Author: johnredwood

With the arrival of many new MPs at Westminster this week for their first year in office I will write a few pieces about the role of an MP, inviting your comments on what you want us to do.

Being an MP is not just a “job”. It is a way of life. My first advice to new colleagues is you are an MP 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Your time “working” may be closer to the standard 40 hour week of a “full time” employee, but for all 168 hours of the week you are an MP.

You are on call all the time in case some disaster strikes your constituency or our country. The constituency cases and emails come in at week-ends as well as during the week and sometimes need urgent replies.

You may be sitting at home listening to the news, but that may trigger some need to intervene following a news item. You may be in the local shops, but may then see something which needs following up for the sake of constituents.

I have included the 56 hours you are asleep or relaxing in bed though you would be wise not to take your MP work to bed with you.  I do so because if you spend time in the wrong bed or share a bed  with an inappropriate person you would soon find out that the media and public thought your bedtime a matter of public concern and debate.

Let us suppose you manage to carry out your duties in Parliament and answering emails, and dealing with constituency queries and cases  in say 40-50 hours a week on average, you will have to accept that some weeks your working hours will be much longer. My second piece of advice is do not fight the need to be in Parliament when it is sitting and debating and voting on important matters. Surely that is what you have struggled  to be able to do. Some MPs no sooner get elected than they are nagging the whips to allow them free time when Parliament is  debating and deciding important issues. This leaves them tense and the party feeling a bit let down by them as the whips agonise over which request they can allow. There are days when we sit beyond 10pm and need to be there for a variety of good reasons. You also cannot do constituency correspondence on an ipad whilst taking a serious interest in a debate or Question time. If you are in the chamber it needs your attention.

Parliament meets to hold votes and make decisions about  matters of interest to most people around 100 days a year. I those days coincide with a wedding anniversary, an important family birthday or a social event you just want to do you are likely to be disappointed. Explain in advance to friends and family that there are times when Parliament must come first. It is always possible to make up for that unfortunate truth by having a  bigger and better celebration at the next available Friday or  week-end when Parliament will not  be wanting you in  the evening or at all. Other Parliamentary days totalling around 70 offer debates which you may or may not wish to join, without votes you have to attend, so they offer more flexibility. For around 17 weeks a year  or 85 week days Parliament is in recess, and there are 104 weekend days off. This allows considerable flexibility on how to organise events outside Westminster, meet the need to do things in  the constituency and have time for yourself and your family. It is always a   good idea to book out family time for non Parliamentary days well in advance and  to stick to it in most cases.

Many of us are distraught at the scenes nightly on tv from the Australian fires. I have contacted the government to ask if we are offering assistance.

We should not  just assume because Australia is a  relatively high income country she does not need help. Faced with the scale of these events she may  appreciate additional ships and planes equipped for dealing with emergencies. We often help other countries facing natural disasters through our overseas aid department so we have some of the equipment needed.

Since 2000 the UK has had quite a good rate of new business formation, in excess of the death rate for businesses save during the 2009-10 slump. London has led the way, with  1544 businesses per 10,000 residents, with Scotland and Northern Ireland at the bottom end of the table  with 739 and 834 businesses per 10,000 respectively. Over the last 19 years the UK has added 2.4 m new businesses.

The bulk of these businesses are self employed people.  Out of 5.9 million businesses, 4.5 million have no employees. 1.1 million businesses with employees have fewer than 9. Just 8000 businesses employ more than 250 people. The regions that have the highest number of businesses per 10,000 people also tend to be the ones with the highest incomes.

We need to ask what would it take to encourage more self employed people to take on their first employee?  It does mark a large step up, with the employer having to accept a wide range of risks and responsibilities.  We both need to create decent conditions for employment, and sensible conditions for employers so they find it worthwhile to take people on.

I would be interested in your thoughts on whether there are  changes to be made to current rules to provide  incentives to employers to create new jobs without damaging employee rights.

To show how unbiased they wish to  be the Today programme had an item  dealing  with criticisms that they are biased. The item failed to grasp why so many of us think there is bias in much of what they do. They are  so keen to run anti Brexit material that they come across as an institution with a strong view more than independent journalists trying to tease out the different beliefs and views of the audience they serve. They do not seem to know all the positives that led us to vote for Brexit. They also repeat daily the same climate change issue with a series of repetitious stories to the exclusion of other major problems and preoccupations of listeners.

