Mr Redwood: Let me start by saying a few words about my new hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karl McCartney). I am sure that the House will join me in praising him for his speech and in wishing him every success now that he has joined us here. It is good to hear someone with a radio face with a passionate voice for his constituency. If he continues that, I am sure that his constituents will be well served. It was great to be reminded of the hugely important Lincoln cathedral, which many of us have visited and admired, and of the fact that Parliaments were once more peripatetic. In those days, there was probably less security and fewer people in the baggage train, so it was probably cheaper to take Parliament around the country than it would be today. I fear that he might have quite a long wait before the next Parliament at Lincoln.

We are here to debate tax avoidance and evasion. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), but I think that the House is pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp if it seriously believes that there is £120 billion of tax evasion and avoidance generally, and that there is substantial tax evasion and avoidance in particular on corporation tax, which we are debating, that we can tackle and get the money in from. Every hon. Member would like to think that there is an easy way out of the financial crisis. If there were a great pot of money representing tax dodging that we could identify and bring into the Treasury, it would have been done by now. It is not a matter of party dispute. If there are tax evaders out there whom we know about, they need to be brought to book-we all agree with that. Labour spent 13 years trying to do it, but the hon. Gentleman does not think that it did it well enough, and is now urging the coalition Government to do it. The coalition Government will pursue it in similar ways, with similar intensity, to the outgoing Labour Government. I fear that they will be no more successful than the previous Government at finding that £120 billion pot of gold because, in all honesty, I do not think that it exists in the form that hon. Members wish that it did.

Let us take evasion-the more serious case. I am sure that everyone in the House agrees that if someone is deliberately evading tax, it is a criminal offence. The House has said that it is a serious offence, and made it a criminal offence, or series of criminal offences, and we wish to see those people pursued and prosecuted. In the case of corporation tax, for example, if a company deliberately misreports its income, and says that it receives less income than it earned-one way of misleading the tax authorities over corporation tax-the book should be straightened, the record corrected, and they should be prosecuted. If the company deliberately overstates its costs to try to suppress its profits-the other way in which people could evade corporation tax, if they were seeking to do so-that, too, should be something that the authorities can identify on investigation, leading to a correction of the accounts. False accounting would be involved, as well as the criminal offence of tax evasion, and there are methods of tackling it. The state has a range of powers, introduced by Governments of all persuasions, to allow company investigation, including second-guessing the audit, and going in if it is thought that crooked directors are misrepresenting their costs or revenues, and the auditors have missed it. I wish my right hon. and hon. Friends the Ministers in the Treasury every success in trying to capture genuine crooks, because we do not need them in our community, and we need to flush them out.

There is another kind of failure to pay the amount of tax that the corporation tax authorities think is correct which, in some people’s language, could be evasion. A company may report honestly its revenues and costs, but comes to a different conclusion from the Revenue about what the taxable profit should be, given its income stream and costs. It attempts to understand the complexity of the law-it may well have its own tax advisers and auditors in support, because any medium or large company does not do this in isolation; the directors want the comfort of knowing that they have serious tax experts behind them, because of the complications of the law-and it makes its case to the Revenue, which disagrees with them. I do not think that that should be treated as a severe criminal offence leading to the imprisonment of the directors. What should usually happen-and what tends to happen-is a fierce of exchange of views between the Revenue, which is trying for one view of the tax, and the company and its tax advisers with a different view. Eventually, agreement is reached. If it is thought to be a bad case, the Revenue has the power to impose financial penalties as well as to secure the tax that it thinks that it is owed.

Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab): I am interested in the right hon. Gentleman’s train of thought, but will he clarify something? Is he saying that there is no such thing as avoidance of corporation tax, or is he saying that anything that comes about is just the result of a misunderstanding?

Mr Redwood: Has the hon. Gentleman been in the Chamber while I have been talking? The first part of my speech was about bad cases of evasion in which a company has deliberately misrepresented its financial condition. Like him, I think that those cases should be taken seriously, and prosecution should result. I am going on to the second set of cases, in which evasion is thought to have taken place according to the Revenue, but when we look at what is going on there is a genuine disagreement between one group of tax experts, lawyers and company advisers and another lot advising the Revenue, which sometimes needs to consult counsel on these complicated matters to try to reach a conclusion. Such cases are often sorted out slightly more amicably, and rightly so, because the companies concerned were obviously not trying to do down the Revenue but to pay the minimum amount of tax to comply with the law, as most sensible people try to do, and there was a disagreement that had to be sorted out sensibly. That might result in financial penalties or in an agreement not to have financial penalties, but usually the Revenue has a certain amount of strength in having its way.

That is evasion, and then there is avoidance, which is much more problematic. I am sure that billions-worth of avoidance is going on all the time, because it is a perfectly legal approach; one man’s avoidance is another man’s sensible tax planning. That is why I asked the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington for an example relating to personal income tax, which is easier for people listening in to this debate to understand. Many small savers switch from tax-paying savings to tax-free savings, which is avoidance of tax, is it not? They realise that they can do better by having a tax-exempt savings product; surely we should not condemn that, because it is about someone trying to get the most for their money. Indeed, that is something that the Government positively encourage. They encourage tax avoidance because they say, “We have the unique power to provide tax-exempt products for savings, and we want you to buy ours rather than the taxed private sector product.”

Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab): My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) asked a telling question, and I am not sure what the right hon. Gentleman’s answer is. The question is this: does he deprecate any tax avoidance, or is he saying that as long as it is strictly in compliance with the law, anything goes? As he knows, there have been some very ingenious, and indeed expensive, schemes used by companies to avoid paying tax, clearly contrary to the spirit of the law but arguably in compliance with the letter of the law. Does he not deprecate that kind of activity?

Mr Redwood: I do not want to get drawn into the moral issue of deprecating or not deprecating: what I am interested in is the efficiency of revenue collection and the clarity of the law for the people having to meet it. It is the job of this House to have a clear tax law that people have to follow, and we often have these debates to try to carry out that task. Sometimes tax law is so complicated, or people outside this House are so ingenious, that there are ways round it that I might disagree with and the right hon. Gentleman will often disagree with, and that is when we come back to legislate again. We say, “We haven’t done our job well enough. People are avoiding tax more easily than we would like them to be able to, and so we’re going to add another complication”-or sometimes even a simplification or clarification-”to the tax law to try to capture that.” That is the job of this House. The shadow spokesman and I will sometimes agree that an avoidance scheme goes too far and we need to legislate to stop it; on other occasions, we will disagree. I will say, “That’s perfectly rational tax planning-don’t be such a party pooper”, he will say, “I don’t like people getting away with that kind of thing”, and we will have our disagreements.

Mr Love: Given the thrust of the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks, does he agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) that cutting the number of HMRC employees by 10,000 might not assist in the process that he is outlining of ensuring that those who take part in avoidance are brought to book?

