The data loss at the Revenue has done one good thing. It has made the world wake up to a problem frequently highlighted on this blogsite the incompetence and waste of the UK public sector. Perhaps now we can have a proper discussion of how the public sector can be changed to give us a better service at a lower cost.

So many things have to change before we have a smaller and more effective public sector. Government has to stop prying into so many facets of our lives, and move away from the idea that Whitehall can manage all the schools, hospitals, police stations and other public facilities from the centre.

This government treats new legislation as just another press release, pushing too many Bills through Parliament at breakneck speed without proper scrutiny, only to fail to implement them or make them work properly. We need to legislate less, and legislate better. We need to reduce the volume of legislation on the books, and make sure what is left is well drafted and effective.

This government treats a press announcement of some new initiative as mission accomplished. Instead we need Ministers who understand that announcing a new measure is just an early step in a long journey. Successful Ministers have to supervise the implementation, and make sure the measure works and is well administered.

This government has introduced higher pay with performance elements for senior staff. The problem is the performance elements are not well designed, allowing too many staff to achieve the criteria for the pay out even when the underlying service is poor or when major errors occur. There needs to be an overhaul of performance pay, containing a personal element and a service wide element, and there needs to be tougher adjudication of whether the criteria have been met before making any payment.

Ministers need to take more interest in how their departments run, and learn to be clearer in setting objectives and sticking to them. Whitehall’s target driven culture does not work because there are too many targets and too many changes. Most departments do not know what winning means. If you set a department or an individual five targets you can assess their achievement and hold them to them. If you set them 100 targets they are off the hook, as no-one expects they can hit all 100, and there will be contradictions between the differing targets giving people a good argument as to why they have failed to hit any particular one.

We need to blend the best of the public sector ethos, with the best of the performance orientation of the private sector in a new way of managing the public service. Wherever possible the public service should have a choice of supplier. Where something is done in house it should be done by people who want to do more with less, not by people who think their aim in life is to spend more money and employ more people whatever the issue before them.

Old initiatives in Whitehall never die, they just fade into the background. When a Minister wants the department to do something new, he or she will be told it needs more staff and more money. He should reply that he wishes to shift money and staff from the old initiative that is no longer required, rather than allowing those officials to slip into the background but remain on the payroll for the old purpose.

The public sector is cost plus it always assumes dearer is better, and lower cost is impossible. The competitive private sector company either delivers more for less or perishes.

The public sector is regulation plus it always takes the longest way round to comply with its own regulations, is slow moving and cumbersome.

The public sector can be very jobs worth. Ministers have created a cynicism in their staff, which leads staff to think the best course of action is to argue This problem is not within my power?, or This issue is not within my budget? or I am going on holiday tomorrow so why bother to start this today? All too often my constituents ring public sector phone lines that are off the hook or permanently engaged. All too often they find the hours for client contact are very limited, data gets lost, phone calls go unrecorded. It is all evidence of a service which is badly led and does not have to compete to keep customers.

Senior staff are often moved around too much. As soon as a senior official gets to know his or her job they are likely to be promoted or moved sideways into a different role. Whilst career progression and development are important, if you change them every couple of years you never have people in post with high levels of experience. It means no-one is ever accountable for anything, as no-one has been in post long enough to have set it up and created the problems that occur. We need to slow down the movement, and give people incentive pay when they do a good job and have the experience to do it better.

We need a new generation of Ministers who wish to work with the civil service, but who wish to lead it to higher standards and less waste . These Ministers like making the announcements and appearing on TV and radio, but often do not help the civil service do the serious work of designing a good policy in the first place, and sorting out the detail of implementation and administration after the announcement. As a result they have allowed shoddy standards in too many cases, and bought the line that appointing more people will solve problems that require thought and management, not more staff.

If you have too many people in an organisation it becomes difficult to manage. The civil service is both too large and too little motivated. It sums up New Labour good at spin, hopeless at managing the government.

You don’t get much for ??550 billion these days. You just get a load of targets, a load of undigested new laws, and some very prosperous private sector consultants who are brought in to almost everything to sort out the mess or do the real work.

Did you notice there will be another consultancy contract as a result of the date loss? Poor old taxpayers.

Mr Cable cannot go on the media without saying something nasty about Northern Rock. Today he was accusing a leading shareholder of "blackmail", when all the shareholder was doing was poiting out that this is a regulated solvent company according to the FSA and the Bank of England, still trading and with a valuable mortgage portfolio. Mr Cable should stop attacking it, and understand that there are ways to protect the mortgages, the deposits and the taxpayer loans without nationalisation. Any sensible person who cares about the living standards of people in the UK should want a successful outcome to the rescue, and would understand that attacking the current shareholders who still decide the future of this bank is counterproductive.

I am glad there are bids on the table that may offer a way forward. There is also the option of running the bank to ensure the taxpayer is repaid, following agreement on the timing of repayments, without a takeover. I still think the government should set out in public how much money it will advance for how long, so every bidder bids on the same basis, and so the taxpayer can see how his or her interest is going to be protected. The taxpayer also needs reassurance that the government/Bank have taken sufficient security over Northern Rock’s assets to protect the position. If they haven’t so far, they should do so now and publish how much collateral they have for the loans.

The absence of public information over how much the taxpayer has committed. Parliament should be told about this large sum. Those assessing the bids should also want to know that all bidders had bid on the same basis concerning the available public support, and should want confirmation that there are no misunderstandinbgs about how much money is on offer for how long. You cannot value Northern Rock shares today, as Mr Richards the shareholder said on the radio, unless you know how much public money is on offer on what terms.

The European Central Bank has decided to keep interest rates up and to threaten higher rates still. Meanwhile, the Fed is moving to recession fighting, with many expecting lower interest rates despite recent rhetoric. The dollar drifts lower, the Euro rises.

The higher Euro is making it very difficult for companies in many parts of the Eurozone to set competitive prices for their products in world markets. In the US there is an export surge underway, and European companies are coming to realise that the US is now a cheaper and better place for manufacturing than countries in Euroland.

Airbus is going to have to cut its European costs or put some if its manufacturing into lower cost places elsewhere. They should not expect immediate relief from the European Central Bank, and should remember that the stronger German currency needs higher interest rates than the weaker parts of the Eurozone.

European politicians like the French President are keen to take the Euro and European interest rate down, but many Europeans will want the counter inflation strategy to continue. Whilst Euroland battles over its future the US will enjoy being a magnet for investment and a stronger exporter. Airbus may whinge all it likes, but it needs to become more efficient.

