The Government has a moral and a political obligation to ensure that British Army veterans of the Troubles in Northern Ireland are not hounded through the courts thirty, forty, fifty years after event, when no new evidence has come to light to prosecute them with. A moral obligation because it is entirely wrong to pursue old soldiers in this way, especially when the terrorists who created the conflict have evaded justice under the terms of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. And a political obligation because in our 2019 Manifesto we made an absolute pledge to legislate to protect our veterans from vexatious prosecution.
As I explained in a post earlier this week, I am proud that we passed a law earlier this year which creates protections for British soldiers who have served on operations abroad. The NI veterans were excluded from this Act because they served on home soil, but a new Bill to include them is expected soon. I regret this Bill was not specifically mentioned in the Queen’s Speech this week, but I am confident - for reason of the obligations mentioned above - that it will be introduced soon. This week I joined a group of MPs led by Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson to discuss the backbencher strategy that will help ensure the Government acts properly and quickly on this essential piece of business.
A law that does not, in my view, need changing is the Suicide Act of 1961. This took the practical step of legalising suicide; the second clause, however, introduced a new offence of assisting or inciting someone to take their life. There is a perennial campaign to repeal this clause so that people who wish to end their lives early - often because of a terminal illness - can get the help of doctors to do so. For many reasons I think this would be a very dangerous step for our society to take, and as I mentioned in a recent newsletter I have set up a new All-Party Parliamentary Group to campaign against a change in the law, and for greater access to excellent palliative care for everyone who needs it. We held our first public meeting this week with a range of doctors presenting the evidence of their experience, and a brave lady with Motor Neurone Disease explaining her decision to die naturally. You can watch a recording of the event here.
A rather cheerier event was my first pint in a pub in 2021, in company with James Sheppard (successfully reelected last week to represent Aldbourne and Ramsbury on Wiltshire Council) and Rupert Stephenson, deputy chairman of the local Conservative party. The Wheatsheaf at Chilton Foliat never poured three more welcome pints of Ramsbury Gold. I listened benignly to James’s tale of woe about Thames Water and the long-running saga of the drains at Aldbourne - which are indeed entirely inadequate to the volume of water they have to carry from all the new housing in the area.
Then to the River Kennet to meet my eastward neighbour, Newbury MP Laura Farris. Like two warlords we met at the boundary, where Wiltshire meets Berkshire, on a bend of the River Kennet in the Chilton Estate. We were there to meet Charlotte Hitchmough from the charity Action on the River Kennet (ARK), her colleague and a river keeper from the estate. They, like Councillor Sheppard, had not much positive to say about Thames Water, but they, too, ultimately blame over-development. Too much water is extracted from the Kennet to serve our growing conurbations, and too much filth - untreated sewage, bluntly - is pumped into it because the sewage treatment works can’t cope with the demand. The result, as Sam the keeper pointed out, is a riverbed covered in green-brown weeds, and a dearth of the flies that denote a healthy river.
The Kennet is the greatest of the tributaries of the Thames - indeed it used to supply half its water, till we started taking so much out - and it is, surely, a national not just a local imperative to make it well again. Laura and I will be hosting a public roundtable for constituents with an interest in the river, and then meeting ministers, Thames Water and the Environment Agency to press them to act. Do let me know if you would like to be part of the roundtable.
Lastly, may I direct your attention to the wonderful Carmela Chillery-Watson’s latest fundraising effort? Inspired by Carmela’s battle against muscular dystrophy, her mother Lucy has written Wonder Girl Carmela and Tinker the Stinker. You can read about it here.