Extradition and Ministerial statements

 

        Yesterday was another day for backbench business in the Commons. This has been Mr Cameron’s best reform so far, enabling Parliament to be more relevant, and to have more impact upon the agenda and debates of the nation.

         The Committee decided to allow two issues to be aired. The first was a motion to require Ministers to make all their important announcements to the Commons first. If a Minister breaks the convention and leaks important information prior to the Statement, then the House wished the matter to be dealt with either by the Speaker or by the Standards and Privileges Committee. Parliament voted this motino down by 228 votes to 119.

          In recent years governments have got lax about telling the Commons first. They often prefer to tell a friendly journalist or create a story on a week-end show. This matters. Parliament is the correct forum, so the matter can be properly exposed to comment and criticism by Opposition and government backbenches alike. If Parliament is to stay relevant most of the time it needs to hear the news first, to disseminate the main announcements about government policy and actions.

          The second motion was to call upon the government to reform our extradition arrangements. Many of us think the European Arrest Warrant  is too intrusive in its impact on UK justice. We are not against extradition, but would like to see the UK retain more control over the process. Similarly, many of us thought the last government’s deal with the US was lop sided, giving too much to the US. Other countries have different arrangements which we think are preferable.

            This motion passed without opposition. This means the government has accepted it. Let us hope they now carry out the will of the House. The UK needs a better deal on extradition. Too much power has been given away by past Parliaments. It is good to see this one trying to reclaim some. I am grateful to Dominic Raab for bringing forward his motion, which I did co-sign.

Mr Redwood’s interventions during the Opposition Day debate on Living Standards, 30 Nov 2011

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con) rose —

Mr Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill) (Lab): I shall give way in a moment.

The weakness in the jobs market is not abstract; it shows up in people’s pay packets. That is exactly what the Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed yesterday. Earnings, it says, are now set to fall throughout the rest of this Parliament. By 2016 wages will be no higher than they were in 2001—£1,400 below their pre-crash peak—yet prices are not falling; they are rising. Prices are going up over the course of this Parliament. Wages are falling and prices are rising. That double whammy is now hurting families all over this country.

Not long ago, the Governor of the Bank of England said that we in this country now confront the worst squeeze on living standards since the 1920s. Yesterday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the squeeze was “unprecedented”. This is the biggest fall in household income since records began. With our nation’s family budgets under such pressure, we would have thought that the Government would step in to help. Not a bit of it. Instead, working families are being asked to pick up the pieces.

Mr Redwood: The right hon. Gentleman is making a very important point—that a big squeeze on living standards started under his party’s Government. It is continuing under the coalition. As the forecasts make clear, a big element in that is energy and fuel prices. Does he have any proposals that the Government could adopt to tackle that problem?

Mr Byrne: We do think that Government should be doing more in the energy market to help to bring down prices. The right hon. Gentleman will, I know, feel strongly about that, because of the 6,500 families in his constituency who are now seeing cuts in tax credits.

When wages are falling and prices are rising, people would expect the Government to do more to help—but what we now have is a budget set out yesterday that tightens the squeeze on working families. Last Friday the Deputy Prime Minister blustered his way through an interview on the radio and said, once again:
“We will not balance the books…on the backs of the poorest”.

That is an old line, and today it rings pretty hollow, because that is exactly what the Government are doing.

Yesterday, the Government rejected any new tax on bankers’ bonuses. Instead, it is children, women and working parents who are picking up the tab for the Government’s failure to get people back to work.

3.19 pm

Mr Redwood: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is his strong intention always to make sure that it is worth while working, and will he bring us up to date on the progress and timetable on that?

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Duncan Smith): I will indeed. The point I was making was that, as the universal credit comes forward in the next two years, it will do huge amounts to ensure that the incentives to return to work are improved. Secondly—and this relates to complaints from Opposition Members about the tax credit—it will reset the baseline so that those incentives will be increased and improved. Had we remained in the same position as the previous Government with their tax credits, there would be no way back for us now.