An update – more policies and views announced:

Clegg: Adopt the EU constitution
Huhne: Adopt the EU constitution

Clegg: Probably enter the Euro
Huhne: Enter the Euro sometime

Clegg: More regional government in England
Huhne: More regional government in England

Clegg: Build more Council houses
Huhne: Build more Council houses

Clegg: Don’t apologise for the anti Huhne stories in the press, as they are nothing to do with him
Huhne: Apologise for "calamity Clegg" aphorism, as it was nothing to do with him

Clegg: Make climate change a priority
Huhne: Make climate change a priority

It’s a real cliffhanger, as the egg and spoon race roars into life with a genuine spat over the "Calamity Clegg" briefing.

I asked the Leader of the House today the simple question:

When will the government seek Parliamentary approval for the ??25 billion they have spent so far on Northern Rock, and the ??25 billion they have guaranteed and where did the Treasury and the Bank find the ??25 billion?

This should not be a difficult questions to answer. The Leader of the House is meant to know Parliamentary procedure. Every item opf public spending has to be approved by the House under a vote for an estimate. There was no estimate for Northern Rock when Parliament approved this year’s budget. Clearly the government is either going to have to put through a supplementary estimate for the money, or to seek to argue that it does not have to bother, on the spurious grounds that it hopes to get the spending back.

Clearly also, as the govrnment is already borrowing heavily this year, the money for Northern Rock was either borrowed or came from selling other Bank of England assets.I suspect it was mixture of the two. I suspect there is also a Treasury guarantee to the Bank of England.

It is high time Ministers worked out how they are going to report and control this massive spending, to look as if they know what they are doing. Miss Harman told us that the ledning to Northern Rock was made available, amongst other reasons, to ensure shareholders did not lose money. Has she looked at the share price recently? Wouild she like to apologise for getting that wrong?

<p><strong>Yesterday during Prime Minister’s Questions, John Redwood raised the crucial question of why there is such a big terrorist threat in the UK. We need to understand it in order to combat it. The government needs to tackle both the terrorists who are wrongly allowed to enter our country owing to insufficient controls at our borders, and the disaffection of some young people legally settled in the UK:<br />
</strong><br />
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): </strong>Why are there so many potential terrorists in Britain today?</p>
<p><strong>The Prime Minister:</strong> We know from the statement made by the head of MI5 that we are dealing with a small but important group of young terrorists who are operating in cells, and we know that there are distinct links in our country with the Asian sub-continent; that is one of the reasons why the numbers in Britain are so high. However, we also know that the measures that we announced last week, not only to win the battle of hearts and minds but to isolate extremists, are the right way forward. The right hon. Gentleman should agree with me that we are making substantial advances in persuading young people that this is not the right way forward and in isolating these terrorist extremists in our country, and we will continue to fight the battle against terrorism.</p>
<p>In the subsequent debate on how to improve our schools, John Redwood advocated giving more freedoms to schools to make decisions for themselves, and more powers to parents to choose the right school for their children:</p>
<p><strong>Mr. Redwood: </strong>Does my hon. Friend agree that the people involved in a school are much more important even than its buildings, and that some of the best schools have old or tatty buildings? Is not the failure of this Government’s strategy that they have no way of changing the leadership in underperforming schools and they have allowed too many such schools to exist for too long?</p>
<p><strong>Michael Gove:</strong> My right hon. Friend makes an important point: among the most important qualities in schools are leadership, motivation and personnel. One of the great virtues of academies is that their leaders? such as Sir Michael Wilshaw at Mossbourne? have the freedom to pay more than the national minimum and to reward good staff with bonuses. They also have the opportunity to recruit and retain the best, and, if necessary, to deal with any weaker teachers. I am sorry to have to say that some of the teaching unions oppose that degree of freedom, but we believe that it is concomitant with the greater freedom in the academy system and that it is necessary to drive up standards, which is our aim.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there has been a pattern under this Government: instead of change and dynamism, there has been timidity, retreat, paralysis and bureaucracy. We would remove barriers to the creation of new schools.</p>
<p><strong>Mr. Redwood: </strong>If the Secretary of State wishes to show substance, he should talk about the Government’s policy rather than spend the whole time talking about Opposition policy? I know that he has no style. Will he tell the House why the Government do not trust parents to make choices in enough cases and why they do not trust schools to decide how to teach?</p>
<p><strong>Ed Balls: </strong>Let me turn to academies and the exact issue that the right hon. Gentleman raises. At last, we are dealing with a school reform that is mentioned in the motion.</p></strong>

On Monday we heard from the Chancellor about Northern Rock. He gave us no figures, but it appears they have already lent ??25 billion of our money to the mortgage bank, and have guaranteed maybe a further ??25 billion. This money is either borrowed, or will have to be borrowed if the guarantees trigger.

Later that day the hapless Chief Secretary to the Treasury came to push through a Bill to give away part of the UK’s rebate on EU contributions – one of Tony Blair’s EU poison pills for Gordon on takeover.

As we have come to expect, the very short Explanatory Memorandum supplied with the even shorter Bill cotained at least three errors, along with an errata sheet. Once again a Labour Minister had failed to supervise papers coming to the House properly.

Andy Burnham wanted to disguise the extent of the giveaway, but had to admit that the gross cost of the EU to the UK over the next seven years, after allowing for the remaining rebate, will be a massive ??70 billion. He and Kitty Ussher, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, seemed to be find it difficult to grasp that it is the gross amount of our contribution (after rebate) that taxpayers have to pay. The fact that some of the money is subsequently spent in the UK does not mean that money is "free". It either has to be borrowed and repaid with interest by taxpayers, or paid for from higher taxes in the first place.

So on the same day we saw the governemnt announce ??95 billion of extra borrowing – and more possible for Northern Rock – on just two spending items, the EU and a mortgage bank. They will argue that the EU money is already in their spending figures, but it is a sobering thought that they want to commit ??95 billion of money they do not have to these two causes. If we borrow the ??95 billion at 5% for 20 years that means UK taxpayers will pay ??180 billion, assuming we do not have to borrow the interest payments as well! Let’s hope if they get the money back from Northern Rock they use it to repay some debt.

How dare Mr Darling complain that the odd Conservative tax cut would create a "black hole" when he has two such massive black holes in his own figures.

