Sherington Tory

To read some of the comments made by the Lib Dems on expansion, you would think that the Conservative party is gleefully attempting to impose 17,500 homes in the rural part of the Borough east of the M1.

Firstly, I want to establish a few points before I go on to make my arguments about why it is we absolutely oppose rampant expansion, and also why the Lib Dems are playing the worst type of party politics, and I want to do so in a way that is devoid of the usual political rhetoric.

Firstly, the Government is imposing planning targets through a quango called English Partnerships (EP). EP have identified “growth areas”, of which Milton Keynes is one, where they wish to see government targets met for housing expansion. In effect this quango has been handed, by government, planning powers that ought to rest with local authorities and with that comes the ability to over-rule or ignore local authorities if they don’t play ball. EP have set up Milton Keynes Partnerships (MKP) with the specific aim of driving expansion in Milton Keynes (whether the local authority likes it or not!).

In an ideal world, where a city needs to expand, it would work in conjunction with neighbouring district and county councils to achieve the best results. Because MKP are forcing centrally mandated targets on Milton Keynes we are being forced to expand beyond what we Conservatives think is sustainable. Equally, because the targets are centrally driven there is little room for agreement and compromise between neighbouring authorities. The net result is that in order not to be inundated neighbouring authorities are pretty much in a position to have to fight one another over expansion plans. This is not the way it should be!

Aylesbury Vale District Council and Buckinghamshire County Council were put in exactly this position. They have commissioned the Buchanan report to defend their position that they do not wish to see the countryside urbanised, in the same way that we Conservatives in north east Milton Keynes have no desire to see our villages swallowed up. We have been quite clear from the outset that we do not agree with, or support the findings of the Buchanan report as it would destroy the character and nature of the villages east of the M1. It is a matter of longstanding record that we oppose it in the strongest possible terms.

The fact is that both Aylesbury Vale District and Buckinghamshire County Councils are both Conservative controlled. Just because we are members of the same political party does not mean that we agree with what they are proposing. The Lib Dems however are spinning the line that because we are all Conservatives those of us in north east Milton Keynes are aligned with Aylesbury Vale and Bucks and that expansion east of the M1 is our adopted policy. I cannot be clearer, it is not.

The other aspect to this is the confusion as to who has a legitimate role to play in the planning debacle that is MKP. There is an organisation called Milton Keynes Forum who are a self-interest group sponsored by a town planning consultancy who support the Buchanan proposals. Once can speculate about what they wish to gain, but it is clear they have an agenda. Milton Keynes Forum however has no official standing in terms of planning decisions, they are simply an interest group voicing their opinions. The fact that their name is similar to MK Partnership (who do have a role to play in the decsions making process) is being exploited by the Lib Dems to cause confusion. They are making great play about the fact that they are opposing the MK Forum proposals on the assumption that people are generally ignorant of who and what MK Forum are. It is my guess that they intend for people to believe that MK Forum are something to be feared, and that they are committed to fighting against. It’s a smokescreen, a feint, and it is entirely misleading. Yes, we ought to voice our disagreement with MK Forum, but we ought not to be distracted from the real fight, which is with MK Partnerships. MK Forum can no more dump 17,500 homes and a road and rail infrastructure on our villages than I can, but the real danger is in not standing up to MK Partnerships.

We could as political groupings on Council stand united against MK Partnerships. The Lib Dems are seeking to spin party politics and make out that they are the only, and true defenders of the villages. The truth is that they have been far too acquiescent with MK Partnerships and have not stood up for the people of Milton Keynes enough. The Lib Dems nodded through in Cabinet the South East Regional Plan without any real scrutiny. In effect they have committed to building 2000 houses in the areas outside of the MK Expansion Area (i.e. the villages in Sherington and Hanslope Wards, Newport Pagnell, Olney, Bow Brickhill, and Little Brickhill) over and above what is already in the council's local plan. In other words the council will need to approve an extra 50 houses in Moulsoe, 70 houses in Sherington, and 30 houses in Emberton between 2012 and 2021 to meet those targets. And this from the party that claims to be resisting development!

