Month: April 2008

When I heard from a constituent complaining of persecution by the TV licensing authority, who not believe him when he told them he did not have a television, I was sympathetic and took up his case. The response I received from the Authority was typical of this government’s revenue arms – inflexible, and determined to raise the maximum cash it can from the long suffering public. As usual I did not take the matter to the press, as the issue came to me in confidence and many constituents do not want their personal details splashed across the local – or sometimes the national – newspapers.

Today I can vouch for the hectoring behaviour of this body, backed up from my personal experience. I have a studio flat in Westminster, which I use when I have to vote after 10 pm in the Commons – or attend a working dinner in London – and then need to be up and out early the next morning for a breakfast meeting or the like. It is not a place I plan to spend my evenings in. I decided not to buy a TV partly because I deeply resent having to pay a poll tax to the BBC for the TV coverage of public issues they choose to put out, and have no intention of paying them two, one for home and one for the flat.I do not like the way they use so many voices who want higher taxes, more European government and more regulation for every problem.I also tire of the very large number of self advertisements on the BBC, when no-one else can buy the advertisement time.

When I moved in they sent me a letter reminding me of the need to take out a TV licence. I wrote back telling them I did not have a TV. For my pains I received another couple of standard letters telling me I needed a TV licence, and that inspectors might call unannounced to check up on me. I wrote back again complaining of the harassment. They replied saying they were sending me another standard letter, that inspectors would be calling unannounced, and they were sorry I was cross about it. They said they would be writing to me in a similar vein at least annually.

It is typical of this government and its state broadcasting corporation that the only thing they care about is extracting more money from the public, and they cannot believe that anyone could possibly live without their TV output. They clearly regard anyone who says they do not have a TV as a liar, and spend large sums on writing them endless letters and sending out inspectors. Their inspectors will, of course, be wasting their time in my case, as I am most unlikely to be in any time they call, unless I am to experience the knock at the door at 2 am, to confirm that I am living in a version of the Soviet Union circa 1960.

We see the daily incompetence and waste of most branches of government, where letters go unanswered for months, where people have long waits to get on a waiting list for a hospital appointment, where many parents and pupils cannot get into the school of their choice, and where the roads are constantly disrupted by the authorities who are meant to look after them. It is galling to discover that the only thing they are persistent about is taking money off us. Life in a democracy requires civil exchanges between the government and the governed, and a framework of trust. Governments should assume honest conduct by citizens unless there is evidence to suppose otherwise, and should have a framework of sensible laws and requirements that most people most of the time respect and wish to follow. As soon as government becomes heavy handed and imposes too many laws – and too many laws that do not seem reasonable to the governed – there is more chance that more people will deliberately or inadvertently break them, and more likelihood that government will then intensify its snooping and heavy handed enforcement. Such a progress makes public life coarser, and creates a growing gap between government and governed. The UK now is suffering from rapacious government, seeking ever larger sums of revenue to feed the bureaucratic monster. It will in turn create an angrier electorate, resentful of how the money is spent and cross about the bullying techniques used to extract it.

The TV licensing website – with comments in 16 languages – tells us they spent over £130 million last year on collecting the revenue and enforcing the charge. They also claim that around 5% of the public with TVs do not bother to buy a licence. It is difficult to know how they work out such a figure, yet still fail to collect the money from them. In this multi media digital age the licence fee is looking increasingly out of date and expensive to collect. It is time for rethink.