(If you are interested in the EU contribution debate see the link to my speech in the debate )

When I was a Minister from time to time I needed to write to all MPs to inform them about something. Either I wrote a letter myself,or I adapted a civil service draft so it was relevant to MPs receiving it. Once the letters had been typed and printed, I then topped and tailed each one, writing "Dear Jane (or whoever)…Yours ever John" to show I had taken an interest and wanted to communicate with each of my colleagues.

Yesterday it was Jane’s turn (Jane Kennedy, Financial Secretary to the Treasury) to write to me. She apparently wanted to tell me that "all efforts are being made to ensure that such a loss (of personal data) can never happen again". The "Dear John" was typed in. There was no "Yours ever" or "Yours truly" or "Yours sincerely". The letter ended with a printed version of her signature, Jane Kennedy.

My name at the top of the destination address overprinted the "HM Treasury " that appeared on the headed notepaper. The Treasury’s efforts to keep a slightly long letter on a single page meant it did not fit. It started with the abrupt "You are aware of the Chancellor’s statement to Parliament regarding the serious breach of procedure leading to the loss of personal data…" How couod I be unaware? Had she not seen me at the Statement? Which MP did not bother to go to hear? Which MP has failed to see the headlines in the papers or hear the odd thing about it on the news?

The letter went on to tell me "I am conscious that you may receive enquiries from constituents". She then repeated some information from the statement, and told me I could always ring the Child Benefit helpline.

There was no apology.

What did this letter tell me about this government?

1. The Minister could not be bothered to top and tail the letter herself as she clearly did not think communicating with colleagues mattered that much.
2. I doubt if the Minister wrote the letter or if she spent any time thinking about the draft. if she had, she would have seen that it was not helping MPs do their job.
3. She does not mind how silly the contents are or how badly the letter is set out on the page.

It was symptomatic of all that is wrong with this government. Ministers are not doing the detailed work necessary to provide a good service to the public or to MPs. Jane Kennedy trusted the civil sservice, and the civil service hastened out something to tick the box and hit the target for "communicating with MPs". Public money was wasted on a useless letter, and any MP who read it should see it confirms the low standards we now expect from this regime.

Many people today have woken up to the news that this government is incompetent. For the first time many have had the scales taken from their eyes, as the dreadful truth sinks home that this time the government’s incompetence has left them personally vulnerable.

Every family in the land now knows they must watch their bank accounts nervously to see if the important private data the government has lost has got into the wrong hands. For busy families struggling to get to work on the government’s congested and useless transport system, trying to pay the higher mortgage and Council tax bills this government’s policies are visiting upon them, and trying to comply with the myriad forms, regulations and requirements of an ever more intrusive state, this is just the last straw.

Many of us already had personal experience of the government’s incompetence. Farmers have felt it as payments have failed to materialise when promised, and as the government’s mishandling of disease and floods left a grief stricken countryside and many dead animals. Estranged parents have felt it, as the CSA has struggled to get a grip on their caseload. Many recipients of Tax credits have been on the wrong end of it, as case after case emerges where people are asked to repay large sums they had been awarded months earlier. Northern Rock depositors have felt it, as the Treasury and the Bank failed to keep confidence in markets this autumn. We have all witnessed it at the Home Office, with farce after scandal over borders and prisons.

Too many people have believed that Gordon Brown was a talented Chancellor who ran the Treasury well. Now his successor has taken over we can see what a tacky inheritance he received. Gordon dined out on the soundbite that he had made the Bank of England independent and this was good for the UK economy. The first banking crisis to hit showed that far from making the Bank independent he had crippled it, so it was unable to handle the crisis itself and needed the involvement of the FSA and the Treasury. Under Darling this ring of three failed to head off the run on a bank, and failed to keep the markets liquid. They lost control of short term interest rates, and precipitated a credit crunch. The Conservative Economic Policy Review chronicled how Brown had damaged the Bank of England and how it left us vulnerable to a crisis, in a section written months before Northern Rock and published well before the bank ran into public difficulty.

Over the 10 years of Gordon’s stewardship the UK had to pay higher interest rates than our main competitor economies, and ended the period with higher inflation than our main competitors. He did not even make the Monetary Policy Committee truly independent, retaining the ability to appoint all the members either directly or indirectly, and refusing to answer questions about why some were reappointed and others were not. He overrode their policy by changing targets at a crucial time.

Of more immediate impact for many British people was Gordon Brown’s raid on pension funds, taking around ??5,000 million a year from them every year in additional taxes. He allowed a new supervisory and regulatory framework to create a system which few companies wanted to live under, so we have seen a flight from offering final salary pension schemes. Gordon’s lethal mixture of higher taxes and more regulation is denying a new generation of employees access to a final salary scheme, something their parents took for granted in most jobs.

The only thing the government has been good at is taking our money off us. Because this matters most to these Ministers, it is done with military precision. If anyone is five minutes late back to a parking place they are likely to face a ticket. If you dare to live without a TV at home you will be bombarded with aggressive notices claiming you are dodging the TV poll tax. The beefed up Customs and Revenue has been much more aggressive than its predecessor Inland Revenue in dealing with law abiding companies and individuals. I have more cases now of people being required to pay tax they do not owe thanks to errors and dubious decisions. Local Councils have followed suit, harassing people to pay Council Tax and to fill in regular records to maintain their single person discounts.

The casual incompetence and carelessness of this government is on display every day of my working life as an MP. Much of my office’s time is spent referring cases where the Inland Revenue or the CSA or the Immigration Service have made a wrong decision or have failed to make any decision at all. More time is spent chasing departments for answers, and chasing them again for a proper answer once the standard reply has come in. Papers and documents produced to Parliament are often error ridden. Bills are rewritten in great chunks just before Report stage. Ministers sometimes do not know the detail of the Statutory Instrument they are putting through so debate is fairly pointless with them. The Bank of England’s official copy of its last annual Report presented to Parliament and kept in the library of the House had several important pages missing which no-one at the Bank had bothered to check. Ministers do not appear to proof read anything themselves or to go over the detail beforehand.

In this environment the actions of the Customs and Revenue this week are neither surprising nor out of the ordinary. I was not shocked by it, as I would expect nothing less from a government that has so neglected the arts of departmental management and administrative discipline. I am very sorry for all those families whose data has gone astray, but pleased that this incompetence was so noticeable that maybe now more people will come to understand that this is the nature of this government. If organisations behave casually it is because the signals sent from the top are casual. Too many Ministers in this government fail to stress the need for accuracy and care at all stages of their department’s work. They live on the media and die politically on the media. They have still not learnt that as a Minister staying out of the papers is usually more difficult and more successful than getting into them. Papers mainly want to report mess up and conspiracy.

