Sir Roger Gale
Member of Parliament for Herne Bay and Sandwich (including West Thanet)
 

The Herne Bay and Sandwich (as the seat is now called) election result came through at about seven o`clock on the morning of Friday 5th July. The count was held in the Westgate Hall in Canterbury because Herne Bay, which is the largest town, is in the Canterbury City District and comes under their Returning Officer. Canterbury constituency counted first, while our ballot boxes were being sent in from the Dover and Thanet parts of my constituency and not surprisingly Canterbury returned its sitting Labour MP, Rosie Duffield.

Suzy and I were asleep. Preparing for a 4am arrival at the counting station and for the rest of a long night after a long election day and so were blissfully unaware that the exit poll had given Labour an eighty-two per cent chance of winning a Herne Bay and Sandwich that, in a good year, ought to have a Conservative majority of about eighteen-and-a-half thousand. This was not a good year!

By the time that Suzy and I arrived in Canterbury the wreckage of a Conservative government was shredded across the Country with Cabinet members and backbenchers treated with equal disregard by an electorate voting for change via Labour or against the government by voting for the Liberal Party , other minorities and a Reform that had become the dustbin vote for the disgruntled – and there were a lot of them.

Team Gale was present in the form of my octogenarian and ever-robust Association President (our eleventh General Election together), my young Chairman and my fiercely loyal agent presiding over I think her fifth general election, together with my youngest son, Tom, the Shadow Leader of Thanet District Council and other stalwarts all acting as the counting agents whose job is to scrutinise the ballots as they are sorted into piles. They all knew the results of the exit poll, of course but did their best to shield us from the potentially awful reality when Suzy and I walked in. The result is now history- and thanks to my supporters we held the seat against the odds but it was a close run thing.

Post election, some six hundred and forty-four newly elected members of Parliament descended upon Westminster – by my calculation three-hundred and fifty-one of them for the first time – to take the oath of allegiance to His Majesty King Charles the Third and then, under the direction of the Father of the House, to elect the Speaker for the duration of the coming Parliament. The Father of the House is not the oldest Member (it would appear that I am he!) but the Member with the longest unbroken service. Sir Edward Leigh, in 1983 when we both entered the House, signed the register, which is when the clock starts ticking, ten minutes before I signed myself. Interestingly he also signed some two minutes before one Jeremy Corbyn! Had Jeremy pipped Sir Edward to the post he would have been the Father and Diane Abbott would have been the Mother which would have made for a fascinating team on the far left of British politics! Such are the vagaries of political life.

In the early days back in the funny farm those of us who have been around the block a few times and are fortunate enough to have residual office space do our best to make our new colleagues, of whatever political allegiance, welcome. Three hundred and fifty-one is a lot of new names and faces to learn and the task will take me, at least, some time. The officers of the House are expert in this process and, armed with books of photographs, become adept at identifying Members in a very few days. Those of us who are less skilled find it more difficult, particularly when the photographs bear little likeness to a subject who may have changed the style and colour of hair or grown or shaved a beard since the picture was taken.

We introduce ourselves and shake hands only once. Those who are not Members and particularly those members of foreign legislatures who greet each other physically almost daily find it strange that while we are Members of the House we never again, after the first meeting, shake hands. Just one of a thousand customs and practices that new members have to learn.

Back in the day it was sink or swim. When I first arrived at the carriage gates in 1983 I wound down the window of my car and said “Good morning. I am a Member of Parliament”. To which the police constable, in those days unarmed of course, said with a twinkle in reply “Yes Sir, we`ve got over six hundred of those here. Which one are you?”. I was given a key to a locker that I have never used and have long-since lost and told to get on with it. Today new Members are given a tour of the Palace of Westminster and induction courses covering all of the rules and regulations, the use of the excellent Members` Library, catering facilities and a host of other pieces of advice relating to the workings of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and other bodies that are ` here to help you` which may or may not be a euphemism for `drowning you in bureaucracy`! New Members, segregated by Party, are also given the use of hot desks in committee rooms transformed into offices until a more permanent allocation of accommodation is made by the Accommodation Whips. And this is probably the first experience of the true power of the Whips that many members will `enjoy`. Not people to annoy if you want a half-decent billet!

The serious business of Parliament commences with what is known as “The King`s Speech” which is of course not written by Buck House but by His Majesty`s government and which, behind all of the Pomp and Ceremony sets out the work programme for the new parliament. Desperate to be seen quick out of the blocks the new administration has already rushed headlong into some regulatory and legislative measure which they are likely, I fear, to repent at leisure. The `red in tooth and claw` sections of the Gracious Speech, designed to head off any mutterings of discontent from the left-wing of the Labour Party, include the effective re-nationalisation of the railways, the creation of tomorrow`s White Elephant in the form of “Great British Energy”, the removal of VAT relief from Private Schools , the removal of the right of the relative handful of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords and a leasehold an Commonhold Reform Bill.

Of great concern, and matters that I raised during the debate that follows reading of the King`s Speech, are a revision of the National Planning Policy Framework that is clearly designed to expedite the building of houses on what is dishonestly described as `Grey Belt` but which in fact means not only Green Belt but the farmland that we need to grow the crops required to support food sustainability. And the small matter of the use of Farmland to create solar farms linked by a new array of pylons stretching across the rural landscape and imposed by the monolithic National Grid. Make no mistake, in place of the Garden of England we face the prospect of an over-industrialised Brown and Unpleasant Land. We may kick and scream as much as we like but as the Prime Minister said when I questioned him during the first PMQs of the new parliament (I paraphrase) “We won the election. We don`t need to listen to you. We can do what we like”.

