Richard Spring MP
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

In our modern, fast-paced world, there can sometimes be a feeling that everything needs to be done yesterday. Consumers of all types of products and services understandably demand high levels of prompt, efficient service at all times. The internet has been the driving force behind this. It is now possible to get information quickly, at the click of a mouse, and then move on to the next task. If one company cannot provide a satisfactory service, you can switch to another.

What can often be forgotten amongst this constant flurry of activity is that, at the grassroots level, there is also a thriving voluntary sector where people give up much of their valuable time to help charitable organisations in their community.

As a local Member of Parliament, I try to support and publicise the voluntary sector in West Suffolk as best I can, because I know they do excellent work helping many of the most vulnerable people in our society. On a recent visit to the Haverhill Volunteer Centre, one of the dedicated organisers, Gaby, showed me a new initiative they were participating in called “caring cards”.

The 29 brightly coloured and humorous cards come in a special pack and cover a range of issues including disability, relationships, young people, substance abuse and many others. On the back of each one is a list of voluntary organisations which help deal with that particular area, complete with the contact number for the group.

I was so impressed by this new and innovative way of highlighting these services that I have made a short web video to help publicise this first class idea.

I hope it will encourage more people to help volunteer with their local group and also guide those who need help to find the best organisation to help them.

Volunteers are often the unsung heroes in our society and their work deserves to be applauded by us all. They fill the inevitable gaps in our welfare structures and without them, support services would crumble.

The video can be viewed on my website at www.richardspringmp.com

In the US, religion has increasingly played a more important role in politics.

Many Americans take a very keen interest in the religious attitudes and faith of any candidate seeking the Presidency and this will surely be seen in the run up to the 2008 Presidential  Elections. Elected representatives talking about their religious beliefs is very much part of the political process there.

In Britain it is quite different, and was pithily summarised by Alistair Campbell’s riposte to a journalist who asked Tony Blair a question about his own religious practices: “We don’t do God”.

Running in tandem with what has happened in the United States, across the world we have seen the rise of Islamic consciousness and its inevitable impact on the political agenda. This was highlighted in a report published today by Policy Exchange entitled Living Apart Together. Amongst its many findings, it reports that more than a third of young Muslims would prefer to live under Islamic law rather than British law. At the same time, we have the Catholic Church embroiled in a row with politicians over an exemption to rules surrounding adoption by gay couples.

British MPs have been, and should be, free to make up their own minds on social and moral issues like gay rights and abortion. They are free to vote according to their own individual consciences. It is one of the most admirable traditions in British politics. Long may it continue…

Rab Butler, the once nearly Prime Minister, used to say that he learned  most about the mood of the nation from the station master at Saffron Walden when he arrived in his constituency for the weekend. It is a worthwhile observation.

In 1997, such was the excitement and optimism surrounding the Labour victory, even in the most unlikely circles, that a perfectly rational businessman friend of mine told me that each morning he consequently felt cheerful and uplifted about the day ahead. The Blair honeymoon lasted so much longer than anybody could have imagined. Then the twinges of doubt appeared, then gradually disillusion, and then contempt. Needless to say, out of tact I never asked, but that morning spring in my friend’s step must have evaporated a long time ago.

I sense we are at a further stage. Anger and disappointment is being replaced.  It is actually becoming quite funny. Watching Government Ministers trying to spin their way out of the shambles in the Home Office, the NHS and in our foreign policy –  it is simply risible. Ministers talk as if they are inhabiting some disembodied sphere. When they justify themselves on the radio or television programmes audiences are beginning to laugh. Tony Blair’s performance on television yesterday was surreal.

It was good to have this pointed out to me as I was back in the real world of West Suffolk again. Barbara Windsor, Sid James, Hatti Jaques, Kenneth Williams – pity they aren’t making Carry On films any more – a new script is being written currently each and every passing day in Westminster and Whitehall.

When I was a small boy I went into a shop with my mother. It was a hot summer’s day and the shop assistant had rolled up his sleeves. There tattooed on his arm, in blue, was a set of numbers. I was transfixed.

Once outside, I pressed my mother as to why he had these numbers. The replies to my increasingly urgent questions came with some care and deliberation, but I established in the end that he was Polish, Jewish and had been given the numbers whilst he was in a concentration camp. I was horrified – I thought it only happened to cattle – why were Jewish people put into camps? You can imagine the flow of questions. That night I could barely sleep. What I saw has stayed with me to this day, and I still think about it.

Tomorrow it is Holocaust Memorial Day. The qualitative scale of what was done to Jewish people is a unique chapter of ghastliness that we must never forget. I, for one, having experienced that incident, never ever will.

Yesterday afternoon was the first time in nearly two years that the House of Commons had a chance comprehensively to debate the current situation in Iraq and the wider Middle East. Tony Blair, once again, opened up Prime Minister’s Questions with a tribute to the latest casualty of the war in Iraq.

We were told by the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, that hopefully a “turning point” was coming up in relation to the war and that the Prime Minister would make a statement then – William Hague quite rightly pointed out, where would we have been in the Second World War if Churchill had waited until we had a “turning point” to come to the House of Commons?

I sat through the debate and listened to the many wide-ranging and thoughtful speeches on all aspects of Iraq and the Middle East. I spoke in the debate and a copy of my speech can be found on my website, www.richardspringmp.com 

One of the problems is that our skilled diplomats, who understand the region and its complexities, have been sidelined by  grand visions and generalisations which have historically never worked in the Middle East, when patient negotiation, hard work and pragmatism are the keys.

