Outside Parliament they are digging ip the road to put in an expensive new cycle lane. They have just spent large sums on putting up ugly metal fences when there are already good defences against attacks. The government has money to subsidise companies bringing in foreign employees, when we need more jobs for UK citizens who have lost their jobs under this government. The government has plenty of money for net zero excesses.It puts  billions into HS 2 and hundreds of millions to subsidise a Chinese owned  steelworks. It grants thousands of sick notes for life to people with mild mental health conditions who would be better off working.

The government sees more public spending as the answer to every problem. They have created a destructive money go round, imposing unaffordable taxes on business, then having to pay some subsidy to stop too many going bust.

Starmer and Reeves have come badly unstuck over controlling defence spending, They now seem to be having the negotiation over more defence spend with the new Defence Secretary which they refused to have with the old one. Why?

Source: DWP benefits statistics

The main reason public finances in the UK have deteriorated so badly is the surge in benefit claims and payments. It has led to big pressure on the accounts and to  too much borrowing. As the state borrows more to pay more benefits so the interest burden of the state debt rises, intensifying the problems with paying the bills. The DWP confuses the State Retirement Pension which is of course a Contributory benefit, with the other non contributory ones.

The government needs to take the surge in benefit numbers and claims more seriously. I am one of the first to say of course we should pay tax to ensure that the seriously disabled and ill can have a decent home and life . This should not be extended to granting sick notes for life to people with mild mental disorders, where helping them into work could help with their recovery. This government has allowed a big rise in the numbers granted benefits with no requirement to seek work. They need to require more to seek employment and to give them the incentives and conditions that encourage successful pursuit of a job. They also need better business and tax policies to promote more vacancies.

The government needs to toughen its controls over our borders more. Too many low pay and no pay people have been allowed in and moved onto in work and out of work benefits. Too many dependents have then also been allowed in to be with the illegal arrivals who get permission to stay. There are still far too many illegal arrivals who are now allowed by this government to claim asylum after they arrive illegally, despite arriving from safe countries. Recruiting more from overseas to do low paid jobs also depresses wages, leaving more people needing benefit top up. This becomes a poverty go round.   This too is increasing the dependency ratio.

The combination of inviting in, allowing in and home growing too many people on low and no incomes is leading to a soaring benefit bill. The more people there are on benefits, the more this government puts up taxes on those who are not. The higher taxes then pushes the richest and most successful out of the country, worsening the ratio between taxpayers and recipients of benefits, More than half the nation now receives net benefits, placing an ever greater strain on those who do make a financial contribution to the state.

My speech on New Towns  ( PS I have always opposed high levels of inward migration and explained the costs and impact of high migration on housing. This speech is in the context of current government policy)

My Lords, in 2004 the Labour Government were struggling with a shortage of homes and rising housing costs, so I offered some published advice on how, for example, they could initiate the construction of a new garden city by the Thames. I provisionally called it Thames Reach—it was in the Ebbsfleet area—as an example of how it would be easier to get consent to something bold and visionary which included infrastructure and formed complete communities than to just keep on adding piecemeal to existing communities who often did not like the stresses and strains that could create. It did not appeal to the then Labour Government, but the incoming Conservative Government later took other advice and decided on

Ebbsfleet Garden City, and that is now well under way, with a development corporation to do it. I am very pleased they did it, and I think it is an example of what can be achieved.

Like others in this debate, I would like to see more passion, enthusiasm, urgency, force and development. The Government made a mighty promise to our country of 1.5 million houses in five years. The last Government were achieving around a million; they hit their targets. The Labour Opposition were quite right to say that they were not that stretching, and they came up with this stretching target. But I have got news for Ministers: two years in, they are miles off the pace. They will not even hit the pace of the outgoing Conservative Government. They need to make a big shift in what they are trying to achieve.

I would also like to hear more about how it can be based in some fine traditions of British development, and the formation of British communities. Someone I revere as one of our great entrepreneurial designers, Josiah Wedgwood, in some ways started it with above-average housing for the skilled workers that he recruited, trained, and wished to retain, in a village called Etruria. What a good idea to give them an improvement in living standards as part of the package.

That was carried on by other great entrepreneurs and rich families. Go and visit Bournville and Port Sunlight; are Ministers not proud of these? They were great achievements, with wonderful architecture, countryside in the development, people with gardens, sporting facilities that they could use, communal facilities that they could go and enjoy, a community that was built around a place of work that they were proud of, and that paid them decent wages and looked after them. This spread out more widely, as we have heard from others, in post-war developments, when you had the development of garden cities, with Welwyn and so forth taking off. So there is a tradition that we can build on, and the Government could show more passion, and a bit more continuity in British life, drawing on the things we can be proud of: how normal skilled workers got access to much better housing, started to live in communities and then went on to become owners, which is also extremely important for democratising capital and spreading wealth more widely.