Their one sided approach is reflected in  their use of so called experts. These people usually  share a similar economic, political and scientific world view. The bias of the experts is never explored. They are not usually asked about their past failures in predicting and forecasting and never asked who they vote for or which philosophy or other influences most weigh with them. Most accept, for example, that Brexit will cause economic damage. They are inclined to say leaving without a deal is “falling off a cliff” or is “disastrous”. They may tell us trade will be  disrupted or even  imply it may in many cases be badly damaged if we dare to leave under WTO terms. The economists  if they are old enough would likely have recommended the Exchange Rate Mechanism which gave us a nasty recession, and would have supported the Bank of England’s actions which helped bring the commercial banks down in 2007-9.

They rarely interview people who believe that Brexit is a good economic opportunity which can make us better off. They never wish to remember that some of us correctly predicted the ERM disaster and warned against the chosen Bank and government action in 2007-9. They will not explore the role of the Maastricht criteria in recent austerity economics . Their few interviews with possible Bank of England Governor candidates in the run up to the selection of the new Governor were pathetic, with no attempt to understand the many mistakes the Bank has made in recent years or to ask candidates how they might improve or change it.

When I have been invited on it is usually to fill some special political slot for a Eurosceptic, rather than to have a sensible interview on  the state of the economy and the policy options facing a country soon to be independent. I am treated to the usual barrage of Remain  questions which become as repetitious as most of them are silly to provide “balance”. Yet the many more numerous Remain interviewees are usually spared having to answer all the questions I would wish to ask them about their past false forecasts and their present misunderstandings  of what is happening in our economy whilst still fully in the EU.

I guess the journalists cannot accept  that Brexit is a great idea of the people who just ask that the Establishment does their job. We want government to  show how the freedoms and the extra money can be used to improve lives and our country’s standing and prosperity which is why the Conservatives have just won a majority. The Leave voter listeners who are still tuning in just want to know why the BBC seems to have such a down on the abilities and prospects for our country outside the EU. They should know the case that says we will be better off with Brexit and give it equal prominence to the negative Remain forecasts.

The lifeblood of an enterprise economy comes from the ability of the many to set up and run a business for themselves if they wish. A vigorous private sector has  easy ways for new businesses to be born, and sensible ways for failing businesses to be wound down or stopped.

The ability to set up a business rests on self belief, access to property, skills and capital, and a favourable balance of risk and reward for doing so. The UK has a relatively good rate of new business formation compared to the rest of the EU, but falls behind the USA in capacity to set up and grow businesses, especially  beyond a certain small scale.

The first thing the government should do is to advise schools and Colleges that self employment is a serious career option. Indeed, the brightest and most energetic students are above all the people that should be asked if they will set up a business of their own rather than seeking the comfort of a cosy job with a large corporation or state actor. Enterprise should also be for the many, as many people who are not interested in academic subjects or who do not  excel at passing exams may be excellent at understanding customer needs and meeting client requirements.

People training at Colleges to be plumbers, electricians, cooks, house maintenance people and other  skills should be offered supporting courses on how to offer their services through their own business.

The government  needs to revisit IR35. It should be easy to gain self employed tax status for all those who are offering their work to clients and customers other than through someone else’s company as a company employee.

The government should raise the VAT threshold higher so people can increase their turnover more before needing to get help and advice on how to comply with VAT.

The government should derate small business premises altogether so starter units are rates free.

As the digital revolution sweeps on we will face more and more dilemmas about personal freedom versus personal empowerment.

In its early days the internet was largely unregulated, allowing a profusion of new communications, spawning an army of citizen journalists with their own take on events and permitted advice on any topic including  the assistance of crime.

As the internet grew so governments understandably intervened to stop extreme abuses. The internet should not be a school for terrorists, an on line academy for bomb makers or a means of  money laundering large sums from the proceeds of crime.

