Author: johnredwood

A few constituents have written to me expressing concern about the introduction on Individual Voter Registration. Let me try and reassure them.

The aim is to complete the transition to Individual electoral registration by the end of this year. As the Association of Electoral Administrators has said, this is the best way to create an accurate register.

As the Minister has stated, under the old system the “head of the household” could register anybody living in a property with no identification needed. Most heads of households did so diligently and honestly, but it was possible for heads of households to provide false information, either by mistake as they were not fully aware of the future living arrangements or eligibility of people staying with them, or because they made a fraudulent declaration.

Under Individual Registration each person is responsible for their own registration, at the address where they are living. They need to supply a date of birth and an NI number which is used to check the applicant. During the transition from the old system to the new one, some 96 out of every hundred voters on the old register have transferred successfully. The remaining four out of 100 have not responded. They may be real voters, or former voters who have died, or voters who have moved and registered elsewhere, or they could be fraudulent registrations. Councils are actively seeking to contact them to clarify and make sure that all genuine voters are registered.

The Minister assures us that by the end of the process there will be at least nine attempts to contact each voter who has not qualified under the new system, including two personal visits. The chances by the end of the process of any genuine voter being off the register are “vanishingly” small. If anyone is concerned that they or a neighbour or friend has been left off they should get them to contact voter registration as soon as possible.

It must be right to have a more accurate register. It is surely high time individuals made their own arrangements for their vote, as they are the best judges of their eligibility and best placed to establish their own entitlement.

The very deed of having to write a letter to Donald Tusk about how we chose to govern the UK should alert UK voters to the profound change in our democracy and constitution put through by stealth in various EU Treaties. Each voter should learn of the plans for political union in the 5 Presidents Report on the future of the EU and the Euro, and ask how can the UK fit into such a far reaching constitution? Each voter should remember that the German government does think that in due course the UK should join the Euro and be in the whole scheme. Germany sees the Euro as a necessary part of the discipline of the single market.

The UK government is seeking changes in five areas. Those who have criticised them for not setting out before their negotiating aims are being unfair. The Prime Minister called for fundamental change in his Bloomberg speech, and identified the need to bring powers back. He grasped the need to restore UK democracy by restoring the power of the British people to make the changes they want through their own Westminster Parliament. I gave the aim of fundamental reform to restore our democracy in that speech my support.

Today’s letter will fall well short of the noble aim to restore democratic accountability through national Parliaments. It will doubtless say he seeks a greater role for national Parliaments, but this will be interpreted as meaning some limited power for national Parliaments to hold up or avoid future legal and policy changes. That will not restore to the UK the right to settle her own borders or determine her own welfare policies. That means that we will need to vote to leave the EU to get back control of our own affairs.

It will say they need to end the message that we are embarked on a journey to ever closer union. They may well remove the message, but that is not the same as removing the reality. The move to ever closer union is built into the current treaties we have signed, and drives the verdicts of the European Court and the decisions of the Commission. We are on a wild ride to political union, though the UK has never wanted that or consented.

It will ask for limits to the amount of welfare we have to pay to recently arrived migrants from within the EU. There may be concessions made to help us. They are unlikely to concede the principle that the UK and the UK alone should be free to decide who will receive in work and out of work benefits.

It will ask for more progress in constructing the single market, and in promoting trade deals at the EU level. The rest of the EU will willingly consent to this, as it strengthens the role of the EU over more of our lives. They will also probably genuflect to the UK wish for some deregulation, but overall this year and next year, as last year, the volume and impact of EU regulation will increase.

The government also seeks safeguards for non Euro members to avoid us having to pay the bills and accept the extra controls the Euro will require. As the Chancellor recently pointed out, the UK thought it had a watertight agreement that we would not have to play any part in future bail outs of Euro countries, only to be told the UK did have to participate in the recent bridging loan for Greece. This demonstrates that anything we want needs to be put into the Treaties themselves to guarantee it.

Proponents of staying in just have one set of scares to push, related to trade. They begin by telling us more than half our trade is with the rest of the EU.This is not so.

They commit two statistical errors in saying this that are reasonably well known. The first is they are only talking about trade in goods, not trade in services as well where the EU share is lower. Second, they do not adjust the EU figures for the Rotterdam and Amsterdam effects, where we export goods there which are shipped on to export markets outside the EU.

There is a third error. They amalgamate imports with exports, but talk about the consequences as if the figure was our export figure. As we import so much more than we export, it gives a very misleading result.

According to Bank of England figures the EU accounts for 44% of our exports of goods (unadjusted for re export) but 53% of our imports of goods.
If you turn to the definitive figures in the Pink Book published annually by ONS that shows in 2014 the EU accounted for 42% of all the credits to our current account, and 51% of all the debits. It meant the EU accounted for more than 100% of the deficit.

The figure the trade worriers should concentrate on is the 42%, not the more than half which is more imports than exports. If you adjust for re-exports it is under 40%. My recent discussions with the representatives of the German government have confirmed again that Germany has no wish to face new tariffs and barriers to her trade with us should we vote the leave the EU, and would be very keen to find alternative arrangements that allowed her to carry on exporting so much on favourable terms. I reassured them that Vote Leave is not seeking to impose new restrictions on UK/EU trade, nor would we be paying any contribution to the EU which we had just left as some kind of payment to keep the imports flowing!

