Author: johnredwood

The Japanese and European Central Banks continue to buy their own government bonds on a grand scale. Their actions in creating money to boost the price of bonds is helping sustain ultra low interest rates throughout the advanced world. Bondholders have been rewarded with large increases in the capital value of their holdings.

It has proved easy for the authorities to create cash and boost bond prices. The US and UK started this process in the West. The ECB now has taken up the running. Japan has been doing it for years, as part of the long aftermath to her large banking and property crash 25 years ago.

The policy is meant to have several desirable affects. It does cut interest rates, helping drive down the costs of borrowing. It does persuade more people and institutions to undertake more risky investments, as those who sell their bonds look for other things to do with the money.

It also has various less desirable side effects. Low rates make it more difficult for banks to earn good profits to restore their damaged balance sheets. The combination of weak banks and tougher regulation means that the extra money created cannot often find its way into the productive economy through the traditional commercial banking system. Savers can feel they need to save more, as the income on their savings falls short, so to some extent low rates discourage the very spending they are meant to encourage. It generates substantial asset price inflation, pushing up the price of commercial property and residential homes as well as the prices of bonds and shares. This has an impact on the real economy, and prevents some people buying a home of their own.

The biggest problem of all with this bond bubble is how do the authorities deal with it when conditions start to alter?  The US and UK has removed the extra stimulus of additional official purchases of bonds without  undue adverse effects. This has been assisted by the large Japanese and European programmes continuing, encouraging more buyers of US and UK bonds as they seek better income levels than are offered by Japanese or German bonds.

When all the main Central Banks terminate their programmes there could be more of a wobble in markets. If and when these same Central Banks start to raise official interest rates, what will then happen? They will need to think through “normalisation”, and think how owners of bonds will respond if there is no further official purchasing to underwrite high bond values.

The arrival of a new Prime Minister in office has reminded us of how complicated our constitution has become in recent years. Theresa May has had to go to visit the First Minister of Scotland, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic, the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany to discuss vital matters of UK national interest as well as of wider significance.

In “The Death of Britain?” book I wrote I explained how too much devolution at home would be destabilising to the Union it was meant to sustain, and how too much transfer of power to the EU would  damage UK democracy and lead to more popular disillusion with government and politics. The rise and rise of the SNP in Scotland has underlined the first argument, with the arrival of almost a full slate of MPs in Westminster from Scotland wedded to independence. They will look to use any opportunity to make the case for independence, and see in the relationship with the EU one of the routes to adopt.  The outcome of the referendum has underlined my second argument.

In all of the changes England was deliberately left out. England had no matching First Minister or formal political identity as Scotland enjoys. England was left off the maps of the EU, seen as a target for break up into regions that in many cases attracted little loyalty or support. The  public voted down the idea of elected regional government in the North East, the one Labour dominated area at the time where the Labour government thought it would be supported.

As  the new government pilots its way through Brexit and seeks to reassure all those of the current devolution settlement, it also needs to heed the voices of England. Scotland makes a lot of its wish to stay in the EU by a majority. Latest polls however, show no overall change in support for the union of the UK after the Brexit vote, to the disappointment of the SNP.England does not have a First Minister to remind the government that England by a convincing margin voted to leave the EU. Brexit is a Union matter and has to proceed as such. Other matters like the financial settlement within the UK are as much English as Scottish issues. England still needs more recognition in our democratic structure.

The rise and rise of EU powers which has so damaged UK democracy has been accompanied by the doctrine that many things are better run by experts than by politicians taking professional advice. It has been the mood of the last 20 years that independent quangos staffed by experts will do a better and fairer job than elected Ministers.

It was with this in mind that both main parties in office have paid lip service to the idea of Bank of England independence. Gordon Brown claimed to have given independence to the Bank of England in a much spun change of policy in 1997. Instead he gave the Bank limited new powers to control interest rates in return for taking away from the Bank the main regulatory powers over commercial banks and giving them to the FSA. This meant that the Bank lacked crucial powers to deal with the emerging banking crisis and crash in 2008, and spent part of the pre crisis period in a turf war with its rival independent body. The elected official, the Chancellor, left these two warring institutions to get on with it, with disastrous results.

