Author: johnredwood

On Monday Parliament debated a new complaints system for the armed forces. This is part of the work the government is doing to improve and define the Military Covenant.

The forces covenant is meant to give armed service personnel decent terms and conditions, recognising that military discipline takes away some rights other workers enjoy. During the debate I raised the issue of what happens when a member of the armed services has to move to a different location when instructed to do so. This can be difficult for the family and disruptive of the wife or husband’s employment. In view of this surely there should be some flexibility in the government rules to help those who are doing all they can to co-operate with military requirements? Late requests to move at short notice are particularly difficult for all concerned.

I have myself for some time urged the MOD to look at offering more of its armed service personnel a home base to which they return following duty abroad, and to limit the number of moves required within the UK. This would assist more military staff to buy their own home if they wished, with the help of the MOD schemes. It would enable children of serving personnel to have more stability in their schooling, and would be less disruptive for husbands and wives. As the average ages of serving military personnel coincides with the most popular ages to have children we do need to help families when one of their members wishes to serve the nation.

I have campaigned for more assistance with home purchase. Military service usually terminates well before normal retirement age. Many ex military personnel have no home to live in when their service ends. If they have moved between various military establishments, renting MOD accommodation, they often have little or no priority on housing lists in individual Council areas. We should be able to do better for our armed services, and plan with them their return to civilian life. The Minister assured me they were finding good levels of take up of MOD home ownership schemes, but more could be done.

I naturally agree that Labour’s policies would be bad for business. Their energy price freeze policy threatens normal pricing behaviour, annoys the companies, creates investment uncertainties and now also ironically means dearer energy when world prices are falling.

Their policy of more intervention and taxation of financial services and banking hits an important UK revenue earner, following their disastrous period regulating the industry badly in the previous decade. They want higher Corporation tax which is never a crowd pleaser with big business, higher individual income tax, not popular with the higher paid, and often use anti business rhetoric. Labour regards business as either the source of social problems, or the agent that must be made to remedy social problems which others might think the government should fix.

I have no problem in a democracy with anyone with an interesting view expressing it. The Acting Chief Executive of Boots made some good points – and one or two points I do not agree with. That makes a political market. He has also illustrated exactly what I predicted when I explained to senior business people that if they used the name of the company they work for but do not own to make a highly political point, it will drag the company into politics and may result in reputational damage to that company.

The shareholders, other employees and customers of Boots may not like this. In what sense does the Acting Chief Executive speak for them? Is it wise to venture the company’s reputation in this way, when the Acting CEO does not know the views and voting intentions of all the other stakeholders in the company? By all means let’s hear from Mr Pessina as an individual with his anti Labour views, but let’s hear less from Boots. Labour now sees it as an opportunity to put the boot into Boots, as they are stung by the criticism. Neither Labour nor Boots will gain from these rows.

As the Euro area lurches into another phase of its rolling crisis, with the EU authorities taking on the voters of Greece and Spain, the relationship between the UK and the EU is also shaky.

The UK is like the poor husband who can never get anything right for his wife. He buys her presents but is told they are the wrong gifts. He gives her money but is told it is not enough.There are always new bills that are said to be extra above the regular housekeeping. He never knows how much it will be from one month to the next. His wife thinks him a cheapskate, the husband thinks he is spending far too much to keep the relationship going.

The husband agrees not to watch the cricket, a game he loves, because it is not an EU game. He is then criticised for not being enthusiastic or attentive enough when the couple settle down to watch the Eurovision song contest instead. He every now and again asks for a bit of freedom, some deregulation, to relieve the domestic pressures of a life measured out for him. He is told he is not pulling his weight and should be lucky the rules are so light.

When he complains that he is being asked to give money to too many of her nephews and nieces, he is told family matters. When he says he wants the spare bedroom back as a study he is told that her cousin has every right to lodge their rent free whilst trying to find a job.

His long suffering wife sees it very differently. She just wants a husband who loves the common European home, respects it and the other family members, and accepts its rules and behaviours. She cannot understand why he is always wanting to change things, pull out of common agreements, and demands more time for himself. He is just selfish. She hates him penny pinching, and still can’t understand why he doesn’t trust her and the rest of the family with a joint bank account.

He would feel it if they broke up. Who would do the washing and ironing then? She doesn’t want a break up, as she secretly accepts his DIY, salary, and home maintenance come in handy. She accepts now she did go a bit far in banning his roast beef dinners once, and now quite likes them when he does the cooking. She just wants him to knuckle down, show a bit more give in the inevitable give and take.

The strange thing is he is not so sure about the break up either. He hasn’t worked out that the Chinese laundry would do all the shirts and sheets very cheaply and well, without all the aggravation. He would be free of the house rules save when he went back to visit. He doesn’t feel he has much say over them at the moment, so what if he was not in future part of the row over what they should be?

What is going to happen to this odd couple? And why did the Governor of the Bank of England venture a criticism of Germany recently, for not sending more money to the poorer countries in the Euro? Does this mean the UK negotiating position is shifting away from concentration on Mrs Merkel?

We are fast approaching a statement from Mr Hague on how the government, and the Conservatives, will carry forward the work on English votes.

I have long argued we should not be plotting evil – English votes for English laws – but English votes for English issues. Why not adopt the cross party word of needs, so the mnemonic can be EVEN – English votes for English needs.

