I might have guessed when the Today programme phoned to invite me on they were not about to do a serious peice on the credit crunch, or provide some balance to the perpetual diet of pro nationalisation comment from the Lib Dems on Northern Rock. Apparently they are readers of this site - but of course the story they wished to do was Mr Coaker’s misrepresentation of a couple of sentences on rape, not a tough interview on the series of articles on how to handle the financial crisis.

When will the BBC learn to follow big stories like the credit crunch and Northern Rock in a balanced way? I have no intention of dancing to NU Lab’s media tune just to please the Today programme.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The latest decision to guarantee most of the liabilities of Northern Rock is a clanger.

There is no statement to Parliament, no statement of how much is now at risk, and no statement on how long our money is to be at risk.

Why cannot the government understand that it has to be tough bank manager to Northern Rock, lending the least it can get away with, imposing strict repayment timetables, and monitoring cashflow daily to ensure that all surplus cash is used for debt containment or repayment?

This government seems to think the taxpayer is made of money. Although Northern Rock is not a huge bank by international standards, judged in relation to the size of the Bank of England it is a collosus, and in relation to the UK public sector it is large.
Guaranteeing maybe ??100 billion is the equivalent of one fifth of stated total public debt, the same as the annual NHS budget, and almost one fifth of total public spending. They are crazy to do that.

Every one percent of error or loss on the whole Rock balance sheet is ??1 billion! Before this move 1% of taxpayers exposure was a mere ??250-300 million, already large but just about within the government’s command.

Northern Rock is too large to nationalise, and too large for us to guarantee all its liabilities. Unfortunately you cannot help some people - they are just determined to get it wrong.

Additional comment: we are now learning that maybe so far we are “only” guaranteeing ??60 billion. It is outrageous that Parliament and markets cannot be told how much is being guaranteed, and on what basis. The authorities lecture other banks about the need for transparency, and then commit the taxpayer to these large risks and vast sums without any proper explanation of how much, for how long, and on what basis.

I hear that today’s papers have a misrepresentaion of my blog on crime from no less a figure that Vernon Croaker, Home Office Minister for Crime Reduction.

He wishes me to apologise for comments which merely reported what is happening in courts on his watch, and fails to quote the balancing comments in my piece.

That is par for the course from Labour. No wonder we have such a crime problem, when the Minsiter charged with the task of reducing crime spends his days reading my blog - and presumably other Conservative blogs, and then sends out a press release and talks to journalists based on a misrepresentation of what I was saying.

I cannot recollect anything Mr Coaker has done to bring down crime in this coutnry - yet he has the power to act. In opposition we only have the power of words to try influcence those who can act, which is why I blog. Ministers should do, not blog.

Instead of playing silly media games, Mr Coaker, why not start tackling crime seriously.

Today’s news that the Bank of England is making liquidity available to the markets is a sensible move, but we should not expect too much of it. The mismanagement of the Northern Rock liquidity crisis has made UK based banks very worried about borrowing from the Bank of England, at the very time when they need to without fear of anyone concluding they are in difficulties because they are so borrowing. This is a tight year end for most banks, which accounts for their reluctance to lend to each other when they need to conserve cash to show stronger balance sheets in their December 31st Reports.

The Bank’s traditional weapons to fight a credit squeeze of cutting interest rates and offering liquidity in money markets have been blunted by the Northern Rock disaster. The Chancellor and Bank need to take other action at the same time as easing money to rebuild confidence. Without confidence, offering liquidity and cutting rates will not be enough to end the squeeze.

The first thing the Chancellor should do is to convene a meeting with the FSA and the Bank and work out a new regulatory structure for the money markets and main banks. We read in the press that the government thinks the right answer is to set up a Cobra type crisis committee chaired by the Chancellor the next time there is a run on a bank or some such similar problem. Far from rebuilding confidence, this type of irresponsible briefing to newspapers undermines it further.

We do not want to hear they are planning to handle a run on a bank better next time. We want to hear they are taking regulatory action to prevent a run on a bank. We do not want to hear that the second most important politician in the government is to be given the job of day by day supervision of money markets and banking as well as all his other duties. We do want a thought through response to the crisis, set out in a Statement to Parliament and followed promptly by whatever institutional reform is necessary.

I would suggest that the government does the following:

1. Give management of government debt back to the Bank of England, so the Bank sees all the government transactions in money and debt markets and influences the timing of them.
2. Give day by day supervision of the main banks back to the Bank of England: not because the FSA did badly, as they alerted the system to the crisis weeks before it became critical, but because the Bank of England needs to see day by day the positions of each bank in money market and debt instruments to inform its decisions about the needs of the system.
3. Reaffirm the Bank’s central role in ensuring a liquid and functioning money market, as the complement to its role in inflation fighting and establishing interest rates
4. To remind people that the Chancellor needs to be kept informed on a regular basis of general progress and urgently if there is a major problem as he has to explain the Bank’s actions to Parliament and has to make the decision on appointments to the top of the Bank.

Items 1 and 2 recreate the more powerful Bank before Brown’s reforms. The misnaming of these reforms as creating an independent Bank of England? has been particularly damaging, as they did the opposite in the crucial areas of debt management, bank supervision and running effective money market activities.

