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June 2002 Click to go back to the soap box list

Back to business

The joyful Jubilee was warm-hearted indeed. With the exception of the two golden days themselves, the weather has been dreadful - wet and windy. With no sign yet of Flaming June, the nights will soon start drawing in towards the autumn!

South Wiltshire has, however, been a picture. The countryside has never looked so lush, nor the greens so vivid. But have you noticed the lack of flowers - wild as well as cultivated? The geraniums in my window boxes have never been so far behind, with hardly any scarlet blooms to complement the Union flag I flew for the celebrations.

Looking at the fields, I anticipate a bumper harvest. Already at their lowest for years, grain prices will go through the floor. Alas, that is more bad news for hard-pressed farmers.

Meanwhile, back at Westminster, we are in for a grim time until the summer recess at the end of July. Why grim? First, as a countryman, London is not the place to be in mid-summer. It will be hot. It will be sticky - except when it is blowing grit in your eyes - and it will be overrun by great oceans of tourists filling every open space just when you need to dash for it. We are thankful for the tourists - I just wish more of them would evacuate to Salisbury!

I have a personal problem with the capital in summer. London plane trees look lovely - but their pollen is the only pollen I know anywhere in the world that now gives me choking hay fever. A short walk from the House to a TV studio leaves me choking because the planes are unavoidable. Such is life - I can live with that.

Grim, too, are the scratchy weeks ahead as the Government ducks and weaves between Lords and Commons, determined to get its legislation on the statute book before we rise for the summer. We will have bad-tempered arguments about some very controversial legislation. For example, the National Insurance Contributions Bill - which is going to put up your taxes substantially from next April. That legislation alone will put up your Council Tax next year by about 3 per cent, and it will cost our NHS at the District Hospital and at our GP surgeries hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Then we will tackle the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill, and the so-called Enterprise Bill which will do some good things for employees and pile on more regulations for business. We will be debating European Affairs - and I will be on the front bench for a whole-day debate entitled, 'Energy -Towards 2050'. I'll be pushing up the daisies by then - but let us not be accused of short-termism in the House!

Locally, three issues are pressing. The Summer Solstice at Stonehenge on Friday 21st June will be well policed. But where will the revellers go until the Glastonbury Festival begins the following Wednesday?

Secondly, there is a very serious problem with our mental health services - which spills over into our alcohol and drugs advisory service. Money - lack of it. Why should we believe a word the Government says about more tax spent on the NHS when we are seeing our services threatened with cuts, before our very eyes. I await a response from the Health Minister responsible.

Finally, the parking crisis at our District Hospital is long overdue for resolution. I'm all in favour of green transport policies - but why pick on the sick, their relatives and the carers? Watch this space.

ROBERT KEY MP

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