Incisive and topical campaigns and commentary on today's issues and tomorrow's problems

          The media is contrasting the  US growth rate which hit 2.8% per annum in the last quarter of 2011 favourably with the stalling economies of Europe. What they are not doing, however, is picking up on the different composition of growth.

            In the UK the public sector made a positive contribution to growth, whilst industry and mining fell, producing an overall small decline.  In the US federal spending was down 7.3% and total public spending  down by 4.6%  whilst  the private sector grew well, producing the overall gain of 2.8% per annum.

 I presume this part of the truth did not fit in with the highly spun stories abouts cuts, or with the belief that Obama has avoided cuts.  The facts show in the last quarter tough cuts in US public spending along with good growth. In the UK there was public spending growth with no overall growth.  That’s too difficult for UK commentators to explain!

             When the government was working on a new policy for high pay and large bonuses I raised the issue of RBS. I raised it again when Dr Cable announced his policy in the Commons. People will judge the success of Dr Cable’s bid to control large bonuses in no small measure  by the government’s  success in handling RBS pay and  bonuses, where the government is the shareholder and the employer.

          Modern politics is besotted by all three main parties chasing the fairness vote. In a time of austerity, they intone, it is important that government is fair.

            At the highest level I have no problem with this. What politican or political party would want to make unfairness their aim?  It is part of  a trite catchphrase. Of course all those of us with some public spirit and some grasp of democratic politics wants things to be as fair as possible, and wish to design and back policies that are “fair”. Any good  MP or Minister has drilled into them the need to be fair to all constituents, fair between competing claims on their time and for their support, and fair in assessing need and cause. We have a duty to represent all in our constituencies or the wider nation, whatever their views and backgrounds.

            If you try to go further you start to appreciate that there are almost as many ideas of what is fair as there are voters. Going beyond the general, you soon get into some serious politics.  MPs and Ministers have to make decisions and judgements. On any given issue we cannot personally back all the viewpoints, though we can ensure they are all taken into account.

            This week the Bishops from their Palaces have thundered that it is not fair to limit benefit claimants to £26,000 a year tax free, as they might have to cut their spending. The public has thundered back, by a large majority, that it is not fair to expect all the people in paid employment, many earning less than £26,000 tax free, to pay extra tax to pay benefit recipients more.

             Labour, usually instinctively on the side of the benefit claimant, in the Commons seemed to side with the idea that there should be some cap on benefits, whilst in the Lords they did their best to work with the Bishops to undermine the notion.

             The European Human Rights Court often claims that if someone has come to the UK uninvited we have to put them up and support them if their home country no longer wants them or might give them a hard time if they returned.  Some in the UK agree with this approach, and think that it is fair to uphold the individual’s human rights, even where their views and approach to life is very different from the UK democratic traditions.  Others in the UK say that such treatment is unfair on UK taxpayers. Why should we pay, they ask, to support people who were not born and brought up here and who have not paid taxes and made other contributions here and may have gone on  to commit a crime here?

             People who want the clocks to be advanced by an extra hour by law say it was unfair that a handful of MPs last Friday tabled amendments and spoke about the problems with the Bill so that it did not pass. Those who did not like the change think it entirely fair that MPs in Parliament should be able to use Parliamentary procedures to prevent a new law they do not want.

               It is the job of the parties to make their own judgements about what they think is fair, and to persuade enough people to buy into their concept of fairness. In the current debate there are many voices who think fairness means giving more money to those who depend on the state, and taking more money from those who are successful in business. The problem, as always, is that there are not enough very rich to pay all the bills. If the state spends more Mr and Mrs Average have to pay more. Meanwhile Mr  Rich may leave the country or simply hire a better accountant.

                 I find it is often my task in these debates to speak up for fairness for people who try to pay their own bills, who believe they should go to work to support their families, who buy their own homes, and pay for their own travel. They  just ask that the state does not take too much away from them to make self help difficult or impossible. There are millions of UK people who do still think they should do a good day’s work for their pay, and think their pay should provide for their needs.

                   Too many of the people in this fairness debate effectively want to tax these people more. If you tax them too much, more give up and become wholly dependent on the state. More need some state assistance. The welfare reforms are about reducing the numbers who have to depend on the state. The  best way to a job is to have a job. The best way to a better job is to have a not so good job and to work up the ladder. The government needs to be whole hearted in its support of such people. It needs to ensure its view of fairness includes a healthy dose of getting behind those who are determined to do the decent thing.

                I have repeated many times the likelihood that the economy will grow much more slowly than government OBR forecasts. I have said the government will borrow more than is desirable. I have called for a stronger growth strategy.