Wokingham Times

This week we are waiting for the Autumn Statement from the Chancellor, due on Tuesday 29th November. Amidst all the red ink, as the Chancellor accepts there will be less revenue and more public spending than planned, there should be some good news to try to get the economy growing more quickly. I am looking forward to the government picking up some of the ideas I and others have been proposing to help small and medium sized enterprises, to make it easier and cheaper to buy a home, and to get the banks lending more for good schemes and well based businesses.

It is true that the government’s plans to borrow £451 billion over five years were increased to £485 billion in March and are likely to go above the £500 billion level in this revision. I find it difficult to understand the arguments of those who say we are not borrowing enough as a nation. The extra borrowing by this government in just five years will be more than the total national debt built up over 1000 years as recently as 2004. It’s another £8000 on the national credit card for every man, woman and child in the country. All that debt means paying more tax to pay the interest. One day it has to be repaid.

What we need is a strong private sector recovery. The government can organise projects for new power stations, extra reservoirs for water, better broadband, more transport capacity which the private sector can finance. That will help. In Wokingham a sensibly phased and affordable town centre redevelopment can assist. It will first provide construction jobs, and later more retail and service jobs to cater for local demands. I hope this Christmas many residents will find time to stop and shop at local stores. There is already a good range.

The Euro zone crisis is going to hit our export markets on the continent. There have been many warning signs. It means exporters have to spend more of their efforts looking for sales in the faster growing parts of the world, like Asia and Latin America, where the opportunities are much greater. People say around 3 million UK jobs are dependent on exports to the EU. The good news is that means 25 million jobs are not. I wish firms well in finding alternative outlets for products where they find the Euro crisis is hitting demand.

I have been part of the pressure group of MPs urging the Prime Minister to seek a better deal for the UK now that France and Germany seem keen to press on with greater integration and more Brussels government. We cannot possibly join in. Our relationship has to change, as they build their continental superstate. Now is the time to demand change, as the Euro area states need our agreement to the centralisation they think they need. Some doubt whether they can save their currency, but we should assume they are going to and make clear our need for a different deal if they try to.

Wokingham Times, 11 Nov

Things changed after the vote on a European referendum a couple of weeks ago in Parliament. The government recognised the force of feeling amongst Conservative MPs and in the country. Instead of condemning us for disagreeing, they announced they are going to draw up a list of powers and functions they want to get back from the EU. They now say they do wish to renegotiate our arrangements. They do not wish to do this immediately, as some of us want, but await other countries seeking revisions to the Treaty.

Many MPs on the Conservative side say we want a renegotiation now. What better time could there be, than when the constitutional arrangements of the EU are up in the air as members try to find a way out of the Euro crisis? We want the people to have a right to a referendum following any such negotiation, so the public can decide if the new terms make it worthwhile staying in, or if it would better to leave. We do not wish to see a single penny of UK taxpayers money wasted on trying to prop up the failing Euro scheme. That’s why I voted against more money for the IMF for fear it would be used to try to prop up the unsupportable on the continent. We are warning the government that soon Euroland will meet regularly, and has the voting power to decide what the whole EU should so. If Euro area countries vote as a bloc the UK will have no influence, no ability to stop undesirable legislation.

The government has made two welcome improvements to our democratic processes which made the referendum debate possible. They have allowed people to petition the No 10 website for a debate in Parliament on a topic that matters to them. That was how the debate on the referendum was first mooted. They have allowed us to establish a backbench business committee with days for debate where we can choose the topics. It was one such day that accommodated the referendum.
Soon the Backbench Committee will also be involved in choosing the business for the government time as well, which could help highlight the matters that need most discussion, and facilitate the passage of those that are uncontentious.

