I have just discovered that David Lidington, our local Conservative MP for Aylesbury, was away in Oslo fulfilling his role as 'Europe minister', when the vote was taken for the Paving Bill for HS2 last week. His argument for not voting against it was that he would have to resign his ministerial role and therefore lose whatever influence he has from within Government to represent the views of constituents on the environmental and compensation issues arising from the project.
Well I follow that argument and I have a certain degree of sympathy with it, but the timing of the Oslo trip was unfortunate at best. David Lidington has to the best of my knowledge been a popular and hard-working MP for his constituents and I have no issue with that....but there has to come a time when political expediency has to be put to one side and principles have to take precedence. We live in a representative democracy where the electorate vote for an MP to represent them in Parliament.....and that has to be David Lidington's ultimate priority. Arguing that his vote against would have made no difference to the outcome may indeed have been true, but I am pleased that Wycombe MP Steve Baker and Chesham and Amersham MP Cheryl Gillan showed some balls and voted against the bill. Perhaps they had less to lose....I don't know. What I do know is that David Lidington's absolute and ultimate priority should be to represent his constituents and not to his Cabinet post. I could even (but only just) have forgiven him for voting in favour of HS2 if that is what he truly believed was the right thing. Well Mr Lidington, as I have done ever since I first became eligible to do so in 1983, I shall be voting at the next General Election..... but it certainly won't be for you.
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