If and when the UK leaves the EU there is no need to accept any EU migrants the UK does not choose to let in. Euosceptics do not recommend accepting Norwegian type arrangements with the EU. We just want to restore UK democracy which means removing all EU bossiness and controls which stop us making our own democratic decisions.
Author: johnredwood
Pipes and cables should not be buried under roads
One of the maddest things about our congested road network in the UK is the way the authorities chose to place most of the crucial pipes and cables for water, electricity, gas and telephones under the carriageway and then seal them in under piles of rubble and tarmac. Each time they need to replace or repair expensive roadworks are undertaken, disrupting the highway, increasing the costs of the utility business, and creating tensions between the utility customers as road users and the utility managements.
I am trying to persuade Councils and utility operators to place all utilities under verges or pavements when laying new ones, preferably in robust and secure conduits with access. We have long since stopped burying the cables and pipes of an office in the plaster of the walls, preferring to run them in architectural conduits with easy access usually under floors. Why not do the same for our main utilities?
Wokingham Borough has said it is adopting this for its new developments. Thames Water has said it likes the idea. It could be done for replacements as well as for new areas. Once installed the future costs of maintenance, repair and replacement will be greatly reduced. Above all our very limited road capacity will not be so readily reduced by utility works, and fewer people will be disturbed by the ominous sound of a pneumatic drill once again cutting up the highway.
I am taking this up with other major network providers. It’s a way to save utilities substantial money over the longer term, and to start to cut down on the number of times our roads are disrupted to improve or maintain basic systems unconnected with the roads.
Reply from Heathrow’s Chief Executive on aircraft noise
23rd October 2015
The Rt Hon John Redwood MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
Dear Mr Redwood
Thank you for your recent letter.
Since we last spoke, we’ve now received the report from the independent consultant on flight patterns affecting the Wokingham area. This analysis is one of the first of a series of reports that is being produced as part of the new monitoring programme launched in coordination with the Community Noise Forum, which we established earlier this year. It will be shared at the full meeting of the Forum on 5th November. I have enclosed a copy of the report for you.
It shows that on departure aircraft are on average 1,000ft higher compared with 10 years ago, however there are more of them over this area (on average 45 flights per day). The main reason for this is an increase in the number of flights going to destinations in the Americas.
When the airport is on easterly operations, the analysis confirms that there is a higher density of departing aircraft over particular areas because of the procedural change NATS made to the Compton route in June 2014. I know that, like me, you want to see this procedure reversed. In my discussions with NATS they have reiterated that this change was made to enhance safety. It also means controllers can get aircraft higher, quicker on departure because it reduces the interaction between arrivals and departures.
For arrival on easterly operations – the source of your constituent’s concerns outlined in the letters you enclosed – there are no set routes or heights for arrival aircraft before they join the final approach path. This results in a large spread of arrival tracks across a number of areas which the analysis shows.
I appreciate this is a complicated issue but I hope the analysis will be helpful in explaining why some residents feel they experience more-flight now in particular areas. This monitoring programme will carry on alongside other actions Heathrow is taking to reduce the impact of noise from its operations through our Blueprint for noise reduction, which includes trialling steeper approaches to keep aircraft higher for longer and fitting quiet technology to A320s.
Finally, I would like to put your constituent’s mind at rest that the air quality in Wokingham will not be affected by aircraft emissions from Heathrow. Once in the air, emissions from aircraft disperse rapidly and once above 500-600 feet, the contribution and they make to local air quality is negligible.
I would be happy to meet to discuss these issues in more detail.
Yours sincerely
John Holland-Kaye
Chief Executive Officer
Wokingham School funding – Reply from the Minister
Dear John
Thank you for your letter of 1 September, enclosing correspondence from Mr Andy Couldrick, Chief Executive, Wokingham Borough Council, about school funding. Thank you also for taking the time to meet with me last month and setting out your concerns about school funding in Wokingham.
I was sorry to read about Mr Couldrick’s concerns about school funding. We recognise that there are anomalies in the current school funding system, and are committed to making schools’ funding fairer. As Mr Couldrick will be aware, the coalition government allocated an additional £390 million to the least fairly funded local authorities in the country in 2015-16. This meant that Wokingham Borough Council gained an additional £716,000 in 2015-16. Despite the progress towards fairer funding, we recognise that there is more to be done, and we will put forward our plans in due course. As I hope Mr Couldrick will understand, we will only be able to come forward with detailed proposals once we have set budgets for education and other public services after the Spending Review.
As Mr Couldrick noted, the allocation process for high needs funding, and consequently the amount of high needs funding each local authority receives, is currently derived from local authorities’ own past spending decisions. There is widespread recognition that this arrangement is unfair and out of date, with a wide variation in the funding provided for children with similar needs. Our aim is to make the funding distribution fairer.
