Secret visit showed security is improving in Afghanistan

I WAS in Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago with the Defence Select Committee. The committee visits operational areas every year as it has a duty to look at and scrutinise the Government on these deployments.

At the same time, other issues are also looked at when the committee is inquiring into them such as ISTAR which is an information gathering system.

The visit is kept a close secret until our return. The army asks us not to tell people we are going, certainly not to tell the newspapers or radio and not to discuss the trip on our mobile phones.

The latter may seem a bit extreme but the MOD takes the risk of someone listening in seriously and if a terrorist group did get wind of our travel then the Defence Select Committee would be considered a prime target. An attack on us, of course, would put other lives at risk.

The visit included meetings in Pakistan to discuss both border issues and the terrorist threat in Pakistan; meetings with both vice-presidents and others in the Afghanistan capital Kabul and meeting both US and UK military in Kandahar, Camp Bastion and Lashkar Gah - the security situation in the latter being much improved.

FOR those who wait for Thursday night and Mr Dimbleby, Devon had its own bit of Question Time fun on Monday.

OK, it was not Mr Dimbleby, there were no national political celebrities and OK it wasn't on the television, but Newton Abbot was host to its own Question Time.

Hosted by Newton Abbot College, BBC Radio staged its own show. Michael Chequer was in charge of the inquisition and two MPs and one hopeful were in the spotlight. Labour's hardworking MP for Plymouth Devonport, Alison Seabeck, sat to the right with former Conservative MP Neil Parish and candidate for Angela Browning's seat next to her. And to the left of Michael was my seat.

Some 80 students made up the audience and Jordan had the task of moving the boom mike around so everyone could be heard.

It was a good range of questions from Afghanistan to school funding, from youth services to policing.

Good questions and good responses from the audience should have made for good listening on Monday lunchtime when it was broadcast.

Interestingly, the audience felt there were too few policemen on the beat and one lad described how when he was out in Newton Abbot, he was attacked for no obvious reason.

Another gauge of opinion showed that nearly all of them were opposed to war in Afghanistan.

Of the six who supported going to war, two wanted to join the army. It was a good debate which I enjoyed.

If you missed it, you can find it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0064kgm/ Interactive_Lunch_Part_One_01_02_2010/

AS ANY teacher in the country will tell you, schools in Devon are under funded. Indeed each school receives £375 less per pupil than the average grant allocated to schools in England.

This is an historic problem going back to the 1980s when the then Conservative Government devised a formula for school funding that gave extra money to schools in authorities with high social deprivation.

While this is right it did not recognise the problems of diverse rural poverty or the problems of sparsity in large counties such as Devon.

The Labour Government looked at the formula in 2005 but changed it not a jot. Now as Labour has put a lot more money into education, the funding gap has grown from £145 in 1996 to £375 today.

On Wednesday I secured a half-hour adjournment debate on this issue. I raised these points and others noting Devon was third from bottom of the education funding league.

Having failed to recognise the problem for the last 12 years, the penny seems to have finally dropped and a review of the funding for schools is due to take place this spring. The minister said it was needed to create 'a fairer system'. Sadly it will not be completed before the election but constant pressure has worked and I am sure there will be more money for Devon. The question will be how much and when.

FRIDAY was my birthday, 21 again, and I knew my wife was planning a surprise in the evening. The game was sadly given away when she first said she would come to a Shaldon Traders meeting with me and, secondly, suggested we get a taxi over.

This meant only one thing, we were going to one of my favourite restaurants (and there are several) Ode in Shaldon.

The traders packed into the Sail Loft at the back of the London Hotel for their meeting which covered a wide range of problems, but particularly those associated with the building work on the flood defence scheme which is going to take away parking in an already congested area. Meetings and representations will now follow.

THERE are moments when democracy stands up and shouts and last Thursday a mighty roar went up in Dawlish.

For years the town council has penny-pinched on the repair of the building and now the cost of false economy has caught up with the council. As maintenance bills mounted there was growing pressure to sell the Manor House and move somewhere more affordable.

Some 350 residents packed into St Gregory's Church for the Parish Meeting to debate this.

I attended and gave out my own survey with, I hope, balanced questions on the future of the listed building. The mayor and councillors were ill-prepared for such a forthright audience who doggedly persisted in asking questions.

In the end the meeting voted for a referendum which would stop the town council from ever selling the Manor House. To do so they would need another referendum.

It was a good night for democracy and most of the bruised and battered councillors will fight another day.