Mr Redwood: It would clearly be a false economy to cut back on the number of staff needed to tackle serious cases of tax evasion; I do not think anybody wants to do that, and I certainly would not recommend it to Front Benchers. It would also be wrong, however, to exempt Revenue and Customs from pressure to improve efficiency and to do more with less at a time of enormous strictures on public spending. I hope that there will be ways to accommodate the hon. Gentleman’s wish for us still to have Revenue and Customs pursuing tax evasion and our coming back to legislate on tax avoidance that it thinks is going too far, as we have under past Conservative and Labour Governments, and that that will be done efficiently and effectively in the way that we wish to see.

John McDonnell: To follow up on the question of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), are there any measures that the right hon. Gentleman would consider tax avoidance that should be brought within the purview of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, such as the large-scale offshoring mechanisms that corporations use to avoid tax? All that the amendment asks is for a report to be made about the measures that the Government will take on such issues.

Mr Redwood: I do not necessarily disagree about the need for us to consider another report on tax avoidance and evasion, but I am trying to set some of the parameters for that report and the framework of the debate. This is an opportunity to discuss why the matter is difficult, and why past Governments have not lived up to the hon. Gentleman’s expectations. I have no problem with having a report, although I do not want to link it to the particular corporation tax rate in clause 1, as his amendment would.

John McDonnell: I am grateful for that response. Successive Governments have pragmatically examined the latest tax avoidance mechanisms and then sought to work through them systematically to address them. The amendment is intended simply to bring forward a report on those mechanisms so that the House can have more oversight of that process.

Mr Redwood: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am all in favour of more oversight by this House, and the more informed a debate we can have about this and other issues the better. Public debate in Britain has been stifled in recent years for all sorts of political reasons that we need not go into. It is better if we can bring such debates out into the open, but we need collectively to think through what avoidance is and what evasion is. If we do not know that, we cannot hope to guess its scale or optimise our measures for dealing with the features of it that we do not like. I am trying to deal with avoidance, on which I believe there is more scope for disagreement than on evasion, which we are all against.

I return to the point that some people’s avoidance is a bad practice and other people’s is common sense. Let us take another example of a matter on which the Government encourage avoidance. I gave one from personal tax, but we ought to be concentrating on corporation tax. The previous Labour Government were keen to encourage avoidance of corporation tax because they wanted companies to invest-a perfectly worthy aim. They said to companies, “If you invest more than you otherwise would do, that is an allowance against your corporation tax so that you will be able to avoid some tax in order to invest more.” One debate that the Committee will have is whether this Government are cracking down too much on investment avoidance by removing some of that allowance and giving everybody the benefit of a lower rate. I hope that Opposition Members will see that they are not as pure as they think they are on avoidance, and that there are certain types of avoidance that they see as a very good thing. It is a well-known feature of many tax structures to encourage avoidance in order to encourage good works or change conduct.

Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab): The right hon. Gentleman talks about avoidance all the time, but is it not about the Government giving companies incentives to invest, rather than allowing them to avoid tax?

Mr Redwood: The hon. Gentleman has made my point beautifully. I have just said that one man’s avoidance is another man’s tax incentive-that is exactly the point that I am trying to make. There are good types of avoidance and bad types. Sometimes all the parties in the House agree that a certain type of avoidance is bad, and then it is in our own gift, because we are the legislature, to table business on any day to stop that tax avoidance in its tracks by changing legislation explicitly and clearly to send a signal. At other times we come together to legislate in favour of tax avoidance, because there are things that we wish to encourage. As he rightly says, sometimes the best thing to do is to give people a lower tax bill to encourage such procedures. That is surely encouragement of tax avoidance of a benign kind and a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Mark Tami indicated dissent.

Mr Redwood: The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but what else is it? Why are people investing more than they otherwise would have done? Because they are allowed to avoid tax and pay less tax than they otherwise would.

Stephen Timms: The right hon. Gentleman is uncharacteristically abusing the English language. To say that something that is explicitly provided for in the law is tax avoidance is not what most people mean by the term.

Mr Redwood: Fine-that is a very good linguistic point, and if the right hon. Gentleman wishes to define tax avoidance more narrowly as actions that we all disagree with, we can do that and it makes the debate much simpler. However, he has to understand that there are a series of grey areas, and it is not a black-and-white matter. There is not a set of actions that everybody agrees are tax avoidance and another set that everybody agrees are perfectly reasonable incentives or sensible ways of paying less tax.

Let us get on to the more difficult corporation tax cases, having dealt with the investment one-everybody in the House thinks that investment is a good thing and that corporations should therefore pay less tax one way or another, either through the rate of tax or through explicit relief.

Let us consider overseas offshoring, which has already been mentioned. Multinational companies have some flexibility about where they invest, borrow and carry out their activities, and they regard the taxation regime as one of the important considerations in determining all those matters. If it is benign, they are more inclined to borrow the money, put up the facilities and earn the full profits in the country concerned by carrying out the whole process and adding all the value. However, if the taxation regime is more hostile to enterprise, they might make different arrangements. Any country that takes part in the multinational free enterprise world has a choice. It must decide whether it wants to be tax friendly, in which case it has to allow people to pay rather less tax, or tax tough, in which case those who stay will end up paying more tax, but there will not be so many businesses here, and some will decide to offshore more of their activities.

Offshoring presents a difficult set of cases. I am sure that Opposition Members can find examples of offshoring that we would all regard as unacceptable avoidance, but much other offshoring represents simple, rational business decision making because the country being offshored against does not have a favourable tax regime, and that is why our decisions tonight and on other occasions when we try to settle the corporation tax regime are terribly important to whether our constituents get more jobs, whether our businesses make more money and whether more action will take place here. Companies have many footloose decisions that they can make about where to borrow, where to spend, where to invest, where to create jobs and how much value to add.

I see nothing wrong with more parliamentary accountability and scrutiny. If my hon. Friends have more capacity to produce a report on tax avoidance and evasion, it would be useful. I hope that my remarks have outlined some of the complexities of trying to determine the elements of avoidance that are to be condemned and about which we need to legislate more, and those that are simply common sense, or even tax promotion schemes, which the Government are producing.

I remind the House that I have recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that I offer business advice to a global industrial company and to an investment company.

England gave the Conservatives a strong popular vote and a majority of the Parliamentary seats. It is time for us Conservatives to speak for England. For too long we have criticised but had to accept unbalanced devolution which allows Scottish MPs to determine English issues at Westminister, whilst only Scottish MSPs can determine Scottish issues in Edinburgh.

The English problem shows just how untenable Gordon Brown’s position is. He has no mandate to be the UK’s Prime Minister as the leader of the second minority party, but it is even worse for England where he is seeking to prevent the Leader of the majority party from making the decisions the English now wish to be made.

