The Commons is Poorer Without Dr Evan Harris

Mark Henderson in the Times decries the loss of Dr Evan Harris from the House of Commons:

Yes, he is an atheist who believes that others’ religious beliefs should not constrain personal freedom. But many of his positions that some religious people dislike are well-supported by evidence: the scientific case for reducing the abortion time limit, for example, is flimsy, as the Commons Science and Technology Committee, on which Harris served, showed to good effect.

Harris’s support for evidence-based policy and free speech also extends to plenty of races in which religion has no dog. How can his support for well-regulated animal experimentation, for example, be characterised as solely motivated by drab, secular determinism? Or his advocacy for reform of the libel laws? Or his forensic scrutiny of the Government spending decisions that have decimated much of British physics?

It was science and evidence that defined Harris’s parliamentary career. This sometimes brought him into conflict with some (though not all) religious people, and it is impossible to deny that he takes a stronger line than many when it comes to religious interference with personal freedom. But it is very wrong to suggest he is a secular “one-trick pony” who sees everything through an anti-religious prism.

Parliament will be poorer for his departure. It needs MPs who share Harris’s respect for evidence.

I couldn’t agree more. Policy should always be determined by reason, by evidence, after rational debate and discourse. Evan Harris has been the parliamentary champion of these principles for years, and as I told him last night, has long been my political hero because of it. Sholto Byrnes in the New Statesman said:

If more MPs had been like him, it is highly unlikely that politicians would have come to have been held in such low regard. If more Liberal Democrats had been like him, I suspect they would be doing much better and might even have stood a genuine chance of replacing Labour as the main party of the left.

A consistently strong voice for the NHS and for science, he shared the title of “Secularist of the Year” with Lord Avebury in 2009 for their work in helping abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel. He has campaigned against faith schools and argued courageously in favour of abortion, euthanasia, immigration and gay rights.

Some readers — especially those who have described me as being “an apologist for religion” — may be surprised to see me praising him. On the contrary, although I may disagree with some of Evan’s stances, I think he has been one of the most principled MPs in parliament, sticking to his convictions and standing up for a true-liberal view of free speech and of the idea of liberty itself.

If you want to help re-elect him in the contest which is realistically no more than a year away, leave a message here, contact him via his website or tweet him on his twitter profile.