Mr Davies is like a cannibal joining the Vegan Society: QUENTIN LETTS on the plain-speaking Tory causing mayhem on the Women and Equalities select committee













45 shares

Right-winger Philip Davies has joined committee of eight women and two men

Chaired by Maria Miller, who joined after quitting Cabinet in expenses scandal

Davies MP suggested 'Women' should be removed from name of the committee

Argued name does not reflect department they scrutinize, like most others

Plain-speaking Philip Davies (Con, Shipley) is causing merry mayhem. Mr Davies has got himself elected on to the soppingly wet select committee for Women and Equalities. Given that he has spent years tilting against political correctness, this is like a cannibal becoming a trustee of the Vegan Society.

Other members of the committee (eight women, two men) are horrified to have a Right-wing brute in their midst.

This is the committee chaired by former Culture Secretary Maria Miller, she of the dodgy expenses claims. Since leaving the Cabinet in disgrace – twang went the catapult, to the cheers of a grateful nation – Mrs Miller has reinvented herself as an equalities bore. Some say David Cameron created the committee in 2015 simply to give his friend Maria a well-remunerated job.

Mr Davies yesterday asked the deputy Leader of the House, ‘Sir’ Michael Ellis, why the Women and Equalities committee had that name. (Ellis is not really a knight but he is such an inveterate suck-up, not least to royalty, colleagues suspect a K will be his ere long.)

Mr Davies pointed out that all other select committees take their names from the Whitehall bodies they scrutinise. The Treasury select committee scrutinises the Treasury. The Defra select committee scrutinises the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Click here to resize this module

Yet the Equalities Office (which has a budget of £65million a year) is scrutinised by the Women and Equalities select committee.

‘Surely it should be called the Equalities committee,’ said Mr Davies yesterday.

Mr Ellis, normally so smooth, stalled. He finally coughed up the suggestion that Mr Davies write to Mrs Miller with his idea. Mrs Miller, who was in the House, wore the face of a diner who had just been presented with a rotten sardine.

The committee is chaired by Maria Miller

The deputy Leader of the House is Michael Ellis

But does Mr Davies not have a point? If a committee is to be about ‘equalities’ (that plural is very 21st century), how can its name single out women? What about men? Gasp, what about those who are neither male nor female? If you are tempted lightly to scorn their concerns I have to tell you, most seriously, in my best schoolmarm voice, that your attitude is ‘inappropriate’ and not of our times.

David Nuttall (Con, Bury N), a friend of Mr Davies, said ‘black and minority ethnic or the gay and lesbian communities might feel the title of the committee suggests it will be giving priority to the concerns of women over their own concerns’.

Justine Greening, who as Education Secretary is in charge of Equalities, has bought bigtime into the jargon

Mr Nuttall is not often to be found speaking up for the gay and lesbian communities but we militant tokenists are glad to welcome him to the fold.

Again, Mr Ellis queasily nudged away the question but there you could sense the Lefties in the House thinking ‘oh, sugar – we’re been rumbled’.

The world of Equalities, you see, has a language all its own. It is one of those tongues spoken fluently by the administrative/political class, yet largely incomprehensible to the electorate.

During yesterday’s Equalities Questions, for instance, we heard of ‘the VAWG service transformation fund’. VAWG is ‘violence against woman and girls’ and it has its own ‘inter-ministerial group’.

Some £80million of tax money goes on VAWG services.

We heard of ‘white ribbon authorities’ and ‘gender recognition certificates’ and ‘safety toolkits’ and ‘safeguarding duties’ and ‘the National Foundation for Educational Teacher Voice survey’ – such phrases being bandied about by MPs with the assurance of cognoscenti. All these things cost money.

Justine Greening, who as Education Secretary is in charge of Equalities, has bought bigtime into the jargon and its big-state egalitarianism. She did not baulk when even further Left-wing MPs demanded more compulsory sex education in schools.

It is generally accepted that the Brexit and Trump upsets were the result of self-absorbed political elites having lost connection with the concerns of the electorate.

Would voters in, say, Stoke-on-Trent Central or Copeland shed a single tear if the millions spent by the Government on Equalities were put to different uses?

Share or comment on this article: Philip Davies is like a cannibal joining the Vegan Society











45 shares