TWO controversial matters are before the Commons at the moment. The 42-day detention decision is in the committee stage and will come back to the House soon. The other is the abolition of the 10p income tax rate.
Both of these are wrong in most people’s opinions and it is hard to see why the Government has held to them so obstinately.
The people I talk to outside Parliament agree with me that a sign of strong leadership would be the ability to change one’s mind early if it became obvious that an original plan was misguided.
Mr Brown cannot agree with this and it was only when he was challenged by a large number of his own back benchers determined to make him change his mind that he made a concession promising to compensate the losers from the abolition of the 10p tax band.
Unfortunately this was too late, under our aggressive and confrontational system of party politics, to avoid this being seen as a U-turn and a sign of weakness.
During a debate on this issue on Monday, speakers attempted to get the minister responding to list the details of the ways in which people will be compensated, whether this will be backdated and how soon they will receive any relief.
Although Frank Field MP, the leader of the potential rebellion, spelled out his understanding of the Prime Minister’s undertaking for compensation, the minister noticeably failed to confirm any of these measures.
So we are left in limbo not knowing who will be compensated and how or when.
It is a very unsatisfactory position to be in, especially for people like a constituent who came to my surgery last week and whom I mentioned, anonymously, in my contribution to the debate.
This person is on a low income, childless, unmarried and disabled, under the age of 60 and has suffered an annual tax increase of very nearly £300.
This is impossible to meet and we have no idea if there will be any compensation or when it might come. Perhaps the back bench Labour rebellion has
only been postponed. We’ll wait and see.
l Other debates I have taken
part in recently include one
on the future of family doctor services when the Secretary
of State for health implied that
no primary care trust (PCT) was being forced to have a
polyclinic and the definition of such a clinic became more and more blurred.
On Tuesday there was a debate on the funding of drugs for exceptional patients by PCTs. This came down to looking at the definition of exceptional patients and post code rationing and sadly reached no helpful solutions.