I have long thought we need a more powerful Parliament. Government spends around half of all we earn in this country. It has huge powers of patronage. It has also given away many of its rights to legislate and govern to Brussels. Such power needs challenge from elected people who are in touch with the public mood and understand where things are working badly. The Treasury Committee has just produced proposals to limit the unelected power of the Governor of the Bank of England, and for Parliament to play a role in his appointment. It is such creative thinking we need to try to harness the commonsense of the British people in how we are governed. The mess that the experts and Ministers made in recent years of financial regulation and banking excess, the boom bust cycle they presided over and the growing incursions into our freedoms should all make us want more scrutiny and more transparency. Speaking truth to power is what MPs are meant to do. There are some signs that we are beginning to do just that.

Wokingham Times, 23 Oct

No wonder politics has a bad name. This week all three main parties whipped their MPs to stop a referendum on EU matters which many in the public want.

In an attempt to make politics closer to people this government launched two excellent innovations. It allowed backbench MPs to choose the business on certain Parliamentary days. This allows us to discuss the things that government and Opposition may have missed or do not wish to talk about. It allowed members of the public to petition to have a topic debated. If more than 100,000 want a given subject the government hoped the Backbench Business Committee would oblige by allowing it to be debated on one of our days.

It was not long before well over 100,000 people had signed up for a debate on an EU referendum on one petition or another. David Nuttall MP duly put the idea to the Backbench business committee that a debate should be held to propose a people’s referendum. Many Conservative MPs were enthusiastic. The debate was granted. Then the leaderships of the three big parties decided they could not tolerate so much democracy after all. Out came the heavy handed three line whips.

Labour’s use of it was at least consistent with their refusal to hold a referendum when in office. It was nonetheless surprising to see the main Opposition party come to the aid of the Prime Minister and Coalition government, who could have been defeated if Labour had all voted with Conservative proponents of a referendum. On this occasion Labour declined to do the popular thing.

The Lib Dems did yet another of their legendary U turns. They offered an In/Out referendum on the EU as their proposal when the Treaty of Lisbon was going through. This week, when they had the opportunity to vote for such a referendum – with a third option added in- they did not take their chance to do as they promised. Nor did they seek to amend the motion, as they could have done, to bring it exactly into line with their pledge. Instead, they tore up their pledge. They opposed all referenda.

The Conservative Leadership had offered a referendum on the Lisbon treaty before it was brought in. Conservative MPs voted for such a referendum on a three line whip to vote for it in the last Parliament. We were defeated by Lib Dem and Labour MPs outvoting us. The Conservatives fought the last election on a Manifesto which did not offer a referendum, but did offer renegotiation to get powers back from the EU. The backbench motion covered just this option by inviting people to vote on renegotiation as well as on In/Out. Despite this, the leadership decided that did not want to trust the people on this occasion on this issue.

I have received many emails and messages asking me to vote for the motion, which I duly did. I do want Parliament to listen more to the public view. There is great unease about the extent to which our laws are made in Brussels, often without our consent, and the way we are being dragged into the Euro crisis. If you want to know more about how that is all panning out, take a look at www.johnredwood.com where I try to keep you informed. Some day the public do have to be asked for their view. The EU today is a very different body from the EEC which older voters approved in 1975.

If not now, when?

I read that the government does not think the current Euro crisis is the best time to renegotiate the UK’s relationship with the EU. Sometimes we are told there is no urgent need for a new Treaty, so there is no opportunity to renegotiate. Sometimes I read there will be changes to the Treaty, but it is not right for the UK to make demands, when these changes will apply to Euro area members, not to us. We are told we should not stand in their way as they try to patch their troubled money.

I disagree. It is the German and French intention to press the Euro states into a much closer union. There will be budget controls, much more intensive surveillance of spending and taxing, more rules and regulations. The 17 will meet more often. They may develop a passion for settling things between themselves, and then pushing them through the 27 member EU where necessary. They will be able to outvote the UK and her few allies.

They may do this through Treaty changes. They might do it through a new agreement of the 17. They might simply try to do it without changing the formal powers of the Treaty, as they are in a hurry and have a phobia about referenda which some countries would need for a new Treaty or Agreement.

This requires a new relationship for the UK. We cannot be at meetings of the 17. Our interests in an open market throughout the EU are different and much more limited than their plans for common government. The UK needs guarantees or opt out facilities to protect herself from adverse law making and decisions taken by the 17 alone, or taken by the 27 on the insistence of the 17 against our wishes.