The first thought I had when I heard late yesterday morning of the government’s loss of sensitive personal data was this should be the death blow to the government’s expensive, intrusive and insecure personal data computer scheme with ID cards. I encouraged the Opposition to make that the main point for the future coming out of the Customs and Revenue disaster.

In a way the loss of Child Benefit data sums up this government. Its systems are intrusive and costly, yet they do not work properly. The very people who should be protecting us and our personal details are the most cavalier with our identities and our personal safety. It is this government which presides over hospitals where infection is so common, this government which fails to control our borders and keep out criminals, and this government which now loses the bank accounts, addresses and identities of every family in the country.

Why on earth should the public trust the government to hold all the crucial data about us on one central identity computer? Why should we believe next time they will look after it better? Why should we believe they will be able to control the numbers and details of our data on such a system, when they have issued many more National Insurance numbers than there are workers in the country, and when passport forgery or false issue is all too common?

ID cards have become a NuLab soudbite, the answer to every criticism of their lamentable record at keeping our borders secure and dealing with serious crime. We all know if they carry on with them they will arive late, massively over budget and unable to do the jobs they are said to be able to do. ID cards will not keep us safe. They will cost us more, make all the law abiding have to fill in yet another intrusive form, and allow the government to carry on running the borders and the criminal justice system badly.

Let’s hope there is a silver lining to the black cloud of yesterday’s news – that even this government now udnerstands the British people will njot put up with more of their money beign tipped down the ID drain, and will ot trust this government to put onto one massive computer disc all the details fo everyone in the country just feady for fraudsters and terrorist to steal it, hack into it or be sent it in the post.

Last week some asked why 400,000 people left the UK last year to live and work elsewhere last year. I would have thought the answer was obvious.

They’ve had enough.

We live in a country where anyone who has gained some qualifications, who tries to pay their own way and to live a decent life feels targeted by this government. We have our identity assaulted, our democratic views ignored, our pockets and purses rifled by the state, our opinions criticised or banned and the public services we do wish to use run incompetently or rationed for us.

We, the English, are told our country is the one part of the Union that cannot have devolved power. Instead our country is to be split into Euro regions. We are told we have to love the EU and accept its constitution, after the promise of a referendum in order to win a General election. Many of us see the EU as a hostile bureaucracy. We are not xenophobes – most of us like our continent and appreciate its range of cultures, languages and cuisines. We just do not want to be governed by a bunch of bureaucrats who think they have to regulate every aspect of our increasingly complex lives and who we cannot sack via an election.

We are told by the government that our lifestyles are wrong. As the Health Service grapples with its inability to keep hospitals clean and infection free the government blames us for being ill in the first place. People are told they are too fat, they eat the wrong foods, and they drink too much. The government encourages a debate criticising middle class? lifestyles. Maybe it’s a prelude to a crisps tax or a further increase in alcohol duty.

If we dare to drive our cars we are treated like criminals. The government has put through so many new laws that most drivers I see on the roads daily are breaking one or other law. Motorists do not accept the government’s demonisation of speed in all circumstances and want to see instead proper policing operating against the minority who are driving stolen vehicles and uninsured cars, and those who are driving dangerously for the conditions. Motorists feel picked on when they are just trying to get to work or to the shops to buy the family food.

If we are foolish enough to make some honest money then the tax collectors descend. The Revenue and Customs have become much more aggressive and in some cases unfair, as this greedy government raids us time and again to pay for their army of helpers and advisers, to swell their drinks cabinets and pay their first class airline tickets as they fly round the world lecturing the rest of us on the need to travel less.

They use the war on terror? as an excuse to whittle away our civil liberties. I can scarcely believe that under a Labour government people can now be arrested and held without charge for a month, and the government wishes to be able to do this for two months.

If Ministers cannot understand why people are leaving, I have this advice for them. Leave the Ministerial car at home next week, and try getting yourself to the office for 9 am each day. Work out what it is like paying the mortgage, buying the petrol, paying the Council Tax and the family food on average earnings in this country, and ask yourself if people really are paying too little tax when you’ve done those sums.

If you still can’t figure out why so many people are leaving, then you are not cut out to be a politician. You are simply, hopelessly and comprehensively out of touch. If you can, then do something about it.

Giving away part of the rebate was reckless and wrong. John Redwood pointed out yesterday in Parliament that Alastair Darling has just added a ??70 billion spending black hole to his ??25 billion Northern Rock black hole, by signing up to the expensive EU budget settlement for the next seven years and giving away part of the UK rebate. All this money will have to be borrowed, meaning large interest bills and ultimate repayment by the taxpayer.

For John Redwood’s speech in full (taken from Hansard) see below.

<strong>Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): </strong>In 1984, as a young man, I was the chief policy adviser to the then Prime Minister. One of my proudest moments in that job was when she returned from a difficult negotiation in the European Community where, thanks entirely to her skill, determination and perseverance, she obtained for the UK a most important reduction in the amount that we had to pay into the European Economic Community.

It was a great negotiation because to achieve that rebate, that lady had to persuade all the other member states to her point of view. She could not block the payments that we were making because a Labour Government had agreed them. She knew they were far too high, and it was her consummate skill as a negotiator and politician that slowly persuaded all the other member states, reluctantly and gradually, to the view that Britain was getting an extremely raw deal; it was paying far too much, and justice required that more of the money should be left in the United Kingdom.

As a result, the Government whom she led and those led by her two successors were able to spend more money on British public services chosen freely by the elected representatives? the majority party in this House? or to return more money to the British people to spend on their own families and businesses through tax reduction, which I greatly welcomed. That makes tonight particularly tragic, because a subsequent Prime Minister, Mr. Blair, went to a European negotiation at which all he had to do was say no. He need not have given any of that money away. He did not need any of the skills that Baroness Thatcher required to win us the rebate? he had all the cards in his hand. He merely had to say no unless and until the other members of the European Union saw the justice of the case that he was making.

When the former Prime Minister moved his position, from the excellent one that there was no need to give up the rebate and that it was not negotiable, to the position that it was negotiable, I and many of my right hon. and hon. Friends had misgivings. The Opposition were prepared to listen, however, and see whether it was feasible to negotiate a much better deal on the spending side of the account, whereby the British position would not worsen, while that of all members of the Union would improve if spending could be reduced on agriculture. Such spending gets in the way of efficient agriculture in many member states and prevents developing countries from getting fair access to our markets.

