.

Will there be a Select Committee enquiry?

This is the Chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, dancing with somebody that the Met doesn't seem to think is terribly important. Mr. Vaz has so far said nothing about Damian Green's arrest.

This will surely change. Mr. Vaz is not known for his media shyness. And he and his Select Committee will want to find out exactly what went on here. After all, Mr. Vaz is no stooge when it comes to the government's anti-terror laws.

6.00 pm Update. Thanks to Marcel: Mr Vaz has now broken silence. His comments demonstrate that he is as intent on holding the Executive to account as ever he has been.

Stick to your guns, Theresa!

Theresa Villiers is one of the most highly respected Conservative colleagues in Westminster. Thoughtful and diligent, she's also in her quiet way, rather bold and radical.

Theresa is, however, coming in for some flak over the party's policy on a third Heathrow runway, most recently on Iain Dale's blog.  I respect Iain tremendously, but on this I respectfully disagree. Personally, I think that the party's opposition to a third runway at Heathrow is right (believe me, if I didn’t think so, I say so!). The reality is that there comes a time when we can no longer keep cramming more and more 'planes and passengers into the same crowded corner of south east England.

Yet for taking this rather sensible approach, Theresa is taking on a lot of powerful corporate interests.

Should it be Jacqui Smith or Gordon Brown that resigns over the Green Affair?

It is, of course, possible that there is much more to the Green Affair than we currently understand.  Perhaps it will emerge that Green was accused of bribing or threatening the official involved, or perhaps there will be some other such matter come to light.  But I shall proceed here on the assumption that the case is as it seems: namely that an opposition politician has been arrested, had his Commons office and home searched, and has been held and questioned for nine hours, because he was accused of embarrassing the government.

It seems to me that the press is far too relaxed over the Green Affair.  I thought it absolutely astonishing that the arrest of an Opposition politician for embarrassing the government merited just a couple of minutes coverage on last night's BBC 10 o'clock News, even though journalists had been aware of the story for hours (e.g. it was noted on ConservativeHome from 8.45pm).  So that's how it goes?? "And in other news, a man has taught his dog to bark in time to Beethoven's Fith, a 100 year old woman still carves her own hedge sculptures, and an Opposition MP has been arrested for embarrassing the government."

This morning's Today programme was no better.  Phil Woolas was permitted to draw an analogy between Green's arrest and the questioning of MPs over the cash-for-honours affair.  This is absurd.  The issue in the Green case is not that people are sceptical that he committed the crime of which is is accused (a potential source of scepticism in the cash-for-honours case).  Rather, it is general astonishment that it turns out to be a crime for an opposition MP to embarrass the government!

Assuming, as I say, that the prima facie appearance of the Green Affair eventually proves correct, there seem to me to be two broad categories of possibility here.  In one set, Jacqui Smith should resign.  In the other, Gordon Brown should resign.  I don't see a third set of possibilities.

Labour's terrorists

Walter Wolfgang, Iceland's banks, and Damian Green don't have much in common. But Labour's anti-terror apparatus has been deployed against each of them.

Who next?

If Ministers weren't told, why not?

"The decision to make today's arrest was taken solely by the MPS without any ministerial knowledge or approval" - so says the Metroplitan Police Service

But the Met told the Speaker that they were about to arrest Damian Green, and they told the Mayor of London, and they told the Leader of the Opposition. If they told all of them, why on earth wouldn't they tell ministers as well?

Assuming as we must that the Met briefing is accurate, the only possible answer is that Home Office ministers are incompetent, disregarded and irrelevent. However you cut it: "not fit for purpose."

His Road Home

You don't always get the chance to right a wrong. Last week I was approached outside Liverpool Street station by a young man, who asked me for money. Not unusual and I generally donate a pound or two, whatever's in my pocket, but that morning I was rushing and I did that frazzled smile thing, the apologetic gosh I'm sorry I'm in a rush thing, eyes elsewhere, sorry mate not just now, can't you see, I'm a busy person with a proper job. The trouble was, the young man had an infection, and his face was swollen, and he was in distress, and I walked on and caught my train, and this was wrong, this was a failure.

