Andrew has hit the new parliamentary term running. He has been on his feet challenging ministers on a range of issues in debates ranging from the withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Allowance to the crisis in the Middle East.
On Monday he slated waste incinerators, citing Westbury, but received an unsympathetic response from the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband. Speaking earlier on the crisis in the Middle East, Andrew urged caution, from his experience as a Foreign Office minister, in overreliance on the UN aid agency UNRWA, whose impartiality has been questioned. He also challenged the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, on his plan to relinquish the Chagos Islands.
Yesterday (Tuesday), in a debate on the imposition of VAT on independent schools, Andrew pointed out ‘the foreign receipts that the independent sector generates’ and wanted to know if they have been accounted for in the government’s calculations. Afterwards, the Warminster MP said, ‘Obviously I am worried about the impact the government’s plans have for Warminster School and what they might mean for the local economy’. In a debate on farming and food security, he made the point that ‘the vast majority of people in this country, given the choice, would rather buy British food’. He pointed out that supermarkets have often acted in a cynical way to exploit this and urged more transparency in labelling to help consumers and British food producers.