I am clear that Mr Cameron has got the message loud and clear that the interlinked rackets, and just-legal wheezes which have driven motor insurance premiums sky high – and out [...]]]> What Blackburn people started, Prime Minister David Cameron will finish. That, at least, is how things look after last Tuesday’s “motor insurance summit” at Downing Street.

I am clear that Mr Cameron has got the message loud and clear that the interlinked rackets, and just-legal wheezes which have driven motor insurance premiums sky high – and out of reach for some – have to end.

The Bill I introduced into the Commons last September, with all-party support, had four key proposals:

1. To ban “referral fees” – the average £600 which is paid by the personal injury lawyers (and ultimately by the insurer) to claims management companies, recovery and repair firms, the no-fault insurers, and (I’m afraid) to some police and NHS staff for accident details;
2. To cut in half the fixed fee of £1,200 which these lawyers receive for each successful claim of less than £10,000;
3. To restrict “whiplash” claims to those few where there’s been a real neck injury for which there is objective evidence; and
4. To stop insurers from penalising honest motorists, especially in the North West, for the fact that claims management companies are more active here than elsewhere.

The Government are already legislating to ban referral fees – not in as strong terms as I think is necessary, but I’m not cavilling about that. They’ve promised to cut the fixed fee. On Tuesday I understand much of the discussion at the “summit” was about whiplash. It’s not in the bag yet, but I’m pretty certain that action on this will follow. It needs to. On the face of it, the statistics suggest that people in England and Wales have weaker necks than anywhere else – including Scotland, which is obvious nonsense. It’s because our system is far more lax in allowing spurious claims. I want to see new rules on whiplash – no compensation, without  good external evidence, if the crash speed was 15 mph or less; medical reports from doctors independent of the claimants.  

Action on my fourth point will take longer; but three of four is good progress.

He earnt his living by telling stories. Yet his “fiction” contained more truths than a dozen reports of Royal Commissions.

He was Charles Dickens.

The 200th anniversary [...]]]> The man who did more than anyone to improve the lives of the poor in Victorian times held no public office; he was neither a Minister of the Crown, nor of religion.

He earnt his living by telling stories. Yet his “fiction” contained more truths than a dozen reports of Royal Commissions.

He was Charles Dickens.

The 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth fell on Tuesday.

Dickens lived in the south of England. But he travelled to the mill towns of Lancashire, and was appalled by what he witnessed.

The dreadful physical conditions in which children and adults were required to work in the cotton mills were, in his view, compounded by the hard-faced men who owned the mills, and controlled the towns.

His tirade against both is to be found in his shortest novel Hard Times, one of my favourites.

Written in 1854, his story is situated in “Coketown”, a thinly disguised Preston, which he’d visited earlier that year. His key characters, the industrialist Josiah Bounderby, and the school master, the wonderfully named Thomas Gradgrind were “utilitarians”.

People like this justified the unequal world from which they benefitted by claims that what mattered was the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” – ignoring the misery which unlucky individuals (thousands of them), like mill-hands, suffered on the way to the sunlit uplands for the fortunate minority.

Dickens had contempt for these people who knew the price of everything, but had no sense of value, nor fairness. “Now, what I want is facts” was Gradgrind’s refrain; anything else, beauty, truth, imagination, was dismissed as “fancy”.

Dickens’ extraordinary skill was in getting the Bounderby’s and Gradgrinds of the world to read his stories, and hold the mirror to themselves.

Gradually, there was an awakening, both by the workers through their trades unions, but also by many of the middle-classes, that conditions like those in Coketown were intolerable, and had to change.

But the wonderful thing about his novels is that they not only tell us about life when he wrote them, but about the human condition today.

As Justice Secretary, I was faced with a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg telling the UK that we were wrong.

I felt that the Strasbourg [...]]]> CAREFUL readers will recall that, in common with both main political parties, I do not believe that convicted prisoners, whilst in jail, should have any right to vote.

As Justice Secretary, I was faced with a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg telling the UK that we were wrong.

I felt that the Strasbourg Court had over-reached itself.

It had been set up after the last war to ensure basic rights in countries controlled for years by fascists.

It had done a good job in this area.

But it was not there to second guess decisions of national courts in the functioning democracies of Europe, where the judiciary were plainly independent.

Our highest courts (under the Human Rights Act) had said whether prisoners could vote was up to the electors and Parliament, not unelected judges.

Much more serious than prisoner votes is whether “guests” in this country – those here as spouses, on work permits, unfounded asylum seekers – can be deported from the UK if they break our rules; and who should decide.

The man who, in Blackburn, killed young Amy Houston in a hit-and-run accident is a case in point.

Ministers said he must leave the UK.

He pleaded a “right to a family life” because, after he’d exhausted all rights to be here, he’d become a father by a local girl.

But our courts said they had to follow what the Strasbourg Court had laid down. He’s still here.

With senior Conservative David Davis MP, I went to see the presiding judges in Strasbourg shortly before Christmas – to press for the Court to rein itself back to its original purpose, and that it needed big changes in the way it operated, and who became judges.

This year – for the first time since 1992 – the UK has the Presidency of the Council of Europe (nothing to do with the EU), the Court’s parent body.

It gives us a once-in-a- generation chance to lead reform.

So I’m very pleased that Prime Minister David Cameron went out to Strasbourg yesterday to make that case.

