What Tory parliamentarians want to see in the Budget

By Peter Hoskin
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With the Budget less than a couple of weeks away, I thought it would be a good time to collect some of the recommendations being put to George Osborne by Tory parliamentarians. Of course, the parliamentarians listed below may want other measures too – and there may be other parliamentarians who want what they want – but I’ve tried to go with the most prominent examples from the past few weeks. If you think I’ve missed anyone off, please do shout out in the comments section, or email me on pete @ conservativehome.com (without the spaces).

Robert Halfon MP: The reinstatement of the 10p tax rate

Robert explained how and why he wants the 10p rate of income tax reinstated in a recent article for ConservativeHome. Here’s a snippet:

“When Labour brought in the 50p income tax-rate, it cost HMRC something like £7 billion pounds overnight, as people changed their behaviour to avoid the new tax. This year, the Coalition will cut that 50p income tax-rate down to 45p, because this is expected to raise more money from the rich, not less. The message of the campaign at CutTaxTo10p.com — or, alternatively GreatGordonBrownRepealBill.com — is that we should use every extra penny raised from this to restore the 10p basic rate of income tax, to help lower earners. Added to the Universal Credit, this will help stop disincentives to employment, and to ensure that work always pays.”

He also discussed the policy on the Daily Politics today.

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What is the Bruges Group?

By Matthew Barrett
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My series profiling the groups of Tory MPs continues with a look at a pioneering Eurosceptic group which helped backbenchers cause significant headaches for Prime Minister John Major during the early 1990s. The Bruges Group is a well-established forum for advocating looser ties with Brussels, and it has gone from a relatively small collection of Tories to one of the groups that best represents mainstream Conservative thinking on its particular policy area.

Origins of the group

The Bruges Group was founded in February 1989 to promote and uphold the ideas Margaret Thatcher expressed in her famous Bruges Speech in late 1988. Mrs Thatcher argued that the tide of opinion on the continent was towards centralising the structure of the European institutions - and this would be unsuitable for Britain's national identity and democracy. In the most famous passage of the speech, Mrs Thatcher said:

"I want to see us work more closely on the things we can do better together than alone. Europe is stronger when we do so, whether it be in trade, in defence or in our relations with the rest of the world. But working more closely together does not require power to be centralised in Brussels or decisions to be taken by an appointed bureaucracy. ... We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels."

The group was set up by Patrick Robertson and Lord Harris of High Cross, ie Ralph Harris, the director of the Institute of Economic Affairs from 1957 to 1988. Lord Harris' work promoting free-market economics at the IEA was instrumental in the creation of Thatcherism.

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In a letter to Theresa May, Dominic Raab MP sets out Tory backbenchers’ concerns about the Communications Data Bill

By Peter Hoskin
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We already knew that the Government is redrafting the Communications Data Bill after opposition to the current plans from Tory MPs and many others. But now, this morning, we have a clearer sense of the depth of feeling on the Tory backbenches. Dominic Raab has written a letter to Theresa May, signed by 40 of his party colleagues, to highlight his and their concerns about the policy as it stands.

I have reproduced the entire text of the letter at the bottom of this post, although here are its four main points of order:

1. “We urge you to limit the application of the Bill to terrorist offences and the most serious crimes, limit access to such data to the intelligence agencies, SOCA and the police, and make the regime subject to judicial warrant as a safeguard against abuse.”
2. “From a law enforcement perspective, there has been no explanation as to how those using foreign internet and communications service providers will be prevented from circumventing the regime.”
3. “Equally, given the public sector's woeful track record of protecting personal data, we are concerned about the vulnerability of the scheme to both the negligence of officials and attempts to infiltrate the system by those with criminal intent. We would urge you to consult in further detail with the Information Commissioner, internet providers, telephone companies and other external experts, to test the technical integrity of the proposals.”
4. “Finally, the Home Office estimates the proposals would cost £2 billion. The Committee stated that these estimates ‘are not robust’. We urge Ministers to subject the proposals to external audit and re-consider their law enforcement cost-benefit in light of the suggestions made, above, to limit their breadth and tighten their focus.”

