Oliver Letwin MP

Over the past five years, many of us involved in national politics have worked together – across the political divides – to establish a consensus on fundamental ecological issues.

These include reducing the UK’s dependence on imported hydrocarbons so we can increase energy security and reduce carbon output. We also have cross-party agreement on the need [...]

At first sight, dangerous dog insurance looks like a reasonable proposition.

But there is a problem.

I think it is right to christen this problem “the gang-master syndrome”.

I choose this name because the law on gang-masters is the classic example that best illustrates the problem.

Some years back, there was the ghastly incident of cockle-pickers being drowned [...]

It is often said that hard cases make bad law – and the thought behind this cliché is surely right. It isn’t possible to construct general rules that will work well for most people most of the time by thinking of the most difficult and exceptional cases.

This is as true in the case of rules [...]

At present, almost all our electricity comes from big power stations that feed into the national grid. The electricity is then distributed downwards through a system of descending voltages.

It is all top-down. And it is basically the same system that was set up in the 1940s and 1950s.

But we are now entering a [...]

There is something wonderfully English and old-fashioned about allotments. They conjure up images of the 1940s – a resilient nation, growing its own in the face of food shortages and rationing.

But the paradox is that allotments are also a thoroughly fashionable and modern concept. As people become more and more concerned about the origin of [...]

Nowadays, concern with pollution is definitely ‘in’. We worry about the ecology of air, water and land. And we have thousands of regulations to prevent them being contaminated by noxious substances.

But there is one kind of pollution about which the law is still remarkably tolerant – noise pollution.

You can drive an extremely noisy motor bike [...]

So far as the country as a whole is concerned, it will not surprise readers of this column to know that I hope 2010 will be a year for change. Both literally and metaphorically, we can’t afford to go on in the way we have been doing for the last 13 years.

But, in the midst [...]

Christmas approaches. A time for celebration – in Bridport as elsewhere.

But also a time to recall that, for some, this is the most difficult moment in the year – a moment when loneliness and anxiety are accentuated by the fact that so many families are gathering convivially to share the festivities. Years ago, when I [...]

Quite regardless of what you think about the risks from carbon emissions and climate change, freeing Britain from excessive dependence on imported oil and gas is an urgent national necessity.

We simply can’t go on like this, being massively and increasingly exposed to fluctuations in price and security of supply – especially when the oil and [...]

Why has binge drinking become such a problem?

The answer clearly lies in that mysterious item: fashion.

There is hardly ever any simple reason why a fashion gets going. Who knows what makes everyone suddenly think that mini skirts are in or out?

These fashions can, of course, be about matters of life and death. A few decades [...]