Sometimes people come to see me at my surgery with debt problems. They often have a large mortgage, and on top have borrowed too much on the Credit card and personal loans. The first advice I always give them is to go through all their spending and see how they can cut it. If each month you need to borrow more you end up on the road to personal bankruptcy. More and more of your income is swallowed paying interest on what you overspent in previous months, and in trying to meet the repayments of your debts. Most people cannot suddenly increase their incomes or win the lottery. If you start reining in your spending early enough, it is just the luxuries and the nice to have items that need to go from the budget. If you leave it too long, you can’t afford some of the necessities either.

So it is with a government running a county. If you allow your spending to exceed your income each month, each month your debt increases. If you do this for short period when your tax income is temporarily depressed by a poor economy, that can make sense. When the economy recovers revenues bounce back and you can get your finances back into order. The trouble with the UK today is two fold. We went into the recession spending and borrowing too much, before we lost tax revenue. We also relied on massive tax revenues from banking and other City activities, and from buying and selling expensive properties. Some of this income has gone for ever, now the bubble has been punctured.

In Parliament we keep returning to this central problem. All parties now agree the deficit needs to be at least halved. That means an astonishing £90 billion a year less spending, if you do it all by cutting spending. No previous government has ever attempted anything like that. The remaining argument is over how soon you start. As my advice to an overborrowed constituent implies, I think the sooner the better. The sooner you start the less damage you do in the longer run. Every extra pound the public sector spends today is another pound we the taxpayers have to pay back soon. In the meantime it is another pound we have to pay interest on. If you tried to do it by increasing tax rates you could end up with less revenue, as people and businesses moved elsewhere.

There is no such thing as government money. There is just taxpayers’ money. Every penny the government borrows, they expect you and me to repay. Their debt is our debt. The advice I have been giving to the odd constituent I now have give to Parliament as a whole. If they carry on like this we all end up in deep debt, debt we did not want and debt we cannot afford.

The good news is much of the extra spending being undertaken is money not well spent. I do not wish to see Wokingham losing teachers, nurses, police and doctors from the payroll, and there is no need for that to happen if we act now. What I do want to see is less bureaucracy, fewer high paid quango heads and quangos, the end to unwanted South east regional government, the end to ID cards, and expensive centralised computer schemes. It is quite easy to do more for less in the public sector, and that is what all of us working in it have to do. The private sector in a cruel recession has had to work share, keep pay down, remove bonuses, cancel prestige projects and favoured new schemes, and work smarter. Now it is our turn in the public sector to do the same.

I have been working with the anti flooding groups in the constituency. Too many homes have already been built on floodplains. Too little work has been done by the Environment Agency and the other main players to dig enough ditches, lay enough pipes and keep conduits clear so when it rain heavily the water goes away safely.

One of the problems has been top down planning. The government has set high targets for new development. Government Inspectors over turn local decisions on appeal, where Councillors rightly reject a planning application because it would be on flood plain or place other stresses on our local services and environment. I raised this issue again in the Commons, only to infer from the reply that these Ministers still want to boss local government around and do not wish to give Wokingham freedom to make its own decisions about its green fields and water meadows.Nor do ther Ministers wish to reduce their targets so it is easier to avoid making the flooding problem worse.

Another has been the lack of action to tackle the excess run off of surface water, and the likelihood of the Loddon and the Emm overflowing their banks when it rains hard. I have been promised proper schemes for both the Emm and the Loddon, but we still await real plans with money to implement them. Local groups are energetic and are working with Council officers to establish what the Borough can do. We are all lobbying the Environment Agency to rise to their responsibilities for the rivers and streams.

This week sees the continuing passage of the Fllood Bill through the Commons. I will attend to make our points, but it’s schemes and cash we need more than additional legislation. Acts of Parliament do not turn back the angry waters – dams, bunds, channels, bigger pipes and deeper ditches are what is needed.

If there is a change of government we are promised greater freedom for each Council to make up its own mind on planning matters. I would welcome that, and would hope that Borough Councillors would then come to the veiw that there are limits to how many extra homes we can build in our District. Existing residents want to preserve what is good about their current enviroinment. Above all residents want to be free of worry when it rains. Today all too many are afraid that bad weather will bring fast run off from so much concrete and tarmac, and with it sodden gardens and wet carpets.

Surely we can do better than that? A bit of commonsense, and some pre-emptive work on the water courses would buy us some peace of mind.

Strange as it may seem, it’s a good time to have conservative values. After twelve years of grim socialism, we have had our fill of enforced living beyond our means. We are fed up with so much of our money being showered on nationalising banks and railways, on hiring a huge army of officials and expensive quango chiefs. We are tired of being subjected to the politically correct thought police. We don’t want a regulator making obstacles for every simple event we used to enjoy. Motorists don’t feel they are the cause of all the world’s ills, savers think it’s time they were rewarded rather than penalised, and people who pay their bills on time and look after their own families feel they should be offered a better deal.

The Conservative party is right to say “We cannot go on like this”. It is time for change. The change we want is change to a world where the doers, the savers, the strivers are treated fairly. We want to live in a state which respects other people’s freedoms and stops taking so much of our money.

There can be no change for the better without sorting out the dreadful national finances. This government carries on spending and borrowing, telling us that will get us out of the hole they have placed us in. It won’t. They are just digging us deeper into the mire of debt.

They say the government will borrow, the state will provide. Who is the state? All of us are the involuntary backers of the state and the paymasters of the government. The government’s debt is our debt. The more they borrow the more we have to pay interest. The more we will one day have to pay back.

The government says a state budget is different from a family budget. It may be in scale, but the principles are the same. If you’ve reached your credit limit you know you have to put off more spending until you’ve got the debt under control. If you are going bust you have to cut spending before it’s too late.

So it is for a state. Iceland,. Ireland and the Baltic states have already found out the hard way that sometime the bank manager – for them the world markets – say enough is enough. They have to cut spending. This week it’s been the turn of Greece.

The UK has overspent. As a nation we’ve built up huge debts, imported what we need from China, and put off settling the bills. We need to make more of our goods, grow more of our food, live more within our means. The public sector needs to deliver more for less. We are close to that worrying hour when the world’s money men tell us the game is up.

Gordon Brown says the cash they are borrowing will help lift us out of the recession. We need to remind him that he has already borrowed and printed record amounts, and yet we are still deep in recession. Over the last five years the government has doubled the national debt and almost doubled the money supply, yet they have achieved no growth at all. The stimulus has not worked.

When we got out of previous recessions we always did so with the help of spending cuts. The IMF forced that on labour in1976. A Conservative government did it in 1981 to sort out Labour’s mess, ushering in a good long period of growth and prosperity. You need to do that to keep lending rates down, and to find the money for the private sector to create the jobs we need.