The stand-out line, though, comes at the very end: “In the absence of reassurance on these points, we would find it difficult to support the proposals.” So who are “we”? The full list of signatories is not being made public, although Mr Raab is saying that around half of them are from the 2010 intake. Strikingly, the 40 Tory MPs outnumber the entire cohort of 38 Lib Dem backbenchers, who might also be expected to rebel on this matter.  

“Dear Home Secretary,

The Joint Parliamentary Committee considering the Draft Communications Bill reported last week, highlighting a range of serious issues with the current proposals. We share many of them.

We support your efforts to strengthen law enforcement, but believe it is crucial to ensure such measures focus on the fight against terrorism and the most serious crime. The current proposals would expand the wide net of existing surveillance powers to cover every telephone call, email, web access and text message from every law-abiding citizen, to be processed by what the Committee described as a ‘federated database’. There has been no proper explanation of how clauses 14 to 16, concerning ‘filtering arrangements’, will work in practice. It is clear that they would authorise datamining, deep packet inspection and other techniques designed to infer potentially suspicious activity from the patterns of mass data held on every innocent citizen in this country.

The Information Commissioner has warned that these plans would herald ‘a step change in the relationship between the citizen and the state’. We urge you to limit the application of the Bill to terrorist offences and the most serious crimes, limit access to such data to the intelligence agencies, SOCA and the police, and make the regime subject to judicial warrant as a safeguard against abuse.

From a law enforcement perspective, there has been no explanation as to how those using foreign internet and communications service providers will be prevented from circumventing the regime. Equally, given the public sector's woeful track record of protecting personal data, we are concerned about the vulnerability of the scheme to both the negligence of officials and attempts to infiltrate the system by those with criminal intent. We would urge you to consult in further detail with the Information Commissioner, internet providers, telephone companies and other external experts, to test the technical integrity of the proposals.

Finally, the Home Office estimates the proposals would cost £2 billion. The Committee stated that these estimates ‘are not robust’. We urge Ministers to subject the proposals to external audit and re-consider their law enforcement cost-benefit in light of the suggestions made, above, to limit their breadth and tighten their focus.

In the absence of reassurance on these points, we would find it difficult to support the proposals.

Yours sincerely,

Dominic Raab”

Tory MPs react to Government's response to European prison votes ruling

By Matthew Barrett
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One of the two biggest political stories today, the summit to consider the next European budget, is opaque. We cannot know what is happening behind closed doors. However, we can know what Tory MPs have made of the other big political story today: the Government's attempt to deal with the European court's ruling that Britain must give at least some prisoners the vote. Here are some of the best contributions of Tory MPs to the debate in the media surrounding prison voting.

Nick Herbert, the former Minister of State for Police and Criminal Justice, wrote about leaving the jurisidiction of the European Court of Human Rights for ConservativeHome this morning. He also appeared on the Today programme this morning, and said:

"I think it’s doubtful that this will comply with what the European Court of Human Rights wants, and it seems as if the Government is effectively just playing for time. And ironically one of the three options that the Government is going to put down today, which is that we retain the blanket ban, is something that it’s unlikely ministers will be able to either to advocate or vote for because it’s a breach of the ministerial code to advocate breaking the law, even though the Prime Minister himself said that there was no way this Government was going to give prisoners the vote and that it make him feel physically sick to even contemplate the idea."

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Conservative Select Committee appointments announced

By Matthew Barrett
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Guido Fawkes has a list of new Conservative members of Select Committees, from Graham Brady's office. Mr Brady explains: "For the following committees I have received the same number of nominations as there are vacancies, the following are therefore elected". The appointments are:

Communities and Local Government

John Stevenson (Carlisle), replacing George Hollingbery (Meon Valley), who became PPS to Theresa May at the reshuffle.