                 Last year’s figures showing just 0.8% growth were disappointing to the official forecasters. They expected 2.4% growth for 2011-12 in June 2010, reduced that + to 1.8% in March 2011 and to 0.6% in November 2011.

                They are forecasting 0.9% growth  in 2012-13 and 2.4% in 2013-14, down from 2.9% and 2.8% forecast in June 2010. The IMF has now downgraded its forecast for the UK to a lower figure for 2012. If 2012-14 growth is still overstated by say 1.5% over the two years, that adds another £10 billion to the deficit in the second year.

                 The government knows it needs to do more. It is still working on  the credit easing scheme promised in the Autumn Statement. It has relaxed its borrowing limits to accommodate cash increases in public spending in every year despite the shortfall in revenues compared to  budget. The government needs to intensify its search for better value for money in what it spends, and for less desirable budget items that can be removed or delayed.

                   It needs to relax the squeeze on the private sector which we have often discussed. Falling inflation will help. So would some reduction in tax rates, as we have argued before.

                    Above all the government needs to understand that it has to tackle the problems of the banks. There is not enough competition or capacity in HIgh Street banking in the UK. The government owns many of the important banks that service the businesses and public. It needs to split them up, create new competing banks, and float them off with sensible balance sheets so they can get on with the task of financing the recovery.

           Over the last quarter UK output fell by a small 0.2%. These preliminary figures are often revised upwards later. For the year as a whole the economy grew at just 0.8%.

           All this was well known and forecast. We have been talking here about the need for a stronger growth strategy for eighteen months, and clearly as the government recognises more needs to be done. What is far less well known is the fact that the government sector is still adding to the expansion, whilst industry and some private sector services are dragging the figures down.

            In the last quarter the  government sector was up 0.4%. Business and financial services were unchanged. Production and construction fell. For the year, government and other services were up 2.5%, business services and finance were up 2.1%, whilst production industries were down 2.6%.

           Perhaps all those who have been talking of the massive state cuts might like to explain how this results in a continued expansion of the state sector relative to manufacturing industry.

            There are popular cuts in spending. The government has done some work to reduce the degree of regional government in England, but it should do more. Many of us would be cheering in the aisles if the government said it could no longer afford any regional government, and rolled it all up. It could leave local matters to Councils, and English national matters can be decided at Westminster.

              Many of us have no regional loyalties. Indeed, we do not even know which region they want to cajole us into. Is my region Thames Valley? Or is it Rest of the South-east?  Is it the South East?  Is it Home Counties?  Is it part of ancient Wessex? Why does my region usually exclude London, where we have strong links and contacts, but may include Thanet and East Kent, which is a long way away?

                It is said the further away from London you go, the stronger the sense of regional identity. I do not myself find Exeter is keen to accept a lead from Bristol as part of the wider South-west, or Plymouth happy to genuflect to Exeter. Liverpool is not a natural subject of Manchester. The senses of City and local identity are usually much stronger than the EU’s regional identities they are seeking to impose.

                    On Monday  night I was invited on to Scottish BBC (there is no equivalent English BBC of course) to talk about English nationalism. I tried to explain that English nationalism is fuelled most of all by the EU. It is our sense of injustice and anger over the way the EU wishes to balkanise England, and wipe it off the face of their maps, that does more than anything else to propel English feelings. The interviewer was not of course interested, as he was seeking to define English nationalism as a response  to Scottish nationalism. He could not grasp that is not how most of us in England define it for ourselves, but as so often the BBC was uncomprehending and uncaring of the English viewpoint.

               I reported here my question of the cost of HS2 this Parliament to Miss Greening.  She told me they would “only” be spending £200 million this Parliament on preparation work. By the standards of  recent government  spending, that was reassuring for three and a half years.

             Today I received a letter. It told me the total cost of HS2 “is expected to be £32.7 billion…..Of this the cost of the scheme this Parliament will be around £750 million”. She had apparently recalled the cost of land acquisition, not all the consultancy and planning costs.

           Restoring democracy to the UK requires the following steps:

1. Hold an early referendum on Scottish independence. I suspect the Scots will vote to stay in the Union. We can then get on with planning a stronger UK democracy.

2. You could then  create symetrical devolution. MPs elected to the Union Parliament could meet in their respective capitals two days a week to transact devolved business, and three days a week in London to transact Union business. London would be the capital of England as well as of the UK. Doubtless the Scots will wish to keep their double manning with different Scottish representatives for the Scottish Parliament. This should require rethinking the pay and rations of their MPs at Westminster,once they do not participate in decisions on England.

3. Renegotiate our relationship with the EU, and put the result to a vote of the UK people to answer the question if they wish to stay in the EU on the revised terms.

