Sometimes the reforming radicals are those
who also seek to conserve.

Over the past few days, many constituents have written to me expressing anger and dismay about the riots, policing and justice. I share this anger and dismay.  As I said in my article on Wednesday, we must establish that the state’s duty is to protect the law-abiding and their property first and foremost and that the police do not require the consent of rioters before acting with reasonable force.

The Prime Minister has said that we will do whatever it takes to restore law and order and to rebuild our communities. His statement yesterday may be found here.

As the Prime Minister has said, too few police were deployed and their tactics did not work. They faced widespread, simultaneous looting, not concentrated public disorder.

More police have now been put on the streets, more people have been arrested and more criminals are being prosecuted.  No phoney concerns will get in the way of publicising the faces of those wanted for crimes.  The police are already authorised to use baton rounds (“rubber bullets”) and there are contingency plans in place to make water cannon available at 24 hours notice.  The Government will give the police the power to remove face coverings under any circumstances where there is reasonable suspicion that they are related to criminal activity.

The Prime Minister also announced measures to support victims and to tackle the culture of criminality which has grown up in our country. There is a difference between right and wrong: a culture which glorifies violence, disrespect and irresponsibility is unacceptable. The Government is setting out to do those things which will change our broken society.

I was glad that the Prime Minister yesterday reasserted the old principle that the public are the police and the police are the public. Given that people are entitled under law to use reasonable force in defence of their lives, their property and their communities, it is important that the public are given appropriate guidance. I will be writing to the Home Secretary seeking that guidance.

Similarly, the police should be guided by the principle of reasonable force. Occasionally, an individual police officer has used excessive force in a difficult atmosphere but, over the past few days, the police have not used that force which it appears the majority of the population would have endorsed. I personally do not approve of ‘kettling’ peaceful demonstrators. We have to recognise that the police are in an extremely difficult position in this area. However, Parliament and the Government must ensure that the police are able to use that force which is reasonable in the circumstances, even if that includes the use of baton rounds, water cannons, tear gas or other tactics which may cause serious injury or even death.

We now face the problem of inadequate sentencing. I will be writing to the Justice Secretary on that subject.

All in all, I believe we now see clearly the legacy of a century of misguided statism and surrender of basic human values. The police have not drawn the correct distinction between policing legitimate demonstrations and intervening in criminal riots: unreasonable force has sometimes been used where none was appropriate and reasonable force has not been used where it was required. That must be resolved.

How so many people have come to be so reckless, irresponsible, immoral and downright criminal will be a subject for discussion over many years. I am reminded of the warnings issued by C S Lewis in The Abolition of Man and by Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote in the 19th century of the dangers of the nanny state:

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated [...]. It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.

It is my view that many in our society have sunk to the present level because, for generations, we have progressively surrendered ourselves to the embrace of the state. It is past time that we rediscovered the classical English values of liberty under the law, which means responsibility. That would include building a straightforward system of justice based, not on the state’s attempt to shape the individual’s character, but on the protection of life, liberty and property.

However, on the positive side, I have been deeply heartened by the way communities have come together to defend themselves and to clear up the mess created by those who have betrayed their fellow man. Moreover, the young people I meet in Wycombe schools and during their work experience unfailingly lift my spirits with their sincerity, good intent and earnestness. Our young people are, on the whole, a cause not for despair but for hope.

The disgraceful events of the past days contain many lessons for us all. We should now strive to build a better society based on personal and social responsibility and those values which have sustained every civilisation, foremost of which is this: do as you would have others do unto you.

My Financial Services (Regulation of Derivatives) Bill has now been printed, ready for second reading on 10 June. You can obtain the PDF here and track the Bill’s progress here. The press release, including links to background evidence and press coverage, is here.

When I introduced my Bill on 15 March, I explained how the accounting rules for banks incentivize trading in derivatives by enabling unrealized profits to be booked up-front, leading to large but unjustified bonuses and dividends.

On 30th March, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee published a report recommending that the Government reassert prudence as a guiding principle. That is what my Bill does and I hope the Government will adopt it.

While complying with the rules, banks are producing accounts that grossly inflate their profits and capital in three ways. First, using IFRS mark-to-market and mark-to-model accounting, banks record unrealized gains in investments as profits. Second, IFRS prevents banks from making prudent provision for expected loan losses by allowing recognition only of incurred losses. Third, IFRS encourages banks not to deduct staff compensation from profits. Taken together, these flaws mean that banks’ accounts under IFRS are at once rule-compliant and dangerously misleading.

By way of example, we have deduced from the accounts of the UK Asset Protection Scheme that RBS may be overstating capital by as much as £25bn.

Boards take decisions based on their accounts. If the accounts are misleading, is it any wonder that boards and regulators are failing shareholders and taxpayers? The public are furious about the injustices manufactured by the banking system, and they are right to be, but how much greater is the injustice if grotesque bonuses are based on false profits?