Education

Chris Skidmore (Kingswood), replacing Damian Hinds (East Hampshire), who became PPS to Mark Francois, the Minister of State for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans.

Health

Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole), replacing Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich), who was made the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Health Services.

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The Unchained Five and a turning point for the 2010 intake

By Peter Hoskin
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If Enid Blyton were writing the story of British politics this month, it might be called Five Go Hunting For Growth. After all, on 13^th September, five plucky, relatively young members of the 2010 intake will be publishing a book stuffed full of prescriptions for our ailing economy and the country that surrounds it. That book is Britannia Unchained. The five MPs are Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss.

We heard from these five over the summer, in a slightly unfortunate preview of the book in the Evening Standard. But they’re strikingly prominent as well today, as MPs return to Westminster for the autumn. Kwasi Kwarteng provides the first entry in a series of Telegraph articles from “leading young Tory MPs”, in which he argues against economic defeatism and for a “new ‘no compromise’ strategy for our economy as a whole”. And elsewhere, Mr Kwarteng is tipped to become “the UK’s first black Prime Minister,” while Dominic Raab and Liz Truss also receive good notices, in a survey of Westminster lobbyists.

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"One-man Think Tanks": how the 2010 intake forced their way into the papers

By Paul Goodman
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As a former broadsheet Comment editor, I over-estimate the importance of comment pages, both on paper and online.  Since the blogs, such as this one, now compete with them, fewer people read them - especially since the rise of the paywall.  Then there's TV.  Then there's Twitter.  Then there's the rest of the new media...

So I declare an interest and a bias.  But despite both, I think Fleet Street comment pages, broadsheet or tabloid, help to set the terms of political debate.

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10 from '10 - ten Ministerial prospects from the 2010 intake

By Matthew Barrett
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The 2010 intake is, by now, known for being one of the most active and resourceful for a number of generations. In choosing ten MPs who could be promoted from the 2010 intake, I have had to overlook a number of extremely good candidates who, in normal, non-Coalition times would undoubtedly be made Ministers, and would do an excellent job. Those MPs include Fiona Bruce, George Freeman, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel and Charlotte Leslie. There are a number of other MPs who I have excluded from my list, because their past Parliamentary rebellions would probably rule them out of contention. These include Nadhim Zahawi, Jesse Norman, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart, Richard Fuller, and Andrew Griffiths.

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Dom Raab MP advocates ten policies to help the little guy

By Tim Montgomerie
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41 Tory MPs join call by Robert Halfon MP for OFT to investigate high petrol prices

By Matthew Barrett
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Robert Halfon, the Member of Parliament for Harlow, and one of the most successful campaigning MPs in Parliament, has organised a motion, backed by 60 MPs from all parties, and including 41 Tories, calling for the Office of Fair Trading to investigate allegations of price-fixing by British oil companies. The full motion is worded as follows:

"That this House urges the OFT to investigate oil firms active in the UK; calls on the Government to consider the emergency actions being taken in other G20 nations to cut fuel prices, for example President Obama strengthening Federal supervision of the U.S. oil market, and increasing penalties for “market manipulation”, and Germany and Austria setting up a new oil regulator, with orders to help stabilise the price of petrol in the country; finally urges the Office of Fair Trading to note that the Federal Cartel Office in Germany is now investigating oil firms active in the UK, after allegations of price-fixing."

