Author: johnredwood

This week we saw a couple of sets of fanciful figures intrude on the debate. There was Labour’s 10,000 police at £30 a year salary, hastily adjusted to £8000 a year, still way below what we normally pay our officers. Then there was the FT’s take on the EU bill for the UK leaving the Union, at Euro 100bn.

The first sets of numbers were mistakes, and have been adjusted upwards as much Labour spending will need to be to make it realistic. £300 m a year is nearer the mark.

The second story that the UK owes up to Euro 100 bn is just silly. There are no legal obligations to pay beyond the sums we owe for our regular contributions over the next twenty two months before we leave. If they want a political deal on money, then of course they would need to knock off our share of the assets. I don’t see that is a sensible or attractive way to proceed for them. They should just accept the Treaty that allows for no special bill.

The UK should continue to be friendly, outward going and positive about it all. We should continue to stress the great deal we are proposing for our future relationship. Free access to our market for all their exporters. Guarantees for all their citizens living and working in the UK. Continued large UK contributions to the defence, security, research and culture of Europe.

Stable and strong leadership is needed by the UK, to be optimistic but to be firm in resisting silly proposals that have no basis in law or political reality.
The EU disobliging briefings sound as if they are coming from people who suddenly realise their negotiating strategy of pressurising a member state into seeing it their way is not going to work. The EU thought the UK would want to stay in the Single market Custom Union. They could then seek to charge us for that. It was always a silly assumption, as the UK clearly wants to make its own free trade agreements with the rest of the world which means leaving the Customs Union. The UK was also clear it wanted to stop paying the money. It is the Commission who are most worried about the loss of the UK’s contributions, as it’s their budgets and salaries that will suffer.

The way countries pay to trade with other reluctant countries is via tariffs. If the EU wants to put tariffs up against us, it can only do so to a limited extent under WTO rules.It would be a lot cheaper than the bills we are hearing about. In return we can impose more tariffs on them given the nature and volume of their exports to us. That is why I have always thought it likely in the end they will want tariff free trade. It is, of course, always possible they wish to self harm. However, it seems it is more the EU Commission that favours a tough approach as the harm is to the member states, not to the Commission itself. The member states are more likely to wake up to the harm it could do their export companies and especially their farmers and want a more sensible approach.

If the EU seriously thinks we need to give them money to be able to sell them goods presumably they would need to give us money to sell us goods. I can’t see that idea catching on.

Promoted by Fraser McFarland on behalf of John Redwood, both at 30 Rose Street Wokingham RG40 1XU

The debate between Le Pen and Macron was by all accounts fiery, personal and intense. There may have been less policy detail than some wanted, but the big divides over policy were nonetheless clear.
They both are running as anti establishment candidates who want change. That is more difficult for Mr Macron as he was until recently a Minister in the socialist government. Agreeing with his opponent that unemployment is too high and new economic measures are needed, he had to deal with why he had not done that as Economy Minister. He now wishes to liberalise the labour market, making it easier for companies to take on people. Madame Le Pen for her part wants to place barriers on the movement of people into the country and workforce, and to protect French trade and jobs by direct intervention. She was asked repeatedly for more detail of her measures and how they were supposed to work. They put the respective cases for a global and EU based approach versus a protectionist France first approach.
They differed strongly on the Euro and EU membership. Mr Macron is fully committed, and stressed the central importance of belonging to the Euro in his vision of the world. Mrs Le Pen argued that the Euro is the bankers’currency, not the currency of the people. She wants a French currency again.
Madam Le Pen attacked the powerful role of Germany in the EU and jibed that either way in this Presidential election France will be governed by a woman – herself or Mrs Merkel. Either when elected as President will need to construct a majority of representatives in the Parliament to help implement their programmes, which will make the Parliamentary elections most important after the choice of President.

Promoted by Fraser Mc Farland on behalf of John Redwood, both at 30 Rose Wokingham RG40 1XU

The 2017 Parliament needs to see through the twin tasks of economic recovery and the successful negotiation of a new relationship with the EU.

Both these mighty tasks were started before. The task of economic rescue began in 2010.

We have seen through the first long part of the recovery, cutting the deficit and creating conditions for many new jobs to be generated. Today many more people are in work, and more have better paid jobs. We now need to raise our sights, to work smarter so more people can be better paid. We need to continue the good progress to getting more people into work. Once in work we need to help them train, improve, and gain promotion.  We also need to be encouraging of enterprise, making it easier for people to set up their own businesses, and to grow those businesses.