The official line is to keep more things in the 27, for fear of our exclusion from any new grouping of the 17. I would find a new organisation for the 17 liberating. We would not have to follow its rules as we would not belong. We could then at leisure negotiate about what was left for the 27 to do. The government seems to think an agreement by the 17 is a threat to us, one to be avoided at all costs. I do not think they could easily do it. It would take time to establish the new architecture and legal framework. It would presumably need referenda decisions in several Euroland countries. From the UK perspective it would leave no doubt that the costs, duties and laws surrounding the Euro are for the 17 alone, and not for us. We would need to negotiate what we can by way of protection from abuse of the law making of the 27, but we have to do that anyway in the context of a stronger Euro group within the 27.

I still think negotiate and then vote is the right UK approach. To those who say this is not the right time, I ask “If not now, when?”
To those who fear a Treaty of the 17 I say “Bring it on”. It will makes things much clearer and will highlight the need for the UK to sort out its position vis a vis the budget, taxing and law making powers of the EU.
And to those who say just withdraw, who claim the EU will not negotiate, I say let the people decide. If the EU will not give a better deal more people will vote to come out altogether.

PS: I see the English Democrats claiming a great success in coming second in a Rochford by election. They took half the Lib Dems vote. Was UKIP asleep for this one, or are the English Democrats taking over in second place elsewhere?

Austerity, the cuts and the reality

Many western countries have been living well beyond their means for several years. The US and the UK have been spending 10% of National Income more than they earn on public spending. Most now agree we cannot carry on like this.

The substantial overspend in the public sector follows hard on the heels of a large overspend in the private sector. The public sector is now borrowing very large additional sums to keep its spending going. In the years before the Credit Crunch many citizens in the US and UK (and in Spain, Ireland and the rest) borrowed large sums of money to buy assets or to consume more. Property prices were driven higher by excessive mortgage finance. The Credit Crunch has changed this. Property prices have fallen. New mortgage finance is difficult to obtain. Overall individuals are reining back their excess spending, and taking or nursing losses on assets.

There are three main ways in which the public sector deficits can be reined in. The favourite political way is to pursue faster growth. If the economy can increase more rapidly, more money will be paid in tax. If the growth rate of public spending is slower than the growth rate of the economy, the deficit will be brought down. Unfortunately in the Euro zone the most heavily indebted countries seem unable to grow. In the UK and US there is a bit more growth, but the rate is not fast enough to resolve the deficit problems.

The second way is to increase tax revenue. The politically popular route to curb the deficit if growth does not suffice, is to tax the rich more. Most politicians unite in agreeing to this proposal. It has two drawbacks. There are not enough super rich to pay all the extra bills. If you raise rates of tax too much on the rich, they may leave, or employ better lawyers and accountants to find a way round the rules. In the UK Mr Blair and Mr Brown, for most their tenure, thought 40% Income Tax and 18% Capital Gains Tax were the optimising rates to get most revenue out of the rich. The Coalition, accepting Labour’s last minute rise to 50% for incomes, and imposing its own 28% for CGT, may discover to its cost these rates lose the Exchequer money. There are limits to how much tax you can get out of a free society with open borders. No recent UK government has managed to collect more than 38% of GDP in tax, so there remains a very large gap between revenue and spending.

Governments following the higher tax route are thrown back on taxing most people, not just the rich. The UK Coalition has imposed higher VAT and National Insurance, as well as the higher Income Tax rate and various other increased taxes and fees. Petrol tax has gone up. This in turn has depressed real incomes, meaning less demand in the private sector. The top 10% of income earners pay £30,000 a year each on average, net of benefits and tax credits. The lowest 40% of income earners are net recipients, with benefits and tax credits exceeding all the tax they pay. These figures include VAT and indirect tax.

