Those who supported the various alterations that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill made or aspired to make to law most probably saw it as an opening up for discussion and reform of long-standing issues that were causing concern to various parties. Scientists wanted legal permission to create hybrid stem cells and increase production of embryonic stem cells besides. Liberals wanted to abolish the requirement for IVF providers to consider a child’s need for a father. Pro-lifers wanted to lower the time limit on abortions, apparently by any degree possible (votes were taken on reductions to 16, 18, 20 and 22 week limits). I’m not exactly sure how to politely stereotype those who wanted to legalize the practice of having a child so as to donate its body parts to a sibling.

The discussion and controversy that surrounded the bill and its amendments, however, made it appear a more and more curious parliamentary phenomenon - it gradually became clear that its various elements were basically unrelated as commentators spoke with the pretense of expertise in fields that were far from their own.

If we look at the arguments for considering some of the changes made, it becomes clear that there was a more subtle reason for introducing all these ideas at once, and one that may have indelibly increased the prerogatives of the government against the rule of common law in this country.

Let’s begin with the attempt to lower abortion limits. The argument used in opposition to this was that scientific evidence had not sufficiently changed since the 24-week limit was set even to show that children are ‘viable’ at twenty-two weeks. Whether this was the case or not (13 of 18 witnesses giving evidence to the Science and Technology Committee were known Pro-Choicers and many did not submit written reports), the argument’s strength rested on the fact that all ‘ethical debate’ on time limits had been ruled in favour of supposedly impartial ’scientific’ debate: terms of discussion had been established that prejudiced a given outcome, although this is less important than the fact that the debate had been limited in this way. The government had assumed the right to define human life, in this case by viability.

The debate concerning stem-cell research was full of red-herrings. Outspoken religious leaders bandied about sensationalist descriptions defaming both sides of the debate, whilst the scientific case in point - that adult, rather than embryonic, stem cells have produced the most significant advances in research - was ignored under the weight of scientistic rhetoric. Supporting stem-cell research per se was joined to the issue of ‘hybrid’ cells, an unnecessary confusion of separate issues. What was assumed all along was the forgone conclusion that human life should be defined exclusively and executively, rather than inclusively and cautiously: you are an inhuman without rights if you have a certain amount of animal DNA, and an inhuman and without rights if you are below a certain age or do not possess certain faculties.

The other two issues I have flagged up are relevant her insofar as they were irrelevant to each other and the other elements in the Bill. That is, we need to ask why they were included. The reasons for including an amendment to the Abortion Act revolved around the renewal and replacement of that piece of legislation, whereas IVF parenthood requirements are a social and fiscal, rather than scientific or negative-rights related. The ’saviour siblings’ section of the Bill is not related to human fertilization or embryology, but rather, perhaps, human termination and why some embryos are more worthy of life than others.

What a human is and when life begins is a philosophical question, not one that can be adequately addressed by legislation. This is why British common law is such an excellent tool to deal with its social and legal implications. Common law is cautious and case specific, ideally independent of party-political programs. Government legislation, however, affects the entire nation at once; it creates attitudes, delegitimizing some opinions and legitimating others. Yet in the HFE Bill we saw the latest assertion of this Government’s assumed right and ability to answer all our questions, make all our choices, for us.

By lumping all these different issues together, the real issue of whether we define human life exclusively (excluding others from humanity by chosen criteria that ’serve society’ like slave-traders and racialists) or inclusively was overlooked and the Government control over the answer to this question asserted. The artificial complexity of the Bill also made it nearly impossible for politicians who share my view - that morally ambiguous legislation be left to our common law tradition - to decide how to negotiate the issue. Abstention is seen as support or careerism. Voting no or yes agrees that Parliament is the place to deal with these issues - but it is not. Doubtless the HFE Bill is only part of a trend, where the state assumes prerogatives until we agree with them. It is a deeply regrettable trend, especially when such literally vital issues are at stake.

Announcing the annual CUCA Garden Party, Sunday 15th June 2008.

The CUCA Garden Party will take place on Suicide Sunday, 15th June, from 3-6pm in the gardens of Newnham College.

