Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):

I strongly welcome the Secretary of State’s clear statement of policy that foreign states should not be allowed to take over press and media in this country, which is a welcome development. I hope that in the proposals for amending the law it will be clear that the policy relates not only to Governments but to nationalised industries, public authorities or companies in which states have significant influence because of their shareholdings. If that is not set out, such bodies may try to find ways around the law. I am sure my right hon. and learned Friend is up to that, but can we please have an amendment that absolutely nails press freedom in the way we want it to exist—free of influence from foreign states?

Lucy Frazer (Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport):

I understand my right hon. Friend’s points. When we bring forward legislation, it is important that it does not have loopholes. As a Department, we thought very carefully about how we can protect against that. When the Bill comes back to this House this afternoon, he will see that we have defined foreign state ownership very broadly. We have extended the definition to include not only ownership but control and influence.

The Prime Minister and Energy Secretary have changed the language about net zero. In her most recent speech she wisely points out that you cannot get to net zero without the active co operation and spending by consumers who would need to change their way of life. This policy has been a top down legally driven process run by governments and big business. It cannot work unless  it comes up with affordable and popular products, services and vehicles.

The government now needs to modify more of its policies to bring them in line with this realism. They have delayed the ending of petrol and diesel cars, recognising that  many do not want one of the current models or find them too expensive.

I have raised with them the need to cancel the proposed fines on car manufacturers who sell too many petrol and diesel vehicles. It is an absurd and potentially damaging tax.

They need to confirm gas boilers will remain available until better affordable alternatives are available. More work needs to be done on whether it will be better to produce enough low carbon gas instead of pulling out all the gas boilers.

They need to do a lot more work on how more electricity can be generated from low carbon sources, how the grid can be expanded, how surplus power can be stored and how demand can be met when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

It remains a bad idea to get our CO 2 emissions  down by importing high energy using products and energy itself. There is more work to do to produce more affordable energy at home and to get energy costs down to improve industrial competitiveness.

 

 

 

 

Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent, as everyone thinks they know. Truth is it was a  very limited independence.

He did it give it the sole power to settle the Base rate of interest. This is done by an independent Monetary Policy Committee coming up with its own forecasts of inflation and the economy. No-one is challenging that. Many just wish they would get better at it.

At the same time Gordon Brown took away the Bank’s power to regulate individual commercial banks and gave it to a new Regulator, the FSA. This reduced the Bank’s ability to influence credit and money.

In 1998 he gave the power to issue government debt to the debt Management Office, taking that away from the Bank. This reduced the Bank’s influence over the bond market.

This system worked badly during the banking crash of 2008-9 with split responsibilities for the banks between the FCA, the Bank and the Treasury, ending with the need for Treasury bank bailouts on a grand scale.

The introduction of Quantitative easing or money creation by the Bank to buy  bonds was thought too big a power to give to the Bank. The overall sum of  money created and bonds bought had to be approved in advance by the Treasury and Chancellor. Any losses that the purchases might lead to were indemnified by the Treasury. There is no way this can be construed as an independent policy. The government has every right to ask the Bank to cut its losses.

The Bank has always accepted that it acted as an agent for the Treasury in building and managing a large bond portfolio. It has also always accepted that budget judgements over spending, tax and borrowing are for the Treasury and Chancellor. The decision of the Bank to incur large and needless losses by selling bonds intrudes on government control of  fiscal policy. Money spent on  bond losses is not available to spend on public services or tax cuts, or it drives up the public sector deficit x the Bank which is the key economic control number.

I have called for the UK to refuse to sign a new WHO Treaty. They want us to give away powers to combat a future epidemic. They want rights to part of our output and stocks of medicines, vaccines and health supplies. Their power grab is unlikely to end there. If we sign then in future we could be circumscribed in how we responded to a health crisis. There would be lawyers controlling what government and the NHS could do.

There also needs to be a proper public enquiry into how the WHO responded to covid.  Where did the virus come  from? Why did it take so long to find which existing drugs could help?  Why were lockdowns so long and how much other damage did they do? Why were WHO numbers on deaths and cases based on different definitions and collection systems by different countries yet published as if comparable?

Ireland and the EU fought to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Now the Republic wants to close it to economic migrants!

The EU and the international lawyers  fought against the UK returning illegal migrants to France. Now they think the EU should be able to return them to the UK.

