Dec 16 2009
Parliament cannot take too much reality
Yesterday I tried asking Ministers some questions. I should have known better. Ministers in this government cannot handle new or straightforward questions. The intelligent ones sense the answers will be bad news and duck.The less well informed ones simply haven’t a clue.
Ministers of both kinds stick to the bumper Labour book of spin. They get by with just a few phrases that have to be repeated endlessly, in worst propaganda style.
In Treasury Topical Questions I asked what they thought of the independent IMF research which shows that as countries increase the proportion of their economies that they spend on state programmes, so their growth rate slows. The Chancellor decided to let one of his juniors duck that one, himself declining to even try an answer. I was treated to the usual nonsense about how they would be getting the deficit down once the Election was out of the way. I had not asked about either the deficit or its reduction, but that clearly was the defensive spin for all tricky questions. I was down as a deficit cutter.
I was also able to ask a question of Miss Cooper (Mrs Balls). She is one of the brighter Ministers. She made a statement about how she wanted to spend another £400 million over eighteen months on employment subsdies, benefit changes and other ideas to promote more jobs. To show her I was not trying to make a party political point I prefaced my question by saying I shared her wish to see more people in jobs. I asked how many additional unsubsidised sustainable jobs she expected to see after the eighteen months spending had expired as a result of her programme.
You would have thought this would have been the most basic question she as a Minister requiring this action would have asked her officials when they were drawing it up. You would have hoped that each proposal for extra spending would have been assessed by her and her staff on the basis of how much contribution they thought each would make to generating more sustainable employment. It was, after all, a jobs package.
The Minister gave a long non answer. There were no figures. She correctly pointed out that the general success or failure of the overall economic policy would have an impact on unemployment. I knew that, but had not asked about that. She was unable to make a single intelligent observation about the impact of her special measures on future employment numbers and implied they simply had not done the homework.
It suggested to me that this was another programme just for an election. It was a policy designed to show “We care”. It was a dividing line with a non existent Tory government past that apparently did not care and had done nothing, yet some of the schemes were very reminiscent of schemes previous Conservative governments did put in and did evaluate in terms of cost per job.
The age of spin is still with us. It is corrosive of Parliament and politics. Of course all past governments have wanted to present their case well and have understood the arts of media communications. Good governments also studied the underlying problems, and sought solutions that would work on the ground. Then policies were not just for effect or for another press release. They were designed to change things for the better and could be explained by Ministers who had asked the right questions and assessed their proposals on the basis of how effective they might be at tackling the underlying problem.
20 Responses to “Parliament cannot take too much reality”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
John, you know that they’re not there to answer questions.
For all the use these Q&A sessions are, they might as well not bother. It would be as much use to send all the MPs home for a three week holiday….
colin Rennie Reply:
December 16th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Why not send all MPs home for a 5 year unpaid holiday and let the rest of us get on with running our businesses and the country.
Have any of them deemed to answer how heroin production in Helmand today compares to 2001?
Or why we now have the highest inflation in the G7?
Or why the interest rates paid in the market place on UK gilts compares to double A countries not triple A countries? (thus we are de facto downgraded)
It’s the late 1970’s again with (yet) another labour government going bust in an incompetent muddle ~ all we need is another bin strike. Actually, strike that, what we need is another Margaret Thatcher, not another Ted Heath!
Well at least you are asking some sensible questions, more than some in your Party.
Simon Heffer has a very good article in todays Telegraph, about the Tories core voters, and how they are being let down by the performance of your front bench on the economic question.
He also sings your praises about your talents on this very subject, although not sure you would want this type of publicity, as it probably will do you no good in your leaders eyes, which is a shame.
Unfortunately, the Government has no interest in projections for policies that look beyond June next year.
This is all about survival – plain and simple.
Miss Cooper – one of the brighter ministers – I must have missed something in her numerous repetitive non answers on TV when No.2 at the Treasury.
Stuart Fairney Reply:
December 16th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Allow me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T-YOtPZY4M
We see this every time a politician is asked a question they don’t like to answer. It’s one of the major reasons the public is disengaged from politics.
Why does no one every say, “You didn’t answer the question!”.
And Mr Redwood, would you be/are any different when you are asked a question you do not want to answer?
The latest economic ‘dividing line’ seems to be the timing of the deficit reduction. Labour will wait longer before tackling the problem.
I was wondering how realistic this is. Perhaps the markets are only calm at the moment because they expect a Tory victory. If Labour pulled off a surprise win, the ‘Gnomes of Zürich’ might have their own ideas about how quickly the deficit should be reduced. Labour might be forced into an emergency budget, where they would essentially implement the Tories’ deficit reduction plans.
This situation is horribly unfair, because your policies are helping the current government.
The GBP 400m that Ms Cooper will spend is GBP 400m that will not be invested by the private sector from which it has been excised. So the question becomes why the minister believes she is so much better qualified to spend the money than are the people who actually earned it. My answer is obvious – she’s not. Her answer is bound to contain whorls of spin because the argument that state spending will drag an economy out of recession is fallacious.
