Author: johnredwood

Good job creation figures, more people moving from welfare to work

November 14, 2014 1 Comment

October’s record breaking employment figures show 30.8 million people in work – the highest level on record. Wokingham’s unemployment remains at very low levels, which is welcome news.

This means an average of over 13,000 more people in jobs every single week over the last year.

As well as a record number of women in work and a continued fall in youth unemployment it is encouraging to see that pay cheques are beginning to rise faster than inflation.
Through our welfare reforms, we are helping people to move off benefits and into work – giving hard working people the peace of mind and security that comes with a steady income.

These remain difficult times for families and there is more to do, but the best way to help people break free of welfare dependency is to go on delivering a plan that rewards hard work and creates growth and jobs.

Key achievements of the last four years

• Employment rate at pre-recession level: 73%.
• Unemployment rate: 6%.
• Nearly 1.33 million more people working full time since the election.
• Over 2 million more people working in the private sector since 2010
• Female employment up 774,000 since 2010
• The largest annual fall in female unemployment on record, with the UK seeing the fastest growth in the number of women in work out of all G7 economies.
• JSA 18-24 claimant count down 210,000 since 2010 – below pre-recession level.
• Excluding full-time students, youth unemployment down 163,000 since 2010
• JSA claimant count down 563,000 since the 2010.
• Long-term unemployment down 99,000 since 2010.
• Number of people on the main out-of-work benefits down 855,000 since 2010 – the lowest since 1990.
• A lower proportion of workless households than at any time on record – down more than 400,000 since 2010.
• Two thirds of the rise in employment has been in higher skilled occupations since 2010 – commanding a higher wage.
• Job vacancies nearly at pre-recession levels – over 680,000 at any one time – an increase of 25% on the year.
• Wages are now beginning to increase in real terms – average regular pay (excluding bonuses, in the three months to September) rose 1.3% on the year, with private sector pay up 1.6%. This compares to an increase in the Consumer Prices Index of 1.2% in September.

M4 Junctions 3 – 12 Smart Motorway Scheme

November 14, 2014 1 Comment

The Highways Agency have told me that there will be further public exhibitions on the above scheme. Two will be held in my constituent, and they will be open to the public from 14.00 to 20.00 hours. The details are:

21 November at Theale Village Hall, Theale

28 November at Winnersh Community Centre, Winnersh

I am planning to go along to the Winnersh event.

Planning application at Beech Hill

November 14, 2014 0 Comments

A number of constituents have contacted me about the planning application at Beech Hill, which has now been referred to the Planning Inspectorate. I have conveyed the concerns expressed to the relevant case officer:

Ms Melanie Dunn
Case Officer
The Planning Inspectorate
Temple Quay House, 2 The Square
Temple Quay, Bristol BS1 6PN

11 November 2014

Appeal Reference No: 2209286

Dear Ms Dunn

I am writing in support of Wokingham Borough Council’s refusal of planning permission at Beech Hill.

The Council investigated this application to build 120 homes very extensively, and found it violated a number of important policies in the Core strategy and accompanying local plans, and South East Plan Policy NRM6 related to the Thames Basin Healthlands Special Protection Area.

The Council’s decision notice was comprehensive, well based and showed just how out of line with planning policy this proposal was.

The local community wishes to support the Council’s decision. The proposed development would cause road and transport problems. The development is not sustainable and would require supplementing public services outside the planned areas of growth in the Core Strategy without the money to do so.

It entails a loss of open countryside. It would damage the rural nature of Beech Hill Road, and adversely affect the environment and local amenity.

Wokingham Borough has drawn up a local plan which identifies and releases large areas for substantial development. It did so to concentrate that development and permit the proper provision of transport links, public services and other support to the new developments. I trust you will uphold their decision in this case.

Yours sincerely

John Redwood

Wokingham Times

November 14, 2014 0 Comments

Remembrance day was a very moving event. In Church in Wokingham people read out the names of around 220 local men who lost their lives in the Great War. They were mainly very young men, with their whole adult lives ahead of them, mown down by shells or bullets in the dreadful mud and terror of the trenches. They were our Great Uncles and Great Great uncles – and a few of our grandfathers and great grandfathers, though many were too young to have married and had children.

In their memory, we can ask what would they have wanted for the generations that followed? I am sure they would have wanted us to have learned from the bitter experiences of total war in the machine age. They would want us to redouble our efforts to try to avoid it in future. Those soldiers who survived that conflict hoped they had fought in the war to end all wars. Twenty one years later our country was at war again against the same aggressor.

Today we also mourn our more recent military dead – in Afghanistan and other modern conflicts. They too were brave. They fought for us and for our country and we take pride in their conduct and military skills. We need to ask how we can best remember them.