Banks are living in a fools’ paradise in which their boards cannot get a firm grip on vital measures like capital and profit. That is plain wrong.

Thanks to the European Union, the UK cannot simply mandate prudent accounting in compliance with UK Companies Law but we can require parallel accounting to British standards while international negotiations proceed. That is why I am calling on the Government to adopt my Bill.

This post from 5 April 2009 seems appropriate to bring forward, following yesterday’s motion on EU economic governance.

Today, I shall be remembering those who have fought and died for our freedom over the years.

A good time to complete Booker and North’s extensive history of the European Union — “The Great Deception – Can the European Union survive?” — seemed to be these last few weeks, as I visited Portugal, France, Germany and Austria. It was an enlightening read.

I have visited most countries in western and northern Europe, perhaps all except Finland, Eire and the Balkans. I have also worked and toured widely in North America, the Middle East and Asia: those trips were a great pleasure but Europe is home and I love it. The political structure that is the European Union is another matter.

There runs through human history the idea that mankind could be happy, if only the good and wise were allowed to rule the rest, free of the inconvenience of democratic accountability. The European Union is yet one more embodiment of this idea.
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In preparation for an article to be published in the Autumn, I just reread The Open Society and Its Enemies – Volume 1: The Spell of Plato. The book traces mankind’s opposition to change and the consequent rise of the myth of destiny, technically, historicism: the belief that history unfolds according to laws which can be discovered.

Popper argues that the strain of civilisation causes us to seek to return to a supposed harmonious state of nature, a heroic age of tribalism, rather than face the burden of personal responsibility. This is, he argues, what gives rise to totalitarianism.

In chapter 6, Totalitarian Justice, Popper presents an argument about the use of the words individualism and collectivism in combination with egoism (selfishness) and altruism. He explains that “individualism” is used in two senses: in opposition to collectivism and as a synonym for selfishness. But Popper explains that collectivism is not opposed to egoism: class egoism is a common thing. However, someone who is anti-collectivist — an individualist — can also be an altruist, one ready to make sacrifices for another individual.

Plato makes the mistake of thinking society faces a choice between collectivism or selfishness. In fact, altruistic individualism is possible, without individuals living constantly in a state of subjection and sacrifice for some group. In our time, as in Plato’s, this error provides a defence of collectivism which is unjustified.

Society is the cooperation of individuals. In my view, one great advantage of a society based on equality before the law, freedom, peace and property is that it can bear selfish individuals without harming the whole of society. More than that, perhaps such an order is the only one which exploits the selfish individual to the benefit of other people.

These are ideas to be developed another time. Meanwhile, I am struck that many contemporary complaints against individualism fall into Plato’s trap and that some of the deeper green ideologues seek a return to a long-lost harmonious state of nature. I wonder if they realise where their ideas may lead?

At the end of an interview at a community event at Sir William Ramsay School, I was asked to comment on recent discussions regarding banning the burka (we might more accurately have discussed the niqab):

CREATING a law to ban the burka would be “just absurd”, Wycombe MP Steve Baker says.

The wearing of the Islamic face veil has been the subject of a heated debate this week.

It follows Tory MP Philip Hollobone’s comments that he would not meet constituents wearing a burka unless the veil was lifted.

Read more: Wycombe MP Steve Baker : burka ban ‘just absurd’ (From Bucks Free Press).

I wasn’t particularly prepared for the question, so my remarks lack polish but I am content with the sentiment: within the bounds of public decency, the law should be silent on what people may wear. It is a matter of free choice.

Those debating the question often point to the counterexamples of wearing motorcycle helmets in petrol stations or balaclavas in banks. Neither counter-example is particularly useful: banks and petrol stations both suffer specific problems with theft, so it is wholly reasonable for owners of these types of property to require customers to reveal their identities by showing their face. Such property owners might require everyone to show their faces as a condition of business, and that would be a reasonable requirement¹. This is not the same as a general legal prohibition on a particular item of clothing.

Resolving these questions requires values. On this question, I am applying equality before the law, freedom from arbitrary government and property rights. The law should be blind to people’s identity: everyone should receive the same treatment under law. We should know in advance how the law will treat us: parents taking their children out on halloween shouldn’t have to worry about whether their children are illegally covering their faces. That is, the law should be simple and universally applicable: it would be utterly wrong to target a particular item of clothing worn by a particular group of people.

Moreover, a person has a right to wear what they wish, since we are all self-owning, and  the act of wearing an item of clothing affects no one else’s property, even if it is not to that other’s taste. Where would we be if we started legislating for clothing to avoid offending anyone’s sensibilities? Strictly Come Dancing would be off the air for a start!  However, a property owner is entitled to refuse to do business with someone who appears to be equipped to steal from them.

This may mean some property owners choose to be culturally insensitive. We may have to put up with that, but we should not ban the burka.

1. As a spectacle-wearing motorcyclist, I find it extremely irritating, but it is still a reasonable requirement in the circumstances. [↩]