Well. I just saw him again, doing the rounds at Cafe Nero, outside the station still. It's freezing cold and raining. His face is better though. This time I bought him coffee and asked him about himself, because I have a fear that people like him - Pawel - can go for days without any proper human interaction. My biggest fear is loneliness and I project it onto the homeless (another failing, I know). His English is very poor, and I'm guessing that's why he's not managed to make a go of it in England. He wants to go home. Of course he does. I gave him some money. I know, I know. Who was I really trying to help? Is a moment's fragmentary connection any more use than no connection at all? I have to hope that it's so.

There must be many such men in London now, washed into our country on the crest of Euro-expansionism, only to find that the streets here are paved with misery. More soon, with the construction industry in decline. My favourite novel this year was The Road Home, by Rose Tremain, about one such immigrant. At least that story, being fiction, had the capacity for a happy ending. I hope Pawel's real story does too.

Were two of the Mumbai terrorists British?

The security services have, for some time, been painting a pretty dire picture of the scale of the home grown terrorist threat facing Britain.  Even so, if the reports the Evening Standard are getting from India, that two of the terrorists in Mumbai were British, are correct then that will raise a huge number of questions about whether we're doing nearly enough to confront radical, violent Islam in Britain.

In the short term, it makes the arrest of Damian Green look like an even more dismal episode.  While British born terrorists were running amok in Mumbai, British counter-terrorist police were busy harassing opposition politicians for embarassing the Government.

Disciplinary proceedings quadruple at the UK Borders Agency

It is hard to find many positives about the deeply troubling arrest of Damian Green, but one of them might be the renewed spotlight it casts on Britain's shambolic immigration system.

Forget about leaked documents for a moment, just the information that has been authorised for disclosure can be shocking enough, like the case I have highlighted of Hammersmith resident Hany Youssef being both on the UN Al-Qaeda list and being granted Discretionary Leave to Remain in this country, or of the awful consequences of a system that is not fit for purpose. and the effect it has on crime and other social problems.

In the Summer, I visited Lunar House, the headquarters of the UK Border Agency. I was impressed with the quality of the workforce, often very young people in senior positions, struggling manfully with the load. The offices were chaotic, however. Files were everywhere, and when I say files, I mean huge wads of paper with tatty cardboard covers, literally held together with pieces of string and rubber bands. Many of these files were thicker than they were wide. Those at Lunar House were clearly under pressure in an extremely unappealing working environment, obviously suffering from poor supervision and weak organisation.

I wasn't the least surprised to learn that staff disciplinaries are on the rise, but I was staggered this week to discover by how much. In response to my Parliamentary Question, Ministers revealed that disciplinary proceedings have QUADRUPLED at the UKBA in the last TWO years. This isn't a small number of staff causing it either - the number of staff involved has also nearly quadrupled, to more than 1,500.

The statistics confirm what I can see for my own eyes, and especially in my constituency casework - Britain's immigration system is close to complete collapse, and, yes, in support of Damian Green, the public does deserve to know.

Don't you just love The Mirror?

Here is the story.

Damian Green - Public Interest is the wrong defence

The Editors argue that Damian Green's passing on of confidential information in relation to illegal immigrants working as security guards and so on was in the public interest.  That may be so, but it is the wrong defence for an MP to be making.  The public interest defence is what the civil servant who leaks information must appeal to to justify his breaching what are otherwise very important confidentiality principles.  The work of government could not go on if there were not people one could rely upon not to pass on one's provisional, half-formed thoughts or half-baked ideas that never go anywhere, let alone security-sensitive or market-sensitive information.  For officials to break confidence should be considered a big thing, and they had better have a good defence for doing so.

The same should not apply to opposition MPs (or, for that matter, journalists) receiving confidential information.  Provided that the dissemination of such information is not demonstrably against the public interest (e.g. we don't want newspapers publishing the cover names of our spies) - and there could be cases in which people would disagree about what was demonstrably against the public interest (I, for example, would regard it as demonstrably against the public interest for newspapers to publish the addresses of convicted paedophiles, since it would threaten order, but I am aware that others disagree with me about this) - provided that disseminating was not demonstrably against the public interest, MPs and journalists should be free to pass on information they have received, even if that information was passed to them improperly.  They should not need to rely on a defence that the person passing them the information was demonstrably acting in the public interest.  That is far too high a hurdle for an MP.