The task of leaving the EU whilst improving our relationship with Europe began last summer after the vote. We now need to bring people together to back a vision of what an independent UK looks like. It can be so much better. We want to be open to the world and a leader of freer world trade. We want to increase our collaborations on research, culture, investment and enterprise with the whole world, not turn our backs on European joint ventures. We do not wish to close our borders, but to welcome students, tourists, people of talent, executives of large global companies and those with the skills we need at home.

The overriding task is to get the law through to complete our exit from the EU, and to negotiate a friendly Agreement on our future trade and relations with the EU that helps them as well as us. The new Parliament will then need to move on to make those changes to our laws we need to make so that our newfound freedom leads to some improvement. The Conservatives have made clear we do not intend to remove any of the employment rights or environmental protections that have come from the EU, but to incorporate them in UK law. There they are safe, unless a party in the future with a majority wants to amend or change them having stated  so in a Manifesto.

We do wish to plan for changes to the current EU laws over fishing and farming. We think we need a fishing policy that is kinder to both our fish and our fishermen than the present policy. We want an agriculture policy that helps UK farmers produce more of our food, and supports landscapes where the farmer has costs to maintain them.

I am conscious that people who voted Remain were worried about possible economic damage. So far the UK economy has continued to grow, to generate more jobs, and to only suffer the same uptick in inflation that Germany and the USA have suffered, mainly owing to oil prices. I will work tirelessly in the new Parliament if elected to see through policies that put continued growth  and prosperity first.

Promoted by Fraser McFarland on behalf of John Redwood, both of 30 Rose Street Wokingham RG40 1XU

I have received a follow up letter today from First Rail, who start the new South West train franchise in August. I held a meeting with them last month to discuss improvements for travellers using Wokingham Station.

They say they do wish to introduce a click and collect facility at the Station for people to pick up goods they have bought on line on their way home. This is subject to reaching commercial agreement on how to do it.

They also say they want to introduce automatic number plate recognition for car parking at the Station.  This would enable travellers  to register their Debit card for automatic payment. They will also allow on line purchasing of car park season tickets. The aim is to make it quicker and easier to park with these additional choices.

The worriers about UK prospects often like to highlight the opinion p0lls of economic facts, the PMI figures giving an indication of how orders and confidence is trending in business.

Today’s figures show an acceleration in manufacturing orders and output prospects , with the Index surging to 57.4 where anything over 50 means growth. There is also a slowing of input price inflation. This is not surprising given the levelling off in  oil prices  and the fall in some other raw materials. China has also stopped raising her prices in recent week after a period of substantial rises in manufactured goods costs.

This is all positive for the second quarter output figures in due course.

One of the drivers of growth and prosperity in eighteenth century England was agricultural advance. Farmers threw capital and technology at the problem of farming. Larger farms were created. Threshing, hoeing and seed drilling were done by newly developed machines. Crop rotations and selective breeding led to big advances in agricultural output.

Today we stand on the threshold of another possible agrarian revolution. The coming of the intelligent tractor with wide arms for spraying, and  capabilities for ploughing, preparing, seeding and tending the crop  is transforming quality of output as well as changing the demand for labour. Drones offer less intrusive ways of watering and spraying selectively as problems and shortages are detected in parts of a field or crop. Raising  animals is becoming more science based, with better information about their health and well being informing choices for their care.

The UK has a great opportunity to grow its agriculture  as we come out of the CAP. The main parties are all ready to continue with subsidy. The government has   promised to carry on with the subsidies farmers were expecting from Brussels this decade.

Some argue the main aim of subsidy should be to remunerate farmers for their role as landscape gardeners on a grand scale. Much of the EU system now is designed to reward environmental work, giving subsidy for keeping land fallow or for nurturing certain types of landscape or nature reserve on or near farmland.  The Swiss system out of the EU is about keeping the unique Swiss mountain landscapes, as an adjunct to tourism and hospitality which feed off the views.

Some argue the main aim should be about food production. Farmers could be rewarded for cutting imports and producing more of the types of food we need and can  grow at home. The EU system used to be more completely based on such an approach.. The policy  was born of post war angst in memory of the dreadful shortages of food that occurred during and in the aftermath of the 2nd world war. Later the EU system evolved to take environmental considerations much more into account.