In any case the Lib Dems will not commit to giving the people of Milton Keynes a definitive say in their own future, something we Conservatives are committed to. Here is our policy:

• At a national level, if we win a General Election before expansion takes place, we will unwind English Partnerships and the local off-shoots such as MK Partnerships and hand full decision making powers over local planning back to the democratically elected local authorities and do away with the centrally driven targets EP are imposing;

• At a local level we are committed to fighting to retain the character of rural north Bucks and halting any development;

• What expansion there is in MK needs to have equal investment in infrastructure (I before E) and that infrastructure needs to be brought into line with the current population (which it is not) before there is any expansion;

• The people of Milton Keynes will have their definitive say in any expansion matters by way of a local referendum. This would be especially important if EP were wound up as that referendum would bind the council (as opposed to giving the council some popular mandate to oppose the centrally driven plans but no authority to refuse them as is currently the case).

Mark Lancaster, our MP, has written to the households in the villages affected to reassure residents and clarify our position in his capacity as an MP in response to the letters he has received from residents who have been needlessly worried by the Lib Dem propaganda.

When the next lib Dem leaflet comes through your door telling you that the Conservatives are going to support the Buchanan report, remember that is not our position at all.

Thank you to the many residents of North rawley, Astwood, and Sherington who took the time to talk to me whilst my team and I were out canvassing on Saturday. The responses to the residents survey we handed out have given us some useful insights into people's concerns in each of those villages. Tellingly, the lies being spun by the Lib Dems about the Conservative's position on expansion isn't being taken at face value and we had some valuable support to our campaign. It's a shame that our political opponents are more concerned with smearing us than working with us to preserve the character of rural north Bucks.

Please do look out for my next leaflet, which will be coming out shortly.

William Rees-Mogg makes some excellent points in an editorial in today's Times. So as not to either re-invent the wheel (so to speak) or makes the points in a manner any less articulate than the author himself I'll cut and paste it rather than paraphrase. Needless to say, I find myself in total agreement.

Now, all our English liberties are becoming orphans
William Rees-Mogg

The adoption row is one more symptom of a dangerous drift


The issue of the Roman Catholic adoption agencies, and their refusal to arrange adoptions for same-sex partnerships, I find altogether fascinating. It involves fundamental questions of liberty, of freedom of religion, of European law and of political philosophy. In our collapsing political society it may prove to be only one week’s wonder, but it is important to think it through.
The dispute all starts with a European regulation — with one of those European incursions into British sovereignty that hardly one British person in a thousand was aware of at the time it happened. We think that we are free people, but 80 per cent of our laws come from Brussels, and cannot be rejected by the British Parliament or, indeed, by the British electorate.



If we do not like what Brussels decrees, there is only one thing that we can do. We can lump it. We certainly have no power to repeal it. Christopher Booker, who reports on European law very thoroughly, has told us where the story did actually begin. Brussels adopted a general directive, 2000/78, that gave a framework for equal treatment in “employment and education”. It outlaws any “discrimination based on religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation”. There is a feast of possible future litigation in those words.

Brussels was, in fact, rather more cautious than usual. Having in mind the Roman Catholic populations of Poland, and perhaps of Malta, where almost everyone goes to church at least on every Sunday, it added a clause stating that the EU “respects and does not prejudice the status under national law of churches and religious associations”. Brussels left the member states free to make specific provisions for religion. As a result, the Polish Government exempted Catholic adoption agencies from having to arrange adoptions for single-sex partnerships.

The British Government would have none of this. It chose to redefine “employment” and “occupation” to include the work of adoption agencies. It also chose not to exempt the Catholic agencies in respect of single-sex partnerships. This is a secular Government with a secular programme. It is also a Government that is very open to influence by lobbies. Rightly or wrongly, it is more afraid of the gay than the Catholic lobby.

The response of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, who are moderate men with a somewhat left-of-centre view of society, was to ask for an exemption. The Church does not accept gay marriages as valid. Ruth Kelly, the Minister for Equality and herself a Roman Catholic, did want to make an exception; indeed she still does. Tony Blair would have liked to support her; the Cabinet wanted a fully secularist policy, of a universal character, except in Scotland, where Catholic agencies would, reasonably enough, be allowed to refer single-sex partners to non-Catholic agencies.

There has been much talk of rejecting discrimination, although the civil partnership law itself discriminates in favour of gays and against family members and unmarried heterosexuals, who are excluded from the benefits.

The likelihood is that the Cabinet will maintain its position. The Catholic agencies, who do a very good job, would eventually have to close. Whose liberties will then have been taken away? Not the same-sex partners. They already have an advantageous position, which is not available to family carers or to heterosexual, but unmarried, partners.

Same-sex partners have the legal right to adopt, which is available through the great majority of adoption agencies. Their rights are therefore fully protected by existing laws, and will be reinforced when the Equality Act 2006 comes into complete effect. The people who will lose their liberty are, in the first place, the parents and families of children being placed for adoption.