To take a concrete and blunt example, if the government isn't competent to hire reliable staff that don't leak sensitive information, that should be exposed by Opposition MPs.  The MP should be able to say "I was told this or that, which I shouldn't have been able to find out.  It was quite wrong that I was able to discover these things.  You need to tighten up!"  The government shouldn't be able to cover up its own incompetence by restricting the passing on of leaks to only those cases in which the leak was in the public interest.  I want to know when the government is leaking against the public interest, also!

Time to focus on border security

As the people of Dover stare out across the sea from the White Cliffs, their overriding concern is for the safety and security of our borders and the security of our nation. It is of immense comfort for them to know that Damian Green MP stands with them. 

Living in the Gateway to England, they know first hand how the Government has totally failed to keep our borders secure. They know all about the disgusting human trafficking that goes on, the bogus asylum seekers and the evil crime syndicates that smuggle people in who have no right to be here.  My mailbag as the Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Dover is filled with disgust and concern about the situation. They know the Government does nothing about it and has lost control of our borders.

So amid the protests about Stalinesque behaviour, show trials and coverups, let's not forget what Damian is really in the dock for. Let's not forget his brilliant work fighting tirelessly to hold the Government to account for its disgraceful failure to keep our nation and its borders safe.  And let's remember why it matters so much to us all:

• 577,000 people came to Britain in 2007 - and net migration was 237,000
• The population has risen 1.8 million since 1997 thanks to immigration alone
• There were 25,800 asylum applications in the 12 months to September 2008, a rise of 15% on the year before
• To cope with all this, some 65,000 new homes are needed each year, meaning even more concrete and congestion along with increasing pressure on our public services

And while they fail to stop people coming to Britain that have no right to be here, did you know that at Dover they arrest illegal entrants who try to leave the country? At the Dover Removal Centre, they give bail to people who are being held . . . people who then, surprise, surprise, vanish and are never seen again. Meanwhile France has stopped us using anti people smuggling scanners at Calais . . . without a squeak of protest from the UK Government.

This is why Damian's work has been so important.  It's time for a renewed focus on border security, the safety and security of our nation and all the terrible figures the Government is so desperate to hide.

The Beginning of the End

It's always hard to spot the significance of things when you're in the middle of it, isn't it? A random decision to change your library books might lead to a chance meeting with someone who alters the course of your life. Some such mundane committee decision (The PM is really fed up with these immigration leaks. Isn't there something we can do about it?) will no doubt be found to be at the root  of the intemperate action taken yesterday against Damien Green. But it won't matter. What matters is the symbolism of the outcome of the decision.

The Met, unfortunately, have a history of politicised activity on behalf of the government - the interventions over 42 days detention jumps to mind - and of lying to cover up their actions when they're caught. When Jean Charles de Menezes was executed, we were fed a tissue of lies about his activity prior to his death (he did not look like a suspected terrorist, he was not wearing a bulky jacket, he did not vault over the tube barrier and run from the police, he did not resist arrest when confronted on the tube, the officers who murdered him did not give him a verbal warning before holding him down and pumping his head full of bullets). So it's too much to expect us now to believe that Damien Green's arrest was not the result of a political decision, taken at the highest level, implemented with the full panoply of New Labour's terror laws. We really aren't fools, Prime Minister, and your strategy of believing us to be such is in tatters.

A curious statement from Gordon Brown about the Damian Green affair

Iain Dale is right, it is always difficult to comment over breaking news stories, but there are two eye-catching things about the Downing Street statement on the arrest of Damian Green, which Sky News is reporting here.

According to Sky, the word from Downing Street is this:

"This is a matter for the police...The Prime Minister had no prior knowledge of the arrest of Mr Green and was only informed after the event."

Two classic Brownisms here. First, the washing of one's hands of any involvement in a controversy if it seems that negative publicity might result, by saying it is in the hands of an outside quango/ agency/ the courts/ investigation/ report/ independent adjudicator/ study, etc (delete as appropriate). In this case, it is the police.

The second is this - there is a denial of involvement, but the denial relates only to a specific part of the chain of events, in this case, the actual arrest of Damian Green. There is no denial that the PM knew of the investigation or knew that a senior Conservative was allegedly involved. Important questions like whether the PM or other senior ministers gave a go ahead for action are not covered in the statement.

For the sake of our democracy, I would love to be proven wrong, and be shown that the PM genuinely knew nothing about the police action against Damian Green. 