It is not just sound money and sensible financial management we need now, to stave off a worse financial crisis. It is also some commonsense in everything else. If you want less of something you tax it. If you want more of something you subsidise it. This government is busy raising the taxes on enterprise and hard work, with their National Insurance and Income tax increases. They are busily subsidising banks and bankers pay, spending a fortune on unemployment, on quangos and on self promotion. If spin doctors and adverts could put a country right, we would be the most successful country in the world by now.

There are many good people in Britain who want their democracy back. They want a strong Parliament that can curb government’s appetite to spend too much and legislate too much. They want to be proud of their country knowing the main decisions are taken here in a democratic way, not in Brussels. They want to be left to make more of their own decisions, free from needless regulation and inspection. They want to feel they can pass on their savings to the next generation when the time comes. They do not want their children and grandchildren left in huge national debt.

I know that’s how I feel. I want a government which will reflect these conservative values. Hard work should be rewarded. Most people should be left free to look after themselves and their families as they see fit. The UK needs to be a country open to enterprise and willing to work harder to earn the standard of living it wants but currently cannot afford. Our government should control our borders, keep us safe, cut the spending and the debt, and allow savers and job creators to keep good rewards for their efforts.

There are many unsung heroes in a working democracy. Each of the main parties relies on volunteers to deliver leaflets, to tell the public about their local and national party policies and actions, and to support their Council candidates. They also rely on volunteers to come forward to contest seats where the prospects of winning are not good as well as where they are good. No greater love hath man or woman than this, to give up their evenings and week-ends to campaigning in places where in the past their parties have done badly.

I remember it well when I fought Peckham for the GLC and for Parliament before I came to Wokingham. I am therefore usually sympathetic to Labour candidates in Wokingham, who see the need to tell us about their party and its national ambitions and deeds, but who in the past have not found enough support to win. We need Labour to take Wokingham seriously, just as Conservatives should take Peckham seriously. A national party needs to feel comfortable in both places and to understand the needs and views in both. They are different in many respects. To be a national party you need to explain your views and actions in every constituency, and keep alive political activity in your name. National parties should not take victory for granted in some places, and write off their chances elsewhere. Upsets can happen.

I am pleased that Labour has an active prospective candidate sending out press releases and seeking attention in local newspapers. That is good news for democracy. No-one should resent a fair debate. Democracy is about choice, and electors should have all the main offerings before them when they vote. What I find disappointing is that our local prospective Labour candidate is silent on the big issues of the day. He does not tell us about how Labour will control the large deficit they have built up. He does not explain why the UK is still in recession according to the Chancellor when most other countries got out of it months ago. He does not explain why they spent so much money on propping up banks, yet small businesses are still unable to borrow enough at realistic rates of interest.

He has instead one main interest – my expenses. If he wishes to make that the big issue I think he has some explaining to do about Labour MPs’ expenses. In order to help him I have some questions for him that he might like to answer when he next writes about it.

In 2007-8 I was the 19th cheapest MP, with total expenses of £105,917. I set myself the task – before the expenses issue blew up in the papers – of cutting my costs by 10% in each of the following two years. I am pleased to report that my expenses will come in well below the £95,000 target I set for 2008-9 when we see the total audited figures, and should come in well below the £83,000 I set for 2009-10 this year. This compares with an average of £144,000 for all MPs in 2008-9 (this audited figure is now available at last).

My questions are these. Why do Labour MPs cost the taxpayer so much more than I am doing? It’s not all additional travel for the ones that come from further away. Why do London Labour MPs on average charge more than I do? Why did the average Labour MP cost around £50,000 more or one third more in 2008-9 than I charged? Why did the Prime Minister have to pay back more than £11,000? Was he wrong to claim that money in the first place?

What would his budget be for the first year were he elected? If he thinks he could do it for less than me, can he explain why current Labour MPs cannot? I would give serious consideration to any sensible budget he cared to propose, as we can all learn how to do better with less spending.

I want Parliament to offer a lead in cutting the deficit. We have to show we can deliver more for less, because we are going to ask the rest of the public sector to do just that.

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)

The so called debate on public spending in recent years has generated enormous heat but little light. Labour has renamed all spending as investment. It has claimed that the Tories always want to cut services when there is no shred of evidence to support this, and argued that any cut in spending amounts to a cut in service.

The aim has seemed to be to spend more regardless of cost and efficiency levels. In the heady days of spending growth so much money was hurled at the public sector that much of it went in wage and salary rises, in recruitment of people to jobs of questionable value. In some big services the extra money bought us lower productivity.

Now Labour has admitted we cannot go on like this. It is bizarre that they are proposing a Bill to try to stop themselves spending. The figures underpinning the bill are the most important political statement I have ever seen in my adult lifetime. Labour say that we need to cut public spending (or raise taxes) by almost £100 billion a year, reaching this level of cuts within four years. Even so the deficit might still be running at the level it reached when a previous Labour government had to go to IMF, unless economic recovery has by then curbed the cyclical deficit.

The usual debate that will follow will take the form of asking hapless representatives of different parties what they will cut to hit these targets. Interviewers will expect bleeding stumps to be paraded, otherwise they will claim it is not a serious cut.

The independent left and other groups will be happy to oblige. This is the time when strongly held convictions can produce the cuts their owners dream about. The left will say we should stop the Trident replacement and make further cuts in our defence budget. They will recommend taxing what few rich remain here to pay their higher taxes.

The Eurosceptics will say we should renegotiate our budget settlement with the EU, or simply pull out to save the money. Some will favour stopping the payments whilst demanding the EU stops the waste and fraud. The Greens and Lib Dems will favour more taxes on motorists.

The Conservative party has set out some of the government activities it will abolish. It wants to stop the ID card scheme, remove most of the regional government that has grown in recent years, stop the detailed oversight of Town Hall by Whitehall and reduce quangos and regulations.

A parade of more damaging cuts in front line activities is not how a business would tackle this type of problem. Whilst £100 billion is a huge sum, and is far larger than any previous range of cuts any post war government has put through, it is only 14% of public spending. Many manufacturing businesses have had to cut their costs by 3% a year for four years, which gets you to that kind of figure. They have not done so by cutting out great parts of their activity. They have often done it by smarter working, by doing more for less.

There are big parts of the public sector that have been under no serious pressure to do this for years. The important change is to put in place new aims and new ways of approaching budgets.

The biggest single cost in the public sector is the cost of staff. Any new government is likely to want to protect teaching and medical jobs, and some other front line public servants. Beyond this are 5 million employees. A staff freeze would start to force efficiency improvements and better processes. A well policed staff freeze could reduce the public sector payrolls by several hundred thousand, on a timetable that allowed the efficiency and process improvements to be introduced. It would mean better promotion chances for people currently employed. The range of cost of outside consultancies at the same time has to be brought under control. Some of the public sector clerical activities might be better done in the private sector following competitive tender. Employees would of course enjoy TUPE protection.