Some of my right hon. and hon. Friends withheld their criticism to wait and see whether the then Prime Minister had some negotiating skills. It beggars belief that he had absolutely no negotiating skills at all. Armed with the veto, he threw it away. Armed with a strong case to win over the new member states and the Nordic member states to the proposition that the common agricultural policy was bad and should be reformed, he was unable to persuade any of them. Tonight, we have a House of Commons with Labour Members almost in denial and about to vote through a disaster for the United Kingdom in the form of an extremely large bill that we cannot afford and do not want.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who opened the debate, showed bravado and obviously implied that he thinks everyone in the country is a fool. He tried to present the Bill as some kind of negotiating success and a way of increasing the rebate. Yes, of course it increases the rebate, because it increases the spending by so much more. It means that Britain will end up paying far more in the seven years of the proposal than if nothing had been given away in the negotiations.

I notice that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who is on the Treasury Bench, has no intention of intervening, because she knows that I am absolutely right about the huge expensive. The documents reveal costings of ??7.4 billion at the current euro-sterling exchange rate. Given the parlous state of the national accounts, we know that every penny of that ??7.4 billion will have to be borrowed. If it were borrowed over, say, a 20-year period at 5 per cent.? the Government might be able to do that? there would be another ??7.4 billion of interest on top of the ??7.4 billion of capital that will need to be paid and then repaid over the 20 years of the debt. I leave out the interest on the interest, which would add to the sum even more. On the Government’s own admission in the explanatory notes to the Bill? they are riddled with errors, of course, but I do not think that this figure is an error? the minimum cost to the state and the taxpayer will be ??7.5 billion, which, in practice, will mean ??15 billion or more, because they will have to borrow it and we will have to pay interest on it.

If we look beneath the Government’s guidance, we see that the true bill to the taxpayer and the British Government will be far bigger. This Government have signed up to a set of spending plans that mean that, on average, every year over the seven-year period the United Kingdom will have to pay ??10 billion into the European Union, after knocking off the smaller rebate, which is still in place thanks to Baroness Thatcher. That means that, in practice, there will be an underlying spending increase of ??70 billion over a seven-year period. Using my simple sum, if the Government borrowed that over 20 years at 5 per cent., we are talking about ??140 billion of first-round interest payments and capital repayments, just to see us through the seven years. At the end of the seven years, of course, we know that we would be on another escalator, because our bargaining position would be greatly weakened thanks to the Government’s foolishness in giving away this most important principle and allowing the rebate to be weakened.

We know that the present Government are careless with public money. They say that any Conservative plan to spend a few hundred million or the odd billion on a tax cut would produce a black hole, yet along comes a mortgage bank in trouble and they can suddenly find ??24 billion without batting an eyelid. Now we discover that they can apparently pledge this country to pay ??70 billion over the cycle of the budget proposal. We know that they can propose that only because they intend to borrow every penny of it, just as presumably they are borrowing every penny of the ??24 billion that they have so far made available to Northern Rock.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury produced several arguments, in the course of a long and rambling speech, for why the budget was a good deal for Britain. There was the strange argument that the rebate was going to increase, whereas we all know that there will be a worsening of the rebate and increased spending. There was then the argument that we should be extremely grateful and welcoming of the fact that, as a result of our much bigger contribution to the European Union kitty, there would be more spending in countries outside the United Kingdom. He implied that he believes that, as soon as a country gets European Union spending, it becomes more prosperous and its growth rate rises. That is a curious argument.

During my time in politics in Britain, I have seen some parts of the United Kingdom receive European Union money. We know that they have been receiving it because, as has been pointed out in the debate, one condition of it is that recipients have to stick the 12-star flag logo all over the sign boards for the projects, whereas I believe that under British law they are not allowed to put a Union flag on anything that we fund directly. Somebody rightly pointed out that the money is ours anyway, because we put more in than we get back. We know that some places have been getting that funding.

If we look, as I have, at the income levels and growth rates in the places that receive that funding, we see two interesting things. First, the poorest parts of the country receive the money. That is not surprising, as the main condition for getting it is that they start as the poorest parts of the country. The other thing that we discover is that, under this Government in the past decade, those areas have also had the slowest growth rates. The money is clearly not kick-starting those parts of the country into greater prosperity; it is part of the problem that is holding them down.

<strong>Julia Goldsworthy indicated dissent.</strong>

<strong>Mr. Redwood: </strong>I see the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy), a Cornish seat, becoming agitated, but she must know that the Cornish rate of growth has been much less than that of London or the south-east. London and the south-east are not main recipients of European aid, whereas Cornwall is. If receiving subsidy and aid triggered a big increase in the growth rate, one would expect Scotland to have been the fastest growing part of the United Kingdom in the past decade, as it has had so much extra money from all sources. Instead, we discover that Scotland has been about the slowest growing part of the United Kingdom.

<strong>Julia Goldsworthy:</strong> The right hon. Gentleman is correct that there is still a large gap between Cornwall and the rest of the country, not only in GDP per head of population but in income. However, the rate of growth is now faster than the England average.

<strong>Mr. Redwood:</strong> Growth rates in London and the south-east are far greater than that in Cornwall, which demonstrates that European Union money is not managing to do what the hon. Lady hopes. I should be delighted if that money were well spent, but one of the big problems with European Union money is that under the rules, it must be put into schemes that it would otherwise not have been put into? by definition, marginal schemes or even those that are not thought very worth while.

<strong>Mr. MacNeil: </strong>Could not the argument be made that the issue is not actually about subsidies at all? The rate of growth in the Republic of Ireland, for example, has been double that in the United Kingdom. That has happened because Ireland left the United Kingdom and set its own tax structure to suit itself. Perhaps that is not happening in Scotland because Scotland is not independent so that it can compete, match and beat the Republic of Ireland.

<strong>Mr. Redwood: </strong>This is not a debate about Scottish independence, but I agree that cutting the tax rate is a very good way to accelerate the growth rate. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury seemed to think that subsidies to the Irish agricultural sector were the main cause of accelerated Irish growth. There is no evidence from the Irish economy that the agriculture sector has led the growth; it has been led by the service and manufacturing sectors. That is definitely the result of very low corporation tax.

