Author: johnredwood

Defra is keen that our new farming policy should  be ultra green. If that means we value and look after our fields and farmland, and protect our forests and wild areas, I am all in favour. The good news is we can do that at the same time as expanding the food we produce and meeting more of our own food needs.

I trust the Defra Secretary will take on board from his current consultations a strong feeling in the rural community that we need a farming policy that puts food production into a more central role than it achieved during the years of the Common Agricultural Policy. There are good environmental reasons to cut down the food miles, as well as good economic reasons why it would be better to cut the balance of payments deficit.

Over the last winter I was pleased to find I could largely rely on home produce. There were good home grown potatoes, carrots, cauliflowers, leeks and onions available most of the time. For much of the winter there were excellent English coxes and  varieties of pears. More recently I have turned to New Zealand for their fruit when English has not been available.

It was difficult to find oranges from anywhere other than Spain thanks to EU tariffs, though some citrus fruits from Israel, North Africa and South Africa did find their way to UK supermarkets. A new agriculture and tariff policy after we leave could be a big boost for our farms and a bonus for our consumers.

I could scarce believe my ears when I heard there is talk of a limit being placed on  how much water each one of us should be invited to use. Water is the staff of life. It is difficult to predict how much water you need for cleaning or cooking. I thought it was agreed that as water is so fundamental special care is taken to ensure we all have access to a good supply in our homes and places of work.

No-one argues  that with strong growth in our population we could run out of bread in a few years time. They do not  point out that baking more bread and putting in more ovens will entail burning more fuel and creating more emissions. They do not advocate   a bread allowance, to ensure we control the total and at the same time allow fair shares for all.

We do not do so for a very good reason. The market can take care of future demand. There is no need to interrupt individual choice. I do not eat a loaf of bread at the expense of my neighbour. There are enough loaves at affordable prices for both of us. Bread supply expands to fill the shopping baskets available.

The same should be true of water. Water is a resource in massive supply. Much of the surface area of our planet is taken up by huge quantities of water. You do not destroy the water by using it, but return it to the water cycle after use for reuse. It is the ultimate renewable. If we allowed full competition to supply domestic water as we now allow for commercial water, supply would expand to meet the demand. Let’s do just that.

Water is a good growth product. Let’s clean, store and use more of it. If we need an additional reservoir, put it in. If mending leaking pipes is cheaper, do that. There is  no need to ration.

I’m all in favour of clean air. The Clean Air Acts which removed the smogs from London and our leading industrial cities were great acts of progress. They did not damage our economy, whilst improving the quality of life and saving our lungs.

Today more can be done. Particulate matter in the air can be unpleasant. It comes from domestic and commercial heating systems, from transport, from power generation and from some industrial processes. Progressively higher standards of pollution control can clean our air more.

There has been a tendency in the UK debate to concentrate on the impact of the car and lorry, and to minimise or ignore the role of other sources. It is true there has been quite strenuous efforts to clean the output from  factory chimneys. There has been a strong move away from open fires and coal and coke burning boilers. Their replacement with oil or gas systems has lowered the output of hazardous waste. There has been less concentration on the particulates coming from diesel buses and trains.

The government will be long on words and targets, but more  careful on proposing changes to the way individuals live. You cannot suddenly demand that everyone replaces their domestic boiler or scraps their coal or wood burning devices. Effecting change in the hearths and boiler cupboards of the nation’s homes requires patient progress and incentives to encourage voluntary change. Requiring people to burn less harmful  fuel in solid fuel devices would be possible. Banning bonfires is part of modern life.

The state should look to its own. There are still cities where bus fumes and particulate matter from the exhaust are an important part of the problem on the streets, especially near bus stops . There are stations where waiting trains keep their diesel engines running, with smoke and particulates circulating in high concentrations by the platforms. There are many public buildings with inefficient and dirty heating systems. Improvement and change in these areas would be the most positive way the government could lead this change.

The ONS had to admit today that it had overstated Public Sector Net Debt excluding  banks by £18.5bn in past figures. £11bn of this was an error, and £7.5bn comes from updated figures. It is all part of a pattern of too much official gloom about our economic and financial position.

Last year to end March 2018 total additional state borrowing came in at £40.5bn, compared to the March budget forecast in 2017 of £58.3 bn. So that  forecast was overstated by almost £18 bn.