The second biggest cost is the cost of benefits or income transfers. Tackling high and rising unemployment will be central to cutting spending. The Conservatives have numerous ideas on how to bring more people back into the workforce through programmes of drug rehabilitation, improved English and maths, and a better package of incentives to encourage work over benefits.

The public sector needs to copy the best practise of the private sector in eliminating error, cutting out waste, and using office space, fuel and other supplies more effectively. Error rates in modern world class manufacturing are around 100 parts per million. Error rates in government clerical factories are often 10,000 parts per million and can rise as high as 100,000 parts per million. A company with such an error rate would not be around too long. It will mean reform, reform to simplify systems, improve processes, and incentivise staff. Energy waste is large. Many public buildings light and heat large areas that are little used for long periods of the day and night. There is an absence of intelligent controls.

Can all this be done? Technically, yes it is easy. It has been done elsewhere. We need a new team of Ministers who will set out to do just that on a large scale. We do not need to cut important services. We can do more with less. We do need to cut out some less desirable activities. There we need to do less with much less. The pamphlet I have written with Carl Thomson sets out some of the big numbers on the costs of running our current government, which shows you just how much scope there is to do more for less.

After the cruel months of the last year we all need some fun and relaxation at Christmas. I love the Carol services and the Christmas markets, the well decorated shops and the chance to buy presents for friends and family. I like cooking the Christams turkey – and taking a day or two off afterwards to recover. The colours, sights, sounds and smells of Christmas can still be magical if you let them. They can be wonderful long after your first enthusiasm at their novelty has passed with the passing of your own childhood.

Many of you have had a difficult twelve months. Businesses have strained to find customers, shops have been emptier than they wish, some have lost their jobs as the recession has bit. Our soldiers have faced a tough fight in Helmand and all too many have lost their lives or limbs. Christmas time is a time to say thank you to all those, in both the public and private sectors, who work hard to keep our essential services going. We thank those who supply our daily bread and water, who care for the sick and educate the young. We pay a special tribute to those who risked their lives or acted well beyond the simple call of duty.

The end of the year is also a time to take especial care of those who are elderly, frail, or lonely. The best Christmas present can often be some company or a kindly act. The Christmas holiday may just give busy people that extra time to stop and help, to spend time with a neighbour or provide some joy in the life of a lonely relative.

I hope all of you find comfort and entertainment by your hearth, around your festive table and with those who are closest to you. May the bells ring merrily, the glasses be charged, the plates brimming with piping hot food and the jokes and games flow. It’s time to bring some simple joy into our days. It’s time to let the children and grandchildren have fun. It’s time to remember some of those childhood pleasures for ourselves. A well lit tree, a well decorated house, a well furnished Christmas table can cheer us all up, especially if we can share it with others.

The National Audit Office confirmed last week that taxpayers have £850 billion at risk through government guarantees, subsidies, shareholdings and other support for the banks. This is a generous way of working out the figures. In practise taxpayers are on risk for £3 trillion of banking liabilities at Lloyds and RBS, as we all know it will be taxpayers who pay their losses if they make more. If we equity accounted for these two banks as private sector companies do, attributing some of the risk to the other shareholders, it is still a £2 trillion plus taxpayer commitment. On the NAO’s figures public debt and financial risk is double the old figure, thanks to the banks. It now exceeds our National Income on their figures.

The NAO also revealed that the cash cost of the banks so far to taxpayers is £117 billion plus refundable fees, producing a gross total of £131 billion. That is larger than either the Health or the Education annual budgets. Readers know that I recommended a far cheaper and less risky way of seeing the bad banks through the crisis. Now we are where we are, there are still cheaper and better options for taxpayers from here.I will continue to put the case for some commonsense. It is high time the taxpayers interests were respected, instead of making us a piggy bank to raid everytime a bank makes a bad loan or wants to pay its staff a bonus.

The overriding priority should be to cut the risk to taxpayers. Selling off foreign banks from within the RBS and Lloyds group would allow taxpayers to get cash back from their forced investments, and would reduce the risk of future losses. Winding up or selling on much of the investment banking business would also cut the risks. It would have the happy political effect of removing the highest paid executives with their bonus pools from the taxpayer. It would mean that next time a Dubai World stops making payments it will just be private shareholders and their bank executives who have to sort it out, not the hapless UK taxpayer and the state bank executives.

It is unlikely the government will do this. Their strategy seems to be based on carrying out the modest disposals required by EU competition law, and then waiting until they can sell shares in the banking Groups at a better price. As a result the UK state will continue to be very stretched not just by its running deficit and accumulating public debt, but also by the large additions to its financial risk from its ownership of two large banking groups. Taxpayers will end up losing large sums of money on these banking transactions.

This week the Bank of England announced that it might in the future sell some of the Corporate bonds it has bought as part of its Quantitative Easing programme. As it has only bought around £2billion of corporate bonds compared to a planned £198 billion of gilts, it is a small sum. It is interesting, however, that it might wish to do this. The Bank added that it would buy additional gilts with any money it raised from the sales.It looks as if the Bank is determined to keep government bond prices up and therefore the interest rate it has to pay low until near the election. It is now throwing in some possible extra money from selling company bonds, despite the fact that the interest rate companies have to pay is already much higher than the rate the government has to pay.

The tragedy of all this taxpayer support is that businesses and individuals still cannot borrow sensible sums of money at a realistic interest rate . The government has invented a highly complex and expensive money go round so the state can borrow, at the expense of everyone else. In due course we the taxpayers have to pick up collosal bills for their folly, when all these state debts fall due. They’ve been taken out in our name, and it will be from our hard work that they will eventually be repaid.

I have always been worried about British military intervention in Afghanistan. Over the last year I have been calling on the government to rethink its strategy. We have been at war for eight years. Many fine and brave soldiers are being killed. There has been a sense of drift over the direction and political strategy from the top.

It was never likely that the allies would commit sufficient troops to fight and win control of the whole of Afghanistan. It is a vast country, and every village and hamlet may offer resistance, given the mobility and penetration of the Taliban. The aim should not be to conquer and then garrison this country with foreign armies. The Russians showed how difficult the task was when they tried.

It appears from the recent statements of President Karzai and Prime Minister Brown that any idea of military victory by foreign armies has now been shelved. The new strategy which is emerging is a welcome improvement on the old “win and control”. There is now a proposed timetable of five years to transfer all security tasks from allied troops to local personnel in Afghanistan.

So far so good. The questions to raise now are these. Why does it need five years to train the Afghan army and police to the point where they can do the job? Will our troops in the meantime be taken off fighting duties and put onto training duties, with local forces leading the attack on the insurgents? If not, how long will it be before they can?