The government then needs to sort out Northern Rock. Some transparency would help. Taxpayers and markets need to know how much has been lent by the Bank to the Rock, when it will be repaid and what security has been taken to protect the taxpayer. If the government offers us more transparency of its own actions, it then has the moral authority to demand the greater transparency it says it is seeking from clearing banks over the valuation of their off balance sheet items. It should not nationalise Northern Rock, but act as its tough but concerned bank manager.

Restoring confidence does require market participants to be able to assess the damage done to the financial system by the decline in asset values on both sides of the Atlantic. The government must not kid itself that this is just a sub prime US crisis. UK market participants also want to know what impact the decline in UK commercial property values already well underway will have on bank balance sheets and the collateral they have taken for loans. They also wish to form a better view of how far residential property prices in the UK might fall, and what impact this could have ?along with job losses and the personal income squeeze on UK mortgage assets and loans held by banks.

There is a lot to do to relax the squeeze. It may be that once the year end is out of the way for the banks, and we have seen their year end balance sheets, things will start to loosen. To be sure they do the government needs to make that statement on the future regulatory position, and needs to get on with leading the market to greater transparency by explaining its own ?and the Bank’s complex and large transactions in markets since the Northern Rock run began.

Gordon Brown’s case for signing the Treaty without the referendum he promised was based on the proposition that he was relying on Parliamentary approval.

When I and others asked for a debate and a vote in Parliament before he went to Lisbon to sign, we were refused.

The Prime Minister went ahead and signed without either the promised referendum or a vote in Parliament. So much for democratic accountability, and for involving people and their elected representatives in the main decisions.

Today I asked him the simple quesiton, what will the government do if either the Commons or the Lords votes to modify the proposed legislaiton to implement the Treaty he has signed? He refused to answer.

The truth is, Parliament will be told it has to accept the Bill as drafted, because it has to accept the Treaty it is implementing lock stock and barrel. Gordon Brown is not going to go back to the partners in the EU to renegotiate any part of it which Parliament does not like.

The 20 days or so of promised debate on this Treaty in the Commons next year will be a farce. It is happening too late, as the Treaty is a done deal. We will not be told to take it or leave it, but to take it or take it. Doubtless the massed rank of Lib/Lab MPs will oblige, and the massed ranks of Lib/Lab peers.

No wonder people are fed up with politics. This government is playing silly games with such crucial matters. They spin they want Parliament to have more power, yet by this Treaty they have just given away a lot more of Parliament’s power, without a single vote that matters before they did so.

It’s been a tense run up to Christmas in the Commons. I have gone hoarse trying to get the government to understand the gravity of the credit crunch, and the need for more careful handling of the Northern Rock crisis. The inflation we now have is the result of low interest rates and sloppy lending in the past - mistakes made months ago. Today’s mistakes by the Bank and Treasury are the other way. There is too little lending and too little money available in the months ahead, which threatens house and commercial property prices, job losses, closures and bankruptcies. I have been asking for some action in the markets to ease the squeeze.

The Opposition has been pressing for a referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty. The government said that it would let Parliament decide instead of the people. When we pressed for a vote on whether the Prime Minister should sign the Treaty or not, Parliament was denied one! The PM signed the Treaty a few hours late without a single vote being cast in Parliament, let alone in the country, in favour of such a course of action.

I have offered a fall back way of handling the Northern Rock crisis. I would be happy if a buyer does emerge who will take responsibility and offer to repay the loans made by taxpayers, but there are worries about whether one will complete a transaction. I oppose early Administration, as it would be difficult selling off all the mortgages and other assets in these conditions at a discount, threatening to realise less than we need to pay off all the creditors including the taxpayer, after accounting for the big costs of such an administration. Administration is clearly not in shareholders interest and prevents them leading a recovery of the bank and its business. I do not think the taxpayer can afford to nationalise the bank. . It is bad enough having up to

As a legislator I have a confession to make. I do not read all the laws that are rammed through Parliament - there are too many of them. I do try to read all the Acts of Parliament brought before us for debate, but these days those Acts of Parliament are just the beginning. Once passed, they allow the government to go off and legislate in detail about that topic, pushing through Statutory Instruments that often are not debated at all in Commons. Many of them are put out in the summer when Parliament is not allowed to be in session, and many of them go through without a word in anger being said against them. Reading the Acts themselves does not leave me well informed about our law - I would need to read all the secondary regulation, sometimes put through a year or more after the original Act.

Many MPs do not even read the primary legislation we are putting through, because it is often abstruse, and vague, leaving much to be decided in the regulations that follow. Because this government limits the time available for debating all Bills automatically, the Commons these days tends to concentrate on a few items or controversies over each bill which might make it onto the media. The detailed work of scrutinising each line of legislation is left much more to outside lobby groups, consultants and advisers. Bill committees can only get so far in the time available, and only by considering the original text. Very often the government ends up with large numbers of amendments at the very end of the Parliamentary process, as by then the outside interest groups have woken up and explain why the law as originally conceived will not work.The Bill we agree to on Report and 3rd Reading may be very different from the Bill considered in Committee.