Lop sided devolution on Labour’s lines was always going to be damaging to the Union. We see just how unfair it now is. The position is untenable. Mr Brown has to go.

PS I am pleased to report that Conservative MPs are going to Westminster to meet on Monday, even though the authorities are not opening Parliament.

1. Parliament should meet on Monday. Leaders need to hear directly from colleagues in the new Parliament as they negotiate. The new Parliament needs to have more teeth than the old, and to do that it needs to meet more often.

2. The Conservatives won a clear majority of all the seats in England. Given nationalist views, we should have a majority for the proposition that from now on it should be English votes for English issues. Pass such a motion, and then Conservatives could appoint Ministers to the English Ministeries like Education, local government and transport, and at least get on with sorting out those backed by a good English majority in Parliament..

There are three features of the result that I find particularly worrying. The first is once again a largely Eurosceptic country has elected a Parliament with a federalist majority. UKIP played a minor part in again securing this unfortunate outcome by standing against Eurosceptic Conservatives , allowing federalists to point to their tiny vote and no seats to claim the Eurosceptic cause is a small minority one.

The second is the growing split in the politics of England from the politics of other parts of the Union. Scotland elected just one Conservative MP and saw a swing to Labour. Northern Ireland elected no Conserative and Unionist MPs. Even in Wales, where there was a modest Conservative revival, the country remained a Labour stronghold. In a hung Parliament the politics of devolution mean the non English parts of the Union demanding all immunity from public spending reductions as the price of their support for other measures.

The third is the election of a Parliament with an overall majority for putting off tackling the deficit. A majority of MPs in the new Parliament – though a smaller majority than in the old – probably think spending more public money will “sustain recovery” and see no threat from taxing too much, borrowing too much and regulating too much.

This is the bakground to political attempts to find a way of governing. If Conservatives compromise with the Parliamentary majority they will be placed under suspicion by their true supporters. If they refuse to seek a means of governing the country they are letting it down at a time when some important decisons do need taking, whatever the composition of the Commons.

It is fashionable to say people want politicians to listen more, to understand their frustrations, to give voice to their anger with the system. Out on the doorsteps it is not always easy to listen, as many people still say “I haven’t made up my mind” as a prelude to making it clear they do not wish to talk about government and the election. Others say they will vote in a given way and also have no wish to discuss it. Some voters are busy when you call and what they are doing matters more to them than your visit. Some feel at a disadvantage, as they are not thinking all the time about the state of the government in the way their visitor is.

However, there are also a lot of people who are prepared to spend some time telling us what is on their mind. Sometimes it is very local: a series of complaints about local planning, rubbish collection, noisy neighbours, poor local roads, high Council taxes or anti social behaviour, matters requiring a local Councillor or policeman to sort out. Sometimes it is a single issue – someone feels passionately about a free vote issue like fox hunting or religious freedom of expression. More often than not it is something that relates directly to that person’s work or family circumstance.

I have come across various public sector workers who understandably want to know if their section of the public sector could be in line for cuts. I have come across more private sector workers who want to know just how much more tax they might have to pay to get us out of the deficit. Many want to know the details of the various tax plans of the main parties, as they seek to work out who is offering them the best deal. Some voters are concerned about the bit of the public sector they use – the local school or hospital – and about the amount of tax they are having to pay. There is no necessary contradiction as Labour always says in these two views: it is reasonable to want more money for the local school and less waste elsewhere. People want good local public services, but they do not wish to see a further squeeze on their take home pay, which sustains most of the things that matter in their lifestyles – their home, food and basic services.

If you put it atogether there is no one coherent programme or set of changes which would make everyone happy. The electorate is very divided about what to do, and has a myriad of preoccupations. That is why the main political parties are finding it so difficult. In the rest of their lives people are used to making lots of very specific choices. The market economy has moved on, and many more people have money or access to finance to give them more choice. Making a single choice once every five years and having to accept the whole package comes hard after the subtle distinctions the market allows.

One voter may like the Lib Dems on cancelling Trident but not on more European integration and the asylum amnesty. Another may like the Conservatives lower National Insurance and Euroscepticism but not their overseas aid pledge. One voter may want to pull out of the EU altogether but not see a way to be able to do so. One voter may wish to see more money taken in tax to pay for more public service and be unsure which party will do that without any cuts in things they like. How does a climate change sceptic vote? How should an animal rights voter express their view? It is now complicated and difficult for people to get what they want.

Under the current system most will decide in the end which party offers them most of what they want with fewest downsides. They will see that the main choice is Brown or Cameron as Prime Minsiter. Some will decide to vote for candidates who cannot win to show how storngly they feel about a specific issue – green policy, or Europe or English nationalism. Unfortunately for them if they get the usual poor result it reinforces the message to the main party leaderships that these are not mainstream causes or forces.

We need to strengthen our democracy, by giving Parliament more teeth to hold government to account, and by giving people more chance to express their views and join in the national debate. We need more things to be decided outside government and politics, so people can vote with their feet and make their own choices on services. The world of web is opening up ever broader horizons, allowing consumers more choice and better prices, and allowing people more say on the issues that matter to them. The political establishment has to find a way of adapting to these forces. At the moment the poltiical system as a whole serves up three styles of Table d’hote when people want to dine a la carte. If government did less that would help. If MPs were more independent that might help. If government was more afraid of Parliament and had to take it more seriously that would improve things a bit. Big government doing too much with a weak Parliament and Ministers not in control is a recipe for voter frustration.

Promoted by Christine Hill on behalf of John Redwood, both of 30 Rose Street Wokingham RG40 1XU

Today is Easter Sunday.
What does Easter mean to modern Britain?

As I attended services on Good Friday, one of the biggest days of the Christian year, I noticed the attendances were not high given the size of the population. Regular practising Christians I have talked to recently feel they are now a minority group. We have passed through that time when the Church goers could assume that a majority of the rest of the population were Christian but just a bit busy at Church times on Sundays, to a feeling that religious belief and practise is for a series of minorities strongly supporting their own religion or their own Church.

We still have an established Church and an official religion. The shrewdness of the Elizabethan compromise settlement – bishops and liturgy, the bible and services in English, believe as you will on the wine and the bread – has proved long lasting. The Church of England and Christian observation is an important part of State as well as of Church, and still inspires our teaching and charitable traditions. Parliament starts every day with Prayers, and many of our schools have religious connections.

For most people in modern Britain Easter is a secular public holiday, an opportunity to have a long week-end off, a chance to go out with the family or to buy in enough food for a siege and have friends or family round to lunch. For others it is a very busy commercial opportunity, with the shops and service providers working hard ahead of the week-end. It’s a time for hair dos, for new clothes, for special meals, for spending time with family and friends. The local supermarket said it was a big selling point for turkeys and fresh vegetables, just like Christmas. When the weather permits it is the first big opportunity of the year to get out and about for pleasure.