One of the most onerous tasks an MP can have is to debate and vote on whether our country should go to war again. When doing so it is wise to remember the loss and suffering that voting for war can bring. It is vital that MPs ask if there is some other way to improve the lot of those we wish to help, to seek some political or diplomatic solution to the problems. The First World War showed that even after an orgy of death and destruction and a crushing military victory, it was still all too possible for the politicians and the peoples to mess up the peace and place it all at risk a few years later. The Middle Eastern conflicts of today show that after military victory it is even more important to know how to create and support a stable democratic government in the country concerned. If we fail to do so the sacrifice of soldiers does not lead to the better life we want them to help create.

My study of history and my close engagement with the debates about recent wars has made me more reluctant to commit our forces, and keener to seek political and diplomatic solutions to problems. Of course if our country is directly threatened and force is the only means of defence we must be strong and resolved in it use. Where the problems are complex, in different cultures, and where our knowledge of the religions, languages and customs is imperfect, we should be careful about committing forces and resorting to arms. Many of these situations will need political solutions in the end, so the sooner we help others locally to try to bring peace about, the better.

Oppositions are meant to oppose

November 14, 2014 106 Comments

People have written in asking for my thoughts on the events of Monday in the Commons.

I have long made clear on this site, in the Commons, in public and in private that I had urged them to opt out and supported the opt out of all the criminal justice measures undertaken by the current government, and did not wish them to opt back in to any measure. I argued this on the simple ground of Parliamentary sovereignty.

I also made clear that I share the government’s wish to be able to bring unpleasant criminals to court if they leave the UK for a refuge elsewhere. I asked the Home Secretary to make arrangements for extradition from the rest of the EU as we do for the rest of the world, by an Extradition Treaty. This to me is preferable to placing our criminal jurisdiction under the ECJ and Brussels, and can be effective, as it is for non EU cases today.

On Monday we once again saw how Parliament cannot work well if the Opposition refuses to oppose. Labour told us endlessly that they fully supported opting back in to all the measures the government had identified, and they fully supported the regulations to bring UK law into line with this sacrifice of powers. They had no single criticism of any of it to make, no wish to see any change of words, no doubt about any of the powers being transferred. Indeed, they have been egging the government on to do so.

As a result it was always going to be the case that this opt in was carried by a very large majority of votes, as the Lib Dems were even more enthusiastic about opts in and would have liked more. The debate and vote was therefore going to lack edge, as the result was never in doubt.

The government took a legalistic approach to the debate by just tabling the regulations needed to complete the transfer of powers. Those of us who wanted a more fundamental debate on the principle of opt in and on the Arrest Warrant which does not need a new UK regulation to be effective were told that we could and should debate these matters at the same time as the regulations before the House. The government pointed out it was offering an all day debate until 10pm instead of just the usual 90 minutes for a regulation.

It stated unequivocally that if it lost the vote on the regulations it would regard that as meaning the Commons did not want the opt ins or Warrant either. The Speaker confirmed that the motion was only about the regulations, but said he would allow people to debate the opt ins and EAW more generally as that was the government’s wish.

Labour then decided to override the longer debate on the opt ins and regulations by moving a procedural motion which meant whichever way we voted on it debate would cease forthwith – at 8pm – losing us the last two hours, and taking up time to debate procedure that we could otherwise have used to discuss the major issues before us.

The Opposition thought it could do harm to the government by playing games with procedure. All it achieved by this was to deny those of us who wanted to make a fundamental case against the opt ins and the Warrant several hours of time to do so. Labour hastened the passage of measures they wanted all along by their clumsy intervention.

A better future for the local NHS

November 13, 2014 3 Comments

Mr Cameron and Mr Hunt have been setting out their aims for the NHS over the rest of this decade.

They begin with the promise that the NHS budget will be protected and increased in the next Parliament if there is a Conservative government.

GP access will be improved, with 7 day appointments by 2020. Everyone will have a named NHS Dr.

This Parliament has seen a real rise in money available for the NHS, and local Drs have a bigger say in commissioning and running the local NHS.

Access to benefits

November 13, 2014 148 Comments

The government has reminded me of action taken so far to limit access to benefits by recent EU arrivals in the UK.I thought many of you might like to see it, as this is a matter you often write about:

“• New EU migrants who arrive in the UK as jobseekers will only be able to claim benefits for 3 months.
• This halves the amount of time EU jobseekers are able to claim benefits, from 6 to 3 months.
• After 3 months, any EU migrant claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance will have a ‘genuine prospect of work’ test. If they don’t have an imminent job offer, they could lose their benefits and right to reside in the UK as a jobseeker.