If even the legislators themselves have not read all the laws, let alone know their contents, it is expecting a lot that busy people trying to lead their normal lives should also know all the laws. There is simply too much law, and too much pettifogging law. Time was when Acts of Parliament were shorter, when there was less regulaiton on top of the Act, and when the principles that underpinned the Act were understood by many.

Today it is more difficult to guess what the law is from first principles, because so much of the law is bureacratic and silly, often achieving the opposite of what it sets out to achieve.

It is still the case that ignorance of the law is no defence, but I have increasing sympathy with generally law abiding people who simply had not got round to reading the reams of legislative paper being churned out by Brussels and Whitehall which might affect them and their businesses. It is easier for large companies, because they can afford expensive staff and consultants to alert them to relevant changes. It is a nightmare for small businesses, where entrepreneurs have better things to do with their time than become experts on EU directives and UK Statutory instruments.

The legislative factories are too efficient at churning out lots of law, but useless at producing good law which is clear, simple, and meets with general support. One of my main grievances with the EU constitutional Treaty is that is designed to make it easier for 27 countries to produce more laws. It is called institutional change to allow decisions to be made. Why one earth do we want more laws? Isn’t everything wicked - and quite a few things that are not - banned and regulated already?

If legislators are to read the laws they pass, and if the public is to have some chance of knowing what the law is, we need to get back to less law and better law. The EU model is based on ever more complicated controls and needless interference.

Too much law means a cowed people, unsure of what the law says, and hesitant about doing things and making decisions. Too much law is the enemy of enterprise and risk taking. Too much law means the talented go into the law and bureaucracy, where the easier returns can be made. Too much law makes life a misery.

Better government means less government, concentrating on those things that matter where a sensible law fairly enforced can make a difference.

Some papers tell me the world has changed, that giant steps have been made to saving the world.

Meanwhile, this morning the frost is so cold I will have to run the heating for longer. It’s 8.47 and I still need the electric llights on as it is dark.

I have not heard from Mr Benn about how the UK will suddenly turn from increasing its carbon output - as it has been doing in recent years - to cutting it. Maybe he hopes the credit crunch will get out of control, for a recession would lower our collective carbon footprint.

The Bali people could have saved their journey and waited for a meeting attended by a new President of the USA who may like them enjoy such junkets and be prepared to sign up to all sorts of cooling words.

The issue is, how does any of this change our behaviour?

Although Labour in so many areas has been all spin and no do, they have been revolutionary in their approach to crime and policing. They set out to greatly increase the number of criminals, by widening and deepening the criminal law, creating many new offences, and changing police priorities.

When they came power they inherited a world in which the public thought there was a hierarchy of crime that should be tackled by the police and prosecuting authorities. These included:
Murder (including terrorism),
Stranger rape,
Other violent attacks on people,
Break-ins and burglary, and
Criminal damage to property.
People expected the authorities to share their concerns about these crimes, and to order their priorities for investigating, charging and prosecuting accordingly. The vast majority of homeowners and people in work saw the police as their allies and wished to help them do a difficult job. There was a trust between the police and most citizens.

Labour set out to change all that. They decided to criminalise the hard working and the law abiding. They decided to set death in accidents alongside murder, seeking to inculpate drivers, railway executives, construction managers and others as similar criminals. They hassled to introduce corporate manslaughter as an offence, although they were reluctant for it to apply to parts of the public sector. All sensible people are worried by the large numbers of people who die on the roads, who might die in a train crash, or who are killed at work. We all welcome steps to reduce the numbers. We do not, however, think private sector Directors and managers regard deaths in such circumstances as just part of the price of delivering shareholder value. The company leaders I know want to prevent accidents like everyone else as most of us share that common human instinct to prevent harm. Such a feeling is reinforced by the fact that it could be their loved one or relative involved, and it is not good business to kill your customers. It is therefore strange for Labour to try to create some kind of equivalence between such deaths and murder, the thing people fear most.

They decided to set date rape alongside stranger rape. Again, none of us want men to rape women, but there is a difference between a man using unreasonable force to assault a woman on the street, and a disagreement between two lovers over whether there was consent on one particular occasion when the two were spending an evening or night together. Labour’s doctrine of equivalence has led to jury scepticism about many rape claims, in situations where it is the man’s word against the woman’s and where they had agreed to spend the evening or night together. Young men do not want to have to take a consent form and a lawyer on a date, just as young women have every right to go on a date and to say “No”, having it respected.

They decided to elevate speeding into the role of serious crime, on the false grounds that speeding is the main cause of accidents. Their own research shows that speeding is a factor in under 10% of all accidents, and that deaths and serious injuries on the roads are much more likely to be caused by acts of dangerous driving, by drivers using stolen vehicles, and by drivers under the influence of drink and drugs after a night out. Speeding brought two advantages for them. It could be policed by machines, as Labour put speed camera after speed camera into place, and it was bound to catch a very large number of otherwise law abiding people. Simple observation showed that most people drove at well over 70 on a motorway, and many at more than 40 on dual carriageways where the speed limit was set. It was an easy way of collecting more revenue from fines, and bringing in a whole new army of criminals.

