Author: johnredwood

The John Redwood Interview – Getting us back on track

Sir John summarises the economic benefits of Brexit and what can now be seized, given political will. 10 minutes of Brexit gold for those who love the idea of a fully independent, prosperous UK.

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Now the government wants to control legal migration it needs to calculate the costs of new legal migrants into low paid jobs to taxpayers. The government now we are out of the EU can make legal migration any amount it likes, from the 750,000 it was at its peak to zero. Every legal migrant  needs a permit from government. Government allows large numbers of low paid workers and students to come.

The Treasury wrongly thinks this boosts our financial position. It is true it adds to GDP but it also adds substantially to public spending and may reduce GDP per  capita. The Treasury/OBR model once again is misleading and encourages bad policy.

As I have argued before every migrant needs housing, healthcare, utility capacity, roadspace and other public services. My forecast of £250,000 for the capital set up costs and early years free services still stands. Ministers should get an up to date government figure and feed it into OBR models.

 

Students pay more to the universities which makes sense for their costs. It does not necessarily work for the state if they bring dependants who qualify for free public services and subsidised housing.

Government also needs to take account of associated costs and problems. 750,000 extra  people need a lot of housing. Even where they can afford their own it places considerable upwards pressure on rents which in turn increases general housing benefit costs. It makes it more difficult for those already legally settled here to obtain and afford a home of their own. More pressure on the NHS makes it difficult to get waiting lists down. Inviting in more staff for  the  NHS also creates more demand for NHS staff.

UK communities are full of people who warmly welcome refugees, invited Ukrainians into their homes after the invasion and accept the need for  some economic migrants. Many people also think 650,000 a year  is far too many, creating strains on public services, housing. infrastructure and community abilities to welcome and adapt.

 

President Biden expelled more than 1 million illegal migrants from the Mexican border last year. France is sending illegals back to Italy. Various EU countries are considering ways of cutting migration. The EU is working on a system of quotas and requirements for member states to take their share of the many entering the EU. The UK now we are out the EU can cut our very large legal migration figures and will not have to take migrants arriving elsewhere in the EU. So government should get on with cutting legal migration as promised in 2019.

 

 

 

Robert Jenrick did not come to his conclusions on immigration through ideology. Asked to be Immigration Minister he approached it cautiously. He formed his view that we needed to be a lot tougher from his day by day experiences . He saw at first hand how young fit men came in large numbers on dodgy unlicensed boat trips. He wanted to end these dangerous journeys, deter more illegals and break the businesses of those who charge them to undertake the trip.

He was persuaded it would take new law. To avoid another defeat in the courts  it would take stronger legal powers.In Suella Braverman he had a boss who knows migration law inside out. He recognised the wisdom of her views like his own.

Yesterday when we at last saw the Bill we heard from Suella that the bill would not be lawyer proof. There could be more challenges in international courts.

I cannot see the point of putting through legislation which does not work. The Home Secretary is going to have to reassure people this  time they will stop the boats.

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):

We eased the driver shortage by training more people at home and paying them more. Is that not the right model for the scarcity occupations?

James Cleverly (Secretary of State for the Home Office):

My right hon. Friend is right. What we want is a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy. These proposals and the work that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced support that. Labour would do the opposite.

The UK government made the following statement yesterday

 

” Home Secretary James Cleverly has signed a joint Treaty with his counterpart, Foreign Minister, Dr Vincent Biruta, strengthening the UK and Rwanda’s Migration and Economic Development Partnership and directly addressing the concerns of the Supreme Court.

The agreement is part of the government’s plan to ensure that illegal migrants can be lawfully relocated to Rwanda under the Government’s ambition to stop the boats – ensuring that people know that if they come to the UK illegally, they cannot stay here.

Following further positive discussions between the two countries after the Supreme Court judgment, and building on months of work between the two countries, the Treaty responds directly to the conclusions of the Supreme Court and presents a new long-term solution.

The landmark Treaty is binding in international law and ensures that people relocated to Rwanda under the Partnership are not at risk of being returned to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened – an act known as refoulement.