The inconography of easter is more pagan fertility rite than Christian symbolism. Shops are full of bunnies and eggs, daffodils and greenery, signs of new life and fecundity. The easter egg is the main gift and currency of Easter. It is the chocolate industry’s opportunity to come to the retail party.

It is true the hot cross bun survives as a poignant reminder of the Cross and the sufferings of Christ, but in a six pack for 50p probably few pause to remember the events in Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago as they place it in the basket. As I put the eleven apostles on my Simnel cake I wondered how many households still bake one or recreate the gospel references in marzipan?

The muddle is very British. Easter is as each person defines it. Perhaps we should remember our great tradition – do not make windows into men’s souls.

Dear Shareholder,

I hope you had a great Hogmanay, and have now forgotten New Year’s Day when sensible people sleep it all off.I wanted to write to you in the spirit of this great festival to tell you how your company has added to the joys of this old and formerly Scottish custom. I left it until today for obvious reasons. No-one wants a serious message from the boss on New Year’s day.

I have been stung by criticisms that the Board of UK PLC in recent years has been too narrowly Scottish, and aware that many of the joys of being Scottish could be more widely applied by changes to the company’s practise and policies. That is why we extended 24 hour drinking, hoping the idea of serious drinking at the time of change of year would spread more convincingly beyond Scotland. I think you will see just how well shareholders have responded to this thoughtful initiative.

I was also worried that shareholders in England did not seem to get enough time off to celebrate New Year in the way we always did in Scotland. The English seemed more hung up on the earlier seasonal festival of the 25th and 26th December. Despairing of weaning them off this, despite all our efforts with changing the language and banning Boxing Day hunts, we decided to just give everyone longer holidays instead.

Our plan to give most people two weeks off for the seasonal festival and New Year has worked well. We led the way from Parliament of course, where we ensured the MPs were sent away on 16th December, not to return before January 5th. We went for a longer period than two weeks, partly because MPs collectively are not very good at counting and sums. I am told some of them have broken the spirit of this by writing blogs and sending out press releases. They were meant to be leading by example, drinking more and doing less, so we will look into whether we can control these unwelcome work activities more. We must find ways to make them enjoy themselves, as we insist on all of you enjoying yourselves in Board election year. As I have often reminded you, the drinks will be on us for the next few moths, unless you use the rival company Conco. We will be advertising our wide range of benefits and income top ups so your glasses can be charged.

I was also keen that we should extend the Scottish winter weather to the rest of the UK. The snow bound homes and the all white on the night scenery are part of the magic of true Hogmanay. That was part of the reason I was so keen to save the world from a temperature rise. I hope you will forgive me from reminding you, but this has been one of the most astounding achievements of your comppany. It was literally as I finished speaking on how we could save the world that the big freeze up and the snow began. I think you will agree you never got this much snow and ice at this time of year when Conco were in charge. It’s a huge improvement. I see it as part of my climate equalisation policy, showing that what Scotland has England should have as well.

It was in that same spirit of generous sharing around the different parts of our company’s territory that led us to allow English shareholders to participate in the losses and activities of two great Scottish banks. Our decision to take over most of those institutions’ shares was the single biggest leap forward we made in our policy of record spending and borrowing. What has been little appreciated is just how it also advances fairness between the different regions of our company. If Scotland is just so much better at generating losses than England, it is a magnanimous gesture and part of our fairness policy to let England join in.

Some have said it is not fair that England has to pay more tax than Scotland to help pay for the company’s activities. They point out that more people proportionately are in paid employment outsde the company in England than in Scotland. I agree. That is why we have been pursuing monetary and economic policies designed to push up the unemployment rates in England, and to increase the numbers of people on UK PLC’s own books both sides of the Scottish border. We want to minimse the need to work for other employers throughout our area, not just in Scotland. We intend to make it as difficult as possible to employ people in the private sector. I think you will agree that that policy is working nicely as well. I am sorry if you still think too many people are in non UK PLC jobs in England. We are working hard on that issue all the time. Our latest bankers tax should get rid of some more of these unwanted jobs, to be followed by the new higher income tax which will stop some of them and drive others out of our territory for good.

Some silly forecasters wrongly said we would let prices fall and create a deflation. The Board’s vigorous action in boorrowing more and printing more will,I ensure you, push prices up at a livelier pace in this New Year. Just to make sure we have asked our railway subsidiaries to charge more for car parking and some journeys if you do go by train. We are sticking up VAT again which will help. Watch petrol prices. We aim to get these much higher over the course of the year, as they feed into all other prices. Our company slogan of “Never knowingly undepriced” will ensure that wherever we think prices are too low we will take corrective action.

So my advice is to sit back and pour yourself another favourite tipple. It’s on the hosue for the next four months. Given the winter conditions you can’t go anwhere easily, so forget all this work lark for a bit. Like the MPs, you deserve another holiday and I am going to make sure you have one.

Yours in snow

The CEO

The mood in the UK towards the EU is currently one of angry resignation. We are angry because Lisbon has been such a dishonest and anti democratic process. The British people by an overwhelming majority opposed the transfer of more powers to the EU institutions under the Lisbon treaty. They were promised a referendum so they could formally express their view. Two of the three main political parties making this promise in the 2005 General Election ratted on it once elected, so the public will was thwarted. We are currently resigned, because Parliament ratified the Treaty against our will and we know in the short term there is nothing we can do about it.

We were thrilled when France and Holland voted the constitution down. What part of “No” don’t they understand, we bellowed across the Channel? Why can’t they get this democratic thing? If you ask the public you accept their verdict. Sometimes the people know best.

We were elated again when the Irish voted down the revised constitution or “Lisbon treaty” as it had to be called, to pretend something had changed to appease French and Dutch opinion. We were livid when they were made to vote again. Some of us think the Irish should have another referendum, so at least it can be the best of three.

It would be wrong to think UK resignation will grow into acceptance and acceptance into enthusiasm for a more integrated Europe. On the contrary, each anti democratic power grab creates more outspoken Eurosceptics. Each refusal to give us our say creates more cynicism and disagreement with what will happen next. The UK is fed up of being taken for granted, and being expected to pay the bills for an oversized bureaucracy it does not love and often does not want.

I appreciate how differently things look from the continent, and how differently people think who receive the hospitality and whisperings of presumed power in the corridors of Brussels. The EU enthusiasts think the UK will do what it always has done. It will grumble about the new powers for the EU. It will try a little to disrupt them. Then it will acquiesce, and one day will accept them fully. The Euro enthusiasts think that the UK will go in the same direction as the centralising states, only at a slower pace with more huffing and puffing.