Tickets will cost £12 for members and £15 for non-members. It is strongly advised to buy these as soon as possible, as the Garden Party is always popular.

We will be serving Hiedseck Monopole Gold Top Vintage 2002 champagne, along with Pimm’s, strawberries, and cucumber sandwiches!

The more sporting amongst you can take part in a quick game of croquet, whilst the more laid-back can sit, enjoy the champagne, and relax.

Help us celebrate the term and the year, and start your May Week off in style!

To purchase tickets, email me with your name, College, and the number of member/non-member tickets you require on , and send a cheque payable to Cambridge University Conservative Association to me at Trinity College.

“Human rights”, which don’t “exist” but are a handy legal construct, always used to be very simple. They were enshrined in law, and by calling them “rights” we gave them the aura of special status, not to be taken away by future politicians.

They included the right to life, the right to free speech, etc. They were simple and easy to enforce. They didn’t cost much: only a legal system.

But then people started saying that these were only a subset of rights, called “negative rights”, and there were other rights called “positive rights” which previously hadn’t been recognised. These included the “right to education” and the “right to healthcare”.

The crucial difference is that positive rights cost money. There’s no such thing as free education: it has to be paid for, e.g. by taxes. So you can only get positive rights by taking money from other people.

That doesn’t mean positive rights are necessarily bad. But it must be recognised that they can only exist by forcibly taking money from other people. (Taxation is “extortion with menaces”.) Failure to recognise this leads to a lack of respect for public services (bad as they are). If, whenever you visit hospital, you remember that it is all paid for from other people’s hard work, you realise what a privilege it is to live in England where this is possible.

Whether “positive rights” are rights or not, they are certainly a privilege, funded by other people’s hard work.

The problem with positive rights is that they are a ratchet. People always want more, and a government can always buy a little short-term success by increasing taxes and increasing what some people get for free (and what other people pay for). Those that stand to gain always shout louder than those who stand to lose.

When the NHS was founded, the services they provided were small, though similar to contemporary private medicine. As new treatments are invented or discovered, these are added to what is available. The bill rises. The NHS now provides all manner of things that have nothing to do with what people need, but with what they merely want, including non-medical plastic surgery, fertility treatment (nothing to do with healthcare), and pseudoscience (homeopathy or magnetic bandages, anyone?).

It provides treatments costing tens of thousands of pounds. Because with finite resources it cannot provide everything, there is the amusingly named NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), whose job is the necessary but not nice task of deciding what to spend the money on. If someone needs a £100,000 drug to treat their cancer, they probably won’t get it because that £100,000 could do much more good if spent on lots of other people.

So here’s another problem with “positive rights”: they’re not necessarily even possible. Does someone have a “right” to a particular drug, if 50 years ago it didn’t exist, and certainly would have been unaffordable if it was? Would they have had the right to it 50 years ago if it was unaffordable? Would they have had the right to it 50 years ago if it didn’t exist?

Does someone have the right to a £100,000 drug now if the money could save more lives elsewhere? The phrase “right to life” always used to mean “right not to be killed”. Negative rights are all about stopping other people doing things to you, not forcing them to do things for you like “positive rights”. However, consider the recent case of Ann Marie Rogers, who tried to claim that by not paying for Herceptin (an expensive cancer drug) the NHS had violated her “right to life”. Clearly “right to life” had been redefined, from the old negative right not to be killed, to an absurd positive right to have one’s life sustained at all costs. Negative rights have a clear infringer. Positive rights don’t clearly specify who is to pay for what is demanded: just a vague “everyone”, through taxation.

Why was the NHS rather than anyone else accused of violating this woman’s claimed “right to life”? Would her right to life have been violated if she had an untreatable illness and was going to die within days? If so, by whom?

Another claimed right is the “right to (’free’) education”. At present, state education is paid for through taxation. But we all recognise that once you have learnt a certain amount, you have to go off in to the world and earn a living.