The old Labour knocking copy against the Conservatives is being retailed against them, and recycled by a government in a hole against its “rebels”. It really is too absurd.
In the 1990s Labour put around the idea that the Conservatives were too divided to be able to govern. The Conservative Prime Minister echoed these sentiments, constantly briefing the press about the need for unity – around his view of what we should do and say next. Now we have a Labour government in trouble. The pollsters ask the public if they think the governing party is divided – of course it is. They ask if the governing party is unpopular – of course it is. The Prime Minister then yells at the rebels for daring to disagree, blaming them for the poor showing in the polls and the probable poor results in the forthcoming local elections. Everywhere from the super loyal Mirror to the leader page of the Daily Telegraph we see the old fib wheeled out – what is wrong with the government is the persistence by the rebels in disagreeing with their Prime Minister.
How stupid! The Conservative party of Margaret Thatcher at the height of her powers was both popular and deeply divided between wets and dries, pro Europeans and Eurosceptics. The Conservative party of Michael Howard was uniquely united in the run up to the Election of 2005, but it did not make us popular. The Labour government of Tony Blair was hugely divided between modernisers and traditionalists, between Brownies and Blairites, between old left and new left, yet it kept on winning.
Very often when a government is in a deep hole of its own digging it is the so-called “rebels” who are the true friends of the party and the government. If the “rebels” who were angry about the abolition of the 10p tax band had been taken seriously earlier, and concessions made before the row became so public, the government would be more popular than it is today. The government is not unpopular today because it has rebels. It is unpopular because it has failed to see that the rebels are usually on the popular side of an argument.
The main cause of the government’s current unpopularity is the state of the economy. People feel squeezed by higher taxes and higher prices. Some now fear for their jobs – as do some Labour MPs as they look at the opinion polls. People know that the government has taken too much money from them, and spent much of it unwisely. That is what is making them angry. They welcome the fact that some Labour MPs understand, and are trying to get the government to think again.
It is never easy trying to get an obstinate government to understand the sources of its unpopularity, as I well remember from my experiences in the 1990s. What you can be sure about is if you do not try to point out the errors of a failing government’s ways you will go down with the ship. If you succeed, you can help right the ship. I admire the Labour “rebels” who want to save the Brown government, but listening to the rhetoric coming out of Downing Street – and from Tesssa Jowell – they cannot be saved because they think the rebels are just being difficult. At their best the rebels speak for Britain.

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How many Labour MPs thought it would come to this? Many of them wanted Gordon Brown with a passion, preferring his more socialist approach to Tony Blair’s Third way ambiguity. Many of them thought he was too decisive and powerful to be stopped. Even the minority of loyal Blairites who privately predicted disaster before he was crowned did not have the courage to put up a candidate against him and expose the obvious weaknesses in advance, to spare their party and our nation the agony we are now living through.

Yesterday’s news was a new low for a government which lives by the news and is judged by the headlines.

We had 8000 schools on strike, making a mockery of Labour’s claim to be the party of “education, education, education”.

We saw the Grangemouth refinery closing down to prepare for a strike over pensions, highlighting the immense damage the government has done to private pension schemes.

A government Minister on TV told us they were taking an active part in ensuring proper supplies of diesel and petrol to Scotland, whilst the same TV programme showed five out of six filling stations they visited had already run out of diesel, with some rationing of petrol.

Over in the City there was more news of the mortgage famine, preventing many young people from buying their first home. Ministers tell us helping such people is one of their aims.

News came of a leading housebuilder announcing it would not be starting work on any new housing sites, as demand was so poor. Ministers have spent the last couple of years lecturing us all on the need to build more homes, and trying to find greenfields they can insist we build over.

In the corridors of Westminster Labour MPs were heard asking if the PM and Chancellor’s climb down the previous day over compensation for some of the losers from Labour’s Income Tax rise was a “con”.

Ministers were still cobbling together some way of sending some money back to people they now admit they are overtaxing, but were unable to explain how much would be sent to how many on what date – and this is sorting out a problem created by a budget delivered a year ago.

The problem for Mr Brown is how to break this desultory cycle of bluster, incompetence and climb down. He wants to avoid looking like James Callaghan bedevilled by strikes, visits to the IMF and high inflation in the 1970s. Clearly the spin strategy this week has been to seek to isolate the 10p tax band problem, make the minimum concession to see them through the otherwise difficult vote next week, and then show resolution in the face of future rebellions. Unfortunately for the PM his backbenchers are suspicious, and will demand more detail before they finally settle the tax question. Meanwhile, the rebels over the ghastly 42 day detention policy have not gone away, and will have learnt from this that The PM does change his mind under pressure. Journalists are already circling the issue, looking forward to dramas ahead.

I enjoyed some of the BBC coverage of the strikes. With a hint of incredulity in his voice, one reporter said it was Labour voters (Meaning NUT members) striking against a Labour government. It was an interesting slip. NUT members were never all Labour voters, even in 1997. They are certainly not all Labour voters today! The left is watching as one arm of the Labour movement, the public sector Trade Unions, turns on another, the Labour party in office. It is not a pretty sight, and it is most disruptive for members of the public caught up in the consequences of the battle. Yesterday it was areas that voted strongly Labour in recent elections which were most affected. Diesel is in short supply in Scotland, and more teachers were on strike and more schools closed proportionately in places like Wales, where people had chosen mainly Labour MPs.

