Aug 12 2007
Labour takes fright at a hint of pro enterprise policies
The Labour spin doctors have been out in force today to try to frighten Conservatives and voters off any idea that we should take action to allow the enterprise sector to create more and beter paid jobs. Apparently the government believes that every word and paragraph of the thousands of regulations that crowd down on us are essential. They also seem to believe that if any one of them were removed businesses would be busy treating their staff badly and taking risks with health and safety.
??Even by Labour standards it’s pretty sorry caricature. Labour Ministers should get out more. They would discover that there would be more jobs if there were fewer regulations. They might even discover that some things would be better with fewer regulations. Take pensions for example. The last few years have seen unprecedented levels of very proscriptive regulation, and have also seen record levels of scheme closure, bankrutpcy and deficits.
??Business knows that the cumulative impact of too many regulations has been to take too much money and too much management time away from new products and services, away from treating customers better, away from creating new jobs. We need to curb them - both to make the UK more prosperous - and to make it safer, cleaner and greener.
??
??
RSS Feed
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
I took it as:
John Redwood: “We’re propsing to repeal some New Labour legislation that we think does more harm than good.”
John Hutton: “You, see, you see, look what horrible, rabbid, foam at the mouth right-wingers they really are.”
One thing though, don’t we have some sort of treaty obligations regarding data protection. Having worked in many a call centre I accept it is the most misrepresented, misunderstood and misused piece of legislation around.
Reply: I am proposing we keep the laws we had before the Data Protection bureaucracy was brought in. If there is an EU legal issue then we will need to negotiate that.
Quite so Mr Redwood, but the press reports of your suggested cuts make the point that you would have to repeal some EU legislation. That, as usual is the problem, It is not enough to announce that a Conservative government would repeal EU legislation; you must take the next logical step and tell us clearly exactly how you intend dealing with the fallout from breaking the treaties. Or do you really believe that the EU will allow a member state to just pick and choose which of its rules they wish to apply? What exactly is the bottom line, is for instance the Conservative party ready to face the prospect of Britain leaving the EU altogether. Or will you be forced into a humiliating climb down when you have to accept that whilst we remain in the EU the British parliament is no longer sovereign in these areas.
Reply: I take readers through how, in the last resort if we cannot negotiate an agreement, we can use UK Parliamentary action to do what we need to do.
“I take readers through how, in the last resort if we cannot negotiate an agreement, we can use UK Parliamentary action to do what we need to do.”
Well that would be a given, but then what?
You have taken a logical step back in the process to arrive at the beginning. As it would of course only be at that stage the government would be breaking the EU treaties.
So we have arrived at a position where a Conservative administration would - if negotiations failed - break the EU treaties, but we have not yet gone further than that point.
What we need is a concrete suggestion as to how exactly the British government would deal with the fall out from breaking the EU Treaties.
Reply: If we have to legislate we will be legally disapplying those parts that Parliament decides. What fall-out? I am sure anyway the EU would wish to avoid that so should give us opt outs.
It is not surprising that NuLab is so afraid of some economic commonsense from the Tory Party. John Major’s 22 tax rises were the prelude to the worst General Election performance on record. The Conservative reputation for economic comptetence, built up over a century, was squandered, in a day, on the altar of the ERM. The time has come to ‘move on’ to use what appears to be a key Conservative buzzword and lighten the creaking burden of regulation on individuals, companies and the community. We should also reduce our tax levels significantly downwards, not to create the kind of brutal tax haven of leftwing fantasy where the rich drive around in limousines, stopping only to get out and laugh at the poor, but just to stop us from falling quite so far behind our traditional competitor countries, and especially the surging new economies. Britain (and the COnservative Party) need tax cuts to better function, to more vigorously prosper and to improve the moral fairness inherent in any enterprise culture of individual responsiblity and ambition.
REMEMBER: the Conservative Party is the party of tax cuts or it is nothing!
Over the last 15 years, in electoral terms at least, the Conservative Party has been nothing, because it has been either increasing taxes or announcing such pathetically small cuts, on the eve of elections, too frightened by the ‘Tory Cuts’ brigade to sell even those modest proposals as energetically as it should. Having had more than 100 tax increases or new taxes over the last ten years, the middle ground has shifted, people will be far more receptive to the idea of even a slight (
JR: “Reply: I take readers through how, in the last resort if we cannot negotiate an agreement, we can use UK Parliamentary action to do what we need to do.”
That is an encouraging reply. BUT, why “in the last resort”? Why not just repudiate the treaties relating to the EU, and then pick and choose just what suits the poeple of the UK. After all, you conceed that there are circumstances (over regulation, or our national borders where we are almost unique in the EU - being an island) where it is appropriate in the interests of the UK and its population, that we should take unilateral action.
Why not just take the opposite view, it is appropriate in some isolated instances to take concerted action. For that purpose, occasional agreements on specific issues (a treaty ) is an accepted and effective means to the desired end.
What we don’t want are omnibus treaties, packed to the gunnels with obligations that bind us to behave in a particular way often against our own commercial and economic interest.
Just a thought.
Wouldn’t deregulation also produce similar savings in time and money in large areas of the public sector ?
reply - Yes, that’s part of the plan.
I think people have got to remember that the current government are quite happy to break EU treaty obligations when it comes to stopping you from buying too many fags or too much booze from France or Belgium.
A lot of EU governments just nod through any new directives, them implement them, put the new law on a shelf and forget about them. Do you honestly think all the cheap tat they sell you in Spanish holiday resorts meets EU product safety or labelling standards?
Reply: If we have to legislate we will be legally disapplying those parts that Parliament decides. What fall-out? I am sure anyway the EU would wish to avoid that so should give us opt outs.
You might have to take a little heat for the team in the short term, but Labour’s woeful reaction to your proposals should have a positive impact for us. Even disengaged voters can sense that your opponent’s emotive language and failure to take on the actual argument screams weakness on their part. In the longer term, this episode is corroborative evidence of Labour’s engrained desire to regulate/control.
The British courts would follow British Statutes, as it would be based on an amendment to the European Communities Act which is the legal base for EU law.
And what about The ECJ that is where any case will be heard, will it also recognise the supremacy of British law?