Author: johnredwood

We were told at the last election backing the net zero  electrical revolution would cut domestic bills by £300. In the first year of the new government they kept putting the managed price of power up. Now we are told by Mr Miliband  we all need solar panels on our roof to save £500 on our electricity bills.

He does not tell us in his bullish soundbite how much it will cost to put sufficient solar panels on our roof. He does not tell us how people can borrow the money to pay for the installation, or how much that borrowing will cost. He does not tell us what risks this entails, how long the solar panels would last or what maintenance they would need.

Meanwhile another ship is on fire with its cargo of battery cars said to be the cause. The Chinese look to the UK as a big potential buyer of their panels and electric vehicles. They out more coal fired power stations in to fuel their export industries as we close ours down.

These policies do great harm to the Uk whilst world  CO 2 continues to rise.

Listening to the new Labour MP for Hamilton you could be forgiven for thinking Labour had suddenly become popular. There was no understanding of why more than two thirds voting did not vote Labour. There was no curiosity about why 56% of voters did not  vote at all. Labour’s vote fell 30%, to stand at 14% of the electorate.

People are fed up with nasty snarling from Labour and SNP about those who dare to vote some other way. They should be seeking to understand why they are so unpopular . They need to wrestle with the failings of the Labour government in the UK  and  the SNP government in Scotland.

Why with all that extra government in Scotland is Scottish  growth still lose than England’s? Why with all that extra public spending does the Scottish NHS still have long waiting lists? Devolved government has not brought greater prosperity or better services to Scotland.More politicians and bureaucrats do not normally energise an economy.

Rachel Reeves claims fiscal responsibility but does the opposite, boosting spending and borrowing. With the agreement of all parties the covid lockdowns destroyed fiscal discipline and hugely expanded the public debt, making it more imperative we take great care now. Indeed the Opposition parties argued for even more spending and for a longer lockdown than the government supplied.

Correcting the public accounts today needs to start with cuts to wasteful and undesirable spending. I have long argued for a big reduction in Bank of England losses. £15bn off the annual cost would be relatively easy to achieve. I have argued for a smaller civil service, back to the levels of ten years ago, reducing overhead by more than a quarter through a ban on most recruitment for the Parliament. Natural wastage reduces costs by around 7-8% a year. I would delay the planned carbon capture and storage programme all the time our competitors are not imposing this additional cost on themselves.

I would continue the work of both recent governments with more policy changes to help and persuade more people into work. Many billions would be saved and extra tax collected . This would be assisted by a big reduction in legal migration and more effective controls to cut illegal migration. Inviting in so many low pay and no pay migrants results in large public spending costs on  hotels, subsidised homes, school places, NHS capacity and infrastructure demands.

Armed with a realistic annual reduction of at least £20 bn rising to £50bn over the Parliament the government would be free to cut some taxes that could stimulate growth and reduce borrowing levels. The current vicious circle is higher taxes, lower growth, bigger deficit, more cuts, market worries leading to higher interest charges. We need to move to a virtuous cycle, Lower tax rates, more revenue, less spending, less borrowing, lower interest costs. The 10 year borrowing cost is currently a costly 4.7%, well above the Conservative levels, thanks to borrowing and spending so much more.

With debt interest at over £100 bn we cannot afford irresponsibility.

Nationalisation of a monopoly is a bad idea. Nationalised rail cancelled lots of trains, delayed others, pushed up train fares a lot. Nationalised water imposed hose pipe bans and tipped raw sewage into rivers and the sea. Both industries cost taxpayers a lot. Neither got enough investment money as they had to bid for it against the NHS and other spending priorities.

What we need in both rail and water is competition. That brings costs down and puts service standards up.

On Monday evening Jacob Rees Mogg interviewed me about my latest book, What do boys want?  (available on Amazon)

It is part social history, part a personal recollection. I was persuaded to write it as I have much earlier memories of life as a baby and pre school small boy than many I have talked to. I was living in a land of giants, mountaineering to get on one of their chairs, trying to cling on to high up chair cushions to practice walking  on two legs.Racing around on all fours was faster and less scary.

I try to recall which boyish characteristics were innate and which reflected the very strong adult view of the time that boys and girls were different and were to be prepared for different roles  in life. We were living in the old fashioned Teresa May’s world of boys jobs  and girls jobs.

I lived in my own imaginary world when I had  learned some language and mastered picture books of how others and animals lived. My soft toy lion was my companion. My dinky cars were exciting as I dreamed of one day driving the real thing. I had a running disagreement with my mother who wished to make clothes and dress my bear as if it was a doll. I got skilled at hiding the clothes. I told her that as the  small bear was off white in colour  it must be a polar bear. I announced the dark cold cupboard under the stairs was the Arctic so he had to live there. My Mum was not amused.

The government thinks it would be a good idea to have 12 more submarines and 6 new UK factories to make ammunition and explosives. They think the UK does have to take the Russian threat more seriously and commit to European defence.