The Government should also look at what works to break down resistance, because we have a paradox in public opinion in this country. The public think that we should build more houses, but most of the public do not think any of the houses should be built anywhere near them. I represented a constituency which always had one of the fastest rates of new house building foisted on it by successive Governments: the constituency of Wokingham. So successful was it that they kept having to break bits off from my constituency to form new ones, as we had so many people coming into the patch. I had to be the chief nimby, but you can see that I am not a nimby. We need to build houses. Construction is a great thing. But I did have to represent the perfectly genuine view that, if you took too many of our green fields and green gaps between settlements, you destroyed the community and changed the nature of the fabric of the local area. We were being asked to take too much, too quickly. 

I also shared the view that we were not getting access to the funds and projects for the infrastructure. We were inviting people in when there was not electricity, water, enough pipes to take the dirty water away, or enough drained land, so the new houses flooded almost as soon as people moved into them. It was a disgrace that we did not plan it properly.

So I urge the Government to put more emphasis on new cities and towns, to accept the conclusions of the report that you plan them in advance and, above all, that you put the facilities in first.

Yesterday in the Lords I raised the question of why the government taxes companies, institutions and people too much, then offers a bit back in subsidy, grants and benefits. This is destructive conduct leading  to less tax revenue and more public spending as businesses close or lose out and people lose jobs and income. There was of course no Ministerial answer.

High energy using businesses close or move into heavy losses and cut jobs thanks to carbon taxes. Steel collapses so taxpayers have to pay big subsidies to struggling producers whilst the Treasury rips them off with taxes.

The example we were discussing yesterday was Colleges of Further Education. They have to pay  VAT and higher National Insurance, so then the government has to find them more grant.

Government puts VAT on school fees at private schools, so then it has to find more money for state schools to pay for the extra  places needed as pupils are priced  out of the private sector.

Government imposes extra taxes on employing people, destroys many jobs,so has to increase its spending on benefits for more unemployed.

Please stop this  destructive merry go round that bloats the state and makes the country poorer. Higher taxes do great damage.

The great inflation after covid lock down is often called the cost of living crisis. It occurred in the UK, the Eurozone and the US where prices peaked  at around a 10% annual increase. It did not occur in Japan, in China or in Switzerland where inflation stayed around 2%. In the UK, the US, Germany and others experiencing the high inflation it led  to the  defeat of the ruling party or executive President.  The  Uk inflation rate  hit 6% before Putin invaded Ukraine and put up energy prices.

The Bank of England, the US Fed and the European  Central Bank are all responsible for controlling inflation, each with a 2% target. Each allowed or caused an inflation five times target. Each blamed Putin and the oil price for  the overshoot. The fact that 3 big importing countries, Chiba, Japan and Switzerland saw no such effect shows the oil price explanation is wrong. The timing of the inflation rise with  some  of it before the invasion also pours doubt on their excuse.

The Conservative government that presided   over the rise paid the  price for the Bank’s mistakes, as it has to in a  democracy. After all the government could  have modified  Bank independence to  stop the mistake. The Chancellor could  have refused to sign off the last £150 bn of money printing as I suggested at the time. Although it was  a Bank decision to print such excessive amounts, from Chancellor Darling onwards the amounts to be printed always needed Chancellor approval and a full indemnity from taxpayers for losses on the bonds they bought.

Despite the obvious errors allowing too much money and credit to be created the Central Banks have largely deflected the blame and have kept support for continued Bank independence. We need to explain the independence only relates to setting the Base rate and making independent forecasts of inflation. Keeping this structure without allowing future errors on  the scale of the Great Inflation requires the  Bank of England to revise its economic model and forecasting methods to demonstrate it  can in future foresee something like the Great inflation, which it failed to recognise until it was well advanced. That will require more diversity of thought on the Monetary Policy Committee, and the incorporation of money and credit more fully into the forecasting models. Those treating money and credit seriously did warn both the Fed and the Bank of England that they were about to allow a big inflation.

An incoming government must show it is on the side of tougher action against inflation, not weaker. It must signal that the Bank needs to take it s duty very seriously to keep inflation down , and needs to strengthen its forecasting and Policy formulation. The UK government itself should also adopt the inflation target of 2% and reflect it in its budgets, wage forecasts and controls over the public sector. Under this government much of the additional inflation is coming from public sector costs, wages and prices, and from Regulators allowing large rises in regulated prices.

