Lib Dems opt out of orgy of virtue signalling

 If you were a Liberal Democrat MP, bearing in mind that there are no safe Liberal Democrat seats and there are always trouble-makers who complain that you are never seen in the constituency, on being told that a rare private members' bills day was coming up today but that all the measures were unexceptional and would pass or be withdrawn for government action, would you break your normal weekend routine and stay in Westminster? 

Thus it was that no Lib Dem (or Scottish Nationalist, or Green, for that matter) was present today. The Labour official spokespeople stood in for the whole of non-government MPs in effect. It was just the situation in which Sir Christopher Chope would normally have stood up and called: "Object!" in order to stop discussion on Bills in a poorly-attended House. But of course Sir Christopher had his own Green Belt Protection Bill on the list of Bills for Second Reading. Ironically, it was not reached partly because of the excessive speechifying which was to come.

Nor would Sir Christopher have wanted to block the passage of the first measure on the agenda, the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill aimed at forced marriages, which would belatedly bring England and Wales in line with a United Nations recommendation of 2016. It was a pity that it had to be left to a private member, Conservative Pauline Latham, to bring in the reform, but at least there was no dissent from the Tories present. It was welcomed by Sarah Champion and Andy Slaughter, supported by Virendra Sharma, on behalf of Labour so that there was surely no need for a couple of self-congratulatory speeches from the other side which added little while prolonging the debate.

The reason for the unusually large contingent of Tories became obvious during the debate on the next item The Planning (Enforcement) Bill was introduced by Dr Ben Spencer representing Runnymede and Weybridge. Dr Spencer currently has a 34.8% majority, but the constituency would be redistributed under current boundary commission proposals. It was noticeable that many of those present represented Home Counties constituencies or those otherwise under threat from Ed Davey's "Blue Wall" attack. The tone was set in an intervention on Spencer's introduction  by Anthony Mangnall (Totnes):

I find it extraordinary that in this House we spend a great deal of time on these Benches being attacked by the Liberal Democrats over planning and the lack of accountability of developers, yet on the day he brings forward a Bill that holds developers to account, the Liberal Democrats are nowhere to be seen

Speech after speech from the Conservative side hammered the same point while not adding much to the debate on the Bill. I suppose (for instance) Sarah Olney representing Richmond on Thames could have stood up to applaud the ambition of the Bill while pointing out its ineffectiveness, but it needed only Ruth Cadbury for Labour to expose basic misunderstanding of the nature of planning permission on behalf of the Bill's drafters and other inadequacies. In the end, the Bill was withdrawn.

Perhaps if the Bill had addressed the underfunding of local authorities' planning enforcement, Liberal Democrats would have come out in support.  Maybe it could have provided a right of appeal to ordinary people at the wrong end of a planning decision, a right currently denied while developers with deep pockets are able to appeal, and appeal, until they get the decision they want. Maybe the punitive nature of costs against local authorities who resist those appeals could have been mitigated. But of course those well-heeled developers tend to be contributors to the Conservative party. We shall see how much the Mangnalls and Spencers stand up for the little fellow when the government's own planned streamlining of planning law comes to the Commons.