I am glad to see the civil service did their job and alerted the government to the problems with their tax on pension investments in the July 1997 budget.

So did we in the Opposition.

I said in the 1997 Budget debate for the Opposition:

Labour is deeply split between Blairites and more traditional tax and spenders. Gordon Brown is trying to straddle the two wings, hinting deeply to the left

I had taken his many denials that he would run against Gordon Brown at face value, until I heard his extraordinary contortions on Any Questions today.

He is clearly a man who is giving serious thought to the pressures building up amongst the

Three Cabinet Ministers - three cases of incompetence - three bills for the taxpayer.

1.

I want to see all unelected regional government abolished.

The Conservatives will not be abollishing the three elected regional governments in the UK that have been endorsed by referendum, nor the elected tier in Northern Ireland if that is in operation.

The fact that Brussels likes regional government is no argument for keeping this unwanted

A few budgets ago Gordon Brown was keen to encourage people to incorporate their business activities as small companies. He set out a very generous tax regime for them to do so.

Since then he has been whittling away the tax advantages. This year he announced most of the next Chancellor’s budget for 2008, and at the same time pushed small business tax up to 22% compared to the 20% standard rate for sole traders. It’s typical of this government to encourage people to do things, then to punish them when they do!

Margaret Hodge has just sent me - and doubtless many others - a coloured brochure entitled “Creating prosperity in every region: England’s Regional development Agencies”.

She tells us the RDAs help to bring prosperity to all parts of England. Nowhere does she point out that the reigonal disparities have grown substantially during Labour’s period in office, with the regions that have least government interference growing much more rapidly than the ones with

Today the government put through large increases in fees for those wanting to stay in this country.

When we asked the Minister what the reason was for the large increases (100% and 200% in some cases) he told us they are going to spend the extra revenue on improving controls at our borders.

The English soccer team

The old BAA have done it again - a day of misery for the passengers of their airline customers. A power cut in an airport which claims it has standby facilities put the baggage handling out of operation for a morning, and created a backlog which still looks dreadful this evening.

If Gatwick had to compete with Heathrow more effectively, and was not owned by the same company, I doubt people would be treated as badly as they have been in recent months during the security changes and now thanks to a power cut.

Everyone who is fed up with the level of service at our leading London airports should send in their views to the Competition authorities, who may decide we need to introduce some more competition to get a better answer.

Thanks for the information that the BBC itself avoids currency risk by operating in the currency futures market, and for the reminder about the BBC’s use of European money.

One of the interesting features of sterling since the launch of the Euro is that it is has been more stable than either the dollar or the Euro, reflecting the mid Atlantic positioning of the UK economy subject to dollar pulls and Euro pulls given our pattern of trade and transactions.

The BBC still struggles to accept that the Uk is a Eurosceptic country, with 80% against the Euro and further EU political integration, and an emerging majority wanting to take powers back. The dreadful performance of the EU in agriculture and fishing, where it has very strong powers, have warned people off the idea that it should have more power in other fields.

The BBC now accepts that some people want to leave the EU altogether, and has to allow them some air time.

I had assumed the massive anti Euro majority would flood the phone lines to Any Questions?

Any Questions last night came from Dublin. We discussed several aspects of the European problem in front of an invited Irish audience hosted by the European Commission’s staff in Ireland.

If you judged by the audience reaction they were strongly in favour of European integration, clapping the Euro and booing some of my comments in favour of more member state decision making and democracy.

However, after the show there were some dissenting Irish voices. One 35 year told me he blamed the Euro for his inability to buy a home in Dublin. He pointed out that interest rates set by a German based central bank were too low for Ireland, driving house prices out of many people’s reach. Another told me they wanted to see powers returned to a government they could kick out if they did not do things in the public interest.

The latest poll of people in all of the member states shows there is now a majority for preventing the EU getting any more powers, and the largest voting block wants powers back from Brussels. The EU Commission may try to organise debates to give the impression that more political union is the future, but the peoples of Europe are determined that the future will be based on more national democracy and less centralised power. The rejection of the Constitution in both France and the Netherlands, founder members of the EEC, should be accepted and understood by the European elite. If they carry on ignoring it, they will find there is no consent

One of my aims in politics has been to talk the rate of income tax down to 20%. So why didn’t I crack open the champagne last night? Why doesn’t it feel better this morning?

The reason is simple - we have had to buy our own tax cut.

One of the reasons I wanted 20% tax was to provide a better incentive for enterpising people and small businesses to take a risk, invest their

Amidst all the self congratulation about the UK’s economic performance there will be little interest in a sober appraisal of the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the UK economy.

We should ask these questions:

Why has Ireland grown three times as quickly as the UK over the Brown years?

Why are the Irish now enjoying higher living standards than us?

Why are companies leaving the UK to establish head offices elsewhere?

Why has UK productivity fallen over the Brown years?

Why do we now have higher inflation than our main competitors?

Why do we have such a large balance of payments deficit?

Once again I have been blocked on a freedom for information request.

I asked to see the KPMG report into the costs of the Olympics. We are paying a lot for all this advice and it would be good to know what we have been buying for

Last night

Yesterday evening some of my colleagues took over the task of trying to secure a proper debate on these contentious regulations. Repeated Points of Order to the Deputy Speaker gave us the ruling that the government has obeyed the letter of Parliamentary law, leaving the rest of us thinking they had done so in a very undemocractic spirit.

Their decision to pass this matter as a Statutory Instrument rather than as a Bill limited debate to only 90 minutes, when the Official Opposition had called for the more extensive and thorough process of examing a Bill. The decision to rush the committee to limit the scope for people to attend and complain backfired, as many of us did do just that. It also guaranteed

Many people are afraid of the Council Tax bill. In many places it is now too high, and in some places it goes up too quickly.

The government should understand these fears and immediately rule out

1. New higher bands

2. A general revaluation.

People need some relief from threats of more taxation. Your house value may have gone up, but that does not mean you have extra income to pay more to government.

I woke up this morning to hear that Gordon Brown has refused to rule out air travel to go on holiday, whilst David Cameron’s rubbish has been investigated.

Recently I was criticised in a local paper when they examined my expenses last year as an MP for driving rather than going by train. They did

The

I often go out on Fridays and Saturday mornings to talk to people on their doorsteps about the issues of the day.

I have been struck by the difference between the majority view of the electorate

The government has concluded that it will be just fine for Councils to go over to fortnightly rubbish collection. It will be an incentive apparently for people to recycle more.

There are several things wrong with this reasoning.
1. It’s counter-intuitive. It cannot be good news during a hot summer in the densely packed settlements of Labour’s urban Britain to have dustbins containing rotting food sitting around unemptied for up to 14 days. The smell will be unpleasant if nothing else.
2.Hot countries usually colllect rubbish more regularly than once a week to avoid smells, rats and other problems.
3. Many of us do not want to see the quality of our rubbish service halved - and we pay for it.
4. Many people have no children at school and are fortunate to have no need of social services. The rubbish service is one of the few things their Council provides that they need - but they all have to pay large bills to the Council. Why penalise them?
5. I cannot see how it will make people recycle more. The recycling service I receive is collected on the same day as the dustbin service, and is already only provided fortnightly. A more frequent recycling service covering more items might encourage more recycling.

My position is I wanted an amendment to protect the position of Christian agencies. I have

Late yesterday afternoon the government chose MPs to sit on a Committee to discuss the Sexual orientation regulations.

There was nothing unusual about that, save for two things.

The first was, the Shadow Attorney General had written to the government explaining that this was a complex piece of legislation, which warranted putting