It also enhances the functions of the independent Monitoring Committee to ensure compliance with the obligations in the Treaty, such as reception conditions, processing of asylum claims, and treatment and support for individuals including up to 5 years after they have received final determination of their status. The Committee is made up of 8 independent members.

The Monitoring Committee will also develop a system which will enable relocated individuals and legal representatives to lodge confidential complaints directly to them. It will have the power to set its own priority areas for monitoring, and have unfettered access for the purposes of completing assessments and reports. It may publish reports as it sees fit on its findings.

To further bolster assurances that relocated individuals will not be returned, under the Treaty, Rwanda’s asylum system will be strengthened through a new Appeal Body. The Appeal Body will consist of a Rwandan and other Commonwealth national Co-President, and be composed of judges from a mixture of nationalities with asylum and humanitarian protection expertise (appointed by the Co-Presidents) to hear individual appeals.”

 

I and my friends will be looking  carefully at the text of the Treaty and at the draft legislation which will be needed to ensure the Rwanda policy can proceed without further interruption by UK Courts. The government believes that if it can send some migrants to Rwanda the numbers wishing to come to the UK illegally will drop substantially. To achieve this the government will need to assert the supremacy of the law established by Parliament over other legal interventions.

Yesterday in the Common we were promised 300,000 fewer migrants in the year to spring 2024. I would prefer it if the government speeded up its changes  to bring them in by the end of this year.

In proof that the UK can now control its own birder, the government is setting about reducing migration. by raising the amount an employer needs to offer to £38,000. Dependents of students will not be allowed in.

The government appeared to have shaken off is wrong Treasury view that more cheap labour is good for the economy. Now the government is stressing all the costs and pressures generated by large scale migration with big demands for housing and public services.

It left Labour , the Lib Dems and SNP saying they wanted to bring in more cheap labour from abroad to undercut UK employees, arguing public services cannot survive without more cheap foreign labour. It was good to remind the Commons that  more training and higher pay has solved the problem of a shortage of truck drivers. We should do the same for other shortage occupations.

 

Between the end of 2019 and June 2023 the NHS increased its staff by 230,000 and the civil service by 67,000. It is no wonder there has been such a large increase in  public spending. Other public sector administration over the same time period is up 41,000 making a total of 108,000 with  the civil service.

It is true Ministers have allowed all of this this to happen.  Chief Secretaries to the Treasury and Cabinet Office Ministers responsible for personnel should have asked more questions about why such a huge recruitment was underway and why it was so top heavy.

It is, however, also true that Permanent Secretaries for each Department are the Accounting  Officers.On their high six figure salaries they are charged with ensuring financial regularity and  value for money. Why  have they recruited so many to ensure such a collapse of productivity? Why hasn’t the Chairman of The Public Accounts Committee, Meg Hillier, called them out or cross examined them about this huge increase in spending with no increase in output?

There have always been large pockets of over employment. Why does the Army have 650 colonels and Brigadiers?

Why does the Cabinet Office have 74 Directors often duplicating functions of departments? How many Chief Executives are there in the NHS with its overlapping CEO s of Health Trusts, national quangos and the  rest?Why can they not 3ven tell me how many CEO s they have on the payroll?

Ministers of State in each department could be empowered by Secretaries of State to get to grips with excessive administrative  overmanning, under the guidance of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. They could ask for plans from Permanent Secretaries to get back up to 2019 levels of productivity for starters, as they must remember how they did that.

The main parties and most pundits agree the UK economy has been held back by a poor performance on productivity. Most want productivity up. Most define productivity just as labour productivity, though productive use of capital and materials is also important in achieving high quality affordable output.

So let us begin with labour productivity. The cross party consensus  on  the need to raise it soon breaks down when you explain that the biggest part of the problem is the collapse of labour productivity in the public sector in the last three years, after a desultory performance from the sector all this century. Labour rush to the barricades and spend much of their time arguing the public services need more staff and more money to deliver. They think the extra £330bn  a year this government has decided to spend this Parliament  is not enough, instead of asking more questions about where all the money went to and why it is not working better. They have pointed to a few areas in health, defence and railway procurement where they think the government paid too much to the private sector but have never identified waste in the public sector itself.