You do not have the right to stay in education for the rest of your life, at other people’s expense. If everyone did that, there wouldn’t be any education because no one would be working to pay for it. If everyone exercised their positive rights, no one would get anything.

There is not, for example, a right to go to university to be taught about medieval art history.

What is the cut-off point? Does the state have a duty to teach you calculus if you’re good enough, or should it just teach you basic arithmetic?

The possible justification of tax-funded education is that we will be better off economically and/or socially if everyone can do basic arithmetic. That doesn’t mean it is a right. We might also be better off in a society where some people know about medieval art history. But that doesn’t mean our taxes should pay for it, and it doesn’t mean it is a right.

Clearly positive rights can be absurd. We should drop the phrase, recognising that talk of rights is not necessary for attempts to justify taxation to spend on things like the NHS and education. The “merit goods” argument does just as well, and doesn’t attempt to justify things like government-funded medieval art history.

Simon Heffer visited CUCA in Lent, resulting in the most attended and best talk of the term. He spoke of the creation of a “client state”, where the Labour Party massively increased the number of tax-funded state jobs in order to increase their voter base. People working in the state sector tend to vote Labour, so Labour’s strategy was clear: make more of them. This is massively costly, but seems to work.

Heffer’s solution is that the Conservative Party should not bother seeking these votes, because they will not vote Conservative anyway. Heffer is a critic of Cameron’s rebranding and apparent change of focus of the party, though has recently said he might consider voting Conservative. (He probably will.) He suggests that Cameron should not adopt policies to try to please everyone including these voters, but should focus on their traditional voter base.

In an article since, “Labour is malignant, not incompetent” (Telegraph, 2nd April 2008), he sees this strategy repeated by Labour with immigration. The Lords Economic Affairs Committee report on “The Economic Impact of Immigration” showed quite clearly that net immigration is not beneficial to the country. This has been obvious for years. The figures show that net immigration does not increase GDP more than it increases population, so has no effect on GDP per person and therefore general well-being. Government responses to this resort to obvious double-speak.

Heffer believes, as do I, that the government has known full well that net immigration is not beneficial, but has pursued it because it knows that immigrants tend to vote Labour. It has put electoral success above the country when it knows they are opposites.

Heffer calls for a radical cut in the amount of money spent by the government, which currently spends over £600 billion per year. Government spending has increased by 50% in real terms while Labour have been in power over the last ten years. As Lord Blackwell pointed out in his talk, the amount of stuff the government needs to provide doesn’t increase every year, so government spending should remain constant. Indeed, this means it should reduce as a percentage of GDP. If the government was spending the same as it was ten years ago, we could have abolished income tax.

Heffer demands tax cuts mostly to save money and free the economy to grow, but he echoes the calls of Sean Gabb for tax cuts to cut the funding to the ruling class - those who draw money and status from the state.

Lord Norman Blackwell visited CUCA yesterday, speaking and taking questions in the Union Dining Room, and then over dinner at Strada. Like me, he is very keen on policy: he worked on policy for Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

He started by talking about how radical some old policies seemed at the time, and how he believes others which seem radical now will be considered common sense in the future. For example, the Post Office used to run the telephone network in this country. As one might expect from a monopoly, the service was shoddy and expensive. If you wanted a telephone, you had to be put on a waiting list, and an engineer had to come to your home and fit one into the wall. You could only buy telephones manufactured by the state, which were very expensive.

People thought that the telecommunications couldn’t be provided by private companies. Now that it is, we know that of course they can.

Later, Lord Blackwell himself presented a report to British Telecom trying to convince them that it was safe for people to have telephone sockets, rather than a telephone hard-wired into the wall. Now, the idea that telephone sockets are dangerous is ludicrous. Then, it seemed radical.

Of course, there is an element of natural monopoly in landline telecomms. It does seem there needs to be some involvement by the state. But it should be as small as possible. As Hayek said, the state needs to create a legal framework in which competition can function. This should be designed to encourage as much competition as possible. Just because a market can’t function without the state, that doesn’t mean the sector should be run entirely by the state.