To recover from here the Prime Minister needs to change his character and approach. He needs to become more interested in the underlying problems and seek to solve them. The number one problem is people are short of cash to pay the ever rising bills – he needs to understand the damage tax poverty is doing to his reputation. To solve this he needs to lower taxes, which requires running a more efficient public sector. He needs to show more flexibility and more honesty in dealing with Parliament. Where his whips tell him there could be problems he needs to listen and adapt, rather than talking tough and then conceding. He should not conclude from all this that reform is impossible or undesirable. He should understand that public sector reform requires persuasion, strategy and tactical skill.

Teachers are on strike. Civil servants are on strike. University lecturers are on strike. The Grangemouth refinery which supplies much of Scotland with oil products is on strike and closed down. The Labour government is taking us back to the wild 1970s, when workers resorted to strike action against a Labour government in a destructive frenzy, which kept the UK firmly near the bottom of any list of richer countries for investors thinking of where to create jobs and do business.

I remember thinking how absurd strikes could be as a young University teacher. We were confronted by a student strike! Some of my colleagues saw it as extra holiday, some as a welcome opportunity to do some more research instead of teaching. One of my abler students in advance of the strike asked if he could shift his tutorial from a strike day to a non strike day, as he was kind enough to think the tutorial of value but he wished to show “solidarity”. I explained that he had to face the moral dilemma. If he wanted to show solidarity he also had to show sacrifice – so I would not change the tutorial date. He asked if he could come to the tutorial on the standard date by the back gate so no-one would see. I said that was fine by me. He became an incognito strike breaker. The students were, of course, striking against themselves. There was no need to give any ground over whatever their issue was.

I finally decided to leave University teaching when an unexpected visitor turned out to be a Union organiser wanting me to join a Trade Union. It reminded me that University teaching, for all the diversity of Higher Education institutions in Britain, was in many respects a nationalised monopoly. The state was the principal paymaster and in some ways the ultimate employer. Governments were likely to squeeze university pay in the long run, and were unlikely to welcome pay systems which rewarded individuals prepared to offer better work or more energy in performing their tasks. I left for employment where I could negotiate my own deal based on what I could contribute to the organisation, working alongside others who would never dream of going on strike.

The four different groups of workers on strike today all have the same grievance at base: they think the government is too mean. The Grangemouth workers will gain the most attention, because their conduct will visibly and quickly inconvenience a very large number of people in Scotland and will soon disrupt other businesses trying to work there. They will be an international advert to footloose industries and investors to avoid Scotland as it descends into industrial anarchy. The University teachers will have the least impact.

The Grangemouth strike is about the closure of the final salary pension scheme to new employees. It is a late example of a wave of pension fund closures brought about by the government decision to tax pension funds. The sad collapse of many final salary schemes is an all too predictable consequence of Brown’s high tax policies, and yet another route by which this government is driving people into tax poverty.

The teachers will only be striking in some schools, through the actions of just one Union. The strike ballot produced a minority vote for the strike allied to widespread abstention. The teachers are right that their pay award is below the increase in the Retail Price Index, but wrong to think that they are being treated badly in comparison to most workers. The majority are settling for pay awards below the current rapid rate of inflation, and below the rate of increase of the RPI. The whole public sector, including MPs, has to accept that the government has overspent and over borrowed, and now has to rein back. We should all expect a period of falling real salaries and wages as the government struggles to adjust after its excesses. MPs voted for a lower increase for themselves than recommended by the Pay review body.

It is sad that relations between the state as employer and its employees has reached this sorry impasse. Private business now experiences far fewer strikes, as employers have learnt to keep talking and to take the interests of their staff more seriously than they used to, and employees have learnt that if you strike in a competitive business you may damage the company to the point where there is no longer a job for you. The public sector is meant to believe in providing a public service. You enter it knowing that in times of expenditure restraint all have to make a sacrifice. It is a pity the Labour government made such a mess of the finances, and a bigger pity that a Labour Education Secretary cannot get on with the NUT.