Notwithstanding pre-election criticism of the Conservative Government`s fairly impressive record on Animal Welfare legislation there was not a word on the subject in the King`s Speech. Not Trophy Hunting, not Puppy Smuggling. Nothing.

The Labour administration`1s direction of travel became clear on Monday 29th July when the Chancellor pf the Exchequer, Ms. Rachel Reeves, made a statement to the House about the “inheritance” that she had received from the previous government. There is, she asks us to believe, “a £22 billion hole in the public finances” that she knew nothing about prior to the General Election. This is wildly and irresponsibly disingenuous and is clearly designed to pave the way for tax increases in first Autumn budget that we know that the Labour Party has planned all along but did not admit to the electorate. All of the figures were made available to Ms. Reeves by the Office of Budget Responsibility (the OBR) and by the civil Service as part of the briefing process offered to all Shadow Chancellors before a General Election so at best she did not bother to study the figures and at worst she has deliberately misled the House. The former Chancellor, now Shadow, Jeremy Hunt was palpably angered by Ms. Reeves` assertions and made his feelings known in no uncertain terms. I understand that a request for clarification is now with the Cabinet Secretary but in the meantime it has become clear that the need for an Autumn tax-grab (Inheritance? Pensions?) has been exacerbated by an inflationary Public Sector pay settlement agreed by the new administration together with a 22% pay offer to try to buy off the Junior Doctors from further industrial action. Industrial disputes have to be settled, of course, but “Once you have paid the Danegeld you will never get rid of the Dane” and it will be interesting to see which Union will be next in line to demand a budget-busting pay rise. Part of Ms Reeves `black hole` at least was made in Number 11, Downing Street.

Ms Reeves` mantra is “If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it”. So, Chancellor Reeves has announced that anyone not in receipt of Pension Credit will not receive Winter Fuel Payment. Now, I have long argued that WFP should be means-tested in some form. It has to be ludicrous that Suzy and I, both well over `retirement` age but still working and earning and many others who do not require it should receive this benefit. There are, though, thousands of pensioners who do not claim Pension Credit but rely on WFP to pay their winter fuel bills and who will now be wondering how they will be able to afford to heat their homes. I suspect that this is a vindictive measure with unintended consequences that will come back to bite the Chancellor where it hurts. “You can afford it and you should do it”.

Finally, the new Chancellor has decided to create an `Office of Value For Money’ which, in itself, has to be a misnomer. What `value for money` is likely to emerge from a costly new Quango set up to do the job that is already being done by the OBR?

On the last day of the summer session, just before the start of the recess, the Red Queen came to the despatch box to expand upon the King`s Speech pledge to “get Britain building, including through planning reform and accelerate the delivery of high-quality infrastructure and housing`. Angela Rayner`s thunder had been largely already stolen by the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, a week earlier, had trailed housing policy as part of her `growth` plans that it had become unclear

whether it was the Chancellor or the Deputy Prime Minister/ Secretary of State for Housing (Angela Rayner) who was actually in the driving seat. And indication, perhaps, that fearing a challenge from the Left the Prime Minister wishes to marginalise his Deputy as far as he can get away with it!

So: we are going to “deliver the change needed to turbocharge growth and build more homes” says Ms. Rayner. This means that we are going to “make local housing targets mandatory”, “Channel the standard method used to calculate housing need” and “create a more strategic system for Green Belt release”. In other words “we are moving the goal posts and if, locally, you don`t like it you can lump it!”

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, says the Deputy Prime Minister, will “Reform Planning Committees so they focus on the right applications” which I take as shorthand for saying that, under the guise of `Ending constant changes to planning policy`, building on farmland, creative massive `solar farms` and demanding that `authorities identify sites for renewable energy` will , far from `”ensuring that communities have a say in how development happens”, be the order of the day. Only in Labour Mayor Khan`s failure-to-build London has the housing target been reduced. Which means that still more farmland in East Kent is likely to be developed to provide overspill housing for the London Boroughs.

When I suggested to Ms Rayner that her announcements represented a plan to build on the land that would otherwise produce the food that our children and our grandchildren would need to eat answer came there none. And neither does she appear to have any solution to the planning consents already granted and believed to represent some one million homes that are currently sitting and growing in value in developers` back pockets.

The early days of the new session were taken up, for me, with campaigning for election as a Deputy Speaker, a post that I had held by Appointment of the House for the past eighteen months. I had not, in fact, intended to stand. I had hoped and expected that with the retirement of Dame Eleanor Laing as Chairman of Ways and Means (Senior Deputy Speaker) and her elevation to the House of Lords her place would have been taken by my friend and the junior Deputy Nigel Evans who I had intended to endorse and vote for. In the event Nigel lost his seat in the election and so I tossed my hat into the ring. I came top of the poll on the Conservative side but did not achieve an outright majority and under the bizarre system of transferable votes that we use for these elections was then not elected. When the Deputy Chief Whip asked me what I intended to do next I said, simply, ‘hold the Government to account` or words to that effect! Freed from the vows of silence and impartiality that bind the holders of the Deputy Speaker`s office I am once again at liberty to speak, vote, to talk to the media and to write these occasional columns. So, after a fallow eighteen months I have so far spoken in one debate (the King`s Speech) and asked four oral questions on the floor of the House.

The Old Dog can still bite as well as bark!