Why do we now think this present government, elected in such a contentious way, can command the support of the people of Afghanistan and why is it worthy or our support backed by the lives of our troops? Will President Karzai’s own new strategy include a successful political plan to win over the many disparate groups in Afghanistan who currently harbour, encourage or put up with the insurgents? All those who know Afghanistan better than I do tell me it is tribal and local in nature. Local forces and loyalties need to be respected and harnessed against the insurgents. This is more difficult to do if the central government appears corrupt, divisive or oppressive to the rest of the country.

Last week was a watershed in British politics. It was a most significant week for all our futures.

There, in the middle of a Queen’s speech widely criticised for being thin and highly political, was a Bill to curb the UK’s ballooning budget deficit.

Let’s forget the absurdity of a government seeking to legislate to control its own budget. They can control the deficit in the normal way by choosing spending and taxing plans that are closer together than the current ones. We need not ask if they plan for the Chancellor to go to prison if he borrows too much.

The importance of this Bill is the recognition by this high spending high borrowing government that the party is almost over. After months of being told we need to spend, spend, spend our way out of recession, after being told the choice at the next election is between Labour “investment” and “Tory cuts”, we are now told whoever wins the election it will be cut, cut and cut again for ten years.

The Budget Bill will require the government to halve the deficit in the first four years, and reduce it every year thereafter. That means that in the first four years after the Bill the deficit has to be cut by around £100 billion or £2500 for every adult in the country.

There are only two ways this can be done. You can cut spending or you can raise taxes. As I do not think our country is undertaxed, I see it has to be done by spending less. If you tried to do it by taxing incomes and businesses more, you might end up in a vicious circle, with static or falling revenues as many companies pulled out and entrepreneurial individuals went elsewhere.

Cutting £100 billion out of a £700 billion budget is larger than anything the public sector has ever tried in my lifetime by a mile. It is not larger as a percentage than many companies have had to do to get through the recession. It is less proportionately than I have just done on the tiny part of the public sector under my control. It means doing more for less in the crucial areas like schools and hospitals, and doing less for much less in the less important areas. It certainly means a big attack on the overheads of government itself, cutting down the numerous quangos, central departments and local Council fiefdoms that have grown in the years of excess.

This Bill, and the huge and growing debt overhang that prompted it, will dominate British politics for the next decade. Gone are the easy choices. The jobs of Ministers, MPs and Councillors will be about making hard choices between spending options, and driving cost down and value and quality up remorselessly as we try to stretch every pound.

As international bodies have made clear, the UK is in a league of its own among the larger rich countries when it comes to borrowing and money printing. Far from speeding our recovery, we have stayed longer in recession than the other major economies. A sustainable recovery requires discipline over public spending and borrowing. If we do not make the changes soon, the markets will force them on us. If we do not curb the deficit we will end up with higher interest rates and higher inflation than our competitors. Our price rises are already far faster than the main economies of the world, and taking off into the new year. Last month inflation shot up by 0.6%, the fastest for 20 years. Expect more of that in the next four months, as VAT goes up and the effects of higher commodity prices flow through. We are taking too much risk with our future. That’s why we need new lower budgets, to back up this Budget Bill.

The UK has remained longer in recession than the US or Germany, China or France. It’s not surprising, given the way the government has subsidised banks. It needs to sort them out and get them into shape. Putting ever larger sums of taxpayers money into them delays the necessary adjustment, and undermines the precarious public finances still further.

This week a constituent told me the best rate he was offered by a local bank for a business loan was 12.5%, when we are told interest rates are at bargain basement levels. It’s a case of one low interest rate for the government, and high rates or no money for everyone else. The Bank regulator is demanding they lend less and hold more cash and capital at the same time as the government claims to want the banks to lend more to struggling business.

Lloyds and RBS should be made to sell businesses and assets to raise the money they need. I would like to see half a dozen new banks on the High Street offering us choice and better service, to replace the nationalised duo. The regulator should not tighten his requirements now, but leave that until the recovery is underway.

The UK has the largest budget deficit of any major country. It certainly hasn’t lifted us out of recession in the way we were told it would. Just as subsidising the banks is holding us back, so spending and borrowing too much in the public sector is starving the private sector of cash. That too is now holding us back. It threatens us with worse problems. If the markets lose confidence because the government is spending and borrowing so much, we will face even higher interest rates and more disruption in the economy.

The government now accepts that sometime it has to start bringing spending and borrowing under control. The public debt on official figures is doubling in a two year period. The state is borrowing one pound for every four pounds it is spending. They should start right away. If you need to control your debt, it is not a good idea to go on one more spending binge before you try to sort it out.

It’s not as difficult as some politicians and public bodies seem to think. I was talking to companies who deliver public services for some branches of government already. They reckon many things could be done for a fifth less without damaging the quality. I embarked last year on a programme to cut my Parliamentary office and personal costs by 10% a year in both 2008-9 and 2009-10. The latest unaudited figures from the Commons show I am well ahead of my target cuts. Transferring the newsletter from printed copy to the web for the next edition is the only visible sign of change in service people will see. I started as the 19th cheapest MP in the table, but realised it can be done for less.

Across the public sector we need to do more for less where the service is important, and less for less where it is not.

The UK economy is troubled by three mighty deficits. Individuals and companies borrowed too much in the good days. They are now scrambling to pay some of it off. Broken banks have little to lend to them and then only at a high price.

The banks overdid it. They are now being forced to rein in their private sector lending, to improve their balance sheets. They are building up more money to lend to the government. The Regulator tells them lending to the government is a safe thing to do, and they should do more of it.

Now the government is overdoing it. The public debt is large and increasing at a rapid pace.

The government says it needs to borrow more to keep the economy going. They think more public spending and borrowing will produce recovery. The danger is it is starts to do the opposite.

If the government pre empts too much of the available cash, there is too little for everyone else to use and borrow. If the government demands too much money from markets, lenders may force up the interest rates before lending more. That would be bad news for the private sector as well.

In the short term the strain is being taken on the currency. International investors and governments do not like the look of sterling so they are selling it, or declining to buy.

Some fall in our currency could be good for exporters. It should enable them to sell at keener prices. It also will cut off some imports, as foreign luxury goods will be dearer. Too large a fall can get out of control, and just makes us all poorer.

As we import around one third of all that we buy, each 10% fall in the pound adds around 3% to our bills – or takes that much off our incomes.

If you print too much money you cut its value. At some point the government has to stop printing money and go back to a more normal approach. Every pound the government borrows on behalf of taxpayers one day has to be repaid. We do need to pay the interest on all that debt. We cannot put off the day much longer when we have to start putting our house in order, before markets do so in a painful and unhelpful way.

This was a crisis brought on by the private sector banks and others borrowing too much. It cannot be solved by the government borrowing too much. I wish it were otherwise. History shows that you can only have a sustainable recovery when the government puts its own house in order. We also need the banks to sort themselves out more quickly, as the broken ones are still not working for the rest of us in the way that is needed.

None of us in public life enjoy cutting public spending. It would be wonderful to have more money available to sponsor your pet schemes, to do good to those in need, to improve our local area.