The third way is to cut public spending. So far the UK government has not tried this overall, though it has made various cuts in individual areas and departments. This is being tried to a greater extent in Euroland, but so far it is proving difficult there as well to curb total spending. Greece wont cut its very large army. Spain finds high and rising unemployment keeps adding to the welfare bills.

The paradox is many UK people complain of the cuts. They mean by this the cuts in their own living standards. The BBC yesterday morning provided a vox pop piece looking at various individual budgets and the way they were being cut. The commentator did not point out that much of the squeeze on these individuals came from higher taxes to pay for the growing public expenditure. People complained of fuel bills (largely tax), energy costs (regulatory and tax costs), higher shop prices and other areas where higher VAT plays its part.

We all dislike cuts in our living standards. Some depend on benefits and government services for an important part of their living standard. Most rely on income from work and savings. It is this majority group that also complains of cuts. The irony is, these cuts result directly from the need to pay for higher public spending out of increased taxation. The ultra low interest rates add to the pain for the prudent, slashing their savings incomes.

Can you help write the end game?

We were told it was weeks to save the Euro. That came and went. Now we have apparently another few days. Mrs Merkel seems to think there is plenty of time to sort out the problems of governance, transfer payments, and control of taxes and spending. Mr Sarkozy seems to be in more of a hurry, partly because he faces an earlier election.

I think there is still a chance that Germany will partially relent on bond buying and money printing by the ECB to buy them more time. There is also a chance that the markets will force break-up, moving faster than the pace of integration and problem solving within the zone. I put it around 50/50. It’s all in Mrs Merkel’s mind. It’s the race to change German public opinion about printing and borrowing together versus the speed of the market imperatives.

Today I invite you, the readers, to tell the world what you think the Euro’s chances of survival are. Do you think they will print and spend enough to buy them time? Do you think more austerity in Greece and Portugal, Spain and Italy, on German recommendation, can pull them through? Or do you think the relentless pressure of the bond markets will force countries out of the currency?

Don’t be afraid of trade – the EU needs us more than we need them

The tired old Foreign Office and Lib Dem line is we have to go along with what the EU wants for the trade. It bedevils the debate again about whether we can negotiate a better relationship for ourselves, or whether the UK would be better off out. We constantly hear the refrain that we have to pay the subscription to be in the trade club, you have to take some rough with the smooth, we have 3.5 million jobs dependent on EU trade.

It means we have to repeat the counter sound bites time and again.

The EU sells a lot more to us than we sell to them. They would not wish to risk that.

Whatever we do on renegotiation and membership, Germany will want to sell us her BMWs and France her wine.

If the rest of the EU did get protectionist with us, we could take them to the WTO and demand international action. Or we could propose a supertax on imported wine and imported cars here in the UK in retaliation.

They say we need to be fully in the EU to influence the rules that affect our business. The question is how much influence can we have, when we seem unable to resist a torrent of new rules which we neither asked for nor need. It feels like we take the rough with the rough, and end up worse off.

The advocates of staying in on current terms have to answer this increasingly difficult question – isn’t the single market becoming a means of lumbering us with uncompetitive costs and rules which Chinese or US or other non EU companies do not face when selling into the EU market?

If the EU moves towards more political and economic integration for the core countries, the UK will have to demand a different arrangement for us to justify our consent to the new Treaty.

If Euroland instead tries a new Treaty for just 17, they will discover all sorts of legal complexities between the 17 and the 27. It will pose all soerts of problems over use of staff, facilities, and payment of bills. We will still need a different relationship, so we still need to sit down and negotiate one either way.

The UK needs to be making this clear, now Euro integration or break up is on the agenda.

Transport improvements for Thames Valley

The Autumn Statement confirmed that the Reading Station improvements will be completed a year early by 2015. By the following year there will electric train services to Oxford, Newbury and Bristol.

The Coalition government has announced a plan to expand capacity on the M3 in Surrey which serves people to the south of the Wokingham district, through a “managed motorway” scheme which includes hard shoulder running.

I have been pressing for more road and rail capacity into and out of the Thames Valley area, as overcrowding and congestion is a problem.