We have now suffered from 20 years of a so called independent Bank. During that time period we have seen two speculative bubbles, in 2000 and again in 2008, a banking crash in 2008-9, the Great recession which resulted from the crash, the adoption of more extreme monetary policies based on printing  extra cash and the  buying up of government bonds. Far from creating stability, the Bank has supervised market extremes, substantial economic volatility and two stock market crashes, including one  with a  banking crash.

The Bank has demonstrated it is not independent, whilst  governments have continued to interfere behind the scenes. Gordon Brown changed the powers of the Bank, then changed  its inflation remit. Alastair Darling rightly  overrode the Bank to get interest rates down in the middle of the banking crash. Governor Carney’s independent judgement looked very similar to  the Remain campaign in the referendum.

The same thing has happened with the Environment Agency. The Agency developed its own policy of allowing parts of the country to flood. It removed  pumps and failed to keep ditches clean and rivers dredged. It allowed substantial new development to be added without always making necessary provision for handling surface water and household  waste water. The whole system broke down in  the Somerset levels, prompting Ministerial intervention to demand pumps and dredging be resumed.

It is time we moved back to a system where Ministers set policy based on public needs, rather than relying on experts who can offer policies that are not wanted allied to  incompetence in delivery. In the end the public thinks the Chancellor is to blame for the economy and the Environment Secretary for flooding, however much power has in theory been delegated.

I am surprised several contributors here have  complained at Mrs Mays determination  to end modern slavery. I think it is an important priority and one I support wholeheartedly.

We hear that too many people are brought into the UK illegally by people traffickers. Too many are employed for wages below the legal minimum. Too many are made to work in unsafe or demeaning activities. Too  many are locked into high rents for cramped or unsuitable accommodation. Indeed one in such conditions would be one too many.

Surely it is a central task of government to stop illegal entry into the UK? It is also important to stop or prosecute landlords who break rules over numbers of people in a property, fail to connect a property to proper utility services, who break planning laws or otherwise take rent off people without providing decent and legal accommodation.

It is important to stop or prosecute employers who violate health and safety standards deliberately, who employ illegal migrants knowingly, who fail to pay the minimum wage, or who coerce employees with penal service and rent contracts as a mandatory part of their employment.

All these practises are bad for the people trafficked, and bad for our society receiving them. We read that there  are too many people living in sheds or sleeping in shifts in small properties with far too many sharing, working in coercive work forces for very little, without legal papers to be here at all. It is the government’s job to find them if this is true and take action to prevent more  coming here in modern slavery.

This trade in people is a scourge of the modern world. I am glad the government wants to take a leading role in closing down these profiteers from misery. We don’t want them or their activities in the UK.

Today I am reminding readers of the suggested Brexit budget I launched for Conservatives for Britain before the referendum vote. It will remind people that I was very clear the extra money we have to spend is the net figure, not the gross £350 m a week. It also reminds people that NHS and social care was at the heart of the programme, along with some VAT measures:

 

“The UK currently hands over £19 billion to the EU every year. We get £9 billion back in services and the rebate which means when we Vote Leave we will be able to guarantee all the funding to farmers, universities and regional grants that currently come from the EU and still have £10 billion more to spend on our priorities like the NHS.

The Conservatives for Britain spending suggestions for the first post-Brexit budget include:

£1.1 billion for disability benefits to avoid controversial cuts

£800 million to train an extra 60,000 nurses a year to deal with shortages and excess agency staff

£250 million a year to provide an additional 10,000 doctors a year to deal with doctor shortages and to staff the seven day NHS well

£750 million a year on social care to offering better support for people in their own homes, and for more care home and respite care places.

£200 million to cancel hospital car parking charges £400 million for dearer medical treatments not currently licensed by NICE, for example cancer treatments such as Proton Beam therapy and Meningitis vaccines

£1.9 billion to abolish VAT on domestic energy, energy saving materials, on converting existing dwellings and on carry cots, children’s car seats and safety seats

£1.5 billion to keep Council Tax down by offering councils the money to pay for a discount on bills they issue

£900 million to remove Stamp Duty on the £125,000 to £250,000 band of home purchase

£500 million should be allocated to a local road fund to support local schemes to improve junction safety and flows, and to provide additional capacity and bypasses on busy roads in congested areas”

These measures or something like them should be adopted soon. We could issue them before the cancellation of the contributions has been achieved, but it would be best to get on with that in a matter of months. The contributions should not be any part of any negotiation over trade issues.

