Letter from Westminster

It's been another exceptionally busy week both in Bristol and Westminster.

There's been lots of education business in the House and elsewhere.

We've started weeks of discussion on Europe. I've seen two good views - one from my new office and one from the top of the Wills Tower. I've encountered the Bristol Dinosaur and in London there was the MPs' pay dog that didn't bark. To find out more, read on...

Firstly, I'm writing this on Sunday evening. It's Holocaust Memorial Day.

Before I left Westminster I signed the Book of Commitment provided by the Holocaust Educational Trust. See http://www.het.org.uk/ for more details.

I wrote that I had visited Auschwitz Birkenhau in 1992 and the memory has remained with me ever since.

The most interesting day of the week was Friday. I spent much of the day visiting Bristol University's Department of Earth Science. My host was Daniela, the Royal Society scientist who is shadowing me this year. The department is one of the world's best and it attracts students and academics from all over Europe and beyond. Earth science is basically everything to do with the physical make up of the planet, including the atmosphere. It involves everything from archaeological digs, sea bed scanning, studying crystals to measuring pollution. The scientists are doing some key work on climate change. Some study contemporary changes.

Others study past climate changes, for instance during the ice age, by examining remains of life forms recovered from deep in the earth. One life form for which they have lots of samples is the dinosaur. And to support their work in Bristol's schools, enthusing primary age children about science, they even have a Bristol dinosaur!

The department is in the Wills Memorial Building at the top of Park Street. It now looks really beautiful with the cleaned stone work and freshly painted coats of arms gleaming in the bright winter sun. Also on Friday I was treated to something I've wanted to do for about 20 years - climb to the top of the tower! The views are of course stunning. The Cabot Tower looks small and in an optical illusion Park Street appears flat from above.

The view stretches up Whiteladies Road and on Saturday I was dismayed to discover that the Clifton Bookshop on that road is about to close down.

The owner told me that internet and supermarket sales have now made business a real struggle for small high street bookshops. This is a real shame and a blow to Whiteladies Road. My shelves are packed with books bought in that shop. It was the first one that I visited when I came to Bristol as it was on my daily walk from Stoke Bishop to university. I will miss it.

In Parliament I've had two Bills to contend with this week. On Wednesday I ticked off another procedural first for me, by handling the "Report Stage" and "Third Reading" of the Sale of Student Loans Bill. This is the final Commons stage of a Bill, before it is sent off to the Lords for consideration. It is the last opportunity to table amendments, on the floor of the House, rather than in committee. The Bill allows the government to sell part of the accumulated debt built up by students. In fact in the next three years they want to raise £6 billion. The Third Reading is the final opportunity for MPs to comment on the purposes of the Bill and I use this opportunity to mention that student debt is becoming a more worrying issue, affecting university drop out rates. Most students now borrow not just from the government (cheap loans from the Student Loans Company) but also have overdrafts and credit card debts. While visiting the Earth Sciences department later in the week I met with a group of current undergraduates and discussed student debt with them.

On Tuesday and Thursday I spent ten hours in the standing committee looking at the Education & Skills Bill. The committee stage is between the Second Reading and Report Stage, when Bills are examined in great detail. This used to be just a line by line consideration. But now, in one of the modernisations of procedure, it starts with two weeks of evidence sessions. Experts come before the committee and we ask them questions. This Bill is the one that raises the school or training age to

18 and if passed will bring about a huge social change. It's a joint Bill being promoted by the Department of Children, Schools and Families and also the Dept of Innovation, Universities and Skills. So it involves Ministers from both departments and thus from our side David Laws as well as me.

The new standing committee procedure is similar to what I've done on the Education Select Committee for the last two and a half years. Sadly, my weekly routine of Monday and Wednesday meetings is about to come to an end as Shadow Secretaries are not allowed to serve on Select Committees. This week was my penultimate meeting and it was on a subject that I care about deeply, social mobility. There is plenty of evidence that Britain is now a country where it is becoming harder for poorer children to rise up out of the circumstances in which they were born. Schools have a duty to have both fair admissions and to promote community cohesion. But the social make up of the most successful schools is badly skewed.

On Wednesday night, straight after the Student Loans Bill, I went down to the Terrace Pavilion to host the annual reception for Universities UK.

This is the umbrella group for British higher education and the room is full of Chancellors, Vice Chancellors and other HE luminaries, including those from Bristol and UWE. I made a short speech, followed by the President of UUK and then the Secretary of State, John Denham.

There were meant to be two highly contentious votes this week. The first happened on Monday when the European Union (Amendment) Bill started its Parliamentary journey. This is the procedure for ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The Liberal Democrats voted to give the Bill a Second Reading; this will allow it to be debated in detail in the coming weeks.

Whereas a normal Bill would be considered by a committee of about 17 MPs in one of the committee rooms, this one will be considered by all MPs in the main chamber. At some point there will be votes on whether the treaty should be put to a national referendum. I do not think that the treaty itself is of sufficient importance for a referendum but I do support the case for a referendum on Britain's continued membership of the European Union. This is the real issue that should be tested.

But the other contentious issue this week fizzled out without a vote. For weeks I've been irritated by newspaper headlines about MPs' "snouts in the trough" or "gravy trains" as they geared up for a row over MPs' pay. For the last 5 years MPs have actually had a below inflation rise. Every three years the issue is looked at by the independent Senior Salary Review Body, in the same way as all other public sector pay awards are considered. Gordon Brown has had the SSRB report since before he became Prime Minister, but has deliberately sat on it for over six months. He has since failed to honour the police review body's award, reducing this from 2.5% to 1.9%. He insisted that the same should happen to MPs' pay.

For the first time in my career it looked as though I was going to be able to vote on whether I got a particular percentage pay rise. You might think that's a great thing to do, but I would have found it an embarrassing spectacle. The choice was between the 2.56% recommended by the SSRB and the 1.9% Brown gave the police, not much of a difference considering the huge fuss in the media. I was prepared to vote for the lower rise, provided that in future years the pay is genuinely settled by an independent report to Parliament, not to the government. In the end, there were no votes!

The SSRB also looks at Parliament's facilities and administration budget.

Our budgets for staff salaries, postage, office space in the constituency, computers, travel, etc were all to be reviewed. These are the areas that the press ludicrously call MPs' "expenses". But I was lucky this week. As a result of the change in Liberal Democrat Leader there has of course been a big reshuffle of jobs. But there's also been a small swap round of Parliamentary offices. This week I moved to a room twice the size of the one I've been in since 2005. I lose my view of the Thames and instead look out over Whitehall. So I may have got a paltry pay rise, but at least I've got a new office!

Stephen Williams MP

Bristol West (Liberal Democrat)

Parliamentary email - stephenwilliamsmp@parliament.uk

www.stephenwilliams.org.uk