Some also asked that the internet be subject to the same laws of libel and slander as the regular media. Many asked for protection from false allegations and from messages of hatred. This has opened up a debate about the duties of internet providers, the extent to which censorship is needed and justified, and the role of the internet in causing harm as well as its manifold ways of doing good.

There are contributors to this site who are deeply suspicious of how the state behaves and how it might come to use new digital controls for its own ends. Would the evolution of a cashless economy mean not merely full visibility of all transactions by the state but state controls and  limitations on those same transactions? At what point does a better convenience for users become an unwarranted intrusion into privacy?  Should we all expect in the emerging world that all our actions, words, purchases are fully available for public scrutiny, or do there remain legitimate reasons for people to be able to keep to themselves what they lawfully do?

Authoritarian societies can deploy digital communications, cashless money, transaction reporting to control their people. They could decline to sell a train ticket to a protest location. They could decline credit to people who join the political opposition. They could intercept on line conversations between friends wishing to share annoyance at government activities.

The challenge for the free West to keep its freedoms is to get the right balance between tackling serious crime conducted in whole or part through digital activities, whilst allowing the usual privacies of people’s spending habits, criticisms of government and the rest that constitute a free society.

There is the additional challenge that as the giant corporations of the current digital era emerge with all their power, the western system should allow strong competition and challenge to them. There is a  danger in codifying how they behave and laying down in law too much of how their business has to be conducted. These  can become barriers to innovation by smaller companies, and can impose  expensive barriers to entry to the business.

As we leave the EU the UK should revisit its laws and regulations governing  the digital world to strike a good balance between keeping us safe and allowing plenty of competition.

Many of the things we enjoy have come from competition and choice, from free enterprise. Post war living standards rose as tvs, fridges, washing machines and cars became affordable for the many instead of being the luxuries of the few. This century has seen digital technology transform lives. It has placed a mobile phone in most pockets and handbags, equipped the many with an easy to work camera and allowed a whole new world of communication and entertainment to be available instantly any time, any day.

These breakthroughs came from entrepreneurs and private sector companies. Often the challengers had to combat unhelpful regulations and protective old model established companies. In recent years digital business models have dramatically changed  advertising, the media, agency businesses and retail, and are going on to change finance and other services.

The successful countries which do most to promote living standards and welfare of their people are the ones who not only understand this but do most to allow free enterprise to flourish. Lower taxes, sensible regulations, a strong rule of law which protects challengers as well as the established businesses, and a climate which encourages talent and enterprise friendly education all help. In future blogs I am going to explore how the UK can provide more opportunity for enterprise to flourish and living standards to rise.

There is no more important task than restoring our right to self government. By the end of the first year of this decade the UK people and Parliament once again will control their laws, money and borders as they wish.

I have every confidence in the people of the UK to make wise choices and to lobby for better government. It has been the people, not their leaders, that have insisted on the UK becoming again an independent country. It will be the people that hold successive governments to account to use the powers well and to spend the tax revenues sensibly.

Once we are fully out we will have more of our own money to spend. Money played an important part in the referendum campaign. Remain forces at home and in the EU have been particularly keen to burden us with as much continuing EU spend as possible to limit the obvious gains controlling our own money brings.

Once we are fully out we can make laws that improve our lives and scrap laws that get in the way. An early candidate for reform and repeal are all the fishing rules that have done so much to damage our fishing grounds. We will be able to raise our standards of animal welfare as we wish. We can have regulations for business which set high standards in ways that allow us good trade with the rest of the world as well as with the EU.

Once fully out we can set our own taxes. We will no longer be subject to losing corporation tax revenues owing to some legal case at the ECJ overturning Parliament’s wishes. We will no longer have to impose VAT on green products and female hygiene goods. We will not have to keep our tax rates within specified bands or at required levels.

The bigger gain will be in our standing in the world. We can become a leading force for free trade through our independent membership of the World Trade Organisation. They would like a major economy to work with them to promote an agenda of freer trade worldwide at a time when the USA is using tariffs and other barriers to trade as a major instrument of wider policy. We will have our own voice and vote in many other international bodies where before we had to accept the EU line.

The UK is well placed to grow faster, to promote democratic and peace loving values worldwide, and to win new friends and influence.