They decided to create a range of new white collar crimes by regulating more and more. Ironically they also decided to bring in similar new regulations for the political class themselves, exposing politicians to the same kind of risks as managers and administrators in pensions, financial services, and a whole range of other services. They have succeeded in making many normally law abiding people worried sick about whether they have complied with everything they need to comply with, and have ensnared some into violations through ignorance or oversight.

They decided to elevate thought crimes to a more serious position than some crimes against people and property. I agree with the government in condemning racial abuse, religious intolerance and incitement to discrimination or violence. I still think that crimes of racial and religious hatred are far worse when violence is added to unpleasant words. The development of a much more extensive law code seeking to control what people say does not necessarily control what they think and do, but it has made the largely law abiding majority very nervous about saying what they think. It has also made intelligent political debate about issues like religion and immigration at times impossible.

Now that Labour has decided to rat on the police pay settlement recommended by the arbitrator there is ill will between police and government. I have sympathy with the police. If you join a no strike profession, and agree for your part to abide by an external body to decide your pay, you should expect the employer to do the same. It is unpleasant to see that someone is briefing, presumably from the government side, that the police are currently unpopular, as if that were a justification to pay them less. Any sensible analysis would show that what is unpopular are the priorities this government has set for our criminal justice system, and the wide increase in the number of offences and the number of potential criminals that has resulted from these changes.

To restore trust in the system we need a government that pays the police whatever the independent review body recommends, and reflects public priorities for policing in its law codes.

To Labour who have deliberately misrepresented this piece, let me repeat: I wish the law to protect women from rape, as all sensible people do, and made it clear that any woman has a right to say “No” which should be respected. I have drawn attention to the large number of cases where courts decide no rape has been committed. These are clearly not the same as rape and must be harrowing to all involved. As some people seem as determined as a silly Labour Minister to misrepresent this piece let me again make it clear that I condemn all rape and wish to see all rapists successfully prosecuted. No force should be used in any circumstances. The issue is so-called “date rape” where the courts judge there was no rape at all.

The reporting by the BBC has hit a new low of idiocy. To them there are good guys who want targets and bad guys who do not want targets. They seem to rely on EU spin, out to portray themselves as the new powerful good cops, taking on the bad guys, the US.

So let us examine what has in practise happened. The world currently has targets under Kyoto. Some of the EU good guys

EU members have shown their worst features at Bali.

The EU lectures the rest of the world on the need for targets, whilst several of its members will not hit their own Kyoto targets. Others like the Uk are allowing their carbon to rise after a good start at reductions years ago.

It thinks it is better to sign up to targets it has no ability to hit, instead of being honest and refusing to sign up to the targets in the first place.

It personalises its disagreements to the USA, when Japan and Russia are also against new tough targets, when Australia appears reluctant, and when India and China are standing apart from any idea of mandatory targets.

The EU should grow up, and learn that if the world is to reduce its carbon output it requires goodwill and understanding on all sides, not a combination of bullying and vain posturing. We will not cure the world’s CO2 problem unless India and China, Japan and Russia are involved as well as the USA.

The problem surrounds the belief in targets. There is a target to cut hospital acquired infections in the UK. I am sure all involved want to hit it. They do not stamp the diseases out, because they have spent all their energies on posturing and target setting, and not enough time working out how to solve the problem.

The world is in danger of being forced into the same nonsense over carbon output. Journalists should ask the people who want tough targets how they think they are going to be hit? Then they should ask why the things needed to hit the targets are not already been done anyway, as these same governments always tell us this is the most serious crisis facing mankind.

If we are to curb our carbon output we need to incentivise countries and people to do so. We need to sit down and discuss how we can share technologies and apply new ideas to cutting carbon output. Governments need to provide a lead, showing how they themselves can cut their own carbon footprint. I have had little response from the UK government to the long list of energy saving proposals I sent them. I recommend energy efficiency because it saves money and reduces our dependence on imports. The UK governemnt is well behind best practise in industry.

These governments also need to show some humility about the limits to their powers. They do not yet control every pensioner’s thermostat and every family’s oven. Until they do so they cannot guarantee to deliver a given figure by a given date.

They will not win the carbon war by going off to exotic locations by plane in large numbers, staying in classy air conditioned hotels, and having flaming rows with each other. Why should the rest of us have to pay for that? Why should we cut our own travel, heating and use of electric appliances, when our political masters do exactly the opposite? Why should we regard Al Gore as a role model, when we have seen his own large personal carbon footprint planted on the world?

I would take all these posturing governments more seriously on this subject if they showed some restraint. If they looked as if they were trying to get on with each other, to shorten the meeting and avoid the need for another carbon intensive junket, they would have more chance of getting the rest of us to follow. If they practised what they preached they would command more respect.

The BBC of course as part of its daily climate change propoganda just assumes the EU is right and the USA is wrong on all this. Even if that were true, it is not the way to get the world to an agreement. They should stop rowing about targets and get on to discussing what practical changes could be made so that people would be willing give up their carbon generating activities, or replace them with better technology to do the job.