 

An important feature of the Brexit campaign was to take back control of our money. Many want to see cash from our cancelled EU contributions spent on NHS matters. I set out a Brexit budget for the referendum as an illustration of what can be achieved.

That budget included money to train, recruit and retain 4000 extra doctors and 60,000 extra nurses. It included cancelling student loans for nurses, and returning to grants. It offered extra money for a wider range of new drugs on the NHS.

The NHS can also be improved by reducing the rate of gr0wth of demand. This can be brought about by moving to a system of controlled migration, cutting the extra numbers needing NHS cover. It can be assisted by a better designed way of invoicing anyone coming to the UK from a foreign country for non urgent health treatment, who currently often receive it free.

The NHS needs to be encouraged to be better at determining who needs hospital treatment. At present too many people go straight to hospital instead of going  through the process of GP evaluation. In hospital many elderly people are detained when there is little or nothing  that the doctors and  nurses can do. Sometimes they have to stay in because there is insufficient social care arranged to allow them back home or into the community. There needs to  be more care outside hospital and better access to it.

The UK has a large  backlog of missing transport capacity to catch up with. Labour cut the roads programme heavily on assuming office in 1997, and cut the total capital investment programme more in response to the 2008 banking crash. The Coalition made slow progress in reinstating the capital cuts.

The last government did concentrate on several very large schemes. It largely completed Crossrail in London, which had been planned under its Labour predecessor. It backed HS2, an expensive project to install a new London to the north route. It made early moves in favour of Crossrail 2. It was almost ready to make up its mind on  new airport capacity, but the politics of the Mayoral election in London followed by the referendum vote dealt a body blow to good intentions to make a decision. It delivered the Olympics projects, continued with various public sector led schemes in the North, and began the conversion of hard shoulders into running lanes on busy motorways.

So what should the new government do? It  needs to up the pace and scale of its response to the chronic lack of commuter rail capacity and main road space. It needs to review road junctions and railway crossing points, to improve safety and cut congestion.

Commuter capacity into and out of the main cities should be a railway priority. Removing bottlenecks on tracks, providing more track bypasses to allow more fast trains to intersperse the rush hour stoppers, taking out level  crossings and other hazards, extending train lengths and platforms, improving braking and cutting train weight to improve  acceleration and stopping times could all add substantially in total to commuter capacity.

So should more freight train activity be a priority. That requires more single waggon marshalling and more branch lines and sidings in modern industrial parks. It also needs more track capacity. Improved signalling throughput the network can assist in providing more  freight and commuter capacity.

On the existing A and B road network the government needs to work with Councils and provide more money for improved junctions. More segregation of right turning traffic and of cycles can improve safety and speeds through junctions. Switching more traffic lights to roundabouts can also assist flows.

 

Another Project Fear forecast bites the dust. According to the Nationwide Index house prices rose 0.5% in July and 5.2% for the year, a slightly faster rate than pre Brexit!

All those looking for a bargain home in the wake of the vote, as promised by some  on the Remain side, have  been disappointed.

Would any any of the doom mongers writing in to this  site care to explain?

The new government seems as wedded to tackling the housing crisis as the outgoing one. They will readily take up the ambitions and schemes proposed in the 2015 Conservative Manifesto to bring home ownership to more people.

Part of what they have to do is to continue with the plans of before. The schemes designed to help people with deposits, to make new homes for first time buyers more affordable, and to expand the general supply are all good  news.

The second part of what needs to be done lies on the demand side. The last government got nowhere near delivering its target of a two thirds reduction in net immigration. This government is pledged to take us out of the EU, which will enable it to put in place a points based system for work permits which can cut the numbers of unskilled and low skilled jobs being filled by EU migrants.

Out of the EU we will also be able to introduce new limitations on newly arrived people claiming benefits.

That will be good news. The large number of people coming into our country are adding greatly to the upward pressures on rents and flat and house prices, as landlords take advantage of the extra demand.

So the second quarter saw good UK growth despite the gloom mongers, despite all the uncertainty about the vote, and despite the pro Brexit vote before the quarter end. Meanwhile a leading pharmaceutical company confirms a large UK investment programme to confound the scientific pundits who said we would lose that kind of thing.

The latest poll shows 43% for the pro Brexit Conservative party and 13 % for the pro Brexit UKIP party, a total of 56%. The Lib  Dems who have argued for a second referendum and staying in the EU languish on just 8 % and are not picking up votes from Labours current difficulties.