That is not what I hear on the doorsteps of England. The sudden propulsion of the withdrawal party, UKIP, to second place in the European elections last time showed how the anti EU mood is firming. The Conservatives romped home in first place on a very Eurosceptic prospectus. English people see how the EU project is taking a crow bar to break up the United Kingdom. The EU’s policy of encouraging separate identity and government in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast is helping destroy the Union of the four countries.

The EU wish to break England up into a series of Euro regions is perhaps the most hated EU policy of all, as England wishes to have its own national identity as the other three parts of the UK press for more independence and more use of their national symbols. The fact that the EU will not welcome and encourage England is part of the cause of stronger English Euroscepticism. There is now a growing band of English nationalists as a result of the EU’s playing around with our identity. These English nationalists would like Scotland, Ireland and Wales to split from England. Their ideal would be that Scotland Wales and Ireland retain the EU membership so England can be set free of both the Union of the UK and more importantly the Union of the EU. Then England could follow her historic and natural instincts of being a free trading low taxed country dealing with the five continents and oceans of the world, building alliances within her English speaking global family.

What do I think will happen as a result of the Lisbon treaty? I fear more of the same. The EU seems determined to be an area of low growth, falling population and too much government. Every time there are choices to be made the EU chooses more regulation over more freedom, more public spending and taxing over less, more regional and Euro government over less, slower growth and a smaller private sector over faster growth and a larger private sector. The EU nations are weighed down by huge public debts, by politicians and quango heads who do not understand markets , people who do not realise what a battle it is to be competitive in this modern world. As the working age population on the continent plunges and as the rule books lengthens each month, there is a blind belief that the growing power and success of India and China can simply be ignored. The EU looks in on itself, growing older and relatively poorer gently whilst congratulating itself in an orgy of self importance.

We are told that now the EU has its own Foreign Minister it can strut the world stage and have more power and influence. I don’t think so. Without credible military forces that will be difficult. Look at the reluctance to either put serious forces into Afghanistan or to face up to the US and tell them we need to get out. The EU has had no influence on the war in Afghanistan and clearly does not intend to have any. Or take the recent climate change conference, where “soft power” might have been deployed. The only deal to come out of the conference comprised the US, China, India South Africa and the USA reaching an agreement. The EU was not even in the meeting that called the shots. The other countries simply had to respond to the US-Chinese initiative.

I don’t think the EU is serious about wanting to create a successful economy, open to talent, enterprise and innovation. I think it is a government construct which one day will presume too far and sow the seeds of its own undoing. The EU is playing around with strong emotions of identity and belonging. It has crossed the UK all too often, refusing to understand the UK’s wish to be part of a common market and be friends with EU countries but not to be part of a common government, a single currency and all the rest. If the EU wants to stabilise its north western frontier, it would be well advised to sit down and negotiate a new deal with the UK which England can accept. That deal would mean the UK opting out not just of the single currency, but also of the more obtrusive elements of the single government now emerging. We do not want a common army, a common defence policy or for that matter a common fishery or a common criminal justice policy. If the EU wants the UK to go along with closer integration for the core countries, the core needs to understand the UK’s wish for some more freedom and flexibility to follow our genius, which has always been different from the continental one.

(This is an article I was asked to produce for www.e-IR.info which they agreed I can reproduce here)

In the days before devolution a General Election was about all the main public services and everything to do with government. Today, as many of you have been pointing out, it is rather different.

Because Labour decided to drive through lop sided devolution, a General Election is still about all public services and main policies for England. It is very different in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The UK Parliament we will elect in a few months time has no power to decide schools, hospitals, law and order, planning and a whole range of other important issues for Scotland. It also has limited powers in the other parts of the UK with devolved Assemblies. If the Leaders of the three national parties appearing in the debates concentrate on schools, hospitals and police they are having a very English debate.

To make sense of the present Union, and to make the programmes of interest to the 10 million people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the debates should centre on Foreign Policy, war and peace, defence, the economy, banking and monetary policy, relations with the EU, benefits and unemployment. These are the principal Union matters. There is then a need for debate about English matters , as under both the Labour and the Conservative proposals these matters fall to be decided by the Union Parliament. In the case of the Conservatives they will be decided by English MPs only. This would be better in a different debate, perhaps involving the relevant Secretaries of State and their Shadows and Shadow Shadows. Otherwise it is best strictly limited in time in the main debates to keep the interest of the audience from the devolved parts of the Union.

As in all things, lop sided devolution has made it more difficult to frame a series of programmes that are balanced, make sense, and are relevant to all voters in a Union election. If the three main debates do spend too much time on schools, hospitals and police, the Nationalists and others will have more a of a case to demand representation. Maybe the answer is to have one debate entirely on the economy, unemployment, total spending and borrowing, banking and other financial and employment issues, and one debate entirely on defence, foreign affairs and constitutional affairs. These two programmes would be of equal relevance and interest wherever you live in the UK. This would leave just one mixed programme which might pay more attention to the problems of England.

The English have always been anti clerical by instinct. The reformation was fanned by distrust and scorn for the behaviour of some clergy. Lawyers have had a consistently bad press in the English novel and elsewhere. Political cartoons used to be even more scatological than they are today. Our Kings and Queens have long had to mix it with the common people, and take the rough with the rough when it comes to gossip and criticism.

These trends of scepticism and healthy disrespect for the professional or the powerful have been increased by the poor performance of the professional and political elites in recent years, and by the anarchic power of the new media at exposing folly, error and worse. In the noughties we have seen the bankers brought low , as some of their businesses came close to collapse when the money dried up. Now a metaphorical lynch mob says “Off with their bonuses”. The regulators have fared no better, pushing through more regulations, claiming they were deregulating, and allowing the whole financial system to get into deep trouble despite their expensive and detailed interventions.

Many voters are at screaming point with the cost and the needless detail imposed by the regulators, when so often the main point of the regulation goes undelivered. Where was financial stability when we wanted it? Where was control of our borders when there was a terrorist threat?The Bank of England began the deacde as everyone’s darling, from the government to the City, but ended with serious questions to answer about its past conduct of monetary policy and its current policy of quantitative easing.

The politicians have fared even worse. Parliament has been brought low. It has given too much power away to the EU and to quangoland. It has failed to debate many of the big issues. It has watched helplessly as government has told the whole world before it tells Parliament anything. Daily freedom of information requests from outside prize out more useful information than Parliamentary Questions from inside. Parliament meets too litttle, so the government can cry “No time, No time” whenever we want to debate something that matters.

Ministers have been brought low, by their own clinging to the spin cycle, and their inability or unwillingness to put in the full daily grind in their departments to try to make sure policies work and are followed through. Their word is no longer their bond. Their word is often a spin doctor’s, and so often their word today will be different from their word tomorrow.

