Author: johnredwood

In 1973-4, the last year of a Conservative government, public spending was £33.4bn or 42.1% of GDP.

The Labour government that followed put it up to 48.9% of GDP, only to be forced into cuts by the IMF. By the time they left office annual spending was ££79.7bn, or 44.1% of GDP.

Mrs Thatcher’s government  left office in 1990. Total spending was then £216.8bn or  37.5% of GDP.

Mr Major left office in 1997, with spending at £324 bn or 38.2% of GDP.

Mr Blair and Mr Brown boosted spending to £686.5bn, or 45.7% of GDP by 2009-10.

The Coalition increased spending to £ 735.5bn, or 40.7% of GDP.

So taking percentage of GDP as many people’s preferred measure of public spending,  one Labour government boosted it by 2% and one by 7.5%. The Conservative government of 1979-97 reduced it by 5.9%  (Mrs Thatcher actually reduced it by 6.6%)and the Coalition cut it by 5% of GDP.

The fact that the high levels of public spending as a proportion of GDP led directly to an IMF crisis and forced cuts in the 1970s, and was part of a wider banking crash in the late 2000s should be a warning to all those who think the easy answer to economic success is to boost public spending. These periods of very high spending coincided with poor economic performance-  part cause and part effect. Each Conservative period in office has had to include getting public spending and borrowing back under control to avoid further interest rate and banking problems.

No Conservative government has cut cash spending. Over all the years of alleged cuts public spending has risen substantially in cash terms and has usually gone up in real terms as well.

Manchester grew prosperous on the cotton industry. At its peak there were 108 cotton mills in the city, and fortunes to be made in designing, spinning, weaving, garment making, selling and financing. Sheffield has long been famous for its cutlery. It pioneered new steel making techniques and sells Sheffield plate to the world. Leeds grew as a large woollen textile centre with a range of services for the Yorkshire industry. Liverpool grew rich and famous on its shipping and transatlantic trades.

The twentieth century was not so kind to many of these industries. Under governments of all persuasions we watched as the wool and cotton industries were challenged by new rivals abroad. The transatlantic liners were largely replaced by airplanes from Heathrow and much of the goods trade shifted to east coast ports. The steel industry also faced new cheaper competitors.

Most of the political debate about a Northern powerhouse is about what government can do for a city, and about who should govern a city. These are important issues. I don’t doubt that good transport links, strong universities, high levels of education and training for local young people, and good housing can help a great city grow and flourish. It may be that local politicians can do a better job than Whitehall at spending the large sums of public money that are on offer, but they will need to prove that by their actions.

There remains the larger question of how are these important cities going to develop and rebuild their private sectors? There are signs of progress, with Manchester’s airport related commercial expansion and with the Leeds financial services developments. To catch up with London all these cities are going to need much larger private sectors, with more modern business activities adding jobs and making profits.

Better rail and road links are needed to export more goods and services to the south, more than to encourage more long distance commuting into the capital. These cities need more higher -priced housing for sale as well as affordable housing to rent, to attract the investors and entrepreneurs. Whilst it is largely up to the private sector to make its own judgements about what it can make and do, the cities that succeed have to show a positive wish to recruit and nurture new business and sometimes need to kickstart sectors or themes for business clusters.

London has recently attracted more hi tec business to the Old Street area by theming Silicon roundabout. Cambridge has been successful at attracting medical and science based businesses to its campus style business parks. The Reading area in recent decades has been successful at attracting a cluster of computer based businesses to the Thames Valley. The Northern Powerhouse can also power ahead by such initiatives. Modern cities cluster excellence and enterprise, just as Manchester has been the foremost technical and financial centre in the world for cotton textiles, and Sheffield was the dominant world leader for steel innovation.

The European Central Bank has a good way of setting out its agenda whilst protecting its boss, Mr Draghi, from any flack. The talkative Central Banker, Benoit Coeure, is a senior member of the ECB Board. He regularly gives interesting lectures gazing into a more integrated European future. These lectures appear on the official ECB website and are given in his ECB capacity. So they are official bank statements, but Mr Draghi falls short of putting his own name to them which might make them more newsworthy.

In his latest, Mr Coeure explains the urgent need for a Euro Treasury, the very Euro Treasury which Mr Draghi did in outline support when he added his name to other 4 Presidents in their statement of common policy. He tells us “Our (EU) institutional framework is not yet sufficient to complete EMU when it comes to economic, fiscal and financial matters. The ECB does not currently have a strong political counterpart in these areas”. He recognises the huge economic and social damage being done by the current Euro scheme: “The crisis (Greece) showed that excessive imbalances and fragilities have been allowed to develop in a number of Euro area countries in the absence of sufficient safeguards… the consequences are not just economic, they are also political. Unemployment hits the young hardest, creating a lost generation.”

His remedy is a Euro Treasury. This would both be able to enforce budget discipline on each member state, but also able to route money from rich to poor. “We cannot advocate a Europe of solidarity (transfer payments ed) while believing that the economic policies of each Euro area country are the business of that country’s Parliament alone”. Exactly. He and his Euro friends wish to sell the Euro Treasury to the Germans as the way to stop excess spending and excess credit in places like Greece, Spain and Portugal, and wants to sell the Euro to the struggling countries as the means for them to gain access to solidarity payments from the richer areas.