Moreover, there is an extremely frightening aspect to JR’s description of the parliamentary process. Ask yourself this question: who exactly are these people who are making decisions to forcibly remove half of the wealth created by the population of this country to spend it in ways that they see fit? Their answer would probably be along the lines of “we are the democratically elected representatives of the country, making decisions in the best interests of the population as a whole”. But Thomas Jefferson, reputedly, said this: “Democracy is three wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.” Far from being a population whose liberties to pursue life according to our own measure are treasured, our parliamentary settlement is eroding our freedoms, sponsoring injustice and paving the way for tyranny. As JR’s analysis shows, once elected to government our parliamentarians forget their humility and their promise to serve. Rather, their focus is on protecting their position in power. The more extreme the national condition, the more extreme the focus on power. We will see the consequences of this in two or three years’ time, when the full impact of the recovery and stimulus measures imposed by the government comes home to roost – in the form of inflation and spiralling debt. An economic crisis of that magnitude will require exceptional political intervention, the argument will go.
Given that the Conservatives will almost certainly be in power when the real economic calamity arrives (public sector debt spiralling out of control, taxes rising, growth collapsing and inflation rising) can I implore you, JR, to remind your colleagues of their free market roots. Get Mr Cameron to spell out the crisis that lies ahead that can only be mitigated by the liberation of enterprises from the intrusion of the state?
Sally C. Reply:
December 16th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
I agree with everything you say up to the last sentence. Spelling out the problems of an overblown, intrusive state is not going to win more votes for the Conservatives. Most people do not care. The unpalatable truth is that if Yvette Balls were to say that she was going to spend £400 million of taxpayer money buying new cars for the unemployed, that would attract a lot more votes – and I wouldn’t put it past the Labour party to do that!
JR, I don’t know how you keep your cool.
As they say only applied re the governments spin machine and for that matter policies, garbage in, garbage out.
As soon as you mentioned Miss Cooper (Mrs Balls) I just knew that you were going to follow it up with a statement about getting a long non-answer from her. It’s unbelievable how much she can talk without actually saying anything meaningful.
Leni, from Lithuania today: “There are no jobs.” Us next…..
With the socking great majority that we the voters gave Our Tony at the last election (Remember “Vote Blair get Brown?”), the PM doesn’t have to do much more than command. His inner cabinet receives their orders on exactly what they must say and their very jobs depend on their loyalty.
Other ministers, like poor Mr Ainsworth, just get told.
Mr Cameron appears to be the same: an inner cabinet of five people. the rest are not really in the loop. So that, at any rate, will not change. I do hope he visits the Tea Room where all the best PMs have lingered.
With a slightly smaller majority, as seems likely, though, the Lib Dems may have to be persuaded by the bigger parties, and that might bring back a spark of life into a moribund and largely empty House of Commons.
Let me get this straight. £400 million to subsidise particular jobs, combined with an increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions. In other words, a tax on employment in successful businesses to prop up jobs in unsuccessful businesses. This is not just mildly eccentric; it is positively gaga. It is totally counter-evolutionary. We are right back to the days of Balough, Kaldar and the Selective Employment Tax.
Am I the only one who feels sorry for the ghost of Charles Darwin. His brilliant insight was rubbished by the religious freaks of his day, and in the modern world there are many people who say we shouldn’t ‘do evolution’ any more.
Mark Parker Reply:
December 17th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
I am not familiar with Balough, Kaldar and the Selective Employment Tax. Can you expland on this?
Mark Reply:
December 17th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Tommy Balogh and Nicky Kaldor were economists who advised Harold Wilson’s government (both were of Hungarian ancestry and made Lords). SET was introduced in 1966, not long before the 1967 devaluation and IMF intervention. Its madness is nicely captured in this Time article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836408,00.html
Being a tax per head, it killed off lower paid service sector jobs in droves.
Lindsay McDougall Reply:
December 17th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
The Selective Employment Tax (SET) was introduced in 1966 by Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan in the Wilson government of that time. It was the brain child of two Hungarian economic advisors to Callaghan, Nicholas Kaldor and Thomas Balogh (sorry for getting the spelling wrong).
What SET involved was taxing companies involved in the provision of services for each employee on the payroll. Much of the money collected was then payed out in subsidies to manufacturing companies, particularly those involved in exporting, again on a per employee basis. Quite apart from the army of bureaucrats, spies and Little Hitlers needed to administer the thing, the idea was quite mad. Had it ‘worked’, it would have led to lean and mean service industries and overmanned industry, not the increased production and exports they were aiming at.
The tax was quietly dropped after a couple of years – Harold Wilson knew a loser when he saw one – and the reputation of Hungarian economic advisors dropped like a stone. It didn’t do too much for James Callaghan’s reputation either.
Mark Parker Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 10:24 am
OK, thanks for the explanation.
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