I was pleased to see over the week-end that the CBI is toning down its position and beginning to recognise that it undermines its own wish to see a successful renegotiation to say they want to stay in come what may. What we need to know now is what renegotiation does the CBI wish to see? What reforms do they want, as they usually say they wish to stay in a reformed EU.

Today we remember.

We remember the bravery and endurance of the many who fought two long wars in the twentieth century.
We are grateful for their success, in ensuring our peace and freedom.
We mourn the loss of so many young lives.
We grieve at the injuries sustained and the hopes ruined in so many personal tragedies.

Out of the ashes of a burning Europe has emerged a number of peace loving democracies.
Out of the destruction of war has arisen a much more prosperous group of nations.

We owe it to them, to ourselves and to our children to see that by our current words and deeds we work for peace.
War is what happens when politics fails and diplomacy breaks down.
War is the result of nations intruding too far on other nations in disagreement and antagonism.
War may be the product of fear as well as of greed and hatred.

When wars end diplomacy and politics have to resume.
When wars end victors do sit down with vanquished.
When wars end both victors and vanquished need to rediscover the toleration and mutual respect of peace.

As I lay wreaths at War Memorials in my constituency I will remember.
I will remember the stories of how my family members fought and survived in those dangerous times.
I will think of all those families that might have been, dashed by the death of young men who never became fathers.
I will think of how in future we can learn from the tragic ways so many conflicts between nations, peoples and religions became bitter wars.

Now I have had chance to read the lengthy Bank of England Report on EU membership I have been struck by the lack of evidence to support its one positive conclusion for staying in the EU. The Bank claims that membership has helped the “dynamism” of the UK economy.

They do see the need to define and prove this vague statement. They do so by saying the EU has made the UK a much more open economy, and this can be seen in the growth of trade resulting from this greater openness. Yet when you turn to the Annex to see the figures, you find in Annex 3 that the UK’s openness as measured by increased trade has advanced less quickly than that of the OECD as a whole. It is true they only give the figures for the period 1999-2014, not our whole membership. However, the last 15 years is the most relevant, as it is only in the last fifteen years that the EU has become so much more integrated and intrusive. Their figures show both trade in services and trade in goods increasing more rapidly for the OECD as a whole than for the UK.

The Bank of England is more in line with reality with the negatives they cite. They are right that the “UK economy was materially affected by the euro-area crisis” , which could of course recur. They are also right that “the impact of EU membership on financial stability is more challenging”.

It is difficult to argue that the single market increases our dynamism, when it weighs business down with dear energy, complex product rules, high VAT rates, an expensive overarching bureaucracy at EU and national level to implement it all, and a failure to negotiate free trade deals with much of the rest of the world. The EU seems to favour a limited number of large companies in each sector at the expense of challengers and small businesses.

The government is engaged in an important defence review. It is tine indeed that we discussed what threats our nation faces, how we should protect ourselves, and what contribution we should make to NATO and the UN. Listening to many experts in this field I am struck by the extent of muddled and jargon laden thinking that passes for strategy.

Let me this morning suggest three roles for our defence establishment to carry out.

The first overriding requirement is to concentrate sufficient force in the UK so that no power would consider mounting a seaborne or airborne invasion. Whilst there is currently no enemy in sight who would seek to do that, history warns us that is the ultimate danger. France carried out one successful invasion in 1066 and failed in the early nineteenth century. Spain failed in 1588 and Germany failed in 1940. he Dutch succeeded by agreement with the powers that be in GB in 1688.

The second requirement is to make our contribution to NATO, and to work with NATO to act as a credible deterrent to aggression towards any NATO member.

The third requirement is to have an expeditionary ability so that we can contribute to UN tasks around the world, and can help defend our own friends and associated territories.

Much of modern thinking is based on collaboration and mutual dependence with allies. History reminds us that we have not always been able to rely on allies. We needed to have our own forces to recapture the Falklands, as allies did not agree with expelling the invader by force. In 1940 we had to stand alone against Germany. This suggests to me that when it comes to defending these islands we need to have the ships and planes in our own military that could do the job.

I will turn to a more detailed consideration later, along with thoughts on countering cyber attacks and modern asymmetric conflicts with terrorism.

This week the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee published a good report. They concluded that UK bombing in Syria would not be a good idea. They recommended diplomatic intervention and the start of a difficult peace process.

Meanwhile the international community is edging towards a similar conclusion. The long war has shown that the main combatants are unable to win. The Assad regime has killed many of its own citizens but still cannot exert its control over large parts of the country. ISIL has limited forces on the ground terrorising locals into acquiescence. The Kurds have established some presence in the north but do not wish to extend their military power over the whole country, recognising this would be impossible and undesirable. Other opposition forces have also proved unable even with western assistance to forge a winning force.

Peace talks will be far from easy. There are several important regional powers to involve as well as the USA and Russia. Many of those interested and powerful in the region do not have a preferred outcome for a new Syria which is feasible. Anyone seeking to rule the whole of Syria has to have great powers of persuasion that they can be fair to different religious and ethnic groupings in the country.

Many in Parliament have decided that Syria is not short of bombs and violence. The UK would not be able or willing to make a large contribution to any western alliance intervention. The West’s Commander in Chief, the US President, is uncertain about committing much force to this continuous civil war. I am glad the PM continues to say he would only bring a proposal to bomb Syria to the Commons if there were a consensus in favour of such action. As the Select Committee has just demonstrated, there is no such consensus.