Local MP David Warburton in a special Question and Answer session with Frome Times’ Joe McCann.
FT: Thank you for coming along and speaking to the Frome Times to respond to a number of letters critical of you recently. So I thought we could cover Westminster politics this week and, in next week’s paper, move on to more localised Frome issues. Can we start with your views on what’s been now called the ‘Paterson vote’ when the Government voted through a change in rules to save Owen Paterson?
DW: I’ve known Owen Paterson for a long time and I know that he’s had a very difficult time but there’s no question that he broke the rules. It’s also clear though that the way the rules are organised in Parliament is incredibly confusing and they do need to be reviewed.
When I saw the Government amendment, the Andrea Leadsom amendment, it seemed to make good sense that we should look again at the rule system. But during the course of the debate, I realised that we were on the wrong side of the argument. I’ve got no problem with voting against the Government – I’ve voted 16 times against this current Government. But on this occasion, I think, it’s the only time in six years of being an MP that I’ve voted a way that I genuinely regret. I had told the whips, I’d told the Government that I would be supporting them. I watched the debate, I realised that we were on the wrong side, that you can’t retrospectively change the rules. But I stuck to the vote because I promised I would, and the Government U-turned and effectively left us all in the lurch. On the upside of that, at least the Government did U-turn, at least they did see that what they were doing was wrong and they realised they had the mood of the House wrong and the mood of the country wrong. I hold up my hands now and say I shouldn’t have voted the way that I did.
FT: So would you apologise to those you represent for voting that way initially?
DW: Would I apologise? Yes, I’m happy to say that this is a vote I think shouldn’t have happened and I don’t think that amendment should have been put forward. It’s a lesson to me.
FT: Talking about misreading situations, we’ve had a number of people mention Prime Minister’s Questions where you asked the Prime Minister whether he’d like to eat a cheese toastie on national cheese toastie day. Do you think that was the best use of a question?
DW: Prime Minister’s Questions is something of a pantomime and something of a show; it’s not the real workings of Parliament and I’ve spoken literally hundreds of times in Parliament on hundreds of issues.
One very important issue that is local to us is the dairy industry – my constituency contains more cows than any other constituency – we have an enormous dairy industry in Somerton and Frome, and a huge number of national and international cheese manufacturers. So that’s a serious underlying issue and we also have an enormous issue with climate change.
Going carbon neutral is an incredibly important thing, so the fact that Wyke Farms, which is just near Bruton, are now producing the world’s first carbon neutral Cheddar cheese, it brings a lot of things together that are important issues; about carbon neutrality, about climate change and about supporting our local dairy industry and the fact that it happened to be National Cheese Toastie Day, I thought it would be amusing. Also, this is just one of many, many, many times that I’ll be speaking in Parliament.
FT: But you are asking a direct question to the Prime Minister which is not something an MP gets to do every day of the week and you’re talking about cheese toasties when we’ve got a £20 cut to benefits, NHS privatisation, Covid recovery…
DW: I actually have to disagree, all the things you’ve mentioned I have asked questions of ministers and spoken in the house about, and I meet the Prime Minister on a regular basis. I think that, to the people of Frome, net-zero and carbon neutrality is a massively important issue and the dairy industry in Somerset is colossally important to many thousands of people.
I think it was an opportunity to make serious points while also embellishing it with a bit of humour, which often goes down well in Prime Minister’s Questions.
FT: You say there that climate change and net zero are very important to you, do you think your voting record reflects that?
DW: Absolutely I do. People often take the voting record from theyworkforyou.com or whatever it’s called, which many people from both parties have complained about because it’s completely unrepresentative of reality.
So what will happen – and it’s a game the opposition play and when we’re in opposition we play the same game – they’ll put down a motion along the lines of, ‘We think that Britain should go net-zero and the Chancellor is doing a terrible job and should resign.’ Something good wrapped up with something that obviously we can’t vote for. Then there’ll be a vote and we’ll vote against it and on theyworkforyou.com it’ll say this MP has voted against the country becoming net-zero.
Now on the other hand, if we put through a bill where we pledge to make the country net-zero, as we have done, there’s no vote because the opposition don’t oppose it so therefore that doesn’t go on the record on theyworkforyou.com.
Over the course of time, that will build up and then on theyworkforyou.com they’ll say so and so has consistently voted against carbon neutrality…it’s complete rubbish and so many people are complaining about it. Also it’s irritating that people think that they are an independent fact-checking organisation when they’re not.
FT: Privatisation of the NHS…the health and social care bill is going through parliament. What are your thoughts on this and on criticism that you guys are pushing to privatise the NHS?