To help inform this, we undertook a substantial research report on the future funding of special needs. The report contains a large number of recommendations that we will be considering. We hope to introduce changes from 2017-18, although this is still under consideration within government, and to consult on them by early 2016. One of the recommendations we will be considering is to implement a national high needs funding formula, driven by pupil numbers and characteristics.
Funding for schools is calculated on the basis of pupil numbers from the previous year because this enables local authorities to set school budgets before the year starts, which helps schools with their financial planning. It is difficult for schools to change their expenditure at short notice and this system protects schools against sudden changes in the amount of funding they receive. We believe that this is preferable to the alternatives of basing funding on unreliable estimates of pupil numbers or the uncertainty for school budgets caused by real-time tracking of pupils.
We do, however, recognise the importance of funding for growing schools. This is why we have enabled local authorities, with the approval of their schools forum, to hold some of their schools block funding centrally for a growth fund. As part of our wider reforms, we are looking at how to support local authorities experiencing exceptionally high levels of pupil growth, and we will consider Mr Couldrick’s suggestion on diseconomies funding as part of this work.
On teachers’ pay, the last government’s pay reforms have meant that rather than continuing to be locked in to statutory pay arrangements where pay progression was automatically awarded to most teachers, schools now have much more autonomy over the management of their budgets and are able to use their total salary budget more creatively to reward the best teachers. Giving headteachers more flexibility over pay enables them to manage their overall budgets and meet their school’s unique set of needs more effectively.
On national insurance, currently, employees who are members of defined benefit occupational pension schemes, like the TPS, pay a reduced level of national insurance, as do their employers. This is because they are ‘contracted out’ of contributing to the second State Pension. As you may be aware, from 1 April 2016, there will be a single-tier State Pension aimed at providing a higher level of basic benefits that all employees will have the opportunity to build up, including members of the TPS. As a result, all employees will be required to pay the same full rate of National Insurance contributions, as will their employers. In return, employees will receive a larger State Pension than before. The liability for this will fall on the state. Public sector employers will have to absorb the burden of increased contributions.
With regard to schools facing deficit budgets, as I am sure Mr Couldrick is aware, if an academy anticipates financial difficulties and is formally proposing to set a deficit revenue budge for the current financial year, which it is unable to address after funds from previous years are taken into account, the board of trustees should notify the Education Funding Agency (EFA). In the most serious cases, the EFA is able to consider funding to support the academy, but only where appropriate, as determined on the merits of the individual case. Maintained schools should contact their local authority if they are planning to set a deficit revenue budget.
Mr Couldrick also mentions deprivation funding, and in particular the use of IDACI. It is for each local authority to decide how much money to allocate through their deprivation factors. Local authorities can decide whether to use IDACI for this purpose, and if so, which IDACI bands to use for funding schools. The Department does not currently direct funding to local authorities for school on the basis on IDACI.
If schools have not already, they may find it helpful to consider our document Review of efficiency in the schools system, which sets out the characteristics of the most efficient schools. This document is available online at: http://tinyurl.com/p52lxda. In addition, the EFA is developing an online efficiency toolkit that provides head teachers, school business managers and governors with information and guidance to help improve the efficiency of their school. The toolkit is a set of short videos providing practical advice to help schools identify efficiencies and cost savings, and the current content can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/pgpf2vn.
Thank you for writing to me on this important matter.
Yours ever
Sam Gyimah MP
Mind the energy gap
The closures of perfectly good coal burning power stations are coming thick and fast thanks to EU rules requiring their premature closure. The older nuclear stations are also approaching their shut down dates. The UK has lost its normal margin of reserve capacity, and is now close to the point where on a cold day in winter with no wind we will have to import sufficient power to meet demand. The ability to import is becoming part of the calculation of how we keep the lights on. This is in accordance with the EU’s wish to create a unified energy market across the EU, so all EU countries come to depend on each other and look to Brussels to control their energy policies as a result.
The UK government is well aware of the dangers to security of supply. Some of us have been arguing about this for years, knowing that it takes years to plan, design and build new generation capacity. Last week the government did decide to authorise a new large nuclear power station at Hinkley Point. The investment will be made by a lead French investor and a supporting Chinese investor. UK taxpayers and electricity consumers will not have to put up any money for the planning and construction phases, but the government is going to guarantee a high electricity price once the station is working. This is the price of pursuing a low carbon economy, as the price of gas capacity would be lower.
The nuclear station on its own will not be enough to take care of all the closures and any increase in demand we might need in the years ahead. The UK has to plan for its rising population, and for the EU passion to switch a lot of transport, both rail and road, to electricity from primary fuels. I would like to see the government announce new gas power stations. They should represent the cheapest and easiest way of increasing generating capacity, and may well in future be fuelled by gas found in the UK.