It is never easy when you are double booked - you can end up satisfying no-one.

Of course the Liaison Committee of the Commons would have changed its date to question the PM if asked. The fact they were not asked implies that Gordon Brown planned to leave signing the EU Treaty to Miliband. When pressure was applied, he decided he had to do both. The EU was insulted because the PM did not appear at the official ceremony, and Eurosceptics were angry because he gave in without seeking the approval of either people or Parliament.

I am all in favour of the PM taking the Commons seriously. I am glad he turned up to answer questions from Committee Chairmen. I would think he meant he takes Parliament seriously if we had enjoyed a vote on whether he should sign the EU Treaty before he signed it. What is the point of Parliament debating it and voting on it now he has committed us? We know we will be told we are not now allowed to alter any part of it. We know the government’s majority will be used to steam roller it through, with the Lib Dems helping drive the roller. All those who voted UKIP or stayed at home because the Conservatives were not proposing immediate withdrawal from the EU should be kicking themselves now. The Conservatives are the only party voting against this Treaty and for a referendum. Pity there are so few of us.

The PM would have made himself a hero with many if he had refused to sign the Treaty and had demanded the retention of vetoes or a better deal for Britain when he took over from Tony Blair. He had spun that he was far more Euroscpetic than Blair. He told the press he hated these grand EU gatherings, and saw much of the EU back slapping as a needless diversion from important matters at home. It is a pity he did not remember this when he became PM. That explains the savage change in press attitudes towards him.

The most revealing answer he gave to the Liaison Committee was when he said he now spent more time reading the newspapers but less time enjoying them. That tells us that he is just as much a slave to the media as his predecessor, thin skinned and concentrating on the wrong reading materials. He should remember Margaret Thatcher’s advice to senior collegeaues - “Don’t read it” - when the press wrote unpleasant things. She was told daily what the thrust of criticism was in the press, but did not usually spend her time pouring over different editions. She did not hold meetings to deal with press stories - only meetings to deal with real problems which sometimes might also be appearing in the press.

As a Minister myself I spent little time reading newspapers, as I had so many official papers to read and write, and so many people to talk to. If I was doing my job properly I knew more about my subject than the press knew, so I did not need to waste my time catching up with the newspapers. If the newspapers ever knew more than me about something within my government remit, then I had to make sure we caught up quickly! This bunch of politicians are too reactive, too slow, and spend too much time on dealing with the media. By the time it’s in the media it is usually out of control. That’s why the departments are so badly run. Whilst Ministers read newspapers, officials put data on discs and send it through the post, and lend

The Central banks concerted action is a move in the right direction, and better late than never. It is part action and part spin, as it is designed to rebuild confidence to get banks lending to each other.

The reason they will not is that they are all worried about meeting their regulatory requirements.

It was the capital requirements placed on banks by regulators that led so many of them to bundle mortgages and other loans up into special vehicles and funds, and spread them around the market. Under the regulators’ rules this enabled banks to lend more with less capital. Encouraged by very low interest rates, they did this on a huge scale, with the regulators watching them and saying nothing. The regulators should have limited the amount of this lending by scoring it differently for capital purposes, or by demanding a more prudent valuation of the packages.

When interest rates were hiked by the Central Banks in the US, Europe and the UK, this started to undermine some of the loans made to individuals who struggled to pay. This in turn undermined the value of the packages of loans spread all round the banking system by regulatory requirement. This has now led banks to need to husband their own cash, limit their new lending and try to tidy up their own balance sheets, to offset the large losses they are having to report. No wonder they do not have money to lend to other banks. Now the regulatory system is doubling up the impact of the higher interest rates, and making banks sit on cash instead of lending it.The Regulators are effectively tightening after the damage has been done.

This is a massive disaster for the world’s regulatory system for banks, made far worse by the lurch of the Bank of England and the other main Central Banks from boom to bust in their approaches to interest rates and monetary management. The Fed has been more decisive in trying to correct for too much tightness. The Bank of England is still a long way behind the plot.

It is high time there was proper recognition of the crucial role played in this sorry story by the regulators. They designed a system which powered huge off balance sheet lending. They allowed it to be valued on a favourable basis with relaxed capital requirements on banks. Now they are doing the opposite, at the very time when they need to relax a bit to get banks able to lend to each other again to keep the system going.

There is at the moment a fashionable syllogism:

Regulation is there to prevent individual banks crashing and to prevent system failure

We have a tightly regulated system which has just witnessed 2 German banks and 1 UK bank get into trouble, and has witnessed a freezing of the markets

Therefore we need more regulation!

This is another area where we do not want more regulation. It is an area where we need governments to show some skill and some understanding of where they are in the credit cycle. At the moment we have boom and bust governments, allowing skewed regulatory requirements when money is too loose, and threatening too tight a regulation when money is too tight.That is the way to make a bad situation worse.

Today the Prime Minister will sign away important powers of self government from the UK to the EU.

At least we have forced him to do the deed himself with cameras to record it for posterity.