They refuse, however, to spell out how they would pay for all this. The budget rises modestly this Parliament to 2.5% of GDP, to be part paid for by cuts in overseas aid. There is no firm promise to increase it to 3%, not even by 2034, yet the Review says it has to go to that level. The new submarines would be rolled out one every 18 months taking two decades to complete.

It is not in the UK’s  interest to get into a war with Russia. No sensible UK government would commit us to one unless we decided to join a general NATO response to some future Russian aggression which was against a NATO state. The states most directly potentially  affected by Russian aggression as with Ukraine today lie much closer to the Russian border .

The UK does need to strengthen the defence of our home islands to warn any possible future enemy off any idea of attacking us. This  needs the  extra spend identified on good anti missile and drone protection, on a stronger navy and airforce  and an additional way of delivering our nuclear deterrent.

The defence review is being sold by the government as a jobs programme for the UK. Of course the UK should make more of its weapons at home. It is also going to need  a stronger UK domestic steel, petrochemical and chemical industry to become more self sufficient. This requires an urgent change of energy policy.

We are assured by a desperate Defence Secretary that the money available for defence will be 3% of UK GDP in the next Parliament. This is a way of telling us he thinks it ought to be at that level but it will not be this Parliament. What is the point of saying that? He is very unlikely to still be Defence Secretary in 2034. The PM and the government might be swept away in 2028/9 if they stay this unpopular.

What he needs to do in his Review is give us an honest appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of our current forces, a statement of what they need to be able to do in the years ahead, and construct a budget of essential spending for the next three years. It is obvious we need to spend more on cyber activities, on drones, on ammunition stocks, on fast missiles and on an Iron Dome style missile and drone defence system for the home islands. We also need to improve the offer to our personnel, with better quality and more stable housing arrangements.

The Secretary of State has taken an interest in better housing. More staff could have a home base, and more could be given help to buy their own home near the base. They could even be allowed to buy a home on the base on a contract which required them to sell it back on leaving the service at a price enhanced by the general movement in home prices during their period of service. That way they would have a deposit or substantial capital contribution  for their first home in civilian life and the MOD keeps its property at base. This scheme would bring private capital into service housing to the advantage of the MOD budget, and would ensure people leaving service had some capital for a home of their own or already had a home of their own to relieve the stress and pressure of ending without somewhere to live.

  The PM claims a hat trick of wins with 3 international Agreements. They reveal a hasty set of concessions to overseas interests and a lack of control of the detail for the future.

He thinks his Chagos deal secures our joint base with the US in the Chagos. The small print does not prevent the new owners inviting in people to populate the other islands and pick disagreements with those operating the base. It does not protect the marine zone, and could result in Chinese and other fishing vessels coming into those protected waters. Surrendering the freehold for no good reason leaves us and the US exposed to what Mauritius wants to do. The PM told us China opposed the deal, only to see China come out and broadly welcome it. It was an obvious win for China, a friend, ally and financier of Mauritius.

He thinks his US deal protects us from US tariffs, at the price of higher tariffs on our exports and lower ones on US exports. That could be the best deal on offer. We now learn it has not come into effect and there is no agreed legal text we can read to see all is secure. The government is left having to ask the US if we are indeed exempt from the latest 50% steel tariff. They should be telling us we are exempt from it and showing the world the text they agreed to secure tariff free steel. That is what they told us they had secured.

The EU re set seems to concede the big principle that the UK will have to be a rule taker from the EU, at least in food matters, and concedes the principle that the UK will have to pay for this submission to cover EU costs. It does not secure the easier entry to EU Airports , the freer routes for musicians to go to perform nor the less friction for our food exports the UK promised. All these things have to be negotiated and put into EU legal text in due course. The UK has paid to play, conceded to get talks. 

Surely a lawyer should look after his client, the UK, better? Nothing should be agreed until everything is agreed. The final text needs to be in the UK’s interest. 

The welfare budget is rising fast. The £296 bn of 2023-4 is forecast to hit £378 bn or 28% more by the end of the decade. Sickness benefit is estimated to increase from £48.5 bn to £75.7 bn or 60% over the same time period. There is a surge in people claiming an inability to work. There are over 900,000 young people not in training, education or work. Mental ill health has increased substantially.

The government is alarmed by this development. They say some of the right things. They  want to get more people into work and are offering more support and back up. They agree with the Iain Duncan Smith reform of welfare to make it more worthwhile to go to work, and are completing the roll out of his universal Credit system. Yet without more reform and or tougher enforcement the bills keep rising.

Some of their backbenchers are pushing for a more relaxed approach to benefits. They regret the clumsy and unpopular removal of the pensioner fuel allowance, opposed by all other parties. They are concerned changes to PIP payments to the disabled could catch the wrong people, harming people with long term serious disabilities. Opposition parties want to see more the detail. Many are now pushing to remove the two child limit on the child payments under Universal  Credit going to the unemployed and low income families. That change was a modest one which now saves more than £3 bn. It would be odd to add a reform to spend more when parties find it difficult to identify easy wins in cutting costs.

All can see how much better off we would all be if hundreds of thousands of people not working could get jobs. They would also be better off . Any ideas on how to do that?