Let me protect myself from unfair charges by saying I am all in favour of more well qualified teachers and medics to cope with growing demand. My immediate concerns are about the large increase in management and administration staff, and particularly in the large numbers of extra well paid senior managers and the runaway budgets of the profusion of quangos that sit between Ministers and Parliament on the one hand and those providing the medical and schools services on the other.

There is  increase in the civil service and in other public administration of some 130,000 people since 2020. Since 2012 the percentage of higher grades (EO and above) has risen from 54% to 72% of the total.  Grade 6-7 are up from 7% to 14%. The civil service analysis of the workforce has a large number of charts on sexual orientation, religion and sex but nothing on qualifications and skills. It says 54.5% are women and 45.5% are men. I have no problem with them not complaining about the under representation of men as I am more interested in what they contribute and what their skills are. There are 11 grades in  the civil service though we are assured  not all departmental or divisional structures contain all 11 in a reporting line. It nonetheless trends to a top heavy and multi layered approach to working which can be a low productivity model.

I have tried to get Ministers to impose a ban on additional recruitment to the civil service and public administration save where an exceptional case can be made out for the need. I have urged them to rationalise senior positions as people leave. One of the obvious causes of poor productivity is the ever higher ratio of managerial  to working level staff. I will be writing more on this topic

The UK sends our King and Prime Minister to the COP event. Neither President Xi, head of the dominant CO 2 emitter or President Biden, Head of one of the other big CO 2 producers is going. These two produce  around 30 times and 14 times as much CO 2 as we do. China adds as much extra CO 2 each year as the UK total. I appreciate some readers want to end the whole set of policies. I continue to advise against inflicting so called net zero policies on us which do not work in their own terms and do damage to our businesses and living standards.

The first issue COP 28 should sort out but will not is the mad accounting system. This says that if the UK shuts its steel works its CO 2 has gone down. World CO 2 however has gone up, as the UK imports steel it would otherwise have made, with more CO 2 in its production and transport than doing it at home. The UK government should want to change this instead of claiming credit for our big reductions based on shutting down too many activities to rely on imports. If world CO 2 has gone up how is that a win?

The second issue to examine should be the unpopularity of the green products government recommend as crucial to success. People are not rushing to buy electric cars, worried about costs, ability to recharge, insurance  and battery life. They are even less keen on heat pumps, given the cost, the disruptive works needed to install and the costs of electricity to run them. The road to net zero needs people to buy in willingly to the new products and carry most of the costs of transition by buying new vehicles and heating systems.

COP 28 could do more thinking about what are practical and affordable ways of travelling their chosen road.  Would it be better to introduce synthetic and sustainable fuels for existing transport as they plan with planes rather than trying to scrap all existing vehicles and replace with electric? Would it be better to develop synthetic fuels to mix with domestic gas and gradually increase the proportion instead of scrapping all domestic boilers?  Have they assessed the amount of CO 2 created by the process of early scrapping of existing technologies and the need to mine and use the materials for battery and electric assembly?

The third issue is wrestling more honestly with the costs. The Conference papers say the emerging world needs to spend $5.9 tn between now and 2030 and will need help with that in the form of grants and loans from the developed world. COP 28 has claimed an early win by establishing a  fund to provide money to countries adversely affected by climate change. This has been reported as around $400 m  with the EU providing $225m, the UK $75m, the US a measly $16m and Japan a mere $10m . China has given it a miss so far. Quite a lot of these initial sums will go on lawyers, administrators and offices to set up the fund. The world is still struggling to achieve the $100bn a year of transfers from the advanced world long ago promised as an annual minimum for climate change policies overall. The UK has once again been generous. This is  yet another unfunded spending commitment which will need to be borrowed. It is also more spending where Ministers will b e unable to check value for money or sense of how it is disbursed. Why not do these things under our own overseas aid budget direct?