Unfortunately, owing to the decision to rely much more on wind energy for baseload power, any gas or other similar power will be dearer. As the wind farms take precedence when the wind is blowing, the grid cannot guarantee demand to new gas power stations. They are needed for cold days, days of high demand, and days with no wind. This makes their power dearer as well, as the consumers have to pay for excess capacity anytime the wind is blowing.
Once you interfere as comprehensively as the EU has done in energy provision you create difficulties in keeping the lights on, and you make energy considerably dearer. Now the best we can do is a quick fix of more gas generation at a price. Meanwhile industry has been warned that if we do have high demand days with no wind, they will be asked not to use power at peak times.
Tax credits again
The Commons considered and passed changes to tax credits On September 15th by 35 votes as part of the Budget. Last week the Labour opposition highlighted them again, and the Commons voted down their motion critical of the changes that had already been made. Tomorrow I am told we have to consider them again on an Opposition amendment to the Welfare bill.
I strongly support the policy of cutting tax for people, and at the same time reducing the tax credits. It makes little sense to me to take money off people that they have earned, and then to give it back in a tax credit. That is two handling charges and two elaborate bureaucracies to take the money away and give it back. I also accept the policy of seeking to boost wages. This really requires rising productivity so the pay rises are affordable, as is now beginning to happen.
I want people to be better off as a result of all the changes. I want them to earn more, and keep more of what they earn. The government has twice shown it has the votes to put through this policy, which makes sense to a lot of voters. There remain two issues of implementation. By how much should the tax credits be cut back? What is the timing of tax credit changes and how does this relate to higher pay and lower taxes?
I have not myself done the sums. I have urged the government to pursue the policy in a way which means it is always w0rthwhile working, and in a way which maximises the number of people who are better off. The government should share with us more of its numbers on the pace of these changes.
Leave means leave
It was good to hear the Prime Minister confirm that if we vote to leave the EU that is exactly what we will do. I know some of you worry that you could vote to leave, win the vote, and then be cheated out of leaving. I have always said leave means leave, and that is now official. The sooner the better, when you look at the current very high cost of remaining a member, and look at the shambolic immigration, energy and currency policies the EU core is pursuing.
The Maastricht controls on debt and deficit
The most recent UK figures on debt and deficit come as part of the UK’s reporting to the EU on these important matters. We are reminded in the official communication that
“The Protocol (to the Maastricht Treaty) on the excessive deficit procedure defines two criteria and reference values with which member states should comply. These are a deficit (net borrowing)to GDP ratio of 3% and a debt to GDP ratio of 60% ”
The latest EU reports show that 14 member states still exceed the 3% control on budget deficits, and 16 remain with debt over 60% of their GDP. Some are way beyond the targets. Italy and Portugal have debts at more than 130% of GDP. Spain and the UK remain well above a 3% deficit target amongst the larger EU countries.
The total Euro area has a debt to GDP ratio of 92%, and the EU 28 a ratio of 86.8%. The Euro area as a whole has now got its deficit down below 3%. The UK in the year to March 2015 ran a deficit of 5.1%.
I read that the left of centre parties who won the Portuguese election have not been allowed to take office because they have dared to challenge the Euro disciplines. The Euro once again overrides democracy.
One of the main arguments in the Euro area is when and how will the Maastricht criteria be enforced? All the talk of a Euro Treasury follows hard on the introduction of the so called EU semester, an attempt to intensify the reporting and the pressure to conform with the required controls on debt and deficit. It is difficult to run a single currency without imposing a strong discipline on total government borrowings in the single currency area. Surplus countries dislike borrowing countries attempting to free ride at lower interest rates based on their prudence. Borrowing countries resent the tight controls on their borrowing the surplus countries wish to establish. So far the Maastricht criteria have not been observed by a majority of states. They are nonetheless an important constraint on worse performance, and they are now once again in the centre of the argument about establishing a Euro Treasury.
Meanwhile it is difficult to see why the UK has to report its debt and deficit to the EU at all, when successive governments clearly have no wish to hit the EU targets, and when there are rightly no penalties for failure to do so. The most recent figures show the UK deficit gradually reducing, with tax revenues growing more quickly than the growth in public spending, as planned.
What is curious is that the left wing UK parties in the UK who thunder against “austerity” by which they mean cuts and controls on public spending and borrowing never fulminate against the more intense public sector austerity the EU requires under its Maastricht criteria. Why do they not spend some time and energy trying to change that?
To the BBC English votes is a Scottish issue, and to Labour it is an issue they wish to ignore
After my speech in the Commons on justice for England BBC Scotland wanted me to give interviews. There was as always no call from BBC England.