The bastions of excellence and style are under attack from a government that dislikes our traditions and misunderstands our history as it tramples it underfoot. The army is the one part of public spending which faces regular cuts depsite being made to fight continuous middle eastern wars. The elite Universities are blamed for the failings of some state schools.

All of this has produced a ready cynicism amongst many voters. They ask why should they believe the figures, when so many seem arranged or fiddled? Why should they believe the remedy, when often they do not even agree with the establishment’s view of the problem? Why should they trust them when they say deflation is the threat, as we see inflation surging? Why should we believe them that the banks were nearly bust, when we remember that the banks were in part brought low by the publication of gloomy warnings about their solvency and liquidity by the government and regulators? Why should we think they are right now about our economic prospects, when they promised us they had abolished boom and bust? Why should we accept their view that too much private borrowing is a bad thing but more public borrowing is a good thing?

The noughties were a bad decade for the British establishment. Its credibility has been damaged by what it has said, which has so deviated from what it has done and failed to achieve.

Today I am writing an open letter to the Prime Minister.

Dear Prime Minister,

The Scottish Parliament will meet to debate the decision of the Scottish Justice Minister over the Lockerbie bomber. When you first took the highest political office in the UK you stated that you wished to restore the Uk Parliament to a more central role in our democratic life. You cannot be serious unless you today recall the UK Parliament, to meet later this week.

Since we were last allowed to convene and do our jobs as MPs, the government has endorsed a substantial increase in so called quantitative easing, has revealed a larger deterioration in our fiscal position than in the budget, has shown that whilst competitor economies on the continent are growing again our economy has continued to decline, and has watched helpless as many more people lose their jobs. We need an urgent debate on the state of the economy.

Since we last were allowed to meet several good Committee reports have been issued, including some worrying criticisms of parts of our health care. Labour figures have been keen to whip up a specious debate about Conservative attitudes towards the NHS through friendly media. Wouldn’t it be better to allow a proper Parliamentary debate on the state of the NHS and how it can be improved and reformed, so claims and counter claims can be tested in a proper forum free of the behind the scenes distortions of the spin doctors?

Since we last were permitted to do our jobs more of our troops have been killed in Afghanistan. There have been recent leaks about the state of our military procurement, along with Minsiterial denials that this has had any bearing on the lives of our soldiers. We need to cross examine Ministers on this. At the very least poor procurement has had a big impact on the state of our budget deficit. We need to ask Ministers to explain what their strategy towards Afghanistan will be once the new government is up and running. We understood the need for the British army to help create a peace sufficient to enable voters to get to the polls. What is the mission now? How do we define success and how long is the new mission to last?

Today we also want to know more about the UK’s relationships with Libya and the USA. The conduct of foreign policy remains a Union responsibility. What actions did the UK governemnt take in the run up to the important Lockerbie bomber decision by the Scottish administration, given its importance to those two relationships? What action is the Uk government now going to take given what has happened?

As far as many English people are concerned, these recent events reinforce what a lop sided and unfair system of devolution we have. A powerless UK government allows the Scottish government to make this decision, washes its hands of the foreign policy consequences, and doesn’t even allow English MPs to have a voice on that foreign policy, whilst Scotland not only makes the decision but has a functioning democracy to debate it.

You should recall Parliament immediately.

Yours

John Redwood

With most of the votes counted, four parties emerge with gains of more than 1% – Greens ( plus 2.5%), BNP (plus 1.4%), Conservatives (plus 1.2%) and English Democrats (plus 1.1%). Two parties have losses of more than 1% – Labour losing 7% and Lib Dems losing 1.1%.

UKIP added little to last time. 21 parties failed to score more than 0.5%. Yes2Europe polled 0% or 3,000 votes.

So what can we make of all this?

It proves that PR drives more people to extremes.It shows that it leads to a huge fragmentation of parties, as more and people set up parties to express their view but fail to get their message acrosss, or fail to adopt a popular message. It leads to laziness by traditional party campaigners – local homes in my area were only contacted by the Conservatives and UKIP, with nothing from Labour or the Lib Dems.

The Lib Dems came out of their preferred voting system particularly badly, despite help from the BBC to boost their chances. Although we were told they were less affected by the expenses saga, that is not how it came across in the Telegraph. They always suffer in Euro elections from their enthusiasm for all laws European and their wish to transfer ever more power to Europe and to bogus regions.

Those who want to pull out of the EU immediately had another bad night. Parties espousing that cause could only marshall about one fifth of the popular vote. They did manage to keep the Eurosceptic vote split. Those who want more Europe had an even worse night, as the majority opinion was Eurosceptic.

The commentators are concentrating on what it means for Mr Brown. It looks as if it means he staggers on, because his critics can wound but cannot kill him politically. As one said this morning, the results are so bad few Labour MPs will want an election any time soon.

The headline for the EU as a whole is a big win by the centre right. I take no joy from that. The so called centre right, the continental winners, are all parties that want more European laws, regulations and centralised power. They all want to do things that will make Europe less prosperous and less free. I am just glad my party today is fully detached from them. At last we have a full complement of Conservative MEPs all elected on a ticket which expressly rejects their federalism. What we need is a European Parliament that slashes the power and spending of the great bureaucracy, repeals laws and gives powers back to member states. Instead What we have outside the UK is more of the same, business as usual for the political class of Europe.

Last night was doubly unusual for me. I had time to watch TV, and there was something on a Saturday night I was willing to watch. I tuned in to the story of the political awakening of John Adams, the 2nd President of the USA.

In their vivid and simplified documentary way the film makers captured the rising tensions in America against the bovine insensitivity of the British government. We saw John Adams, the honest and fair minded man, defend British redcoats against false charges of murder from an angry crowd that had taunted and assaulted them. We saw him turn down preferment from the clumsy colonial authorities, only to go on to advance radical proposals concenring the rights of man when even for him the autocratic inflexibility of the British government became too much to stand, let alone defend. He and his fellow delegates to the Convention fashioned the philosophy and the fine words of freedom that made the intellectual backbone of the new Republic. They shamed the gross incompetence of the British some 130 years after Parliament had had to make a stand for its rights against the Crown.The irony of Britain moving from home of liberty to colonial oppressor could not have been missed by the English gentlemen who made the Amrican revolution. I wondered if any Americans watching could see some of the irony now that America is viewed as the oppressor by some in countries where she uses her troops against the will of the locals. The cause of freedom requires tolerance to the differing views of others in most circumstances.

It made me think how much today we need to fashion a new coalition for liberty in our own country. The countless intrusions into our freedoms have often been criticised individually but when we look back over the last decade the total impact is large. Much damage has been done in the false name of security. More has been done by taking in vain the name of social justice, and still more in misguided ways to save the planet. The government has found causes it thinks are higher than liberty, and has then invented ways of seeking to further them that all result in the same dead and deadly end – more state power, more state control, more taxation, more rights and privileges for the governing and more duties and obligations for the rest of us.