Today we have to recognise that the public sector is simply taking too much. It is taxing too much and borrowing too much. Now it is also printing too much. If we go on like this there will be another crisis. This time the pound will sink too far, making us all poorer. Interest rates will be forced up, making many poorer again.

Even the government recognises that at some point the printing has to stop and the borrowing has to come down. The irony is the government has been busily lecturing the banks and the private sector for spending and borrowing too much, only to go on doing exactly the same itself.

The important thing in the next couple of years will be to hold on to what matters most whilst bringing the books into better balance. I will want to see money spent on good teachers, nurses, doctors and sensible management of our core public services locally. I want an end to regional government, to the regional development Agency, to the regime of Best value and Comprehensive Performance Assessment affecting Councils. I can live with far fewer glossy brochures, traffic mismanagement schemes, partnerships and officials with jargon filled titles.

There is some good news out there. If the public sector copied the best of the private, or even copied the best of the public, cost would fall and quality rise at the same time. Private health providers told me last week that they could provide operations for the NHS one fifth cheaper than the NHS hospitals manage. Under Labour’s arrangements the local NHS can use private providers to deliver service free to the patient. There is considerable scope to cut the costs of government, starting with Parliament where there are too many MPs and their offices are often very expensive.

We need Councillors, quango boards, public sector Chief Executives to all follow the same mantra. It is time to do more for less. It is time to do things better and smarter. When I was leading a manufacturing company management team each year our customers expected a 2-4% reduction in prices. They also expected better quality and prompt delivery. We did it, because if we didn’t the Chinese would. It is difficult but not impossible. That’s what we now have to do throughout the public sector, so we keep what we value, and charge what the country can afford. If we go on as we are we end up with national bankruptcy.

Parliament is not working. For all too many days and weeks it does not try to work, as the majority decide to avoid all business and shut the chamber. For 82 long days this summer there has been no Parliament.

But the truth is, it does not work very well these days when it is open. If you have Ministers who either do not want to explain themselves to Parliament, or who do not know much about their departments and jobs to be able to, it fails to perform. All too often when I go in to ask a question, make a point, seek some information for myself and constituents I am brushed off by the Minister. Some Ministers know the answer but think it too embarrassing to tell. Others don’t know the answer because they are not up to job.

There was a good example of this when two Mondays ago we were allowed to meet as a Grand Committee to discuss the “South eastern” economy in Reading. The Minister chose the subject of the economy. He had as much briefing as he wanted from all the responsible departments including the Treasury. His answer to my first question was he would write to me with the answer. His answer to my second question was to assert I had deliberately asked a question I knew he would not be able to answer. One local paper dutifully reported this as fact!

In a sense I suppose he was right. Long experience of Labour Ministers had taught me he was unlikely to be able to answer any question properly. I did not seek to find a particular question I was sure he could not answer. I was unable to think of one worth asking that he could answer. I guess if I had asked for him to comment on anything the government had done that he thought make things better he might have managed it, but he was doing that anyway in his prepared speech.

My first question arose directly out of an announcement he was making. He told us the government was proposing a carbon storage facility for the South East. I asked how much it would cost. You could not get much more simple and direct than that. Surely any Minister contemplating a great scheme would have some idea of the general costs involved before venturing it as a proposal? Apparently not. It was a scheme without price. I suspect it was a scheme without any other kind of foundation in reality.

My second question was not that difficult. I asked what impact printing £175,000 million was going to have price increases in our shops. Some people think this could prove very inflationary, particularly if it drives down the pound and therefore jacks up import prices. Others think in current conditions it is not, as everything is so depressed. A vaguely competent Minister could have got away with saying the government sets the Bank of England the target of 2% per annum for inflation, and the Bank will run things including money printing in order to hit this target. That would not have been an interesting or helpful answer, but it would have done and should not have been beyond the Minister. A better answer would have been that the Bank and government – for the government is involved in this – believe that printing £175 billion is necessary to get inflation up to 2%, as they think prices could fall if they don’t do it. I assume that is what they must believe to be pursuing this unusual and risky policy.

All too often I conclude the government just can’t get the staff to do the Ministerial jobs. If there are no answers there can be no proper Parliament. By the way, I still have not had the written answers to my two questions, promised almost a fortnight ago. What else has he had to do, given the absence of Parliament?

We are all cutters now. The sinner repenteth. Labour’s economics guru has joined the consensus. The Prime Minister has admitted that even a government run by him has to try to get spending more in line with revenues. Let’s enjoy the moment.

The Prime Minister wants to “cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets”. He wants to sell off “unproductive assets”. He seeks “realistic pay settlements”. It is almost as if he has been reading my blog and articles over the last two years!

Let’s leave aside the rhetoric of the false distinctions – Conservatives are not in the business of cutting crucial front line services, and they are not wanting to stop the recovery. The truth is Mr Brown has signed up to spending reduction, as some of us have been urging for a long time.

The media should now be asking some more questions about what all this means. Let’s see if we can help them ask the right things:

What is a realistic pay settlement, when RPI inflation is negative, and CPI inflation below 2%? Would the public sector be willing, as many in the private sector are, to take low or no pay increase in order to keep more jobs? The PM should offer a lead on this now, today. He needs to get expectations down, to make the public sector more affordable, whilst protecting the lowest paid and the most important front line workers.

What is an unproductive asset? Surely we need to be selling productive assets as well, starting with all those banking assets. How big a programme of disposals can he come up with? Isn’t now a good time to sell, as the Bank is pumping up asset values like crazy with its quantitative easing programme.

Which costs does he think he can cut? Why doesn’t he start with a freeze on new advertising, new consultancy contracts, new glossy brochures and bogus consultations, and follow it up with a destock of paper clips, computer consumables, stationery and other office equipment?

Which inefficiencies has he suddenly discovered which he has tolerated up til now? Will he start to raise labour productivity by imposing a complete staff freeze on all posts, exempting front line service providers in core services like education and health?

Which unnecessary programmes is he running? Would he include in that all the panoply of unelected regional government, which wastes millions and would be best swept aside? Local people had the chance to see for themselves the farce of the Regional Grand Committee, where the views of majority had to be suppressed by undemocratic rules to keep the Labour show on the road. If the government can’t even stop the waste on unelected regional government, what are they going to stop?

Which does he think are the lower priority budgets? Could they include the budgets of the Surveillance society, which Conservatives have identified recently as ones to eliminate? If not those, then what does he have in mind?

We should expect a lot of nonsense about the Opposition wanting to stop the recovery in its tracks, and wanting to make deep cuts in core services. No mainstream political party wants to do either of those things. What we need now is a more level headed discussion, line by line, of what can be taken out of the public spending figures, before the debt gets completely out of control.

It is frustrating sitting at home watching the news when there are so many important issues to ask the government to explain, and so many areas where change and improvement is needed. Parliament should be in session to debate the next part of our mission in Afghanistan.