Bad Bank and official policies are good at bringing governments down and damaging the economy. Their Exchange Rate Mechanism policy created a wild boom/bust to get rid of the 1992 Conservative government, and their QE debauched currency got rid of the last Conservative government.

A new poll gives a big thumbs down to closer alignment with the EU and to the Re set policy.

It is true Polls have shown understandable voter disappointment with the pathetic Brexit the UK governing establishment have created. The government and the many EU enthusiasts in the Establishment have mistaken this for support for putting the UK back under EU laws.The  voters complaining about Brexit are not just the approx 20% minority who will always want us back in, but lots of voters who feel cheated by a government that will not shake off the worst features of retained EU law and policy.We voted Brexit for something better. We did not want to stay under the EU laws  and taxes which kept us with slow growth and lack of innovation,  losing out to the US and Asia all the time.

In a new independent poll with a good sample 59% say they do not want to surrender some powers to make our own laws and taxes to get better access to the EU single market. Only 27% think it a good idea. The agreed poll question was generous to the EU as it implied we could get better access for the sacrifice. The news from the reset talks so far is we will not get improved access whilst paying  a big price in extra payments to the  EU and in accepting many unhelpful laws.

This poll was commissioned by Britain Un bound, a new cross party group. I am joint chairman of the Advisory Committee with Labour’s Richard Johnson, an academic at Queen Mary London. The group includes Reform, Conservative, Labour, DUP and SNP members and contributors.

For two years the government has added more renewables, told us they are cheaper, and watched as electricity prices have been rising.

When challenged they tell us prices have only gone up because electricity prices are often based on the price of gas generated electricity.

So here are their options

1 Change electricity pricing so renewables and nuclear do not get the gas based electricity price

Or

2,Remove the high carbon tax/emissions trading costs imposed on gas generators

And or

3. Get more of our own oil and gas out.This will bring big increases in tax revenue as the UK collects it instead of passing lots of tax to Norway and US for imported gas.Use the extra tax revenue to cut energy prices.

4. End high guaranteed prices for renewables for future projects and contracts.Our historic contracts offer dear power.

5 Commission more new combined cycle gas power stations to keep the lights on.

My Lords, industrial electricity prices are four times the level of the United States of America’s and more than three times the level of China’s. It is no wonder that we face a disaster of deindustrialisation accelerating under this Government with the closure of the oil refineries, ceramics plants and others that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, rightly mentioned.

This is all avoidable damage. It is self-harm on a huge scale that the Government should be ashamed of. We have signed up for dearer electricity—it was not just this Government, but this Government have signed up to it, doubled the signature and worsened the terms, making it so much worse than even the position they inherited. It was always going to be the case that, if you put on more renewables, you would have dearer electricity. It is completely wrong to suggest otherwise, because you need to pay for two systems: you need the wind power as well as 100% back-up, because on some days, particularly cold, difficult days in winter, there is no wind power at all. So you are paying twice with the back-up.

It was always going to be the case that the more renewables you put on the system, the dearer your cheapest form of energy production, which is gas generation, becomes. When you switch from gas being on baseload to gas being interruptible and brought in only occasionally when there is no wind, it works much less efficiently. The efficiency of the power station drops from over 60% to around 40%, so there will be even more carbon dioxide per amount of energy produced. Of course your costs go up dramatically, because your overhead costs for the gas power station are defrayed by a limited number of days instead of being defrayed by operating every day of the year apart from occasional maintenance. It was baked into the system that this would be less efficient and work less well.

Governments, particularly this one, have then compounded the problem by saying that gas must incur very high carbon tax charges. Of course our electricity was going to get dearer, because customers had to pay additional taxes on the gas. Why are there additional taxes on the gas? It is mainly as the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, implied: the gas was too competitive and was still cheaper even on some of the interruptible runnings that they were proposing. So you needed a big carbon tax to say to people, “This really is the dearest part of the power system, which is why we are trying to get rid of it”.

So the Government go out and sell to the public this unbelievable idea that we have uniquely dear electricity because we are producing some on gas—gas which is diminishing in volume because, when we have windy days now, there is more wind power available, so the amount on gas has reduced proportionately. They are not coming clean with the public that a series of levies and carbon taxes are the cause of very high energy prices in the United Kingdom.

The Government offered £300 off people’s bills as a lovely election offer. We all thought that that meant our bill would go down by £300, but we now learn that their down payment is £150 off a rise, so the bill still goes up. The sting in the tail, which we were not told about, is that we have to pay the £150, but out of general taxes instead of our electricity bills. For most people who go to work and pay taxes, that is no advantage at all. The Government are kidding themselves and undermining their own popularity, industry and commerce by a policy which is all self-harm.