Why do so many upholders of the international rules based system set out to stop the enforcement of law against illegal migration?

I am willing to publish critical views and different opinions to my own. I have not been willing to publish one correspondent who every day writes in to explain how a couple of billionaires run the world. If they changed their minds global government would still be pushing the same net zero and WHO agenda.It is vexatious  to have to delete the same old refrains every day.Some billionaires are attracted to following the fashionable follies of the world establishment.

I have allowed people to state some disagreement with covid vaccination. This too is not what I wish to pursue as I do not have a sufficient grounding in medicine and the vaccination programmes are now behind us. I was critical of the length and severity of covid lockdowns at the time. Their past wrongs cannot be altered. Astra Zeneca is currently in court proceedings over side effects of its vaccine, where there will be a judgement in due course.

You and I will get more out of these exchanges if you engage with the campaigns I run and the issues I raise. By all means tip the site off about new mistakes and disasters. When responding it helps to build bridges with others rather than just expressing anger about most things.

Several of you want a box None of the above on ballot papers. That is a cop out. Democratic politics is about choosing between what is on offer. If you don’t like what is on offer join the party nearest to what you want and battle to change their offer, or start your own party. If you think all the candidates are bad persuade a better one  to stand  or stand yourself. If you decline to stand or start a party you are admitting your idea of what is needed is not sufficiently widely  shared to take off  in an election.

The world is being changed by two simultaneous revolutions. The green revolution is a hugely ambitious global government inspired project driven by international treaty, laws, targets, bans and subsidies. The digital revolution is a bottom up consumer revolution, driven by huge demand for smart phones, computer pads, online retail, downloaded entertainment, social media, business computing power and robotic assistance. The digital revolution shows what is possible when you have the consumer on your side. The Green revolution is stumbling to find the products and services that people will willingly buy as it seeks to harness sufficient private capital and spending power to add to the large sums of public and  business money green transition currently relies on.

 

Mc Kinsey  in their study reckoned the world would need to spend $275 trillion in the years to 2050 to get to net zero. That is almost three times current annual world income and output. The sum is so large because a full green transition requires the end of most fossil fuel energy, the radical change of electricity generation, and  the massive extension of electricity grids and cable systems. It means  the switch over of most vehicles, planes, and ships to low or no carbon alternatives, the change of people’s diet from meat to vegetable based food, big change in the way people heat their homes and cook, and the transformation of factories that currently rely on gas, coal and oil for their power. There is  no way governments can afford all or most of this. It needs most homeowners to find the money to rip out the gas boiler or replace the solid fuel fire, to change their car or  van and to find diets, holidays and entertainments that are light on the CO2.

 

So far world business has not found the Beetle or Mini of the battery car revolution to fill the parking lots of the average family. They have not produced the smartphone or ipad of the home heating world that flies off the shelves and replaces fossil fuel heaters. Governments are proceeding by trying to force or persuade people to buy products they do not want to buy, or by banning or taxing products they like until they give them up. This causes friction with many voters, and can lead to parties in government losing elections by being too bossy about green issues. The Dutch government fell in a general election when many electors thought it had gone too far in trying to rid Dutch farms of livestock for a meat diet. The French have rioted over higher fossil fuel taxes.  Candidate Trump in the US is polling well on a platform of rejecting the net zero imperatives and turning to extracting larger quantities of cheap domestic oil and gas to stimulate industry and help home consumers. President Biden has carried on offering more drilling licences against the wishes of Green Democrats for fear of losing votes.

 

Governments treading the road to net zero are urging or nudging people to buy electric cars. Recent figures show falling sales in Europe. Tesla, the pioneer of expensive electric vehicles for the richer consumer has been forced into layoffs and scaled back production. It is cutting prices to try to widen its appeal. Many people find battery electric cars are too expensive to buy. Many are worried about the lack of range on some  battery cars.  Many are also concerned about the lack of charging points and the time it takes to recharge when you reach one. Some are concerned  about battery life, repair costs and insurance given the impact the large battery has on the structure of the  car and how central it is to the lifetime costs of the vehicle.

 

Some think government and business should do more to develop low and no carbon fuel for existing internal combustion engines. After all, it is generally agreed that there cannot yet be battery powered long haul jetliners so the accent there is on the production of synthetic no carbon fuel for conventional jet engines. People can produce small quantities of synthetic petrol for existing car engines, so why not scale it up and try to find the economies of scale to make it more affordable? Many people are nervous about electric cars as they expect when there are more of them governments will need to tax the electricity they use to make up for the loss of petrol and diesel duties.