Why do people go to Catholic agencies rather than to the more readily available Anglican or civil agencies? It will often be because they hope that children they can no longer care for will still get a Catholic upbringing in a Catholic family. That cannot always be arranged, but the intent will often be there. The Catholic Church does not accept single-sex partnerships. That is a matter of religious doctrine. One does not have to agree with it to defend its right to be stated.

No doubt the secular character of the present Government has reinforced its decision: There is to be no exemption. In its philosophical chain of thought, European ideas have played a guiding part. The historic basis of the English common law is one of pragmatism and precedence. Our law has been moulded over time to the shape of our English society. It represents the consensus of the English people over the generations. It has also been influenced by strong individual personalities, going back to the time of Henry II.

The philosophers of English liberalism have concentrated on the liberty of the individual, where the European philosophers have emphasised universal propositions. John Stuart Mill’s great work On Liberty makes his overriding concern for the individual absolutely clear. “If all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

The Cabinet, less Ruth Kelly and Tony Blair, is trying to impose its will on the Roman Catholic Church, which has become the representative of liberty as such. I do not doubt that the Catholic hierarchy will stand up for themselves. They have the full support of the Anglican Archbishops of York and Canterbury. They deserve everyone’s support. The European philosophers are represented by the universalism of Immanuel Kant, who believed in the “categorical imperative”, which he defined in this way: “I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” How English Mill seems; how un-English Kant was; how Kantian our human rights law has now become; how rapidly we are losing our liberties. Is it not strange that the weakest Government in modern memory should also represent the most insidious threat to our liberties?

In a survey today a growing number of young Muslims want to see a radically different Britain with the imposition of Sharia law and support for anti-western campaigners that their paernt's generation. The irony is that it is the liberal, secular lobby who are driving people of all faiths into a state of perpetual frustration. I am hardly suprised that young men and women who try and live by the tennets of their faith feel disenfranchised and secularised to the point of frustration. In a less regulated workld of "live and let live" where living a life of faith is seen as an equally valid, and complimentary, way of life to a liberal, secular, anti-theological one there would arguably be less frutration, and the need to voice that frustration (sometimes violently).

I feel this Government has atempted to impose it's own view of the world in a way that the Catholic and Anglican churches have not. All three of the Abrahamic faiths have a very similar view of the family and how it ought to be constructed. To allow Catholic and Anglican adoption agencies to promote policies in line with its religious perspective is not discriminatory, especially when combined with a "signposting" policy that recognises the desire of gay couples to adopt. That these agencies can now no longer offer a practical and diplomatic solution to a very human problem without fear of prosicution goes against every principle of "fair play" that is quintisentially British. How ironic then that the Government wants us to teach "Britishness" in our schools (though I wonder how much reinvention of Britishness there will be in that particulr syllabus).

On their website the Lib Dems want us to save money on our household heating bills - and save the planet. Wow, I just wish someone had thought of that earlier.

Actually, they have. There's something called the BREEAM (Building REsearch Environmental Assessment Measure) Rating that applies to buildings as an internationally agreed standard. There's one for nwe-build homes too called the Code for Sustyainable Homes. You can download it here: The code is voluntary, but it provides an excellent guideline for planners as to what they SHOULD be diong to ensure that newly built homes are sustainable, energy efficient, and have a low or even zero carbon footprint on the environment.

Of course the advice on the Lib Dem website is commendable, but next time they come knocking on your door canvassing it might be worth asking them exactly how far they go beyond giving advice on how to lag your boiler into actually implementing the BREAM standard, which is after all doing something about sustainable development and not just giving the impression you are doing something on a website.

As for me, if elected, I'll be doing all I can to esnure that new homes are planned to consider the highest BREEAM rating that is affordable, and that new commercial developments comply as fully as the design process allows. In other words I'll work towards raising the standards of sustainable buildings (being a professional Facilities Manager and involved in large scale building projects this is what I spend my professional life doing) to protect the environment rather than just putting up a few hints. I'll also be looking to introduce into the planning sycle a erquirement for constructors to minimise waste materials which have a huge net effect on a building's carbon footprint. Almost 40% of all materials taken onto a building site are packaging that just gets disposed of into landfill. I'll aim to focus the planning process into ensuring that a high percentage of packaging materials are recovered for recycling and not sent to fill a hole in the ground. I can assuer you that the Lib Dems haven't thought that far ahead!