This Treaty sacrifices more vetoes than any predecessor Treaty. It helps create an EU foreign policy. It reinforces EU moves to its own defence and criminal justice policy. It gives far too much power to the central EU institutions, to be exercised in an undemocratic way.

Not a vote has been cast in favour of such treachery.

This week we were allowed a debate on European matters. The government again ruled out the referendum on this transfer of powers which they promised before the last election. They made that promise because they knew the transfer of power was unpopular, and they wished to avoid debating it properly in the General Election. They kept saying in the Election there was no point in discussing the Treaty because there would be a full 3 week campaign and vote on it on another occasion.

The government’s case, put by the chief butcher of our freedoms, Mr Miliband, was that Parliament will decide. He claimed that is right way to do it in a Parliamentary democracy.

I and other Conservatives pointed out in the debate that if Parliament is to decide, it has to have a vote on this Treaty before the Prime Minister signs it. Miliband denied us that vote this week, tabling a motion on the adjournement, and refusing moves by Bill Cash and others to debate a proper motion on whether to ratify the Treaty or not. It makes a mockery of the government’s claim, that Parliament will decide, and that Parliament matters.

The government’s offer of around 20 days of debate on the Bill to put the Treaty into practise is cynical and crude party politics, not democratic procedure. They hope 20 days of debate on the EU will allow them to brand Conservatives as fixated about the EU which does not emerge high up voters’ list of priorities. Every time we table an amendment of substance to reduce the impact of the Treaty we will be told that it cannot be allowed because the Treaty is done, dusted and signed. It will be 20 wasted days, with the government majority used to steamroller through a disgraceful Bill that the British people and their elected representatives have been denied a vote on.

This should be remembered as the death of democracy day. This is the day that the UK accepts an undemocratic Treaty which even contains powers to avoid these difficulties in future when the EU wants to grab more power from us.

Incompetence has become the middle name of this government. Incompetence at Revenue and Customs, losing many bits of data, culminating in the loss of personal records for 25 million people. Incompetence at DEFRA and the Environment Agency, unable to keep the drains and ditches clear or to use some JCBs to dig land drains capable of taking all the water their developments rush into inadequate pipes. As a result we had serious floods this summer and watch nervously every time we have heavy rain. Incompetence at a government laboratory complex letting dangerous disease escape into our cattle. Incompetence at the Home Office, unable to control our borders properly or to keep records of who has legally entered the country. Incompetence at the Health Department, where hospital acquired infections stalk the wards of many NHS hospitals. You name a department, and they have made blunders.

The incompetence that worries me most because it will damage so many people is the incompetence at the Treasury and Bank of England. The bungled rescue of Northern Rock has left taxpayers with a staggering

The BBC Today programme had a second go at Northern Rock this morning, and did allow Lord James to set out some of the reasons why nationalisation would be a bad thing. He reminded us that managing the Group would be very difficult for the government, there would be conflicts of interest with their role as Regulator and that there could be competition complications if a nationalised Rock used public money to take busienss away from others.

He might have added the biggest reason of all - taking on more than ??100 billion of liabilities would be a huge commitment for the taxpayer. We the taxpayers would undoubtedly lose substantial sums of money we could ill afford to lose, even if they did nationalise it for ??1 and faced down the lawsuits of aggrieved shareholders who would object to such a confiscation.

Lord James proposed something he called “work - out” instead. This is more commonly known as “run-off” in the financial world, and is used for for example for insurance companies in trouble where they have to be closed to new business. The existing book of business is then managed to a successful conclusion over the years. Of course that is the fall back option, should the current shareholders and directors fail to make a success of running it as a going concern, and if the takeover bids do not result in an agreed deal.

The governnment needs to do some straight thinking and some straight talking for a change.

IT HAS TO BE A TOUGH AND FAIR BANK MANAGER, MANAGING THE LOANS WITH A VIEW TO GETTING THEM REPAID AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.

IT HAS TO REMAIN THE REGULATOR OF THE FINANCIAL MARKETS BUT SHOULD STRENGTHEN THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND IN THIS FIELD WHERE IT TOOK SO MUCH OF ITS POWER AWAY TEN YEARS AGO

IT SHOULD RULE OUT BECOMING THE ONWER OF NORTHERN ROCK, AS THIS WOULD COMPROMISE ITS ROLES AS BANK MANAGER AND REGULATOR.

Today we were told that we were to receive “The first ever Children’s Plan” Is this a 5 year one left over from the Soviet Union we wondered? Will Marxist songs and invigorating exercise be essential ingredients, as a government backed play strategy is part of it? Apparently it goes alongside the 10 year strategy for young people which we already enjoy.

We discovered that at the core of the plan will be a switch from age testing to stage testing. Unfortunately the printed text from this incompetent Minister had that phrase the wrong way round, saying he would switch from stage to age testing. Although the first time he read it out he got it right, at a subsequent attempt he reverted to the wrong version in the House.

We learned that teaching English to all pupils was central to the task. The printed Statement itself offered:

Sentences without verbs
More sentences starting with “And” and “But”
Split infinitives

A highlight was the conclusion that new primary schools should be co-located with the “police, social care, advice and welfare services…”. When I asked him if he really thought a police station on the same site as a primary school would make the school more attractive to parents he looked puzzled as he did not seem to realise co-locating police with children at school could
mean siting the police station at the school.