What will the government do to ensure a fair election result? When will the government turn from fighting to training Afghan troops and police so they can take on the security tasks? What more can be done in the meantime to ensure good equipment and better protection for our soldiers? It would be good to be able to ask the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to explain.

The government is printing and borrowing huge sums of money. We need to have more explanation of when they will start to curb the deficit. How much debt do they want to run up.? How do they propose that we should pay the growing interest bill, and when do we have to start paying it all back? Isn’t there a danger that too much money is lent to the public sector, starving business of access to the money they need for investment and working capital?

The main political parties do all now seem to agree that at some point in the not too distant future choices have to be made and priorities established. When you are spending and borrowing too much, something has to give if you are not to end up bankrupt. The sooner we get on with making those decisions, the easier it will be to control the runaway spending.

The future of the Wokingham District is being planned for us as you read this. Various schemes have been proposed to meet government targets to build more homes. The Council has felt it has to comply with the top down targets and the planning requirements that have increasingly come from central and regional government in recent years.

These targets and demands suddenly look rather dated. In the short term the building industry is in such a state that developers are not pressing to build hundreds of homes, for fear they cannot sell them. Housing finance is a shadow of its former self before the Credit Crunch.

Plans to provide new schools and other infrastructure that would be needed if we are to rush ahead with more development now have to be viewed against the background of the gathering clouds over public spending. Each of the main parties is bowing to the inevitable. After the election, if not before, any responsible government is going to have to cut spending. This government has indicated already in its forward plans capital spending will take some of the bigger cuts. It is will not be an easy background for Wokingham to bid successfully for capital money to build the facilities for large new housing estates.

Maybe the climate of opinion is also shifting. The Conservatives have unveiled new plans to give much more power to local Councils to decide on how much development they want. The Official Opposition is saying it wants to scrap regional plans and top down targets. Liberal democrats traditionally want more devolved power to local government. Could even this government start to respond to the demand by voters and Councils for more of the important decisions about the size and shape of local communities to be taken locally? That is less likely, but political fashions can sometimes prove irresistible, as cutting spending now seems to be.

I think we need a long hard think about how much extra development we can and should take in the light of these important changes. It is likely migration will be less strong, and that businesses will struggle to create large numbers of new jobs. This is a different background to the one we are used to. There is no need to rush to judgements on big new housing developments all the time there are so many uncertainties around. The priority should be to press on with the redevelopment of the Town Centre, as the Council I believe wishes to do. Financing this will be more difficult, but not impossible.

It is important to preserve or green gaps between settlements. We have to recognise all the time there is no money for extra road and rail capacity, transport constrains what we can do. The persistence of flooding is also a timely reminder that much of our area is low lying. It was or is flood plain. We need to leave some land capable of absorbing water from heavy rains, if we are to avoid more flash floods and persistent bouts of water invasion into more homes. In the meantime, have a look at the plans and send in your views to the local planners.

We have lost so many freedoms in recent years. We have been bamboozled, regulated, spied on, and made more and more dependent on the state. Central government has nationalised the local authority education service, introduced tax credits which extend high up the income scale, and micro managed so much of our lives.

It has also attacked independence where it found it. Savings for retirement have been taxed to the point where many final salary pension schemes have been closed. Car drivers have been pilloried and taxed for daring to use the freedom of the roads. More and more jobs have been provided in the state sector, as public spending has taken a rising proportion of our national income.

Far from tackling inequality, we have seen it rise further. Far from getting people into jobs so they can look after themselves and their families, we have seen a rise in unemployment and benefit dependency in recent years. Far from healing divisions in society, government seems to have gone out of its way to declare war on savers, entrepreneurs, independent schools, “elite” universities, motorists, bankers, small businesses and all those who value their freedom.

The economic failure has been the most breathtaking and the most damaging. We have lurched from an economy built on too much credit and borrowing in the private sector, through a deliberate credit crunch which undermined that model of economic development, to a model based on massive public sector borrowing on a scale never before attempted. People’s economic freedom has been undermined by higher taxes, more regulation, and the damage done to the economy by the boom/bust economic management.

In the period 2003-7 the authorities kept interest rates low to encourage a credit binge, and the regulators turned a blind eye to the ballooning of bank balance sheets and the build up of risk. In 2007-8 they lurched to a tight policy of higher rates, suddenly demanded more capital and less lending from the banks, starved the money markets of funds and brought parts of the system down. At the end of 2008 and in 2009 they panicked, slashed interest rates, printed money and tried to make the markets liquid again to rectify the wanton damage of their previous policies. The predictable result has been to drive many more people into unemployment and dependency on the state.

The current problem

Today we face three inter related crises. There is a public spending crisis, brought on by the overexpansion of the state, and by the colossal waste and inefficiency of so much of what it does. There is the broken society, where all too many people are without jobs, living in broken homes, with some prey to the evils of drug taking, enforced idleness, heavy drinking, random violence and lack of purpose. There is the damage being done to the world of enterprise, by the high taxes, needless regulations and a mean spirit which is ever ready to condemn those who venture and strive. If we are not careful the government will trigger a cycle of decline. Without good growth the public sector is unaffordable. If the answer to every problem is thought to be more public spending and further state intervention the bills will mount unacceptably. If we carry on with existing policies we will drive talent away from our shores, and snuff out more of the spirit of enterprise which is needed to get us growing again.

Getting people back to work

People need a hand up, not a hand out. The best welfare policy is a job. Government needs to be free to concentrate more on national security than on social security. One of the tragedies of the last twelve years was the missed opportunity to reform welfare. When Frank Field was told to think the unthinkable and Harriet Harman was in charge of the welfare department it looked as if they might at last adopt something like the Clinton reforms of welfare which had helped bring unemployment tumbling down in the USA. Instead they fell out with each other, achieved nothing and both lost their jobs. Tony Blair gave up the task before it was begun, and threw away the political credit he had in the bank to do just such a reform.

Labour used to say rightly in the 1990s that we spent too much on the costs of economic failure. They meant the welfare bills were too high. It is an enormous waste of potential talent and energy to keep more than 5 million people of working age on benefit without work. That is what Labour have done. To fill all the jobs that were created in the borrowing fuelled growth years of 2002-7 they opened our borders, inviting in large numbers of migrants to take the jobs available. Welfare reform has to centre around ensuring most people out of work are available for work and are looking for work, and on ensuring incentives to get a job and stay in a job. It also needs to be allied to controlled immigration, so more of the jobs that are available can go to people already settled here and otherwise on benefit.

It is a paradox that demanding more of people to get them off benefit is a way of freeing people. It is however true. They should be better off financially and in other ways if like the rest of us they gain a job and have to get up in the morning to earn their living.