In the UK, British Telecom runs the lines (and even this is changing), but other companies can run calls on top of them. Much like Network Rail running the train tracks, but other companies running the trains. This is much better than BT doing everything, without having to compete and therefore having no incentive to provide a good, cheap product.

The same thing has been done with broadband internet. Can you imagine what our internet would be like if the government still had complete control of telecomms? Atrocious! Things would never have improved so rapidly.

We probably wouldn’t even know what we were missing out on. In Cuba, the state has to stop its subjects from finding out about the standard of living in other countries, so that they don’t know what they’re missing (toasters). What are we missing at the moment that we don’t know we’re missing? We’ll only find back if we stop the state slowing us down.

So telecommunications is one area where those advocating privatisation have been proved right. So are railways. Alex Singleton of the Globalisation Institute addressed CUCA at the Gin & Tonic party at the beginning of term, and he pointed out that by every objective measure, the railways have been improving since Conservative privatisation - the turning point.

Lord Blackwell suggested that healthcare and education are next to be privatised. People don’t know what they’re missing. They don’t know how good things could be.

However, Lord Blackwell didn’t suggest that “privatising” healthcare meant abolishing tax-funded (“free”) healthcare. Abolishing state-run schools doesn’t mean abolishing free education.

He suggested a voucher system. Consider education. The system would require very little change. Instead of being told what school you must go to, you could choose. Instead of only the state being able to set up state-funded schools, anyone could. That’s all.

He suggested not using the word “vouchers”, for two reasons. One, he thought it was as tainted as “privatisation” for many voters. Two, people didn’t know they wanted it, even though they wanted its consequences. If you offer people “choice” in your manifesto, they say “We don’t want a choice of schools. We don’t want to send our child to the next village. We just want to send our child to the local school, and we want it to be good.”

Choice (i.e. competition) doesn’t even need to be exercised to have beneficial effects. You don’t have to take your business from the local pub and drive to the next town. It’s just the fact that you could that means your local pub has to make an effort.

Similarly, if you go to a bad school and a good new one starts up, things won’t just be improved if everyone moves to the good school and the bad school shuts down. In most cases this won’t even be necessary. All that is necessary is that you can move. That is enough to give the old school some incentive to improve.

A similar scheme could be implemented for healthcare.

He suggested rolling out education vouchers in poor areas first. Even though this would mean richer areas wouldn’t get the benefits so quickly, it would demonstrate that the measures were to improve education in poor areas the most. This might help get voters used to them.

“Privatisation” seems radical in the UK at the moment, but it won’t when people see the consequences. We just need to look at the success of the Swedish implementation of vouchers.

People like to claim that there is something special about education and healthcare: that they are “public services” rather than products like any other. This is wrong. They are products like any other. People said the same about telephones.

Lord Blackwell used much libertarian rhetoric, and seemed to consider himself a libertarian. I’m not sure whether I’m a libertarian or not, though I have very strong libertarian sympathies.

I think vouchers are a good idea. But they’re not a libertarian idea. Vouchers roll back the state by allowing the state to pay for, but not run, education and health. They do mean that the state bureaucracy is smaller even if taxes stay the same. But libertarians would not even have taxes to pay for education or healthcare.

It may be that complete abolition of the welfare state is better for the country, especially in the long run. As Andrew Perraut says, “if markets are as massively productive as we libertarians believe and compounding returns to growth in the long term are taken into account, you could probably justify no more than very basic safety nets, for fear of distorting the economy and dramatically lowering everyone’s goods in the future.” But the safety net could include healthcare and education.

In any case, vouchers are better than the current system, and we need them fast.

My commitment to reducing the size of the state is Perraut’s: any taxation reduces economic growth. Some taxation is necessary, but the optimum amount is far lower than it is at present.

Lord Blackwell’s seems to be for a different reason. Statism cows people. It reduces the striving, self-reliant ethic. If people have a problem, it encourages them to expect the state to solve it, rather than solve it themselves. This attitude reduces economic growth because it discourages innovation.

He ended on a quotation that Lady Thatcher looked up while they were working on a speech. It is one of the closing sentences from John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty”:

“a state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands, even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men, no great thing can really be accomplished.”