4.Complete the abolition of all English regional government

5. Abolish more quangos

6. Complete the reform of the Lords

7. Strengthen the Commons further

I will be writing in more detail about each of these in turn in future posts.

            The Lib Dems seek to differentiate themselves from the Coalition’s policies. I have no problem with that. The two Coalition parties are different, and need to offer choice to the electors come another election.

              What suprises me is how they wish to be different. They think a benefits cap of £26,000 is too mean, when a large  majority of the electorate and a majority of their own voters think it is an important improvement in our welfare system.

              They think the UK should not stand up to the EU, but should go along with more or less any further transfer of power, tax imposition and other humiliation the EU should want to visit on us. Around 80% of the UK public disagree with them.

               They want a mansion tax , to tax people who live in the more expensive parts of the country, regardless of their incomes, mortgages and circumstances.

                Put this altogether and they end up with just 9% support in the latest polls. No amount of banker bashing rhetoric seems to work to make them more popular, but then they are in government and are paying RBS executives large sums whilst losing  they lose  taxpayer money. No amount of pro EU rhetoric seems to lift their poll ratings. Nor, I suspect, will voting for more benefits for people not in work as these matters are put before the Lords.

           There has been so much comment and debate about the Credit Crunch, bank collapse, large recession and inflation which happened in recent years, that attention has been diverted from the constitutional vandalism carried out by the EU and its collaborators in the last government.

           In 1999 I wrote a book entitled “The death of Britain”. It is time to revisit its predictions, bring the analysis up to date, and to go to ask how can UK democracy be restored to a country with a mangled constitution.

          I argued that devolution would “fuel nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales”. “It is helping create a Europe of the regions in the way the Commission wants”.  ”The end result will be a more factious, more overgoverned, more overregulated United Kingdom… It will not reconnect the public with the politicians. It will confirm the public in their view that politicians by and large do not solve problems, do cost too much, and are good at misleading the public in their own interests”. Devolution is usually a stepping stone on the way to a break up of a union.

                The book concluded:

 ”It is a crowning irony that, that following decades or centuries of success with the Westminster model and our belief in freedom, this government and this European Union should  now be uniting to destroy much of what is best in the Mother of Parliaments.”

               “What is the point of Parliament if a common foreign policy for Britain is hammered out by our partners on the continent? What is the point of Parliament if the most important decisions about economic policy are taken by an independent central bank in Frankfurt? What is the point of Parliament if many of the important issues of health and education and local government are determined by regional assemblies and not at Westminster? How much democracy will there be if crucial decisions are taken behind closed doors at Brussels meetings?…”

            “One day, however, the British people will collectively wake up to realise that Parliament, the fountain of so many of their liberties, no longer has much water in it….They will discover there are so many layers of politicians and bureaucrats from town hall through district council through county council through regional assembly through Westminster to Brussels, that they very rarely get a straight answer to anything and find it extremely difficult to work out who , if anyone, is to blame….The Scots will get restless for more independence…”

                       “Labour’s constitutional blueprint is nothing more than a plan for the destruction of United Kingdom democracy. It threatens splits within the kingdom. It threatens transferring too much out of democratic control. It gives far too much ground to the federal plan on the continent. ”

                         13 years on much of what I feared has come true. Devolution has unleashed nationalist movements.Devolution is not a stable settlement, but a constant series of demands for more. The Treaties of Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon have transferred far too many powers to the EU, making the  UK powerless in many more areas and adding to scepticism and hostility toward politics as a result. The advent of more decision making in quangos, Brussels and further layers of government has added to cost, complexity. It  lacks  clarity and is increasingly unacceptable to electors. A so called independent Bank  of England presided over our worst economic and banking crisis since the 1930s, making many policy mistakes.  As I feared Labour got rid of the people it did not like in the Lords, but did not know how to reform it positively.

                       Some things I feared we prevented. We stopped the UK joining the single currency, despite Mr Blair’s enthusiasm. We stopped changes to the voting system for Westminster, though we have them for other layers of government.  We have checked regional government in England, defeating elected regional government and now starting to cut  back the unelected because it is a needless and unaccountable layer.

                      In future pieces I will examine what more we need to do to rebuild a proper Parliamentary democracy in the UK.

                     The BBC today reported  79% now support English votes for English issues – that’s a start. Then the BBC ruined it, by saying the answer to the sense of English injustice with the union was a bit more devolution to the northern cities! No, BBC, the answer is to let us English speak for England, and for England to be able to take its own decisions where such decisions are devolved in Scotland. If Scotland is united in its devolved kingdom, so must England be.