<strong>Mr. Cash: </strong>On the Irish economy, my right hon. Friend might not have been here when I made the point that there is an excellent book by Mr. Roy Foster called Luck and the Irish? demonstrating that the money put in by the European Union has been less effective in increasing Ireland’s prosperity than American money and tax reductions.

<strong>Mr. Redwood:</strong> I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s endorsement of my case. So much European money went into the agriculture sector in Ireland, but that is not the great success story. The success story is in those sectors that have attracted large sums of foreign capital to create new businesses, which in turn have attracted a lot of talented Irish people back to Ireland to discover that it is a place where they can have very good careers.

<strong>Mr. MacNeil:</strong> Some economists argue that the agriculture subsidies not only did not help the Irish economy but hindered it in some ways, because resources were allocated to a less productive sector of the economy than they might have been.

<strong>Mr. Redwood: </strong>Again, the hon. Gentleman makes a helpful and sensible intervention. I hope that Ministers are listening; they might learn from it.

To return to my argument, all too often the projects financed by the European Union are marginal, or, in economists’ terms, sub-optimal? not those that one would choose for oneself. That is the role of the scheme. As the sage from Great Grimsby was saying a few minutes ago, would it not be much better if in some cases we could choose the projects ourselves and spend our own money on them without the middleman? without having to send the cheque to Brussels and then get some of it back after jumping through various hoops to prove that the project is one with which we would not otherwise have gone ahead? It is a rather crazy way to spend money.

<strong>Julia Goldsworthy:</strong> Does the right hon. Gentleman think that there is a benefit to investing in high-risk projects? Those projects often give the opportunity for the greatest returns, although they might not be viable in their own right or have the resources to take on that risk themselves.

<strong>Mr. Redwood: </strong>The hon. Lady should read a history of the 1970s, when we had a Government who thought that backing winners was a good idea, and every one turned out to be a flop or a loser. Maybe we are returning to that in the Government’s latest approach to choosing investment projects and dealing with European Union funding. One begins to worry.

The Chief Secretary’s next argument was that this had not all been in vain. Although perhaps in his more honest moments he accepts that we are talking about a very big bill? at least ??7.5 billion and maybe ??70 billion? he said, Ah, but there will definitely be agricultural reform.? That has already been revealed as a curious opinion given the attitude of the French, who will be in the chair of the European Union when the so-called review occurs. The language of the European Union has already downgraded the review, and the French have made it clear that they do not wish major reforms of the common agricultural policy to occur under their chairmanship. We come back to the question of how to negotiate. I always thought that when negotiating, if one is minded to make a concession in order to gain a concession from the other side, one makes sure not to make one’s concession until the other side makes theirs. That is what good negotiating is about. It is quite extraordinary to make a massive concession for 2007, and then say that in five or six years’ time, somebody might discuss making a concession the other way. Why on earth should they give us anything when we have negotiated in such a stupid way?

<strong>Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con):</strong> Does my right hon. Friend agree that the French position is that the major reform of agriculture has already taken place? Further negotiation is not even a glimmer in their eye.

<strong>Mr. Redwood: </strong>My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. As others have revealed in this debate, it is not even clear that the proportion spent on agriculture is falling, although it is certainly clear that the amount spent on agriculture continues to rise. That is the French agenda, which has a lot of supporters in the European Union. I do not believe that the Government have a majority in Europe to support a significant change, and they certainly do not have unanimity on fundamental change, which is what they require.

Even worse, we know that quite a bit of the ??70 billion that we have been asked to contribute will be spent on programmes to which the auditors will not be able to give a clean bill of health. Extraordinarily, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) has told us that that does not count, because such fraud, malpractice or misspending occurs in member states rather than as a direct result of European Commission action. However, all that money is spent under European Union rules.
<strong>
Mr. MacNeil: </strong>I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again; he has been very kind. To control misspending, does he agree that there should be a cap on the amount that certain individuals receive, which would mean that people such as the Duke of Westminster, who is a very wealthy landowner, would not receive obscene amounts from the CAP?

<strong>Mr. Redwood: </strong>I do not want to personalise the debate in that rather unsophisticated way. However, I make common cause with the hon. Gentleman in saying that too much money is spent through the CAP. The CAP should be reformed and that money should be repatriated. Too much money is also spent through a lot of other programmes. As the auditors have revealed, regardless of who technically spends the money, it is spent on European programmes, and all too often it is spent wastefully or even fraudulently, which should be a grave concern to us all.

I cannot say to the people of Wokingham, I voted tonight to make sure that you will pay more tax in order to spend another ??70 billion over the next EU budgetary period, and some of that money will be wasted, frittered or even spent fraudulently.? As someone who looks at the auditor’s reports from time to time, I cannot satisfy myself that that money will be well spent from now on and that we should relax. The money would be more likely to be well spent with proper investigation and control if it were spent closer to the people who paid the tax, rather than if it were to go through the intermediation of a remote and bureaucratic system of government on the continent before coming back here or to other member states to be spent by officials.

One of the myths of the EU is that it has a small and very effective bureaucracy. By remote control, the EU employs hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats throughout EU member states. Those bureaucrats might as well work for the EU, because they are doing the EU’s bidding? I am glad that that is not the case, because they would be asked to do even more things with which many of my hon. Friends and I undoubtedly disagree.

I urge all sensible Labour MPs to vote against the Bill tonight. Those who vote for it will vote for more British taxpayers’ money to be spent in faraway places, sometimes on fraudulent, incompetent or badly run schemes. They will vote for this country to borrow yet more money, which it cannot afford, and to pay yet more interest. They will vote for a further deterioration in the way in which this country’s budgets are run by this Government. They will vote for the results of a negotiation that was so maladroit that our previous Prime Minister gave away a wonderful set of opportunities that another Prime Minister had negotiated for us without getting anything in return.

This is an extremely sad day for the United Kingdom. It is a sad day for this Parliament, and it is a day that Ministers will come to rue. Ministers should understand that they are in a big borrowing hole. They have the black hole of Northern Rock, and they have the black hole of this Bill. Labour Members will find that there is less public spending for their constituencies, and Conservative Members will find that there are fewer opportunities to cut the burden of tax on the British people so that we can prosper more.

Yesterday was a dispiriting sight in the Commons. We saw Lib Dems and Labour arguing over the future of a bank when none of them seemed to understand the first thing about how banking operates. Nor did they seem to understand the complicated banking regulations and company law they have put in place over the last decade.

Cable for the Lib Dems set the terms of the debate in an entirely false way, which unfortunately some in the media have copied. He offered two "solutions" as the only possible options – put NR into administration (i.e. bankrupt it) or nationalise it.

