My Week: From Fair Trade to Iraq

Written by Sandra Gidley and published in Romsey Advertiser on Fri 3rd Nov 2006

Fairtrade products: improving conditions for farmers worldwide

I travelled from Westminster last Thursday evening to speak at the Fair Trade Coalition meeting in the Abbey Rooms. One of the other speakers was from Waitrose and he spoke about the Waitrose Foundation which aims to improve conditions for some of the workers in South Africa. A good initiative and one which I hope Waitrose expands to other areas.

On Friday it would have been nice to have been able to attend the Hampshire launch of the Poppy Appeal which was held in Romsey but I had a long standing engagement in Eastleigh to take part in an event organised by their Youth Council. They had arranged a question and answer session with a difference. Instead of the usual question master and four speakers format they introduced key pads and interactivity which gave the whole thing a "Who wants to be a millionaire" feel. The reason it was different was because the young people had been given a completely free hand in the organisation.

On Monday I was in Birmingham, speaking at a conference but we were all on a three line whip to be in Westminster on Tuesday because the Nationalists had an Opposition Day. This meant they were able to set the agenda for the day and they used the opportunity to call for an Enquiry into the Iraq war. When the Conservatives announced that they would be supporting the motion there was great excitement. Given that a significant number of Labour MPs had opposed the war and the Prime Minister was only given the "approval" of Parliament because of Conservative support there was great excitement at the prospect of a Government defeat.

On the night it was worrying to see that a number of the Labour Party's "awkward squad" were clearly abstaining. I don't know what the Chief Whip had said to them but she was very effective. The Government won the day with a majority of 25.

Earlier in the day the "warm up" act was an attempt to introduce a Ten Minute Rule Bill on Abortion. One aspect of the proposed Bill was to reduce the time limit for abortions but unfortunately there were other proposals in the Bill which managed to upset the pro life lobby and the pro choice lobby. This is a shame because there was a lot of sympathy with the issue of reviewing the time limit and if the MP had stuck to that issue alone she might have received support. As it was the Bill was defeated as people with diametrically opposed views on abortion voted against it. But, I would not be at all surprised if this issue is not picked up again after the Queens Speech and we have the next round of Private Members Bills.

Reproduced with the kind permission of Romsey Advertiser