It goes with the territory.

But there are limits. I no more approve of gratuitous insults against football managers, Steve Kean included, than I do against politicians.

I say two other things about Mr [...]]]> FOOTBALL managers and politicians are both in the public eye, and both have to put up with regular criticism, whether they like it or not.

It goes with the territory.

But there are limits. I no more approve of gratuitous insults against football managers, Steve Kean included, than I do against politicians.

I say two other things about Mr Kean.

One is that he has shown considerable strength of character in recent weeks.

The second is that, with a mainly young team, he has secured some remarkable results in recent days; the draw, away, against Liverpool; the fantastic win, away, against Manchester United; and the very fine result last Saturday when our ten-man team beat a determined Fulham 3 – 1.

I am happy to put on record that this was against my expectations of what I thought he, and the team, could manage.

If we could just win those six-pointers against the other teams at the bottom as well, we might still be in the Premier League next season, too.

The breathing space which these recent, better results give, should be a time for reflection by the club’s owners about how they can improve relations with the club’s many thousands of supporters.

I’ve been sitting in the same seats at the Blackburn End for at least the last 15 years. So have most of those around me.

They are a good cross-section of fans; and they don’t deserve some of the criticisms which have been made of them, either.

They are decent people, just deeply frustrated by an unnecessary absence of communication, and direction by the owners (which, by the by, has unfairly placed Mr Kean in the firing line).

Many of us have tried, so far without success, to make constructive contact with them. I live in hope that, despite recent difficulties, the owners will now positively engage with the fans and the community.

They would be pleasantly surprised by the result.

A moment’s thought should tell them that their interests are, in truth, the same as ours.

These were – an Assistant Serjeant-at-Arms, in eighteenth century garb, complete with sword; a Doorkeeper, in different fancy dress; a bewigged Clerk at the Table; [...]]]> There were just 13 human beings in the House of Commons’ Chamber on Tuesday night when, at 10.55. pm, I got up to open my debate on the Clitheroe/Blackburn/ Manchester rail services.

These were – an Assistant Serjeant-at-Arms, in eighteenth century garb, complete with sword; a Doorkeeper, in different fancy dress; a bewigged Clerk at the Table; two ‘Hansard’ reporters (who provide the complete, word-by-word record), one reporter from the Press Association (which provides a news service to all media outlets); and seven MPs – the Speaker, a government Whip, the Transport Minister Theresa Villiers, her Parliamentary Private Secretary, Darwen and Rossendale MP Jake Berry, me, and one other MP, name unknown to me, who evidently did not have a home to go.

Anyone watching the proceedings on the television might well have asked “where’s everyone else?”; maybe adding “isn’t it outrageous that the Commons’ Chamber is empty much of the time?”

For big set-piece debates how many MPs turn up, and on which side, does matter.

Who “wins” these debates can be as much as matter of psychology as of oratory; as every football fan knows, when the crowd get behind their team, it can raise their performance.

But for significant local issues like improving North East Lancashire’s rail services, it’s the fact of the debate, not the numbers in the Chamber, that’s important.

The debate I had on Tuesday is known as an “Adjournment Debate”. I had to apply for the slot before Christmas; happily my number came up. Like any sensible MP, my interest was in advancing my case, not point-scoring. I arranged for Mr Berry to share some of my time; and ensured that the Minister’s office was well briefed about what I was to say.

We’re still some way off getting the go-ahead for spending to give a reliable, half hourly service on this line through the day.

But if it does come off, this debate will have helped, by raising the issue up Ministers’ and Parliament’s agenda.

The performance by the [...]]]> I don’t know if the Government is paying Pete Waterman to be it’s PR Manager for its plans to build a high speed rail link so that we can all get into London quicker and spend our money there, but if he is then Mr Cameron should be asking for his money back!

The performance by the eccentric millionaire on today’s BBC Breakfast News Show can only have helped those opposed to the scheme.  What the presenters presumably hoped would be a reasonable discussion became a blazing row between Waterman and the HS2 opponents – with the ex-record producer launching into a tirade of anger, shouting ‘rubbish’ as the other side tried to speak.

Personally I’m firmly on the side of sustainable rail investment.  But we need a proper and sensible discussion on this.  I’m yet to hear any decent argument for HS2 when the railway network all over Britain is crying out for investment.  Train times to London are already well down – you can comfortably get from Preston in Lancs to London in 2 hours – which makes a day visit perfectly practical.  Yet it takes almost the same amount of time to get from Blackburn to Liverpool, and almost an hour to make the fairly short trip from Blackburn to Manchester.

The basics are there – by spreading the £17 billion it is claimed HS2 will cost, across the rail network we could have a truly fantastic service – faster trains all over the country, better stations, and perhaps a halt to ever increasing fairs.  All of which would help the economy in general – as opposed to putting a bit extra onto the economy of the capital.

Everyone in every region knows of a local railway that can be improved so it wouldn’t take much research on the Government’s part to work out how else it could spend the money.  As things stand I won’t be backing HS2 but I am backing Jack Straw’s bid to get the Blackburn to Manchester track doubled – allowing half hourly services instead of the current hourly arrangement.  And I support schemes such as reintstatement of the Todmorden curve and the re-opening of the Skipton to Colne link.  The Government should show a bit of imagination – rather than the old fashioned London-centric model they are using.