I agreed to do a radio interview for BBC Scotland yesterday morning. The wish was to debate the SNP false allegations of second class MPs and possible damage to Scotland and the Union. Understandably there was no interest in whether these proposals help England enough or are fair to England.
In England Radio Berkshire asked to interview me. They too took the SNP agenda and sought to confine the interview to the issues of so called second class MPs and alleged damage to the Union. They did not ask a single question about how it might help Berkshire. They did not ask if it gave enough power to England. They did not ask how we might want to use the power. They did not grasp that the settlement of the money is going to be a crucial issue which is only partially dealt with by Thursday’s vote.
If the BBC wishes to pose as broadcaster for the whole Union of the UK it has got to learn the lines of the English as well as the Scottish. It needs to probe and ask questions from an English point of view as well as from a Scottish point of view. It needs to be voice for England and to offer us some English coverage. We need a BBC England.
Labour made the situation worse by their behaviour in the Commons on Thursday. Few Labour MPs came in for the debate. Their response was led by a Welsh MP, with Welsh MPs more prominent than English on their sparsely populated benches. Their threadbare arguments were similar to the SNP, complaining about second class MPs and an alleged inability of the Speaker to read whether a bill or spending item related to the UK or just to some part of it.
Labour failed to speak for England. Most of Labour’s English MPs were notable by their absence. They allowed a debate on England to become more a debate about Scotland. Again there was no BBC England to ask them why they don’t care about the injustice of devolution to England, or to prise out of them a policy on how England should in future be looked after on our fast changing constitution.
Mr Redwood’s speech during the debate on English Votes, 22 October 2015
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I speak for England. For some 18 years English MPs in this United Kingdom Parliament have proposed, encouraged, or come to accept with good grace major transfers of power to Scotland, substantial transfers of power to Wales, and the transfer of other powers to Northern Ireland. Now it is England’s turn.
Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP): The right hon. Gentleman says that he speaks for England. We all recall that, in a former existence, he once tried to sing for Wales.
John Redwood: In those glorious days of great singing, we had a unitary country, which meant that anyone could do anything from this great House of Commons in the Government across the whole United Kingdom. We have this problem today because, in our collective wisdoms, we are transferring massive powers to devolved Governments and to all parts of the United Kingdom, but not to England. Now it is England’s turn to have a voice, and England’s turn to have some votes.
I welcome today’s proposals, but I must tell my hon. Friends that they do only half the job. What England is being offered today is the opportunity to have a voice and a vote to stop the rest of the United Kingdom imposing things on England which England does not wish to have and has not voted for. That is very welcome, but we still do not have what the Scots have. We do not have the power to propose something for our country which we wish to have and which may well be backed by a large majority of English voters and by English Members of Parliament, because it could still be voted down by the United Kingdom Parliament. So this is but half the job for England. Nevertheless, I welcome half the job, and I will of course warmly support it.
We are given but two pathetic arguments against the proposal by the massive and angry forces that we see ranged against it today. First, we are told that it will not be possible to define an England issue. Those Members never once thought there was a problem with defining a Scottish issue, and, as we know, issue after issue is defined as a Scottish issue and passes through the Scottish Parliament with very few conflicts and problems.
In your wisdom, Mr Speaker, you will be well guided in this respect, because every piece of legislation that is presented to us will state very clearly whether it applies to the whole of the United Kingdom or just to some parts of the United Kingdom. The decisions on who can vote on the matter under the double-vote system will therefore become very clear, because they will be on the face of the law. How can this House produce a law that does not state whether it is England-only or United Kingdom-wide? The law must make that statement, so it will not be any great problem for the Chair to sort that out.
Then there is the ridiculous argument that this measure will create two different types of MP. The problem, which some of us identified in the late 1990s when devolution was first proposed and implemented, was that it created four different types of MP, and we are living with the results of that today. English MPs have always been at the bottom of the heap. I have to accept that Scottish MPs come here and vote on English health and English schools in my constituency, but I have no right to debate, or vote on, health and education in Scotland. That problem needs to be addressed, and we are suggesting a very mild and moderate way of starting to address it. I hope that the House will give England a hearing.
I find it extraordinary that so few English Labour MPs are present today, and that not one of them is standing up and speaking for England, saying “Let us make some small progress in redressing the balance.”
Several hon. Members rose—
John Redwood: I do not have time to give way, and others wish to speak.
Today is the chance to start to put right some of that injustice to England. Today is the chance to start to rebalance our precious United Kingdom. Today is the chance to deal with lopsided devolution, and to give England something sensible to do. In the week of Trafalgar day, let me end by saying, “England expects every England MP to do his or her duty.”