I expect Mr Hague to accept that more is involved than a few votes on a few bills that are England only. Once the Union Parliament has decided the total grants to local government in the four parts of the UK, for example, surely all the detail on how the English money is divided up are matters for England and English MPs, just as Scotland’s detailed settlement is for the Scottish Parliament? Once the UK Parliament has settled England’s NHS budget, then surely English health policy under that budget is a matter for England, just as Scotland’s is a matter for the Scottish Parliament.

Similarly we should want English MPs to decide England’s Income Tax rate as Scottish MSPs will be deciding Scotland’s. Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would also take part at Westminster all the time their Income tax is settled with England’s.

I also expect Mr Hague to agree there needs to be an early debate in this Parliament, when the parties can set out their differing approaches.

I want him to sign up to the first proposal in his White Paper, English votes on any English matter. That is the simpler way, and the fair way. The other remaining proposal he is considering does not allow English MPs to settle English matters, as it retains a vote for Scottish MPs on any proposal England wants. That is not fair to England and does not keep the promise to deliver English votes for English needs.

There is no complexity on deciding which is an English (or English, Welsh and Northern Irish issue) as it is one settled in Scotland by the Scottish Parliament. They seem to have no difficulty deciding which they are for the Scottish Parliament, so it should be equally easy to decide a non Scottish issue.

The Greek government is discovering quickly how imprisoned they are by all the accumulated debts and the Euro they inherit. Being part of the iron discipline of the Eurozone makes things worse. Argentina, Venezuela and others show that whilst having you own currency can help  with devaluation  staving off disaster for longer, you can also come badly unstuck as a country if the state spends and borrows too much even with its own currency. If you devalue too much overseas debt becomes very expensive, and imports too become much less affordable.

There are some who think it is always caring for the state to spend more. There is always more poverty to relieve, more good works the government might like to undertake, more public service to increase and improve. The problem is if you overdo it, far from being more caring, the government ends up making brutal cuts at the insistence of its creditors. I doubt Greece wanted to cut public sector wages and make large cash reductions in what they spend on their health service, but they were driven to that by poor financial management.

There are others who think that it is always good for an economy for the state sector to run large deficits. They argue that the private sector or the overseas sector can easily lend a surplus to the state, so isn’t it better if the state deliberately overspends so there is more spending and activity in the economy? Unfortunately this doesn’t work out either. Greece has just shown you can have a recession which loses you 25% of output whilst continuing throughout that period to run much larger deficits than more successful countries. If running up large state debts produced good growth and wealth increases, then we should expect countries like Greece, Argentina and Venezuela to be amongst the richest in the world.

I hope the UK is reminded of the lessons of prudence by the parlous Greek state. Borrow too much and you reach the point where no-one wishes to lend you any more. Borrow too much and you have to spend more and more of your income on interest charges, leaving less for what you need. Borrow too much and you end up having to cut drastically as your creditors insist.

In each case there is also all the spending which is not as advertised. Governments spend too much on themselves very often, and are commonly inefficient and badly managed. In a country like Greece tax collection is very difficult, as so many people scorn the state they live in, regarding the taxes as unfair or avoidable.

I read that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker believes there’s no question of writing down Greek debt. The other Eurozone countries will not agree to that.He reasons that there can be no democratic choice against the European treaties. One cannot exit the euro without leaving the EU.

These brutal statements do at least have the virtue of honesty – assuming they stick to this no bail out position. I quite understand why they have to say there can be no bail out just because Greece has voted for less austerity. Had Mr Juncker said “Greek voters can change the Greek government and its policies, but they cannot make the rest of the EU send them more money” then I would have thought that a tough but understandable stance.

Mr Juncker goes wider, and simply asserts “there can be no democratic choice against the European treaties”. That does not just mean they cannot vote themselves another country’s money or change of policy, but they cannot vote for their own change of policy if the custodians of the treaties disagree with them. That is much more worrying and is why some of us do not like the current treaties and think they go too far in controlling countries and throttling democracy.

It is also interesting that the Commission now asserts that continued membership of the Euro is part of the deal, and any country leaving the Euro would also have to quit the EU itself. I am not sure where he can find that explicitly stated in the treaties, though again I see the logic of it. Clearly he thinks it is another threat to Greece that might worry them. We do know, however, that the EU does think it possible for a country to be in the EU but not in the Euro, as the UK and Denmark legally do and as the candidate members of the Euro do.

Mr Juncker’s harsh words imply a growing impatience with all who want special deals or who stand in the way of a uniform policy and discipline for the Euro area. Greek democracy is worryingly unruly and at variance with the Brussels view. The EU has now hit out and told the Greek voters they are wrong and have to think again.

As we watch the collapse of many of the traditional governing parties of the centre left and centre right in the Euro area we can expect more of these conflicts between countries struggling to be democratic again and a Commission telling them they can have any policy they like as long as it is the EU one. The irony is that in a way Mr Juncker is right. For the Euro to work they all have to accept its cruel discipline and live under its rules. That is why some of us said in the years before its launch they should first create a democratic government of Euroland so the public could have their say and have a choice. To have a single currency people and governments of the founder states have to accept financial and moral obligations to each other. Leaving democracy at the level of the Euro states, but taking much of the power to the centre denies effective democratic change, busts open the old party system, leaves many feeling very dissatisfied with politics, and may in the Greek case do considerable damage to the economy and banking system of the Euro area.