View From The House - 2nd September 1999

Reprinted From The Lichfield Mercury

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

As I write this article, Jack Straw (the Home Secretary) seems to be in trouble with the race relations industry over his remarks about "travellers" or "criminal gypsies" as he put it. He said on Radio WM "Many of these so-called travellers seem to think that it's perfectly ok for them to cause mayhem in an area, to go burgling, thieving, breaking into vehicles, causing all kinds of trouble, including defecating in the doorways of firms and so on and getting away with it". As a consequence, Mr Straw has been reported to the Commission for Racial Equality and to the police to see if the Public Order Act has been breached by him.

What nonsense! Labour may be great authors of political correctness (which I believe people will rebel against in the not too distant future for the madness that it is) but even I wouldn't wish this on Mr Straw. It is wrong to generalise about any group of people, but there can be no doubt in Staffordshire that travellers, gypsies - call them what you like - have been causing a real nuisance in areas like Streethay. Ordinary law abiding folk are finding it very expensive to use the law to evict them from where they have decided to squat. And I have to ask the question: Is it fair that even the law abiding travellers should have free access to hospitals and other services if they have avoided paying any tax? Is it right that taxpayers should subsidise the minority who have chosen to opt out of paying council tax and income tax?

Even I suffered at the hands of the politically correct a while back. A Labour MP had asked a question about "black youth unemployment". I asked a supplementary question related to this which, by House of Commons standing orders, has to be directly connected with the main question. I asked "was it not important that young black people should not only have equal opportunities, but want to work too and that training should imbue the work ethic". Of course, this applies to feckless young whites too. But what an uproar! For all of one day(!) I was being accused of everything under the sun - from being a cross between Hitler, Stalin and Ghengis Khan. All for stating the obvious. Political Correctness is becoming a form of spoken fascism. Jack Straw made it very clear, as did I, that he was not referring to a community as a whole and his observations reflect the frustration society is enduring at the hands of a lawless minority.

A confused issue, also related in a way to that of PC, is fox hunting. I do not agree with cruel sports. Indeed, I do not see how cruelty and sport can be linked. But banning fox hunting is not the obvious solution it at first seems. No one in the know doubts that one way or another foxes would have to be culled to protect wildlife and domestic animals from cruel deaths and to protect the foxes themselves from starvation. Gassing and long-range shooting where the fox bleeds to death or is maimed and slowly starves are not humane alternatives.

The last time this matter arose in Parliament, I proposed that the law be changed to stiffen the penalties against cruel hunts (to include imprisonment) and to allow the RSPCA to ride alongside the hunt to ensure that the new laws are enforced. I would also ban digging out and other such practices outright. As these ideas were not adopted at the time and I knew that the Government would prevent the Bill to ban fox hunting from becoming law, I chose not to vote on the issue. Now that the Government has raised the fox hunting issue again, I am pleased that my ideas have begun to gain currency. Several Labour MPs have taken up the theme of permitting fox hunting, but under much tighter controls on the lines I spelt out a while back. Let's hope that sense prevails. I for one see little humanity in introducing gassing - a far crueller way of culling foxes.

Finally, I find that Labour is not so "New" after all. Taxes have gone up by over £4 billion affecting everything from insurance to pensions to fuel prices. (It is just less obvious than putting it on income tax). And John Prescott is taking the nanny state with his fight to the death against car owners to new extremes. Watch this space. The latest plan is to tax car drivers as they enter cities. Will Lichfield be next?