Do we think current EU policy is well judged? How do farmers want the UK government to develop its own agriculture policy, safe in the knowledge that there is no present threat to the subsidies farmers receive? There is a  big opportunity to grow more at home for the home market, and to invest more in the new husbandry that will raise productivity.

On 1 May 1707 the Act of Union between England and Scotland came into effect. Today, 310 years on, what is the state of the Union?

It feels from the polling that Scotland is happy with the way she made up her mind in the recent referendum to stay in the union of the UK.  The polls to remain have been fairly steady ever since the vote.

The case for Independence floundered on three main worries. The first was what currency would an “independent” Scotland use? Those in favour of independence strangely wanted to stay dependent on the Bank of England and retain access to the liquidity and credit lines of that central Bank, when the rest of us said if you leave the Union clearly you can no longer be an inside member of the Bank of England system with full facilities for all your banks. There was a marked reluctance to accept the Euro and no fervour for an independent currency to make Scotland properly independent.

The second problem was the financial arithmetic on spending, taxing and borrowing. The referendum took place against a background of oil over $100 a barrel. Even at those prices the fast run off in the volumes of oil thanks to the maturity of the Scottish oil province meant a strain to afford all the present spending levels. Since the vote the price of oil has halved, meaning there are no oil revenues to take back from the Union. This would leave Scotland with high increasing borrowings and or in need of tax rises on some scale.

The third problem was quite a lot of the SNP seemed in reality to be in favour of  Devo max, more control over law making and spending in Scotland whilst remaining a member of the UK.  Their idea of Devo Max went beyond what any of the Union parties thought feasible or sensible.

Many Scots have now decided they are Unionists. Others have decided now is  not the time  to cut loose. They see there are no plans they believe on currency and finance that make sense.

We may discover the state of the Union is healthier than the SNP wish. It is interesting how the SNP attempt to use the EU referendum result to shift opinion does not seem to have worked. It has also left them arguing both that leaving the EU is economically damaging, but leaving the UK is not, which is quite a contortion to bring off.

The formal statement from the EU 27 after their Brexit discussions this week had some sensible and positive points in it. They talk of their “wish to have  the UK as a close partner in the future”. They ask for a single financial settlement but  do not put any figures in it. They wish this to include sorting out the shareholdings we have in the European Investment Bank and the ECB which must be our credits. They say they are ready “to initiate an agreement on trade, to be finalised and concluded once the UK is no longer a member state”. They want agreements that go wider than trade, to include security. They seem to accept in principle reciprocal rights for EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU.

They make much of how unified the EU is and will be over their negotiating position. The UK is not trying to cause division, as we are well aware that it is easier if there is one negotiator for them and they will all sign up to anything the central team agree. They seem unsure that they can hold it together as single voice and view, so they tell the other member states that they are not to talk Brexit with the UK individually. This seems both petty and unenforceable. A willingness to talk to partners is important, but does not mean the EU position will automatically fall apart. It might just be better informed and better reflect its member states views.

There are still some less helpful statements from the EU point of view in the official words. We are told at the beginning “Citizens who have built their lives on the basis of rights flowing from the British membership of the EU face the prospect of losing their rights”. It is difficult to see how this can be true, as the UK has made clear it wishes to ensure full rights to stay and work in the UK for all EU citizens who have legally done so, as long as UK citizens get the same treatment. Further down the document it implies that will be the EU’s view. We are told a trade agreement cannot be discussed until the leaving agreement has been hammered out, yet they also say there can be talks about it in parallel to the second phase of the leaving Agreement. They also say nothing is agreed until all is agreed, so the UK could require preliminary agreement on trade or countries in the EU at risk of high farm tariffs might want the EU to sort that out. Clearly the EU wants to run the risk of damaging its exports to the UK by tariffs.

The language on Ireland, Cyprus and Gibraltar is not as  inflammatory as some reports or interested parties seem to suggest.

All in all it seems to me to be a working document that the UK can respond to. Both sides accept the UK will be leaving the EU, its internal market and customs union. Of course the UK should pay its bills on leaving, but no-one has set out any  bill with financial and legal credibility  that goes beyond our regular contributions up to withdrawal date.

At midnight on Tuesday next I along with all other MPs cease to be an MP. Parliament will be dissolved.

Any references on this site to my role as an MP will become historic.

Government Ministers remain as Ministers, but are very restricted in what they can say and do as Ministers.

I will  be  busy with the election but will keep a website going.

The election campaign period starts officially on Wednesday 3rd May with the receipt of the writ.

This website is paid for by me.

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