Freeing people to look after their own families

As welfare reform starts to work, so public spending on the costs of unemployment and the interest costs on the borrowings to pay for the benefits will start to come down. At the same time we need to leave people free to save or spend more of their own incomes, and need to allow businesses the freedom to spend or invest more of the money they generate through their sales.

For most of the Labour years they lived with the 40% top rate of income tax that they inherited from the Conservative reforms. They even managed to get the standard rate of income tax down to 20%, which is a fair and competitive rate by world standards. It is a pity they did this by hiking other stealth taxes, but it has produced a rate which an incoming government can live with.

Unfortunately they decided to hike the 40% rate to 50% at the end of the current Parliament. 40% was already becoming a less competitive rate, as other countries around the world came to realise the need to attract talent and allow people to keep more of their earnings. 50% is an uncompetitive rate which will act as deterrent to new business starting up, to businesses coming to the UK and to some high earners staying. If we wish to free people to look after themselves, their families and their employees, we need set competitive income tax rates.

Company taxes too need to be competitive. Businesses do not have to locate in the UK. Most of our large businesses are owned by overseas shareholders in whole or part. Few have any strong attachment or loyalty to a UK base. If you wish to create and retain jobs in this footloose modern world you need to set tax rates which are attractive to the major world corporations when planning their investments, and attractive to the world’s entrepreneurs when placing their funds.

Our current corporation tax rate of 28% is no longer competitive and needs to be lowered. Countries which have set lower corporation tax rates, like Ireland and now the Netherlands, have been more successful in attracting new business and headquarters organisations of major companies to their shores. The Conservative Opposition has announced it wishes to get to 25% as quickly as possible, and thereafter would consider taking it lower. With a standard rate of income tax at 20% and a capital gains tax rate of 18% there would be some symmetry and poetry in getting it down to say 20% in due course.

The main argument against lowering either the top rate of income tax or the rate of corporation tax is loss of revenue. There is little evidence that over anything other than the very short term there is a loss of revenue from such moves in the ranges we are talking about. On the contrary, both the UK and the overseas experience demonstrates that lowering tax rates increases the tax take from the rich and from companies. The best way of taxing the rich more is to lower the rates.

With a lower top rate five things happen. Firstly, more rich people come to live, and spend money in the UK. Secondly, it is less worthwhile people already settled here spending money on good tax and legal advice to get round penal taxes. Thirdly, the rich will venture more, if they can keep more of their income and gains. Fourth, fewer people leave the country in search of a lower tax jurisdiction. Fifthly, more companies come to establish their headquarters or their base for expensive staff ion the UK, as they can reward them better for less cost if the tax rates are lower.

When the Thatcher government lowered the top rate of tax on earned income from 83% to 40% in two moves, the amount of tax the rich paid went up, and the proportion of total income tax paid by the rich went up. All five effects came together to increase the tax base and taxable income by more than the drop in the rate.

The same is true of corporation tax. When Ireland cut the corporation tax rate to 10% it was inundated with businesses coming to the country. The total tax take went up massively, by much more than the UK, through the impact it had on growth rates and general incomes.

Some people argue that high tax rates are necessary on higher incomes, in the interests of equality. They enjoy imposing high marginal rates to level people down. The problem with this policy is it may just drive people abroad, lowering incomes and job opportunities in the country and thereby making everyone a bit poorer. It is also based on the proposition that income belongs to the state, who kindly allow you to keep some of it, rather than on the belief that people need incentives to work and that income they earn is theirs to spend as they see fit. Taxation should take what is needed for important public services but should not take so much as to stifle initiative and snuff out self reliance.

Freeing people to choose their public services

Leaving people with more of their own money to spend is one of the most empowering policies any government can follow. Armed with more of their own money, people will be more self reliant, needing less from the state. To give people the opportunity to obtain good jobs and earn good money it is important that all have access to high quality education.

One of the many disappointments of the last 12 years has been the failure to translate extra cash for schools into better results from schools that serve the interests of the poorer parts of our country. Although comprehensives in inner cities, for example, have attracted the lion’s share of much increased funding all round, there has been no breakthrough in results and achievements at many such schools.

Indeed, in some ways the great divide in British society between those with rich parents who can afford to go to an independent school, and the rest, has grown bigger under Labour. The government is worried sick about the inability of enough young people from comprehensives to get into “elite” universities. It seems to think the answer is to lecture the universities about their admission procedures instead of tackling the underlying problem, which is the standards achieved by those leaving the state schools.

True freedom would come from allowing people more choice, and allowing a much wider range of schools to spring up. If parents and students had more choice, bad schools would shape up or drop out more quickly, and good schools would expand faster.

I would like to see everyone go to an independent school. We could invite the state schools to become not for profit trusts, educational charities, companies, teacher co-operatives or whatever structure they liked to speed independence and change. Parents would be able to choose a school from the whole gamut of independent schools then on offer, with the state paying the fees up to a prescribed limit, which ensured that everyone who wanted one had a free place. I would allow top ups, so some parents would buy a dearer school place partly with their state money and partly with their own money. The stark division between those with free places at state schools, and those with very expensive places at a limited number of private schools would be abolished. Pupils would be paid for by a variety of means including the state payment, scholarships and parental top up at the dearer schools. Everyone turning up to university interview would come from an independent school. Parent power would be far more effective at raising standards than armies of bureaucrats, reams of advice and guidance, and the top down test and target culture.

Freeing the traveller

Nowhere has the snooper and tax inspector society been so pervading as in the field of transport. Motorists have been treated as one remove from criminals. In the name of the good aim of raising safety standards on our roads a whole range of measures have been brought in which have failed to improve safety but have limited freedoms and created a nightmare world of rules, taxes and surveillance.

The evidence is strong that excess speed is the cause of a small minority of accidents. Yet in the name of safety the concentration has been on placing ever more varying speed limits on roads, and spending on technology to enforce them. The evidence also abounds that segregating traffic travelling in different directions, creating more space at junctions and providing safe separate facilities for pedestrians and cyclists is the way to improve safety. Instead we see more and more examples of road narrowing, junction narrowing, mixing vulnerable road users more with cars and lorries and ever more signs and instructions to drivers. For ten years there has been no attempt to ease congestion and therefore reduce pollution by improving our roads in a sensible way.

For most young people freedom is based on access to personal transport. We need to accept this, and try to find ways of accommodating that wish that is safer and less polluting. Technology and commonsense are both allies in this. The policies of the last decade have failed, and have left many people frustrated, unable to get to work, the shops or to an evening out in a friendly and easy way.

Conclusions

People yearn to be free. They have had enough of the snooper society, the bossy government society, the dependency culture and the political correctness which have characterised recent years.

Not only is government and society fractured, but it is now unaffordable. The government is borrowing ludicrous sums of money to try to keep its unpopular show on the road. The suggestions I have made would both free more people to look after themselves and their families, and reduce public spending at the same time. We have too much bad government, too much needless government , and too much wasteful government. It stops us doing what we need to do to look after ourselves and our families. It is designed to create a dependence on the state which we cannot afford. It reduces human dignity, removes much self responsibility, and undermines freedom Instead of a can do culture we have a I want culture. It is time for change.