Postscript.

Afterwards, over dinner, he talked about the historical consequences of global cooling, including the halt of the expansion of the Roman Empire. This would be an excellent way to write an article aiming to change people’s minds about global warming. The scientific evidence that global warming will stop, rather than being catastropic, is clear. We haven’t had any for over ten years. So take this for granted! Treat global cooling as inevitable, and write an article about its historical consequences and how we must prepare to meet them again.

The Chairman’s Dinner is now sold out.

It is my great pleasure to announce that tickets are now available for the Chairman’s Dinner.

The four-course dinner will be held in St John’s College on Friday, 13th June, with a drinks reception on the Backs at 7pm, and dinner in the Wordsworth Room at 7.30pm.

Tickets: Members - £40, Non-members - £45 (menu below)

Tickets are strictly limited, and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. To reserve a ticket, please email me on , AND send a cheque (payable to Cambridge University Conservative Association) to me (Mike Morley, at Trinity) by Saturday 31st May.

Your email should contain your name, and the name of any guests, along with any dietary requirements.

Your ticket will not be guaranteed until I have received your cheque: you may lose out if you do not get your cheque to me promptly.

Dress: White Tie preferred*

Salad of Roast Gressingham Duck with hand-dived sea scallops
(Vegetarian: Tian of Avocado and Celeriac)
Pleno Blanco 2006
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Grilled Quail
(Vegetarian: Cabbage Timbale)
Sterling Hills 2006
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Warm Apple & Membrillo Tart
Madeira
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Artisan British and Irish Cheeses
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Coffee and Mints

Greg Hands, MP for Hammersmith and Fulham and CUCA Chairman in Lent 1988, will speak on the topic “My CUCA days with Nick Clegg”

Friday 16th May, 6pm

Dining Room, The Cambridge Union

We are joined by Norman Blackwell, a former Downing Street policy unit director who worked for both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Lord Blackwell is currently Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies. He was a Special Adviser in 1986 and 1987, and was Head of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street from 1995 to 1997.

Lord Blackwell was formerly a Partner at McKinsey & Company, and a director of Dixons Group. He currently has a range of business interests including non-executive director of Standard Life, Slough Estates plc, Interserve plc and Corporate Services Group plc. He is also a senior adviser to KPMG and a Board Member of the OFT. He was created a Life Peer in 1997.

This is our last meeting before we take a break for revision and exams. Come along to what promises to be a fascinating talk. We next meet at the Chairman’s Dinner!

Monday 5th May, 6pm

The Junior Parlour, Trinity College
Opposite Great Gate above the Post Office: enter Whewell’s Court and it’s at the top of the staircase on the right.

Stanley Johnson is former Conservative MEP an environmentalist and author of books on the environment. He has worked at the World Bank and was the Head of Prevention of Pollution Division at the European Commission from 1973 - 1979. He is a trustee of the Gorilla Organisation and a board member of Plantlife International.

He is also father of Boris Johnson, the new Conservative Mayor of London. Stanley Johnson was Conservative candidate for Teignbridge in the 2005 general election.

If rumour is to be believed he may well be the next candidate for Henley…

8pm, Sunday 11th May 2008

Our legendary Port and Cheese evening. A selection of fine cheeses and free-flowing port, accompanied by stimulating conversation, will help you unwind.

Dress code: Black Tie

Tickets will cost £6 for members and £8 for non-members and are NOT available on the door. Places are strictly limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. After the event is full, I will add names to a waiting list in the event of non-payment or cancellation.

In order to reserve tickets, please email me on and give a cheque payable to “Cambridge University Conservative Association” to me in person or by UMS to Mike Morley at Trinity College.

The deadline for receipt of applications and cheques is MONDAY 5th May at 6pm. Your ticket is not guaranteed until I have received your cheque.

Late payments will not be accepted and your ticket will be offered to someone on the waiting list; cancellation with less than 72 hours will still result in your cheque being cashed.

Signing up to the facebook event will not guarantee you a ticket until I have your cheque.