He sees this raises issues of accountability. He helpfully suggests ” The joint implementation of a political project and an economic strategy also assumes that our political union will be strengthened… I have spoken out in favour of the creation of a finance ministry for the whole Euro area under the oversight of the European Parliament”

This has serious repercussions for the UK. We are rapidly moving to a world where the Euro drives major political changes with decisions shifting to the centre. Mr Coeure wishes to use the single market as part of the mechanism for his reforms where the UK is directly involved. The banking union too increasingly envelops UK banks in its fold. Are we going to have two categories of MEP, those from Euro participating countries and those from outside? Or do we get to debate and vote the spending of their currency union money?

Dr Vince Cable as Business Secretary in the Coalition government set up and financed two new banks using taxpayers money. The Green Investment Bank rushed to invest in the green bonanza, using heavily subsidised taxpayer cash to invest in taxpayer and energy customer subsidised green businesses. The British business bank is available for more general finance for business.

So far the Green Bank has been given £975 million of taxpayers money as capital, and the British business bank £664 million. If taxpayers had just used that to repay some debt, we would have saved around £50 m of interest a year. So how much did these two banks between them earn in profits in their last reported years?

Unfortunately, instead of making us more than the £50 m we could have saved they managed to lose £20 million between them! They paid the taxpayer no interest or dividends on the capital put up. They paid for lots of salaries, some expensive property to trade from, made various loans.  The Green Investment Bank formed a joint venture with the Department for Climate Change to spend some money on green investments abroad, helping competitors overseas.

Neither bank is regulated by the PRA or the FCA in the way all private sector banks are. So now we know the answer to what do you do with £1.6bn to make sure you don’t make any money on it? You give it to a couple of government banks set up by Dr Cable.

I accept the advice of the Electoral Commission. The EU referendum deserves a neutral and clear question. Remain or leave is quite straightforward and meets with general approval as fair. I will vote for that and trust the government will recommend it as an amendment to their Bill.

I read that Mr Farage does not wish to co-operate with other Eurosceptics in running a Leave campaign. He wants to run his own campaign, with one topic, that of immigration. Fine. I now hear that Mr Farage has wisely said he does wish to co-operated with the official campaign but not to run it.

I do not think it would be wise to run the Leave campaign on just one issue, however topical it currently is and however central it clearly is to an important group of voters. The reason we need to leave is wider than current migration problems. We need to leave so we can regain control over our future. We need to leave to be a free and prosperous people. We need to leave to restore our democracy. We need to leave because the EU is increasingly becoming the political union for the Euro area. We need a new relationship with the rest of the EU so we can trade, be friends and co-operate with them outside the current centralising treaties.

We do want to make our own decisions about who to invite into our country. But we also want to make our own decisions about what welfare benefits to give out, about how to regulate our banks, about how to generate our power, what price to charge for electricity, about how we can best look after our environment and who we can deport and extradite. Most of the rest of Europe is embarked on a project to create a United States of Europe. The EU is on a wild ride to political union. UK voters can keep us out of that by voting to leave the current treaties, or by accepting the new relationship Mr Cameron negotiates if he succeeds with this wider vision of fundamental change. The rest of the EU will want to trade with us and do deals with us, and many will be relieved there is no longer worry over the difficult question how does the UK have a relationship which works from inside the centralising EU, now dominated by its single currency.

I hear the government also plans to amend the Bill over the issue of purdah, or the rules over what government can do during the referendum period. As an MP who voted against their original proposal I look forward to seeing their second thoughts.

If you look at the self assessment income tax receipts which include much of the top rate tax collected, you see that over the four years of 50% top rate self assessment income tax came in around £20.5bn a year. This was £2bn or 10% lower than the levels of 2007-8 and 2008-9 when the top rate was 40%

Last year was the first year that self assessment income tax has gone to higher levels, reaching £23.6bn at the 45p top rate. This July saw further  strong upwards movement in self assessment income tax, with growth of 17% over July the previous year.

Success in getting more tax revenue in means that so far this financial year the government is making decent progress in getting the deficit down. The public accounts showed a surplus for July, a good month for collecting tax. The amount of borrowing needed so far this financial year is down by £7.3 bn to £24 bn.

The EU has increased the deficit, not just by its own demands on UK finances, but also by requiring a change of accounting to increase the amount of depreciation the government has to charge itself. This has raised the deficit by a further £1.1 billion this year.

Public spending is forecast to go up a little in cash terms next year and the year after, following the increases proposed in the July budget. As there is currently no CPI inflation and low wage rises in the public sector this means overall a real increase. Total spending is forecast to rise by £12 billion in 2016-17 and by £14 billion in 2017-18. This year it goes up by £6.8bn.

With substantial increases in health, welfare, and EU contributions, and real increases in defence and overseas aid in line with growth in the economy as a whole, this will mean some reductions in other programmes and departments. It is that time of year when the Treasury is looking for ways to get more for less or get the same for less, and when departments are meant to come forward with sensible ideas for being more efficient and cutting out less necessary or wasteful spending.

I have made some suggestion recently on this site and elsewhere. Network Rail’s budget is very wasteful and inefficiencies are large. It should be easy for the new management to save money and achieve more. The area of housing sees large double subsidies, to both homes and people. It should be possible to build, sell and rent out more homes without needing so much subsidy to the housing providers. The budget of the Climate Change department was increased substantially under its Lib Dem Ministers under the Coalition and should be able to manage with less.

The Business department has a large budget. Now Corporation tax is down and growth has resumed, it should be possible to reduce the amount of business subsidy being paid. An energy policy based on exploiting cheaper energy would also help. The two state banks run by the Business department should be expected to make some profits instead of requiring cash.

The government is in the process of seeking to control welfare bills. The two best ways to do so are to help more people into work and into better paid work, and to limit the numbers of new migrants coming to the country.

I look forward to your ideas for ways to bring the bills down.