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Dominic Raab leads the House in passing measures to bring the killers of Sergei Magnitsky to justice

By Matthew Barrett
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Yesterday evening in the House, Dominic Raab introduced the following motion:

"That this House notes the passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Bill through the United States Senate, the Bill to condemn corruption and impunity in Russia in the case and death of Sergei Magnitsky in the House of Commons in Canada, the approval of the resolution of the Dutch Parliament concerning Sergei Magnitsky dated 29 June 2011, and paragraphs I and 20 to 21 of the resolution of the European Parliament of 14 December 2011 on the EU-Russia Summit; and calls on the Government to bring forward equivalent legislative proposals providing for a presumption in favour of asset freezes and travel bans for officials of the Russian state and other countries, wherever the appropriate UK authorities have collected or received evidence that establishes that such officials:

(a) were involved in the detention, physical abuse or death of Sergei Magnitsky;

(b) participated in efforts to conceal the legal liability for the detention, abuse or death of Sergei Magnitsky;

(c) committed the frauds discovered by Sergei Magnitsky; or

(d) are responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture or other gross violations of human rights committed in Russia or any other country against any individual seeking to obtain, exercise, defend or promote basic and internationally recognised human rights, including those set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966."

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Zac Goldsmith voted the most fanciable male MP (again)

By Matthew Barrett
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Sky News' annual St Valentine’s Day poll, compiled by Sky News’ political team sees the Conservative MP for Richmond Park, Zac Goldsmith, retaining his position as the most fanciable male MP.

Labour's Luciana Berger also retained her position as the most fanciable female MP, although Tory women are rated as the most attractive with 6 listed in the top 10, while Labour have 4 and the Lib Dems have none. Despite Goldsmith's first place, Labour men did best overall with 5 entries, but the Tories were just behind with 4 places.

Raab's proposed motion demanding a review of the extradition treaty between the UK and US, is backed by MPs

By Joseph Willits 
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Last night in Parliament, a motion tabled by Dominic Raab MP (Esher and Walton), demanding a review of the 2003 extradition treaty between the UK and US, was agreed without a vote. Raab was clear in that the tabled motion was "not about abolishing extradition, which is vital to international efforts in relation to law enforcement" but "whether, in taking the fight to the terrorists and the serious criminals after 9/11, the pendulum swung too far the other way." The purpose of the review, Raab said, was to "inject a dose of common sense into the blunt extradition regime that we now have in place".

Raab cited comments made by Alun Jones QC (who represented the Spanish Government in the Pinochet case) in the Telegraph yesterday, who warned of an imbalance within the UK-US extradition treaty. Raab said:

"An American citizen who is subject to an extradition warrant in the US has the constitutional safeguard that a judge must examine the evidence. In this country, a short recitation of the allegations suffices. That is a very real and important imbalance."

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Tory MPs debate the News of the World phone-hacking scandal

By Matthew Barrett
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Redoubtable Labour Member Chris Bryant managed to secure an emergency debate in the Commons yesterday, following Prime Minister's Questions and a statement by the Prime Minister on the situation in Afghanistan, to discuss the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. 

Although the debate was abused by some Members (Labour's Clive Efford, for example: "Only if ordinary people make a stand will we stop these rich people—rich people who have invaded the lives of ordinary people in the street—making themselves even richer and even more powerful."), Conservative members took a range of considered and serious positions in reaction to news of the scandal. 

Three Conservative Members called for a "pause" in the current News Corporation takeover of BSkyB (as, it appears, has now taken place):

• Nicholas Soames pointed to "serious criminality" at News International: "Given that there is clear evidence of serious criminality on the part of some people at News International, would not due process also now include, in any event and without necessarily referring this to the Competition Commission, calling a pause pending further evidence?"
• Anna Soubry called for the issue to be referred to Ofcom: "Such is my concern—I have been persuaded by much of what I have heard today—that I think there must now be a pause in the consideration of the matter that has been referred to and will be determined by Ofcom. I urge the Secretary of State to consider whethbryer we should pause things, given what has happened."
• Zac Goldsmith said anything other than a pause would be "appalling" to the public: "That deal needs to be put on hold by the Government until the dust has settled and we know where we stand. Anything less than that will be viewed as appalling by the public and will be met with a nod of disapproval."