What a mess. Troops are dying most days in Afghanistan, whilst the wrangling begins over the low turnout and the honesty of the election process there. The government sanctions another £50 billion of money printing to keep the state borrowing show on the road. The government deficit shoots to new highs, well beyond anything we have ever seen before. A report comes out saying that some patients are very badly treated in NHS hospitals. Large numbers of young people get good grades in their exams but have to scramble for university places. The jobless totals keep on rising.

I called last week on the Prime Minister to allow Parliament to meet again. Everything in Parliament happens as a result of majority vote, so it takes the wish to the Leader of the majority party to recall Parliament. The Prime Minister refuses to do so. It sums up his whole attitude to the public sector – more cost and less value. Surely he can see there are huge issues and big decisions that should be subject to proper debate and scrutiny? If he were a democrat he would understand that the changes in both the war and the economy are so important that we need to debate them. Why won’t he let MPs do their jobs properly?

There is no substitute for cross examining Ministers about what they are up, demanding they make statements to the House to explain their actions, and probing them across the floor in debate. It is all too easy for them to print money or increase wasteful spending if there is no need to tell Parliament and defend their actions.

I keep my constituents informed of my views and proposals on these matters through www.johnredwood.com.. I am calling for a reappraisal of what we are trying to do in Afghanistan. I want to see us set a timetable for training Afghan troops and police so they can be in the frontline in creating and holding the peace in that civil war torn country. British troops should be in supporting and training roles not on the front line.

I am very critical of the way the government is handling the banks and money markets. I want to see them make more rapid progress in sorting out the banks they have taken into nationalised ownership, to return them to the private sector. We taxpayers need our money back that was recklessly pushed into them. The government should not have supported and approved the Lloyds/HBOS merger, and should have insisted on loans on tough terms to banks in distress, not share purchases.

The latest money go round is bizarre. The government issues billions of pounds of new debt so it can spend more than it collects in taxes. It then authorises the Bank of England to buy up a similar amount of existing state debt, to negate the effects of issuing so much in the first place. The aim seems to be to get through to near the next election without any problems in raising all the money they need, because they are effectively printing it instead. We need an exit strategy from this policy. The way out has to include getting much better value for money throughout the public sector.

Meanwhile Ministers and Lord Turner posture on bank bonuses, claiming the bonuses are wrong and they will do something about them. There is nothing wrong with a private sector company paying a bonus out of its profits, or even out of the private shareholders money if they so choose. There is everything wrong with paying mega bonuses to large banks that either are already in receipt of taxpayer support, or who would be in receipt if they get things wrong. Why should taxpayers have to bail out institutions that intend to carry on paying mega bucks for failure?

The answer to that is simple. The government as owner of these banks should just say “No” and refuse such bonuses, unless and until the banks are properly profitable again and are going back into the private sector at no loss to taxpayers. The Regulator should warn banks that could end up with a government guarantee or support to be careful about high risk bonuses systems. Any support that was needed should be conditional on no payment of bonuses to senior staff, and repayment of any given against the Regulator’s advice.

I was asked to write about improving efficiency in the health Service. As someone who has never run a hospital you might well ask what is the point of reading what I have to say.

Have I done anything that is relevant? I spent ten years as a full time senior manager in business before entering Parliament, rising to Chairman of a main Stock Exchange listed industrial group. I spent ten years as a full time senior public sector employee, reaching Cabinet and Shadow cabinet level. My role as Secretary of State for Wales included responsibility for the NHS is Wales. I have also spent ten years as a backbench MP, chairing four different types of business on a part time basis(not all at the same time).

I have found going into various parts of the public sector and into various companies that there are common themes to make something work better, and some common rules on how you can turn round an underperforming activity if that is what you face. The similarities in the leadership challenge are often more striking than the differences or special problems.

Good management is about using the minimum of resource to deliver the best of service or product. It is about continuously striving for improvement. It is about getting the morale of your workforce up and keeping it up. A strong leader defines what success is, makes sure that success is stretching, but then helps his or her team achieve it. Higher efficiency comes from the full engagement of the whole team in achieving that success.

You may by now be switching off. This is just more motherhood and apple pie, or a less jargon filled version of management speak that cascades through the modern NHS. Not so. It is the distilled conclusions I have come to after being involved with success and with failure in delivering more for less in many different organisations.

Let me now shock you. You can have too many managers. You will not get that unity of purpose unless managers free and liberate their reports to get on and do the job. You will not achieve success if you allow targets to multiply, objectives to become complex and for a meetings culture to develop. You need a can do culture, a culture where the senior managers steps in only when things are going badly wrong to rescue them, or to praise and reward and demand more when they are going well.

The check list of areas to improve and the issues where costs can be cut and quality raised is the easy bit. If your senior managers do not know that already then you have the wrong senior managers. I remember some examples that I initiated when I was looking after the Welsh Health Service.

I started with a top heavy structure. I had reporting to me both a Permanent Secretary and his team, and a Chief Executive and his team. I abolished the CEO job and the office that went with it, and concentrated on the one top management structure through the department. We didn’t have the time or the money for the luxury of competing centres.

I asked about stock levels and supplies. I discovered there were three levels of stocks for the hospitals – some were held in a central warehouse at our expense, some at hospital level and some at ward level. Why? Hadn’t they heard of just in time? I was told drugs can perish so they need careful storage, and they needed buffer stocks. I called in the pharmaceutical companies and asked if they could supply the drugs at the same prices into each hospital directly when needed instead of into our central warehouse., They said fine. Out went the expensive and cumbersome central warehouse, and down went our working capital.

Running a hospital is like running a hotel, with a medical activity attached. Just as some hotels exist to book people into their spa or health farms, so hospitals are hotels to book people into an operating theatre. The patient will judge their experience mainly by the hotel, as they are usually asleep when in the operating theatre. The surgery only becomes an issue for them if it goes wrong.

Cleanliness and quality is even more important in a hospital than a hotel, as the combination of cutting people open and dealing with people who are seriously ill increases the dangers of infection. Any hospital manager should make patient safety the number one issue all the time. In a good factory these days every line manager knows safety comes first and processes are designed to get rid of the risk of accident. Machines and procedures are idiot proofed to stop disaster. Good factories also stress cleanliness, as dirt can contaminate parts and equipment as well as being unpleasant for employees. If I were a hospital manager I would want to get on top of all cleaning and secondary infection issues first. The complaints department could then be cut, and there would less remedial work.

Thereafter is the usual grind, reducing administrative headcount, simplifying forms and paperwork, banning needless meetings and doing with fewer outside consultants, cutting energy use, and concentrating everyday on getting things right first time.