 

Governments want people to adopt heat pumps or electric heating systems. All electric heating is usually  dear to run. Heat pumps are expensive to install. Anyone in an older property may need to undertake extensive and expensive insulation and cladding of the buildings  first. They may also need to change the size of the pipes and radiators to get it warm enough with heat pump energy. Some people who have adopted heat pumps complain of high electricity bills to run them. Some find it difficult to get the water and the rooms hot enough. As a result only a very small proportion of people have so far bought them. The gas boiler remains more reliable, a lot cheaper to install and may also be cheaper to run.

 

Democratic governments will not stay elected if they force people to buy products that are too dear or do not fit people’s expectations of how they should perform. Governments should learn from the digital revolution which took off using private capital and thrives on the freely chosen wishes of billions of  consumers worldwide. It did  not take bans  and subsidies to get so many people to buy gas boilers or cars, replacing coal fires and the horse and cart. There are many ways of creating a cleaner and greener future,  but all successful ones will rest on consumer goodwill. The transition is too big and too dear for governments to carry the burden themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a lot of interest yesterday in the history and performance of the railway. I was asked what would I recommend.

I voted against HS2 and would complete as elegant an  exit as possible whilst of course completing the section to Birmingham currently under contract. I would accelerate the introduction of digital signals which increase capacity substantially and improve safety.

I would break up Network Rail , re uniting track and trains around mainlines into  London terminuses as franchises fall in. The regional or line companies created could be opened up to private capital progressively on new and different franchise terms. All these companies would be subject to open access challenge. Freight companies and challenger passenger companies could compete for the increased number of track slots available. If any regional/line co sought to exclude from reasonable access there would be an appeal to the Regulator who would be under a duty to allow fair competition.

The present debate about whether to nationalise the railway overlooks one crucial fact. In 2002 Labour did nationalise all the track, signals and stations and ensured a public regulator controlled timetables and many fares for the residual private train companies. Since then several of the train franchisees have given up and the state has taken over. It is not easy to run a private rail company if you cannot get the track slots you want, if the track and signals provider lets you down too often with track and signals faults, and if the timetables required do not conform with demand patterns of passengers.

If there was any doubt about the failure nationalisation can bring you then consider the case of the entirely nationalised HS 2. There over paid public sector managers spend their way through huge sums of donated public capital, happily overrunning agreed budgets massively and progressively announcing  delays to the arrival time of London to Birmingham and putting off the start tine for the northern routes.

Network Rail states the value of the track, land and buildings at £82 bn but after 22 years of its management taxpayers only have £15 bn of net assets left. Network Rail has lost us money and taken out £53 bn of loans courtesy of a taxpayer guarantee. Strange how this justified high pay and bonuses.It looks like the work of a bad hedge fund, taking over great assets then borrowing and borrowing on the back of them, lumbering itself and us as taxpayers with huge interest bills.

There is plenty of bad commentary about this nationalisation idea. Margaret Thatcher with myself as her adviser did not privatise British Rail. When John Major did he rejected my advice on how best to do it.

This Parliament has seen a surge of cases against MPs. There are now 18 MPs sitting as Independents because their parties no longer support them. 8 were Conservatives, 7 were Labour,1 was SNP, 1 was DUP and 1 was Plaid. Looked at as percentage of MPs elected that means that 25% of Plaid MPs, 12.5% of DUP, 3% of Labour and 2% of SNP and Conservative MPs elected are currently suspended.

There are many differences in why they lost the whip. A few are on suspicion of criminal activity. Some said inappropriate things. Some behaved badly in their private lives though did not break the law. Some we are not allowed to know why Labour suspended them. Matt Hancock undertook a tv programme in the jungle.

The process for dealing with these very varied cases serves neither the public nor the MPs well. It is wrong for the public if an MP has broken the law or behaved badly but stays on for many months pending some action, in some cases barred from coming to the House. . It is wrong for the MP if it takes many months for Parliament to conclude the accusation was false. Whilst these matters  deserve proper investigation it is in everyone’s interest that decisions are speeded up.

Where the argument is over something the MP said or over actions that are not criminal the best judges are the electors at the next election. Where the accusations are about serious crimes the police and CPS are the  judges of whether to bring a prosecution.