Iraq is likely to be Tony Blair’s lasting legacy and yet, in the twilight of his premiership, he shamefully skulked away to avoid a debate on the war he led us into – where we looked for a display of leadership yesterday from our Prime Minister, we found instead weakness – such a contrast to the  courage showed every day by British soldiers on the ground in Iraq. 

The County Council in Suffolk has decided to recommend that the three tier school system should merge into two, the same arrangement as with most of the rest of the country.

Parents are very anguished because they do not like change: they are committed to the existing schools and the staff who teach there. The County Council has produced evidence to suggest that a two tier system enhances educational achievement.

All of us will remember being somewhat disoriented when we ourselves moved from primary to secondary schooling – some head teachers feel concerned that this happens twice in Suffolk.

At the heart of many peoples’ concerns is the range and scale of reorganisation which has afflicted our public services. In my Parliamentary lifetime, we have gone from a West Suffolk Health Authority to a pan Suffolk Health Authority, then five primary Care Trusts, then three, then back to one. The administration of the NHS really has deteriorated. Similarly we have seen reorganisation in local government and local criminal justice – has performance improved?

The key question is – even if there is educational improvement, is it enough to offset all the inevitable cost, financial and human, that this change would bring about. This is not, of course, a party political issue but already the Liberal Democrats are sniffing the wind, and no doubt Labour too, to see how the debate and consultation plays out. Regrettably, you can be sure that on their local track record their judgment will not exclude any possible party political advantage. We wait to see!

It is again symptomatic of the shambles which has now descended on this Government that yesterday the Prime Minister indicated an open mind about whether the Home Office should be split in two – the Big Story of the weekend – and which conveniently happened to push Ruth Turner of Downing Street fame off the front pages.

You would not believe it but the Home Office is a much smaller animal than it used to be. Two relatively new departments, Culture Media and Sport and Constitutional Affairs have taken on chunks of Home Office’s former remit (licensing, gambling, broadcasting, the fire service and so much more). Yes it is true that worldwide migratory flows are not likely to abate, and yes we face terrorism not rooted in territorial claims but religious fundamentalism, and is therefore more difficult to identify and prevent.

Key parts of the Home Office do not communicate with each other. Charles Clarke had to resign over foreign prisoners because the prison department failed to talk to the immigration service. It is the antithesis of joined up government. The words whelks and stalls spring to mind.

This morning a Labour MP jokingly suggested to me that perhaps the Home Office should be split three ways. Why not? Another headline.

You couldn’t make it up…   

China has been in the news again because it fired a ground-based ballistic missile to destroy an old weather satellite. Shock horror in the United States, which relies so heavily on satellites for surveillance and communications. No doubt real anxieties in Taiwan too. Whether we like it or not, the recent complete dominance of the United States globally is ebbing. It is not only in economic matters that the world is tilting eastwards.

China is full of contradictions. Hundreds of thousands of young Chinese are or have been educated in universities abroad, yet there you cannot get the BBC website, as China seeks to shut out internet sites it finds potentially or actually disagreeable. Yet the rapidly growing Chinese middle class is now beginning to realise that everything modishly Western and modern should be in context.

Walking around the Forbidden City last month I was surprised to see somebody drinking out of a Starbucks cup. It being cold, the thought of a cappuccino was pretty attractive, so we found the small and unobtrusive Starbucks outlet which was very crowded and active. Now hundreds of thousands of Chinese are emailing and blogging their alarm. The Forbidden City is simply wondrously unique. I cannot think what the equivalent here might be – selling Big Macs to visitors in Buckingham Palace?

The Chinese have torn down many old sites and buildings, but now are beginning to realise that their heritage is a precious one. Assuredly, as Chairman Mao might have observed, in this instance it is simply a cup too far.

In Suffolk, the County Council is proposing to move away from the present three tier school system where pupils have an interim stage, from 8 to 13, between primary and secondary schools to simply a two tier system with no middle schools.

The whole process has had considerable interest from head teachers, councillors and parents. As the local MP, my main concern is what is in the best interests of the children and their future education. That is why I am keen to consult as widely as possible and listen to the views of all interested parties.

I have set up a special email address middleschools@richardspring.com for people to contact me with their views on the issue.

I have also made a short video about the changes which can be viewed on my website www.richardspringmp.com 

Vulpine, serpentine, duplicitous….these are just some of the adjectives which have been applied to the Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson. What an enigmatic figures he is, so brilliant at analysing problems and issues other than those which apply to himself.

Yet, even if not amongst Labour MPs, he is regarded with some admiration in political terms by many Conservatives on the grounds that he was central in making the Labour Party electable, a remarkable feat after so many years in the political wilderness. Personally he is charming, funny and clever.

Peter Mandelson is an enthusiastic Europhile, and in The Guardian yesterday effectively attacks Gordon Brown for his rather less fulsome views on the European Union. The Brown camp is constantly throwing out hints about the Chancellor’s dissatisfaction with much about the EU.

I am convinced that Mandy would do anything to stop Gordon from succeeding Tony and that Gordon knows this. Until Gordon, as is now very likely, succeeds this summer, the heavy hints and spats will continue, not even in code.

Unless something seismic happens to Gordon, he will in due course either seek to marginalise or decapitate Peter. Knowing this, Peter may feel he has nothing to lose. It will make for great entertainment.