Given these much better figures the Treasury needs to ask itself some  questions about its spending and taxing policies, and ask why the official forecasts and figures find it so difficult to track what is going on.

I have asked my office to be fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation.

We will pass information on to public bodies or other counterparties involved in a complaint or query when a constituent writes in. We will regard the submission of the complaint or query as consent to this.  We will keep a record of that query and response usually  for the life of the Parliament in case of follow up issues, and will update constituents as appropriate on that topic.

Where the data sent is particularly sensitive, as with details on medical conditions and treatment, we will usually request express permission to share this with the other  bodies involved.

We have always sought to handle people’s data well and to respect confidentiality. We have to trust government, local government and their  Agencies to do the same when we pass on information to seek to resolve an issue.

We have also often have to point out that I cannot act on a case affecting someone’s adult relative without the express permission of the person affected. I understand why people often want to intervene for their adult children or for their parents, but unless they have power of attorney I do need to ask for consent from the person at the centre of the complaint or query. If a power of attorney is involved then my office need to see the written record of it. Where the relative is living in another constituency it will usually be necessary to refer them to the MP for that constituency, whilst I am happy to take up all such issues affecting people living in my constituency, even if they have been initiated by a relative living elsewhere. I will always need the consent of my constituent.

The USA has temporarily suspended the tariffs it threatened to deploy against China. Apparently the trade talks are making progress. China accepts that the balance of payments surplus it enjoys with the USA is excessive, and wishes to help the USA find more ways to sell to China. Some of this requires market opening by China of a general kind, and some requires more successful US exporting relative to say Germany of products China already imports.

China is a heavy importer of transport goods, engineered products and technology. The USA is wishing to be more cautious about how much technology she sells, given worries about the way China has handled Intellectual Property in the past.  Boeing will be hoping a new trade deal strengthens their hand against Airbus, and the US car makers will  be wishing to do better against Mercedes and BMW.

The UK should win from some of the changes envisaged. China accepts she needs to liberalise her banking and financial services markets more, which could assist the UK as well as the US. We too have a substantial trade deficit with China.

I assume Mr Trump would prefer to find some common ground and show he has a “win”. So far China seems to understand and accept this, and is busy trying to find ways in which the US can do a  bit better. China can argue that her policy is to liberalise progressively anyway, as she has been doing at a slow pace since joining the WTO.  Accepting the idea that the trade gap must narrow a lot is one thing, but bringing about the day to day reality of more US exports or fewer US imports is still going to take time and will be difficult to deliver.

As forecast here, the tribulations of some traditional retailers gets worse. There are many older shopping areas and High Streets with empty shops, closing down sales and poor footfall of customers. There is still plenty of buying going on, but more of it is on the web, and more is concentrated in the glamour centres from Bicester Village to the Metro Cemtre, from Oxford Street to Birmingham New Street and from Trafford to Westfield.

We see a pattern of bankruptcies, financial reconstructions and shop shrinkage by many traditional retailers. Administrations and restructuring seek to get rents down to keep shops open, or close stores to cut the cost base. Meanwhile well intentioned policies like the Living Wage and the Stakeholder pensions push up the costs of employment, and business rates help push up the cost of property. A rising cost base hits falling turnover as people examine the goods in store only to  order them from an internet provider on line. Some people complain about the fall of the High Street only to support the rise of the Internet by how they buy.

Last week’s announcement by the government to slash the maximum stake permitted in fixed odds betting terminals in High Street shops was motivated by the wish to cut down addictive gaming which can wreck family finances and damage family life. It is also likely to lead to more High Street closures of such shops and to drive more gambling on line. This comes close on the heels of Mothercare announcing 50 shop closures, and ToysRUs going into administration. House of Fraser is undergoing a financial restructuring and looking for cost reductions. Ocado with its strong on line offering an expansion into the US  now has a larger stock market value than Marks and Spencers.

I am working on a series of options for the government to bring some relief to struggling High Streets, as they wish to do. Flexibility in switching uses and users of High Street property  must  be part of the answer. Plenty of free or cheap shoppers parking nearby is another part. The combined rate and rent package has to be affordable for a moderately successful trader.