We are promised extra money to ensure graduates involved with early stage learning, and to offer masters level qualifications to new teachers.

It all sounded like a further attack on the excellent private nurseries run by caring adults with some flair for looking after and enthusing young children.

Today was vintage “Today”. We had the plug for Vince Cable’s idiotic idea that we should nationalise Northern Rock, with no alternative comment or criticism. No-one has explained how taking over responsibility for all ??100 billion of the Rock’s liabilities would be better for taxpayers than merely lending them less than a third of that sum against security from their assets.

Then we had an interview with some inarticulate government Minister about forthcoming cuts in physics departments in Universities. Aggressive repititon of the same question - would the Minister cough up an extra ??80 million which someone had said they would like - wrecked any chance of the rest of us understanding the issues or the problem. His repitiatious statement that the cash available had increased did not advance our understanding much either. Neither questioner Sarah nor interviewee Minister had anything to say about where all the money that had been approved was going, and why the “cuts” all have to fall on physics teaching. It is pathetic that public debate is reduced to a slanging match or a dialogue of the deaf, with one side saying the money has gone up and the other saying it’s not enough. There is never analysis of how much is spent, how it is spent and how efficient and effective the recipient is. Politics should be about priorities, not about sandbagging the taxpayer at every available opportunity.

It was yet again a very expensive Today programme for taxpayers- after wanting to take on ??100 billion of Rock risk saving some physics for ??80 million was a bargain! Will they never give voice to those of us who want to save the taxpayers money and run puiblic services better?

This is almost a first - you won’t often see this, amidst the long list of things to repeal.

I do think the Competition authorities in the Uk should make clear that we will not accept take-over bids for UK based companies by sovereign wealth and investment funds. I do not think we should allow national governments to be able to nationalise UK companies and do with them as they wish, especially where Uk buyers have restricted rights and opportunities to buy assets in those countries.

It would be quite easy to amend Competition law or clarify Competition practise, by stating that all such attempted takeovers would be automatically blocked by the Competition authorities as anti competitive.

Last Wednesday John Redwood met Gary Grange and Mike Dalton from the Post Office to discuss the possible closures of Barkham and London Road sub Post Offices.

John Redwood said he would need to know public reaction from the people making up to 400 visits a week to Barkham Road and up to 750 to London Road. He was keen to stress, however, that if the Post Office was to have any chance in persuading Wokingham people this was a good idea they needed to make better arrangements for alternative provision.

The main office in Broad Street, Wokingham, is already very busy. It needs more than seven counter places, and the accommodation for vans, lorries and sorting staff is old and inadequate. John suggested they moved the sorting activity to a new location in better premises with good road access, and expanded the shop whilst modernising it. The back area could be redeveloped for a more suitable purpose and cash released from the project.

John Redwood said:

It is pathetic that the government has a department for regulatory reform and legislation to deregulate, but no idea on what to repeal.

I submitted 65 proposals to them before the last election, held a Parliamentary debate, and sent them the proposals again last year. There are proposals in Freeing Britain to Compete, the Conservative Party’s Economic Competitiveness Policy Review.

Have they lost these as well? Maybe they put all our proposals on a CD and put it in the post!

Al Gore today recommends once again higher taxes and a higher carbon price to cut CO2 emissions. He wants to tax the poor off the roads and let them stay cold in winter. Rather like Maria Antoinette, he would probbaly say “let them walk and wear thicker woolies”. There is no mention of incentives and technology, the magic weapons in the battle to reduce our dependence on burning carbon.

Meanwhile, the UK government has decided to take another tilt at windmills. Urging more renewables (a good thing), they are ordering many more wind farms (a more questionable thing). I hope it is windy on Christmas day when we all want to cook our turkeys. It would not be good being told by the electricity industry in 2020 we will have to wait for a windy day to have Christmas lunch.

The government should also audit the carbon needed to make the wind turbines, install them, maintain them and replace broken parts. They should then add in all the carbon expanded to make stand-by plants for days when it is not windy. Then they might see that “wind wind” is not always “win win”.

I went on my annual pilgrimage to see the local Premier side in action yesterday at the kind invitation of a constituent. As a circketer who likes most sports, I went with some trepidation and heavy heart, expecting to see a Liverpool masterclass in ball control, passing, and the occasional goal to give them victory over the home side. How wrong I was!

Instead I saw the multi millionaire multinational Liverpool side outplayed by Reading. They were not just outplayed, they were made to look ordinary. At times Liverpool looked like a school team with everyone chasing the ball, failing to stay in position, run into space and to play an open passing game. I saw tall talented Crouch lose balls in the air because the shorter Reading players jumped higher with more purpose. I saw great Liverpool players lose heart, or fail to show the energy and the skill you expect of such highly paid and highly rated players. I saw Reading players give time and again of their best, culminating in a magical free kick drifting into the Liverpool goal via a Reading head, and a breathtaking run by Harper to craft a goal out of very little by running round the goalkeeper. Hunt gave his best for 90 minutes, and was everywhere harrying the Liverpool team.