DW: I have no words for how absurd it is. People have been saying that the Conservative Party are going to privatise the NHS for about 50 years or probably longer. But there’s no line whatever of the NHS being privatised or sold off. In fact, the NHS budget has gone up to £177 billion; the biggest budget it’s ever had, just a massive increase of £33 billion this year plus £5.9 billion for waiting lists. There is absolutely no privatisation.
The proportion of NHS services that are provided privately is minute. An awful lot of NHS services have to be done in the private sector, of course, because the NHS can’t provide all its own light bulbs and its own gowns and its own masks and its own tables. Obviously, it has to use the private sector in order to function and that’s what this bill is trying to secure. No-one is selling off the NHS in any sense whatsoever.
FT: The light bulbs and the gowns is one element but people are more concerned about care being outsourced to private sector companies where there’s no real control. Some of the Conservative MPs have rebelled on this.
DW: Yeah, when you say that care is outsourced to private companies and there’s no control – there is an enormous amount of control and they do have to follow very, very strict guidelines in the same way as the NHS has to do.
If the NHS can lead people to get the help and the care that they need at a better value for all of us and therefore free up more frontline services, then it’s only to everyone’s advantage. As long, of course, as the care is provided properly and it is very strictly controlled.
Obviously, the key point of the NHS, the crux of the entire thing, is that we must provide healthcare for the entire country free at the point of use and instantly, or as near to instantly as possible, available. That’s a very expensive – the NHS has more budget than any other department and more funding than anything else – 2 million staff – there isn’t any danger of the organisation itself being run down or sidelined.
I understand people’s concerns but I also understand that very often the fears around these things are politically generated campaigns which are not to do with the NHS, they’re to do with political motivation and to do with Party politics. Which I think is a shame.
FT: Second jobs seem to be in the news – do you have a second job?
DW: Yeah looking after my kids. No, I don’t have a second job.
FT: Do you think MPs should be allowed second jobs?
DW: Very often the problem with Parliament increasingly is that people leave school, they go to university and study politics, then they work for an MP and then they stand for Parliament and get elected. And they have never been in the real world at all, so I think having some access to other jobs; a lot of MPs work in the NHS for example at the same time as being parliamentarians.
Obviously there are those high profile cases that are coming out at the moment who are earning squillions of pounds doing crazy jobs and I don’t understand how they can be an MP at the same time.
The rules shouldn’t be that we can’t have a second job, but that there is some sort of strict control over what those jobs are and how much time they’re going to take from your work as an MP. What I don’t understand is how you can find the time, because doing the job of an MP is a 24/7 job; it’s every single day, every day of the week.
FT: You previously had a second job for a period of time; working for Vouch?
DW: No I didn’t. No no, I was just on the board
FT: You earned a thousand pounds a month for 8 hours a month?
DW: Yeah it wasn’t 8 hours it was about 1 hour and I was just on the board of the company for about 6 months. 2019 I think it ended. As I say I don’t know how they can find the time. I’m in London Monday to Thursday or Monday to Friday most weeks and then Friday and Saturday in the constituency visiting people; more often than not on a Sunday you’ll be at home and you’ll be answering emails or responding to messages and preparing for the next week. So I don’t understand quite how someone could do a more time-consuming job at the same time as being a Member of Parliament. I think that there ought to be a stricter regime. There ought to be some kind of control over it.
FT: Do you think that the current Government and the leadership of that Government is fit for purpose?
DW: I think that the press and the Westminster bubble can often amplify and exaggerate bumps in the road that happen to all governments. The Conservative party have been more or less in power for 11 years but are still ahead in the polls. I don’t think overall people generally think the government’s doing a bad job at all. I think that there’s no question that what the government’s had to face is the hardest experience possibly since the war.
The pandemic had the potential to completely destroy the country’s economy and we kept the show on the road. Unemployment has not fallen off a cliff, businesses haven’t imploded, and we are bouncing back already.
It’s a substantial achievement and there are many, many Bills going through Parliament that have enormous amounts of support on both sides of the house. So, no, I think the Government’s doing a good job in a terribly, terribly difficult time. Having said that I think the Government have made a few recent mistakes and I think therefore it’s been a bruising time.
We’ve had contentious votes and then the Owen Paterson affair which was not edifying at all for the Government, but then look at the polls. I think the public still appreciate the work that the Government’s doing and appreciate the difficulty of the situation that we all find ourselves in. I think that we’re going to come out at the other end of this in good form.
FT: So you’re still for the PM? He’s the man for the job?
DW: Yes absolutely.