At least Labour Ministers do not have to worry about the Opposition’s view on this. When Conservatives were in power Labour MPs were always tempted to support strikes and strikers and to side with them. The Conservative Opposition today is united in condemning strike action. It recommends to all the strikers to talk and to use democratic protest, whilst returning to work. It advises the government to listen, and to see what it can do within the difficult financial constraints its budget mismanagement has created.

This government just doesn’t get poverty. Rather, it begets it.

The government thinks there is child poverty and fuel poverty. Today – and next week in Parliament – the pressing issue is tax poverty.

Poverty is a shortage of income for people to pay the necessities and have a decent lifestyle. There are three ways of tackling it.

The political parties all agree the best way is to create a climate in which the economy generates enough well paid jobs, so people can go to work to earn what it takes to afford to keep themselves and their dependents.

They agree that for some, it is necessary to take money from the many to give to the few who cannot find or hold a job.

The third way would be for the state to let people keep more of their money, instead of taking so much from them in tax. If those on lower incomes paid less income tax they could afford the fuel bills and could manage the food and housing bills without requiring a benefit top up.

The government is hoist on its own targets to cut so-called child poverty. It is a curiously misnamed set of targets. Practically all children are poor. We have legislated to make sure they remain so, as we believe we should prevent children under the age of 16 from working for pay to take them out of poverty. (Please note, I support the banning of child labour!) We also usually prevent children from inheriting or receiving larger sums from relatives with property and money to give them an independent savings income which they control as minors. This government wishes to take this approach further, by preventing 16-18 year olds from entering full time work for pay without an educational component, something I do not support. I want 16-18 year olds to have opportunities for more education if that is what they want, but I do not favour compulsion.

What the government means is it wishes to cut parent poverty. That’s a good thing to want to do. I also want to cut it, along with cutting poverty for childless couples and for single people. The government’s determination to tackle parent poverty has led it into the dangerous political quagmire of abolition of the 10p tax band, offering compensation to some parents through benefits and tax credits, whilst taxing single people and childless couples more. Transferring money from one group of low income earners to another is not what a lot of Labour MPs came into politics to achieve. It is certainly not what I am about. I want to tackle the low net incomes of all.

Today there is a summit on fuel poverty. Yes, the fuel bills are spiralling upwards. No, there is nothing in the short term the government can do about the ever higher oil, gas and coal prices. Yes, the fuel companies have to pass on most of the increased costs of fuel to them. Yes, that will make them unpopular and the objects of political diversionary attacks.

Yet if you buy fuel for your car or van, for your working vehicle or for the delivery vehicle to your home, more than two thirds of the rip off price is tax. The energy companies are great tax collectors, taking money from poor and rich alike for their product, only to hand over lots of it to the government. People could afford even today’s high bills if they kept more of their own income. The government’s removal of the 10p tax band undermines everything and more besides that it is trying to do to alleviate fuel poverty. There would be no fuel poverty for the many if taxes were cut.

I believe the best anti poverty programme you can have is cutting taxes. Under this government, far from playing Robin Hood and taxing the rich to pay the poor, as socialists would like, the government is playing Sheriff of Nottingham. It is taxing the poor to give to the new rich, the Chief Executives of the ever expanding state, to the well paid bureaucrats, to the legal advisers, the management consultants, the spin doctors, pollsters and focus group masters, to the computer contractors and the PFI/PPP providers who cluster attentively around Labour’s great public sector money making machine. Labour even wants to add the political parties to the list of those who deserve more tax cash from the poor to sustain their expensive habits. There are just not enough multimillionaire footballers and movie stars to take the money off, especially when they can leave the country at the very whiff of higher taxes on their fabulous incomes.

If the government were serious about tackling parental poverty and fuel poverty, if it understood that it needs to tackle single person and childless couple poverty as well as pensioner and parent poverty, it would curb its own insatiable appetite for cash for the grandees of the public sector. It would cancel or seek value from all those consultancy, research, financing and management contracts that festoon in the profligate public sector. Ministers would curb the Ministerial drinks cupboard and cut back on the air travel.

So come on Labour. Put in place a real anti poverty programme. Understand poverty is a shortage of spending power for anyone who is poor, whether they are young or old, single or married, with or without children. It is bad news for anyone suffering from it. The best and quickest way to get more people out of it is to lower taxes. That means reining in the excesses of the multilayer government and the quango state.