The extraordinary decision to call Gerrard off at 70 minutes when he was the main hope of Liverpool, playing with power, determination and skill made it look to us as if the manager had surrendered the tie with 24 minutes still to go. Liverpool lacked punch and the will to win once Gerrard had gone, and not had enough of it with him trying to rally them when he was on.

If I was a shareholder in Liverpool I would want to know why such a team performed so badly for so much money. As someone who believes in free markets I do not begrudge talented people the large sums the global market and global brands can bring. But if top players expect millionaire pay we should expect millionaire performance, and should expect a big element of the pay to be performance oriented. The Reading stars earned their bonus, more modest though it doubtless was.

It was a great day for Reading fans. I enjoyed it enormously, and thought it most amusing to see how little at times great football club owners buy for all their money! We English like the underdog. Yesterday the underdog was Cruft’s finest.

Belgium remains hopelessly split. It is in a way the very embodiment of the European dream. Regionalism in Belgium has been fostered so successfully that the Flemish speaking part of the country now wants nothing to do with the Walloon or French speaking part of the country. The country has quite enough adopted EU law to keep it going. The Eurocrats only worry is there is no longer an official government in place to keep on forcing the new Directives onto the Belgian people. It’s a lovely irony, that European regionalism has destroyed the last vestiges of Belgian national authority (never strong),which in turn weakens the political method for forcing new EU law onto people in Belgium!

It also shows the power of regionalism, especially when it is backed up by linguistic, cultural and economic differences. The EU project generally is likely to splinter other nations. Indeed the scheme is based on divide and rule - setting Catalan against Castillian, Scot and English, Southern Italian against Northern Italian, Walloon against Fleming, Basque against Spaniard. The EU felt that if it weakened state power it could occupy the vacuum it helped create by taking new state power at the EU level.

What is might discover, in the longer term, is that it cannot contain the petty nationalisms it has helped release. The EU is playing a dangerous game with people’s snese of their own identity. The collapse of Belgium may not in the long run be as good as some EU fans think from the EU point of view. Member states have been very important so far in preventing dissent with the EU from getting out of hand, because they still have some legitimacy. The EU has no similar legitimacy to put in place, once the member states lose it as they have in Belgium.

When I first heard the news that the EU-Africa summit would produce a declaration to promote democracy at its heart I marvelled that African dictators had a sense of humour forcing this statement onto a reluctant EU. The EU after all is famed for ignoring the wishes of voters at every turn. They tell countries that hold referenda to re-run them if they reach the wrong answer. They work with secretive governments to throttle promised referenda at all costs.

Then I guessed it was more likely the EU, with its usual brass neck, presumed to telll Africa democracy would be good for them whilst ensuring it was suppressed at home. The EU did not raise an eyebrow when the North East of England voted down regional government and the UK government carried on with it nonetheless, because regionalism is an EU idea. The EU doggedly pursued the development of its Constitution that both France and the Netherlands had voted down. It has conspired to deny both countries and the UK a referendum on the slightly revised version it now insists on. The EU always wants a second referendum if some European power grab is voted down in a first anywhere in the EU. The EU can never understand the word “No” about its plans to take power away from European peoples.

For once I agree with Gordon Brown - he was right to stay away from this conference. It was a pity that the UK was still represented. I see no advantage in the world being told of the importance of democracy by the likes of Mr Mugabe.

Why is the EU so blind to the follies of its position? Is this the same EU that lectures us all on the need to curb climate change? If it is the most serious challenge facing the planet why organise such an expensive junket for many politicians and advisers to fly to, burning carbon on the way? Going from jet to limo to 5 star hotel does not set a good example to the rest of us who are told that taking the family saloon to Tesco is bound to wreck the planet.

Is this the same EU that imposes agricultural protection on the 27 member states with a view to stifling African agricultural development by closing or restricting our markets to them ? Signing a declaration that we want more trade with Africa does not remove the main obtstacle, EU agricutural trade restrictions. It’s just more warm words and humbug.

Is this the same EU that imposed a travel ban on Mr Mugabe because his regime offended even the EU by the magnitude of its assault on civil liberties.? If a travel ban made sense last month, why could it suddenly be lifted this month when there was an EU boondoggle? Doesn’t it show there is no morality or backbone to EU foreign policy, no wish to apply pressure to evil dictators? What is the point of posturing against him one month, and welcoming him as a valued friend and adviser around the conference table the next?

Why is the EU spineless when dealing with dictators, yet spiteful when dealing with the democratic views of the people like us who pay its bills? When will they learn that we are angry about the way the European political elite wastes our money, ties us up in bureaucratic and legal knots, and embarrasses us on the world stage. We want an end to its artificial regions, an end to its expensive posturing, an end to its refusal to listen to the views of the taxpayers.

This summit makes the EU look discredited and dishonest. If they cannot take a stand against Mugabe, if they sign up to democracy when thwarting it at home, people will conclude they cannot be trusted.

Please can we have our country back? We want to make our own foreign policy decisions.