Neither of these courses of action make any sense and should be rejected at this stage.

Of course the government could bankrupt the Rock, if it withdrew its funding and the promise of more cash and if no private sector party stepped in with the offer of the money. That would renege on government promises and might break its loan agreement (we still have not seen what form that takes or what period it covers). It would still require the government to bail out the depositors, unless they reneged on that promise as well. It might prove to be dearer than other options, and would probably lead to law suits against the government by shareholder and other interests who could legitimately complain about the inconsistency of government actions.

The government could push a nationalisaiton bill through the Commons with Lib dem support. Presumably that would offer no compensation to the shareholders. Then the taxpayer would be on risk not just for ??24-25billion of loans and the estimated ??16 billion of remaining deposit guarantees, but for the whole ??100 billion of liabilities on the 2006 balance sheet and any additional ones added since the last year end. The government would then have to make the announcements about sacking the staff that were superfluous to the slimmed down business they would be running, would have to pay all the bills whether the company werre profitable or not, and stand behind all the obligaitons of the company. The government would need to repay the debts outstanding to other city institutions as they fell due. Why would that be good for the taxpayer? What does Alastair Darling know about running a mortgage bank that he cannot share with the external management already in place?

The only sensible course of action from here is to ignore siren pleas for liquidation or nationalisation, and to manage the debt and the deposits rationally like a proper bank manager. The government has not "nationalised" the bank by lending it money. What it needs to do, if it hasn’t already is:

1. Secure sufficient asset cover to guraantee repayment of all its lending to NR whatever happens. If it does not have enough asset cover – and in current conditions you need to take much more than100% cover given the possibiltiy that the value of mortgages will fall – it should do so as a condition for future lending.

2. Set out the repayment schedule it expects, preferably in agreement with NR but if necessary it has to impose one.

3. The shareholders and Directors of NR then have a choice – a) trade their way out of it b) find a bidder for the whole who will meet the repayment schedule or c) start selling the assets off piecemeal to meet the repayment schedule. They and the Regulators tell us they are solvent. That means that the assets cover the liabilities, so selling the assets will enable them to repay the liabilities. The government only wants one quarter of the assets of the business to repay it loans so far, so it should be achievable.

4. The deposit guarantee should continue but the governemnt should replace it as soon as possible by the beefed up general deposit insurance scheme they are working on with the City. If the deposit guarantees trigger the need for more funding the Bank of England should allow for that within its schedule of repayments.

The Directors and shareholders should be given a chance to rescue it by methods a) or b). The timetable should ensure that if they do not do so in reasonable time then method c), an orderly run off, kicks in automatically. That way taxpayers can get our money back without legal actions against the government for precipitating a crisis.

Mr Darling failed to tell us what markets and Parliament needed to know yesterday – how much money has been lent on what terms. The absence of this information runs the danger of creating a false market in the shares. It also means the task of evaluating bids for NR is difficult if not impossible . If bidders do not know how much money is available on what terms, how can they ascribe a sensible value to the company? And how can you compare bids, if bidders have made different assumptions about government generosity?

Yesterday I needed to refill my car. That meant paying ??40 to Mr Brown and ??20 to an oil company.

The cheapest filling station was offering diesel at 3p a litre less than some others. As that represented a saving of ??1.80 and I had to pass it anyway it was the obvious place to go. Most other local people in need of fuel decided the same thing, driven there by the enormous cost of the tax on petrol after the recent tax hike and by the upwards move in oil prices.

It took me more than one quarter of an hour to queue to fill, fill, pay, then queue to check the tyres and to check the tyres.

It gave me plenty of time to get angry with this tax greedy government . No doubt they need the money to pay for all the fuel in Ministerial limos and airplanes as they jet around the world lecturing the rest of us on what to do.

The BBC today offered two visions of the future for Northern Rock. The first is nationalisation, with the Lib Dems recommending compulsory purchase of the Rock, apparently for nothing, wiping out all the shareholders. The second was another Treasury guarantee, this time to small long term shareholders so they do not lose out if things get worse from here.

Both of these ideas are absurb. The taxpayer already has too large a commitment to Northern Rock, and should not be asked to take on a bigger one. It is not the taxpayers job to own and run a mortgage bank. Nor can the taxpayer decide to subsidise one group of shareholders amongst the wider list of shareholders. The compulsory nationalisation of the bank with no compensation to sharteholders would probably trigger law suits from them claiming their shares still had value. The subsidy to some shareholders might trigger law suits from the others claiming the division was arbitrary and unfair.

The Lib Dem acting Leader has pursued a persistent campaign against the outgoing management of Northern Rock in a way which makes offering impartial advice difficult, and has displayed a lack of knowledge of legal obligations and how banking works. That presumably is why the BBC have him on so often on this subject. His advice would put the taxpayer at risk of legal actions by shareholders and leave the taxpayer with larger problems of how to manage the whole mortgage bank.

People ask what could be done? What should the Conservative position be? I think that is obvious, bearing in mind I would not have started from here, as I recommended pre-emptive action long before the bank experienced the run.

What the Chancellor should do with the Bank of England is treat this lending to Northern Rock as if it were a commercial loan. They must agree with Northern Rock the duration and interest payments, with a schedule of repayments. They must take sufficient security to guraantee that in no forseeable circumstance can the taxpayer lose money, and then force the mortgage bank to manage its way out of the debt to the agreed timetable. If they cannot agree a sensible timetable then they have to impose one which they think the bank should be able to meet. Above all they must have enough security to ensure no taxpayer loss. Then they need to agree all that with Brussels, which may be the most difficult part of the obvious remedy. I assume they got Brussels agreement in the first place to temporary assistance – they now need to define how long is temporary.

Yesterday I spoke to the Bruges Group meeting in King’s College Hall, London about the need for a referendum on the Constitutional treaty. I proposed that all should write to and lobby MPs who promised a referendum on the Constitution before the 2005 election, and who now say they will not vote for one on the result. The bets chance we have of stopping this undesirable further major transfer of power is to force a referendum. This has been made more difficult by the apostasy of the Lib Dems, joining forces with the government to stop one after promising one. We need more popular presure on both Lib Dems and possible rebel Labour MPs to have a chance of success.

Meanwhile, Mr Miliband was surveying the damage to his career that had had been done by failure to clear a speech on European integration with the PM before briefing the press. Hearing Mr Miliband on the radio today he is a very worried man, hastening to say he is fully behind the PM, and keen to do his bidding. Miliband joins Alan West, the wayward former Admiral, in having to do some more revision before opening his mouth in public about government policy.