When I go the local shops this morning I will doubtless see several people breaking the law, as many do now most of the time. Some will drive at 35 mph believing they do so safely in a 30 mph zone. Some will park on the double yellow lines in the side road close to the shop, seeing no harm as they will not bock the road. Doubtless some will fail to record cash payments for their businesses in their tax account file. Some businesses will be trading today in ways that doubtless violate some little known or unloved regulation. Some break laws because they cannot see the point of the laws, some break them inadvertently because there are so many to know about, and some break them because it makes their lives easier to break them. Recent research has unearthed just how many thousands of new criminal offences this government has introduced, finding new ways to ensnare the usually law abiding. If you invent enough complicated forms, difficult requirements and new rules for business and the general citizenry you will end up making criminals of most. To what purpose?

As I watched the Adams story unfold I knew I would have been with the crowd in demanding liberty in 1770s Masachusetts. I today I am with all those of you who feel there are too many taxes, too many spy cameras, too many new rules, too many needless interventions in our daily lives. We need to rebuild our free society. As we emerge from the Credit Crunch the message should not be that we need more government, but we need wiser government. We do not need more red coats with better weapons, but someone in charge who knows the temper of the people and trusts them to be freer and to make of their own decisions.

When we get a change of government we do not want managerialists who think it is just a question of running the existing system better, but freedom lovers who ask which bits of the creaking machinery of state do we need to keep running, and which can we pension off.

Men and women in Brtain are no longer born free, and live in chains. We need to burst them, to trust people more and governments less. It was big government working with regulated big banks that got us into our current economic mess. It was big government running scared of terrorism that sought to protect us with guards and gates in ways which cannot work when we need to win hearts and minds. I just wish the architects of the current autocracy had watched and understood last night’s docusoap of freedom. They should see that there is relevance today in Britain from those events long ago on the wintry Eastern seaboard of a great country.

Today I learn that the government is intending to stick to its plans to keep public sector wage increases below the current rate of inflation. This is a necessary if unpleasant task, given the massive over recrutiment into the public sector in the administrative, political, media related and management echelons. At least MPs got that one right, voting ourselves a well below inflation increase in pay.

Now Parliament has to sort out the expenses mess. I am glad David Cameron today is proposing no money to furnish a second home – the true end of the John Lewis list. Labour wants to move from John Lewis list to a National Audit Office judgement – will they need an MFI list or the equivalent? How different would that be from the current John Lewis items and prices?

Gordon Brown needs to put much more discipline into public sector costs. We are awash with too many MPs, MSPs, Assembly members, Regional assembly members, Councillors, spin doctors, private office staff, Ministers, senior officials, management consultants working for the public sector, qunago chiefs, CEOs and deputy CEOs in local government and the rest.

While he is about his pay squeeze, why doesn’t he at the same time introduce natural wastage to start getting the numebrs down. And how about just scrapping all that ghastly English regional government? I have just received another couple of picture brochures from the South east regional assembly which reminded me what a complete waste of money it is.

The English Democrats almost lost lost their deposit in a b y election with the two main federalist parties not fielding candidates.You would have thought if their campaign was popular they would have done better here in these unusual conditions than they did.The argument remains true, that trying to make Eurosceptic points by splitting the Eurosceptic vote in other situations is self defeating.
It is also interesting that in a by election where the outcome would not change the government and where two of the three main parties withdrew, the cause of an English Parliament was so unpopular.
It illustrates that people do not have an appetite for more politicians and more bureaucrats at their expense, when taxes are so high and when English votes for English issues, the Conservative position, can deal with the worst of injustices in the current lop sided devolution.
I suggest to the English Democrats that they learn from this bad rejection in a by election they could have done well in if their cause did resonate more, and decide not to run candidates against Conservatives likely to win in a General Election, especially in very marginal seats. Other wise they just help Labour more, the architects of unfair devolution and the betrayers of the UK through Nice, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and the cancelled referendum.
It is silly when we want so many of the same things there are so many scraps. The Eurosceptics will win when enough of us are united behind a strategy for getting powers back from Brussels, and having a different relationship with the EU that allows us to trade, be friends and have shared rules where it suits the UK and the other members.

I agree with everything David said about the erosion of our freedoms. He expressed the frustration many of us feel about the build up of the controlling state – the way ID cards, spy cameras, the loss of Habeas Corpus, the daily assault on our freedoms by nit picking regulation – now add up to an unacceptable loss of liberty. He spoke for me when he listed the monstrous assaults on freedom this government has mounted.

His selfless act to give more prominence to this issue is a bolt from the blue. I do hope the Conservative party will allow him to fight the seat as he sees fit, and welcome him back if and when he wins. He deserves to win, for surely he speaks for the overwhelming majority of English people who want to keep their freedoms, or regain control over their lives after years of stealthy assaults on our liberties. It is a commentary on the way that this government has marginalised and sidelined its part time Parliament that a leading MP feels he needs to trigger a by election to get the message across.

Good on you David. I want you to win.

If Labour fail to put up a candidate we will know they are frit, unable to face the electors on a crucial topic where they claim to be on the popualr side of the argument. Clearly they do not really believe it is the popular side if they don’t want to fight.

As I am never shy to criticise the BBC, I should be fair. Today, they invited Brian Wilson and me to debate the issue of devolution and the PM’s wish to have a debate to “save the Union”. It was a balanced and sensible piece, which I hope the audience found worthwhile.

It enabled me to explain that I opposed Labour’s devolution scheme in the late 1990s because it was lop-sided and unfair.

I want proper devolution – devolution of many more decisions to individuals, families, companies and communities, in both Scotland and England. The UK is over-centralised.

I am against regional devolution in England, and in favour of equal treatment of Scotland and England when it comes to making decisions at UK or England/Scotland level. If the PM wants to save the Union, he could begin by abolishing unelected regional government in England, and by giving power to English representatives to decide the issues the Scottish Parliament decides north of the border.

I thought Gordon Brown was an intelligent man. I read that he has hired, at our huge expense, a number of intelligent advisers. How can they, between them, have come up with the subject of care for the elderly as the topic for the “fightback”?

Anyone with half an ounce of commonsense – or do we have to say gram these days? – would see the pitfalls. The popular position on care for the elderly is to offer “free” care for all, the one thing the government has to rule out on cost grounds. The issue is one settled by Members of the Scottish Parliament for Scotland, where they have more generous arrangements than England.

