Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow him on Twitter. Regular Conservative Home readers will know that last year, I campaigned successfully along with this blog and many Conservative MPs for the Government to drop the 4p per litre fuel rise that was planned by Labour, and would have hit every family in […]
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow him on Twitter. Last Friday, I received an email from the Chief Executive of the House of Commons. It stated: “As part of the Savings Programme, the House of Commons Commission has agreed that Clock Tower tours should be self-financing. In order to cover costs of […]
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow him on Twitter. Today there was a major debate in Westminster Hall. With many other backbench Conservative MPs, I urged the Government to speak out against the persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka. As many ConservativeHome readers know, the years between 1983 and 2009 saw a […]
By Robert Halfon, MP for Harlow, and Charlie Elphicke, MP for Dover. Tax cutting has to be as much about morality as about economics. Both are just as important, and neither are mutually exclusive. For Modern Conservatives, the task is clear: Any tax cut must be affordable, help the economy to grow and be justifiable […]
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow him on Twitter. There was a good article on modern censorship in last weekend's Observer by Denis MacShane MP. He reviews the new book on censorship by Nick Cohen, who explains that – contrary to popular belief – everything is not rosy in the Internet Garden […]
Robert Halfon is Conservative MP for Harlow. Follow him on Twitter. So Diane Abbott said some stupid things in which most reasonable people will disagree with. But, we Conservatives should be hesitant about jumping on the "PC" bandwagon, tearing our clothes, wailing and gnashing our teeth. In doing so we walk into the elephant trap, […]
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Today will see the second reading of my Private Member's Bill, to democratise the BBC – if it is called by the Speaker. First of all, let me say that I am not a “BBC basher”. I love the BBC. I don’t even mind its centre-left […]
Robert Halfon is Conservative MP for Harlow. Tax cutting is as much political as it is economic. That means that it is no good just to argue the economic case for cutting the fifty pence tax rate without any consideration of the political consequences. And the political consequences of such a tax cut – at […]
Robert Halfon is MP for Harlow. Although I prefer Blackberry, it is impossible not to recognise the genius of Apple. Nevertheless, one of my main objections has been the somewhat authoritarian nature of its products. Not only does it provide the infrastructure – fair enough – but it ties you to their ecosystem completely, without […]
Robert Halfon is MP for Harlow. First: the free world must stop appeasing dictators. It may work in the short term but never in the long. The last government, some of our universities and businesses, lost their moral compass when it came to dealing with the Libyan regime. Whilst senior new Labour Government figures hob-nobbed […]
Robert Halfon is MP for Harlow. As Tom Newton-Dunn at The Sun has reported, with unemployment at 2.5 million, and petrol prices hitting 150 pence in some places, there is increasing evidence that higher petrol prices are causing higher unemployment. In 2006, when petrol was just 95p on average, experts at the London School of […]
Robert Halfon is MP for Harlow. No doubt there are those who seek to blame the riots on 'cuts', 'unemployment' and the like. Yet, the Coalition Government has only been in power for a year and, even with the austerity restraints, public spending is still above 2007 levels. Labour left office last year with unemployment […]
Robert Halfon is MP for Harlow. His personal blog is here. I have been watching a fascinating series on the BBC: 'The Virtual Revolution', about the story of the World Wide Web and the Internet (it came out last year, but I have only just caught up via Sky+). One thing is really clear: apart […]
Robert Halfon is the Conservative MP for Harlow If you don't believe in the Laffer curve, just have a look at petrol taxes. Figures published by the AA show that the Treasury is now losing money because of soaring fuel duty. The Government actually collected £637 million LESS in fuel taxes than in the same […]
Robert Halfon is Conservative MP for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter. For the past few years now, we on the right have been busy congratulating ourselves on the success of our presence on the Internet. In some ways it is understandable. Right of centre websites like ConservativeHome, Guido, John Redwood’s blog and much more besides […]