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Majority of the 50 most "cost-efficient" MPs are Conservatives

By Matthew Barrett
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The company Key Business Insight's "Commons Performance Cockpit" ranks MPs by their total cost - that is, staffing costs, travel expenses, office costs, salary, and so on. The majority of the 50 "most efficient" MPs, in terms of total cost, are Conservatives. 

The top 50 "most efficient" MPs between 1st April, 2010 and 31st March, 2011 are listed below:

1. Dan Jarvis (Labour, Barnsley Central) £5,457*
2. Deborah Abrahams (Labour, Oldham East and Saddleworth) £12,472**
3. Eric Illsley (Labour, Barnsley Central) £57,485***
4. Zac Goldsmith (Conservative, Richmond Park) £59,242
5. Rushanara Ali (Labour, Bethnal Green and Bow) £59,242
6. Ben Gummer (Conservative, Ipswich) £60,422
7. Gavin Shuker (Labour, Luton South) £60,687
8. George Eustice (Conservative, Camborne and Redruth) £60,692
9. Sam Gyimah (Conservative, East Surrey) £60,899
10. Matthew Offord (Conservative, Hendon) £61,077
11. Anne-Marie Morris (Conservative, Newton Abbot) £61,292
12. Teresa Pearce (Labour, Erith and Thamesmead) £61,776
13. Mark Reckless (Conservative, Rochester and Strood) £61,780
14. Guy Opperman (Conservative, Hexham) £61,857
15. Gemma Doyle (Labour, West Dunbartonshire) £62,324
16. Christopher Pincher (Conservative, Tamworth) £62,583
17. Stella Creasy (Labour, Walthamstow)  £63,510
18. Ian Paisley, Jnr (Democratic Unionist, North Antrim) £64,755
19. Richard Drax (Conservative, South Dorset)  £65,102
20. Owen Smith (Labour, Pontypridd) £65,157
21. Damian Hinds (Conservative, East Hampshire) £65,365
22. Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge) £65,396
23. Kwasi Kwarteng (Conservative, Spelthorne) £65,571
24. Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)  £65,651
25. Jonathan Lord (Conservative, Woking) £66,162
26. Rebecca Harris (Conservative, Castle Point) £66,576
27. Anas Sarwar (Labour, Glasgow Central) £67,630
28. Andrea Leadsom (Conservative, South Northamptonshire)  £67,940
29. Claire Perry (Conservative, Devizes) £68,047
30. Sajid Javid (Conservative, Bromsgrove)  £68,171
31. Sarah Newton (Conservative, Truro and Falmouth) £68,172
32. Conor Burns (Conservative, Bournemouth West) £68,443
33. Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative, Lancaster and Fleetwood)  £68,624
34. Margaret Ritchie (SDLP, South Down) £68,705
35. Rehman Chisti (Conservative, Gillingham and Rainham) £68,917
36. Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist, Strangford)  £69,063
37. Liz Kendall (Labour, Leicester West) £69,147
38. George Hollingberry (Conservative, Meon Valley) £69,251
39. Alok Sharma (Conservative, Reading West)  £69,273
40. Chris Kelly (Conservative, Dudley South) £70,316
41. Angie Bray (Conservative, Ealing Central and Acton) £70,334
42. Naomi Long (Alliance, Belfast East) £70,581
43. Kate Green (Labour, Stretford and Urmston)  £70,619
44. Margot James (Conservative, Stourbridge)  £70,755
45. Pamela Nash (Labour, Airdrie and Shotts) £70,842
46. Jack Dromey (Labour, Birmingham Erdington)  £70,912
47. Kris Hopkins (Conservative, Keighley)  £70,944
48. Stephen Metcalfe (Conservative, South Basildon and East Thurrock) £70,966
49. Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Birmingham Ladywood) £71,072
50. Tristram Hunt (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent Central) £71,269

*Took his seat on 3rd March, 2011
**Took her seat on 13th January, 2011
***Resigned his seat on 8th February, 2011