These reforms are based on a simple principle. That EU migrants should come to the UK to work and contribute, not to claim benefits.

The reforms tighten up access to our welfare system for EU citizens and help ensure that EU migrants are not in the UK to take advantage of our benefits system.

These new measures are the latest in a series of Government reforms in the last 12 months to ensure the UK benefits system is increasingly focussed on EU migrants coming to the UK to work and contribute.

The following measures are already in place.

• From 1 January 2014, all EEA jobseekers have had to wait for 3 months before they can claim income-based JSA.
• After 3 months, jobseekers have to take a stronger, more robust Habitual Residence Test if they want to claim income-based JSA.
• Since April 2014, new migrant jobseekers from the EEA are no longer able to claim Housing Benefit (HB).
• Migrants from the EEA who claim to have been in work or self-employed in order to gain access to a wider range of benefits now face a new robust test to decide whether they should be considered a worker/ex-worker with a minimum earnings threshold.
• As of 1 July 2014, jobseekers arriving in the UK need to live in the country for three months in order to claim Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit for their families too.”

More needs to be done. We await the Prime Minister’s speech on migration later this year, which he has said will be central to his renegotiation with the EU. Your thoughts on what the PM should demand for continued membership of the EU, or what you would rather see for an independent UK on migration would be useful and topical.

The CBI and a referendum on the EU

November 12, 2014 123 Comments

We read from the CBI conference that a few large companies and the CBI leadership are against an EU referendum. They think it could create uncertainties and make life more difficult for big business.
The opposite is the truth.

It would be interesting to know if these large companies who express this view have polled their UK shareholders, UK employees and UK customers. If they did they would very likely find that a majority of them want a referendum just like the majority of the public at large. A large majority of smaller and medium sized businesses want a renegotiation and a referendum on the results, as other business organisations have pointed out.

The CBI needs to be asked why it thinks our current membership of the EU is helpful or important to business. It is after all our EU membership that lies behind the very dear energy imposed on European business. It is the Euro many of these businesses recommended which has helped create poor demand and mass unemployment on the continent. It is some of the excessive EU regulation which prices European business out of work, making it less competitive worldwide.

Many countries in the world trade and succeed economically without belonging to the EU. The UK would do better without the high budget contributions, the dear energy and some of the regulations that the EU imposes. The rest of us can see that. Just as some big businesses changed their view on the Exchange Rate Mechanism and the Euro which they got spectacularly wrong in the past, so they will have to change their view on our current EU membership as they start to see the true burdens it imposes. They should not seek to undermine the UK negotiating position. If we do not succeed in negotiating a good deal then the people will vote for Out.

The EU arrest warrant

November 11, 2014 8 Comments

Yesterday the Commons voted on 11 of the 35 measures where the Coalition government intends to opt back in to EU jurisdiction. We were told by the Home Secretary that a vote on the 11 would be taken by the government to be a vote on all 35. If the government had lost the vote they would have dropped all 35.

I wished the government to negotiate an extradition agreement and related agreements with the rest of the EU as it has done with other countries, rather than opt in to these measures. I spoke against the government surrendering UK Parliamentary control over these criminal justice matters. I voted against the proposal on the 11 measures. The government won by 464 to 38 votes, with almost 150 MPs abstaining or not present.

Mr Redwood’s contribution to the debate on the proposed EU Criminal Justice measures

November 11, 2014 8 Comments

Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Many of us thought that we would have an opportunity today to debate the very weighty question of whether this country should opt back into 35 important measures relating to criminal justice, and put it under European Court of Justice and European Union control. We looked forward to a debate and a vote on that high principle, which includes the important and contentious European arrest warrant, but also a number of other measures that constitute the building blocks for a system in which our criminal justice would be conducted primarily under the central control of the European Union rather than that of the United Kingdom.

We welcome the Government’s wish to engage and to allow us a reasonable length of time in which to debate those matters, followed by a concluding vote at 10 pm, but you, Mr Speaker, have told us, very wisely and helpfully, that that is not what the business motion says, and, through you, I urge Ministers to consider amending it. As I understand the position, you would probably be sympathetic if they wished to do so. We could debate their regulations for 90 minutes, and during the remaining time, until 10 pm, we could debate the much wider issues of substance. We could discuss whether we wish to opt into all those measures and what we think of the European arrest warrant. Some believe it to be the biggest of all the measures, which is in itself debatable. I think that justice would then be seen to be done by the wider public.

I hope, Mr Speaker, that I am not taking liberties by suggesting to Ministers, through you, that a simple amendment to the business motion might provide a way out of this dilemma, and enable the House properly to consider the wider constitutional issues.