Devizes Constituency Labour Party

---

 

According to the website that monitors MPs activities, Ms Perry has spoken in sixty-two debates since she was elected (as of 8 February.) That, it judges, is “well above average amongst MPs.” On the other, hand written questions are not so satisfying as regards headlines: she’s only had 20 answered – well below the average.

 

 

When Ms Perry finds a colourful phrase that pleases her, she sticks with it. On a conservative party blog in which she defended the ring-fencing of the development/aid budget, she took a strange view of Labour’s record:

                        ‘After 13 years of Labour profligacy when action entailed flinging

                        money at a wall marked “good intentions” and hoping that some would

stick…..’

This is, of course, a grossly distorted view of Labour’s record on international development and aid – a record that saw thousands of carefully targeted projects (for instance in Rwanda, a country ignored by the previous Tory government while the genocide was underway there.) It also ignores Labour’s record on the successful debt relief initiative – in that ambitious initiative Labour did not only have ‘good intentions’ but led the world. But she’s obsessed with this notion of ‘chucking money at walls’ – let’s just hope the coalition is not replacing ‘good intentions’ with ‘malign intentions’.

 

In a committee stage debate in November on the coalition’s removal of entitlement to Labour’s health in pregnancy grant (11 November 2010), Ms Perry was back on her ‘throwing money at walls’ critique of Labour’s progressive policies:

                        ‘…we have moved beyond being able to throw taxpayers’ money at a

                        wall marked good intentions.’

There was, she claimed, no evidence before Labour’s policy was introduced, that this was the best way to deliver maternal care. This may have been one of the debates she ought not to have spoken in – for she was firmly put in her place when Kerry McCarthy (Labour, Bristol East) pointed out that Ms Perry had not been in an MP when the measure was introduced and had obviously not read the debates:

                        ‘It is nonsense to say that it is just about

good intentions and that somebody thought it would be nice to give people a bit of money and see how it worked out.’

You do have to be careful when you use sweeping generalisations that fit your ideological position rather than fitting the facts.

 

It was in this debate that Ms Perry won (if that’s the right word) her Daily Mirror headline. When a Labour MP said the £190 benefit paid to all pregnant women prevented many being plunged into abject poverty by the expense of having a baby, Ms Perry rose - to her full height - to ask:

                        ‘Given that the families are in extreme poverty, as the honourable

                        lady points out [which she had not done], should they be having

                        children at that point?’

The Mirror headline ran Tory MP Claire Perry questions if poor are fit to have kids.  That was adding something positively Victorian to the debate rather than something new. The Mirror then enrolled her in its list of the unacceptable faces of the Conservative Party. Perhaps she thinks that’s a well-deserved honour!

 

We shall be keeping a careful eye on Ms Perry to see whether she sticks to her new year resolution.

                                                            ****

The first weeks of 2011 do not augur well. She was so excited by her visit to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, that no sooner was she back in Westminster than she popped up seven times in a debate on the bill to require referenda on any future transfer of power (however miniscule) to the EU. She does not have many positive points to make in support of policies, but she likes taking swipes at Labour. Four of her interventions were simply making snide attacks on Labour. 

 

In Strasbourg Ms Perry had spoken up about state sovereignty and criticised the European Court of Human Rights for over-ruling Parliament. Whatever one thinks of the European Union – or even about universal human rights – this is all rather strange.

At the front door the coalition is busy trying to defend Parliament’s sovereignty from ‘attack’ (as the Tories and one or two LibDems see it) by monster “Europe”. Meanwhile at the back door, the coalition is working late into many nights shovelling out parliamentary sovereignty, accountability and scrutiny as fast as it can. The Localism Bill (which is supposed to underpin that hollow policy THE BIG SOCIETY) will erode basic democratic principles of transparency and ministerial responsibility so much that the Head of the Civil Service has ordered an inquiry into its constitutionality. The top-down reorganisation of the NHS also circumvents parliamentary scrutiny – as the White Paper says “The headquarters of the NHS… will be in the consulting room and clinic.” In other words, as far away from Parliament and the ministerial in-tray as possible.        

 

Her latest intervention was in the first debate on the forestry sell-off. Again she had nothing positive to say about the policy but took a swipe at Labour for selling off forests without consultation. This time she was firmly put down by the Deputy Speaker for breaching a ruling he’d just made to allow as many MPs to speak as possible.

*****

Next time: we investigate Ms Perry’s heroes and ask why she got such bad publicity

in the Daily Mail - of all places - at the Tory conference.