We stand united with India

Two months ago terrorists attacked the Marriot hotel in Islamabad killing 57 people, and today they unleash an even more deadlier attack on hotels in Mumbai, with a reported death toll of over 100 as I write. Our heart goes out to India and her people in her hour of need.

In August, upon the 61st anniversary of independent India, I wrote that India is our greatest and most important ally amongst developing nations. We must do all we can to help her hunt down the perpetrators of these most heinous acts, and then help her heal the wounds.

We are stand united in the global war on terror.

The cap on fees must go

By Laurie Thraves, Education Researcher

It is interesting to observe the qualities that successful post-18 education institutions share.  Perhaps the most important of these is independence.  Professor Yves Mény, President of the European University Institute, has identified the responsiveness of the leading universities in the United States as the key to their success. The OECD has suggested that the strength and international prestige of the United States' education system lies in its large, diverse and competitive higher education system.

If the UK higher education sector is to perform similarly well, universities must be free from government control and able to set their own fees, entry requirements and course contents.  Lifting the cap on tuition fees is an important step towards this aim.  This proposal, made in Reform's new report, has been criticised, in particular by the president of the National Union of Students, Wes Streeting, as likely to disadvantage poorer students.  Mr Streeting's concern for the poorest is genuine.  His criticism, however, is misplaced.  In fact, the available evidence indicates that he is flat wrong.

Owned by the unions

From today's Times: "Britain’s biggest union saved Labour from bankruptcy by guaranteeing its finances in a secret deal that the party is refusing to make public. Unite, which has given £13.4 million to Labour since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, gave formal assurances in June that it would support the debt-ridden party."

T h i r t e e n   p o i n t   f o u r   m i l l i o n   p o u n d s.

Isn't that a truly staggering number?  The sooner we become more like Canada the better.

Benefits to be raised in real terms

In the PBR, chapter 5, we read:

Box 5.1: The effect of negative RPI inflation on the value of tax and benefits
The Government’s economic projections show RPI inflation as negative in September 2009. This means general prices using this measure of inflation are expected to fall. RPI inflation for that month is used to index income tax, tax credits and national insurance allowances, thresholds and limits for 2010-11. September measures of inflation are also used to index social security benefits.

With projected negative RPI inflation, the Government would maintain the cash value of tax allowances and thresholds, and the RPI-indexed social security benefits, consistent with statute. Holding these constant with lower prices means that in 2010-11, their real terms value would rise in relation to RPI, and that people would be better off in real terms. Analysis in real terms shows the effect on tax and benefit changes in terms of people’s purchasing power.

The basic State Pension is indexed by RPI inflation or 2.5 per cent, whichever is greater. This means that there will be an even larger real terms benefit for pensioners in 2010-11. Some benefits are uprated by earnings, and negative RPI inflation increases the real terms value of those increases. For 2011-12, when RPI inflation is projected to be positive, allowances, thresholds and benefit levels will be increased from their 2010-11 levels in line with standard indexation. This will maintain the real terms gain from 2010-11 for future years.

In other words, the government is committing that, even if deflation races away, benefits will not be cut in cash terms and the pension will always rise at at least 2.5%.  Committing to real rises in benefits whilst trying to keep overall expenditure to an ambitious 1.1% growth rate seems like a challenge.  Why should deflation change the way that benefit and pension indexation is done?  And can we really afford an open-ended commitment to raise benefits and pensions in real terms at a time when budget deficits are so out of control and debt is to rise so rapidly?

Two thirds of new jobs are in the public sector

Over at The Sun (yes, I'm linking to The Sun - so what?) is a very striking graphic (click on it to enlarge) - read it and weep...

Three kinds of crisis, and what will and won't work in addressing them

Let's distinguish between three forms of crisis that firms - in any industry - can face:

1. Liquidity crises
2. Solvency crises arising from past losses
3. Future profitability crises

Sanctions would have killed many more Iraqis

That's the conclusion of a post by Eric Posner of the University of Chicago:

"Let’s suppose that the sanctions regime had continued for 10 years, from 2003 to 2013, and further that security flattens out—it doesn’t get worse, but it doesn’t get better. Under these assumptions, 400,000 Iraqi children would have died if the war had not occurred and the sanctions regime continued. Now, almost 100,000 Iraqis died during the war, and so one of the war’s benefits is that it saves the lives of 300,000 Iraqis (over 10 years)."

More here.