Clearly Mr Miliband mistook the PM’s enthusiasm to ram the EU Constitutional treaty down our throats for genuine pro EU enthusiasm. Miliband wanted to wax lyrical about more defence integration, at a time when the PM was aware of the danger to his position of going ahead with the Treaty without a referendum. Brown used to brief in a Eurosceptic direction before he became PM, and must know he has moved such a long way from those briefings in his recent stance pro more EU integration through the Treaty. He has lost support in the Sun and the Times, and jeopardised what relationship he has with the Telegraph, as a result of his pro EU stance on the Treaty. To be seen to be advocating a European army before the Treaty is through would be unfortunate timing from the PM’s point of view. That can come later, once the dirty deed of ratification is done amidst protests that nothing important is happening!

It is interesting to see how lacking in political skill and understanding Mr Miliband is. This government is more treacherous than Blair’s or Major’s when it comes to Ministers making speeches or statements that say something new. It is important to nail down the PM’s view, and to understand whether the PM really means the view he expresses, if you are to have a quiet political life and a long one!

How many more interviews of these two are we going to hear on the BBC with no question about Europe?

Both these men believe in selling our country down the river to the Brussels bureaucracy.
Both campaigned for a referendum on the Constitution to win their seats for the first time in 2005, and both intend to rat on this promise when we get a chance to vote for a referendum on the Treaty soon.

Surely they should be asked why they have torn up their promise on the Constitution?
And shouldn’t they be asked why they want the organisation that has given us the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy to be given more power to mess up more of our country?

I still think Clegg will win, as friends of Clegg are clearly better at helping the media write anti Huhne stories, than the friends of Huhne are at hitting back. It is good to hear the underdog critcising the front runner more – it makes the egg and spoon race of the Liberal leadership a little more interesting.

The Chancellor has to be careful not to create a false market in Northern Rock shares.

The amount and duration of government lending to the mortgage bank is fundamental to valuing the shares. If this funding is to be there for as long as Northern Rock wants, the company will have one value. If the funding is to be phased down it has another value. If it is to disappear rapidly it has yet another value. In circumstances where the funding is withdrawn quickly the value of the bank then rests on what private sector funding is available at what terms. The differences between these values will be large.

In such circumstances it is vital to avoid a disorderly market in the shares that the government makes a statement tomorrow saying:

1. How much money has been lent to Northerhn Rock so far via the Bank of England?
2. How much more might be lent under the guarantees in place?
3. What time limit if any there is on this arrangement?
4. What if any agreement is there over repayment schedules?
5. Is this funding available to any buyer of Northern Rock, or only to the independent company that first asked for assistance?
6. If funding is available to a buyer of Northern Rock, what will be the requirements concerning repayment by them?

The markets need this information so people can value the shares sensibly. Parliament needs it so we can do our job protecting the taxpayers’ interests. I fear a false market in the shares unless we are told what the government’s position is on these and related matters.

As Gordon Brown must be fed up with Alex Salmond and the Scottish National party running rings round him, fomenting English dissent with the Union, I suggest the following advice to the Prime Minister:

To rime Minister
From :Senior Political Adviser

I understand your reasons for turning down a referendum on the EU Treaty, even though I still think it would have boosted your ratings and made you appear different to the age of spin under Blair. I have been thinking how you could at one and the same time show you are concerned about what people think, and deal with the Scottish problem created by Alex Salmond’s persistent campaigning against the Labour government from his platform in Edinburgh.

The one good thing in the opinion polls for us in Scotland is the way support for independence has fallen sharply. As Salmond is about creating the conditions for Scottish independence, his biggest failure so far is to see support for such a venture falling rather than rising, the more he does as First Minister. I suggest you take advantage of this by giving Scottish people a referendum on independence.

We could present this favourably. We are listening to the wishes of the Scottish people. We would be giving to the First Minister what he says he most wants, a vote on the Union, at a time when he least wants it. We would call his bluff.

It should be easy to secure a "Yes" vote for the Union in Scotland – it would be far more difficult in England at the moment. All the main parties apart from the SNP would line up with us, and the polls allow plenty of leeway for a poor campaign for the Union. Once we had secured it, it means the issue of Scottish independence is off the agenda for a generation, and Alex Salmond will go from hero to zero in three short weeks. It should create internal dissension within his party, and lead many of them to ask what it is all for if they have already lost the hearts and minds of the Scottish people on the main thing that matters to them. Thereafter we would be free to adjust the financial settlement between England and Scotland to some extent, blaming Salmond for any cuts that had to follow in Scottish spending. He would not get another term as First Minister, and his minority government may even break up before the end of their term.

It still leaves us the problem of England, but it would mean English nationalists could no longer look forward to the early exit of Scotland from the Union which many of them favour. My advice on that remains not to wind the English up more by pressing ahead with strengthened regional government which they hate. Indeed, why not as part of the efficiency reviews look at ways of reducing the cost and intrusiveness of regional government in England to show them you understood the meaning of the North East referendum result? At the time you thought the Blair/Prescott combination had really messed that up, so why not accept the verdict of a very Labour part of England on that issue?

This government often lacks a sense of irony and timing.

This week they proudly announced 20 minutes had been lopped off the train journey time from a London station to Paris, after substantial taxpayer expense.

At the same time they announced that they intended to introduce some security scanning at larger stations, including St Pancras, and make it more difficult to get a car anywhere near the station.

When I asked Jacqui Smith sometime ago to explain why they introduced such time consuming security at Heathrow but not at railway stations, I did so in the hope they would streamline the airport system. Instead the government, as always, has opted for levelling up misery rather than levelling down government encumbrance.

We may discover after further large expenditure on physical barriers and security systems at St Pancras that passengers lose the 20 minutes gained by a faster train in more delays getting to the station and on the station before being allowed to board the train.

It is high time transport experts and Ministers started thinking about total journey time, not just about station to station journey time. For many people in southern London a cross channel train from St Pancras is going to take a lot longer than one from Waterloo, as they will take longer to get to the station, whilst for those to the north of central London they will have a gain. It is important that we do not go from redistributing the pain to inflicting more on anyone trying to reach and use a station.

Improved security should come from improved concourse monitoring, better intelligence and intelligence inspired checks on those who might be terrorists, rather than on blanket checks on everyone.