So, in the middle of a row about the unfair treatment of England and the state of the Union, generated by his own side led by the Labour Leader in Scotland, a Scottish MP, acting as Prime Minister of the Union, decides to highlight the unfair treatment and tell us, the English, it has to stay unfair! Did no-one, from the PM down, see what an own-goal this was likely to be?

My colleagues and I have sat through many a surgery appointment where constituents have complained that their elderly relatives have had to sell their homes to pay the nursing home or residential care-home fees. We have had to patiently explain (under this government and its predecessor) that offering to pay all nursing and care-homes fees from taxpayer receipts would mean a big increase in taxes. We have explained that health care is still free to all of whatever age, but living costs in a home are more akin to you and me paying the mortgage and the grocery bills, so they have to come out of private funds until the elderly have run out of cash, when the state will then take over. The constituents are rarely persuaded, and feel a great sense of injustice that their elderly relatives have to sell up and pay.

There are four possible answers to the vexed question, ‘who pays the care-home fees?’ The first is the elderly themselves, either out of their savings, or from the proceeds of selling the houses they no longer live in. The second is the relatives or friends of the elderly, often the people who will inherit the houses if they do not have to be sold to pay the fees. The third is for the elderly to have put in place some type of insurance or financial arrangement in their younger years when they had more income, so they do not need to touch their previous homes and their capital value. The fourth is to require the taxpayers to pay, as if residential care were a full cost on the NHS.

It might be a good idea for the relevant Secretary of State to consult on more imaginative ways for elderly people to finance their possible need of care-home services that do not require the sale of their residence when they do have to move into a home, if the government now has such ideas. It makes no sense for the Prime Minister himself to open up the whole issue of care for the elderly when he cannot afford to offer the solution those most affected by the issue would like, and when it is treated differently on either side of the English-Scottish border. It just reminds people that he is a Scottish MP, and reminds us all of the differential treatment under his lop-sided devolution.

Care for the elderly reveals the unfair settlement for England. The Prime Minister and his advisers are letting England down again, and spending our money on highlighting just how they are doing it. They are showing that Scottish MPs in this government can lead the debate and settle the outcome for England when they cannot do the same for Scotland, and when English MPs have to keep out of the Scottish decision.

The Prime Minister tells us he will do whatever it takes to save the Union.

He should begin by remembering it was the Labour government he supported which put through lop-sided devolution for Scotland, and half-hearted devolution for Wales. Far from saving the Union, as advertised, these schemes made the Union unstable. I wrote my book, “The Death of Britain”, to explain how Labour’s constitutional revolution meant “tearing our country up by its roots”. I argued that “devolution Labour style will devolve more power not to people, but to politicians and administrators. Far from cementing the UK, it will pull it apart as advocates of a Europe of the Regions intend”.

If Gordon Brown is serious about wishing to save the Union, he needs to understand the strong feelings of injustice in England.

1. English people do not want their country balkanised into Euro regions. We do not think you make up for the lack of an English Parliament by offering elected Assemblies for the South East or the North West. Indeed, these unelected regional governments throughout England, which Labour wishes to offer in elected versions as substitute, need to be abolished to show the government has at last understood the meaning of the “No” vote in the North East. Regional government in England is an insult to those of us who love our country.

2. English people want some symmetry in the constitutional arrangements. If Scotland can decide matters like local government finance, planning, health, education and the environment without English MPs being involved, why can’t England decide the same things without Scottish MPs being involved? Nationalists in England now want the extra cost and complexity of a full English Parliament in addition to Westminster. I prefer making English Westminster MPs do both jobs. The same could also apply to Scotland, with the Scottish MPs settling Scottish matters in Edinburgh for part of the week, and joining us to settle Union matters for the rest of the week. If Scotland wants to have two lots of representatives, as they do now, they should have the pleasure of paying for them.

3. Many English people want fairness in allocating the money. Constituents want to know how it is that Scotland can afford a better deal on student finance and, in some cases, a bigger range of pharmaceuticals on the NHS. Gordon Brown should tackle the more obvious anomalies that hurt England.

4. The Prime Minister should grasp that the biggest constitutional threat to the Union comes from EU developments. English people are not going to be happy until they have a vote on the Constitutional Treaty, and have their view taken seriously that we want less EU power over us, not more.

I concluded in 1999 that “The Government’s devolution plans will create more tension and conflict, rather than less. We already see London complaining that Scotland gets too much money. We will soon see Wales complaining that it is not being treated seriously and Scotland complaining that the powers it has received are not enough… It is all playing into the Commission’s hands beautifully. It is creating a Europe of the regions in the way the Commission wants. It is helping to fuel nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales. London is useful to begin the process of regionalising England…The end result will be a more divided, more factious, more overgoverned, more overregulated UK… it will just create more armies of bureaucrats and politicians wringing their hands, complaining that they do not have enough power, and levying money from people to keep themselves in a lifestyle to which they wish to become accustomed”

The Labour leadership’s astonishing U Turn on a referendum about Scottish independence in Scotland leaves Gordon Brown in an even weaker position over both the EU and England.

Up to this point we have been told that big constitutional issues – like Who governs the UK – is a matter for the UK Parliament and not for a popular vote. We have been deprived of the promised EU referendum on the grounds that it is too complicated for the voters to grasp and has to be left to professional politicians.

Now we learn that the question of who governs Scotland is a matter just for the Scottish people.

In that case Who governs the UK? should be a matter for the UK people. The case for a referendum on the big transfer of powers recommended in the EU Constitutional Treaty on this logic has to be put to the voters.

The Scottish example comes across as yet another injustice to England. If Scottish voters can settle their fate within the Union unilaterally, why can’t the English? Gordon Brown should now offer the English a vote on whether they wish to stay in the Union, which would force him to recognise the unfairness of the current settlement and to offer improvements in order to secure the continuing consent of the English to his constitutional arrangements. As a Unionist myself I want English votes for English issues – the restoration of the English Parliament at Westminster with dual mandate English MPs.

Under Labour we have had to put up with lop-sided devolution for a decade. Now under Labour we have to put up with lop sided democracy, where five million Scots can express a view on our constitution, but 50 million English cannot. When Labour first presented its skewed devolution proposals I argued that, far from strengthening the Union, they would weaken it as they were unfair on England. This further twist will do yet more damage. It is as if the SNP has found a way to get the London government to do its job for them. It has always been SNP strategy to make England angry with the Union. They have an able assistant in this cause in Gordon Brown.

The alternative explanation is that he is so weak he cannot control or influence Wendy Alexander, the Labour leader in Scotland. Labour’s devolution has badly miscarried from their party political point of view. They now have a Conservative Mayor of London, an SNP-led government in Scotland, a coalition government with the Welsh Nats in Wales, and no Labour representation in the Northern Ireland Assembly. I am sure their original idea was to create devolved government in places Labour usually won, and offer a voting system which made it difficult for anyone else to gain a majority.