Author: johnredwood

New housebuilding has risen from the lows  of the Great recession but is still running well below the levels the housebuilding industry thinks is necessary, and below the levels of new household formation. Part of this is related to the immigration issues which we have often debated on this site. Today I wish to look at other matters.

If the country chooses a Conservative government next May and if that government succeeds in getting a new deal to control migration from the EU, there will still be a need to build new homes for people already settled here and for the newcomers we still invite in from all round the world. No-one in the policy and political world is proposing an end to all migration. The UK is an attractive place and there will be  some further expansion of numbers.

This government has promoted more homeownership and more housebuilding through a variety of means. Mending the banks, setting out the Right to buy scheme, and creating a background of more jobs and growth have all contributed to the increase in new homes. More land has been made available for development.

There are still predictable tensions between housebuilders and settled communities accepting new development. In an area like Wokingham we have accepted substantial new building over the years. Some of this has been properly planned by the local Council with supporting roads, schools and other facilities. Some was pressed upon us by Planning Inspectors under the previous government’s top down regime.  The danger of this could be seen in aggravated flooding problems, road congestion and the need to expand school and medical provision without the local community always generating the capital receipts from the development to cover these associated costs.

Future development needs to be at a  sustainable level with care taken to ensure that substantial new development sites are properly prepared with good road access, public service provision and above all with proper methods of dealing with faster run off of  the surface water and with the waste water that buildings generate. Councils and the Highways Agency also need to use the opportunity afforded by new development to update and upgrade the road network which is becoming  increasingly congested.

During the last government many road schemes were cancelled and little new road building took place. At the same time both local and  national government sought to manage the existing road system more intensively, often reducing traffic flows and traffic speeds. Sometimes this was necessary for good safety reasons. On other occasions it was done to try to force people out of the car and van onto public transport.

At the same time the government invited in large numbers of new people who owned cars and vans or aspired to do so, greatly adding to the vehicle stock and the congestion problems. Around 85% of all our journeys are made  by road transport. The success of privatisation of the railways in its first decade in boosting passenger numbers has  been followed by substantial rail investment which has also helped boost capacity and travellers. Because the initial base of 6% of journeys was so modest, even with good railway growth it was not possible to take the pressure off the roads by this means.

The Coalition government  recognised the problem of lack of roadspace,  but faced two difficulties in responding quickly. The list  of possible new road schemes ready to build was very short. It takes time to crank up good projects and get them through the design and planning phases. The government inherited a massive public deficit, and the one area the outgoing government had cut to make a start on deficit reduction was capital schemes.

The Chancellor has gradually reversed some of the capital cuts, and the Transport department is working away on more road schemes for the future. The country remains a long way behind where it needs to be. Every day there is a danger that a single incident will bring a major route network to a halt. One crash, or one section of roadworks can result in  long delays.

I will look at what could be done to improve both safety and vehicle flow on the roads we already have in a later post.

The large increase in EU migration has come about for a variety of reasons. The addition of several lower income countries to the EU in recent years makes it more tempting for people to wish to come to a richer country like the UK to take advantage of the better pay, higher welfare benefits and better public services. The success of the UK economy in generating many more jobs at a time when several major continental countries are back in recession or stuck with very slow growth also encourages more people to migrate to the UK.

The original idea of free movement was the free movement of workers, not the free movement of benefit seekers. The UK has fallen foul of anti discrimination provisions in EU law when having a universal system of benefits. It means it is difficult or impossible for the state to restrict EU migrants from  having access to income top ups, housing and child benefits which are universally available to low income or no income people in the UK. Some other continental countries have contributory based systems where new migrants do  not qualify automatically because they have not yet worked and contributed in their new host country.

I have urged this government to switch us over to a contributory based system where all can be treated fairly but where UK citizens who have contributed – or who have earned entitlement by undertaking full time education here for a specified period – qualify for benefits that would not be given to new arrivals.

The government has tightened the criteria for eligibility within the current legal framework, and is now limiting the time someone can be out of work and looking for work on benefits to just three months. Going further and reducing  the benefits “pull” of our system further  should be relatively easy within  the confines of current EU law, if the UK is prepared to change the basis of its welfare system. That still leaves open the bigger issue of the UK being able to control the numbers of job seekers who come and take jobs, which the Prime Minister has said he wishes to sort out in his renegotiation.

After years of irritating lectures from Germany on how the UK has to put up with  unacceptable EU controls of our borders, with the deeply damaging dear energy policy, and  with constant raids on our tax revenue to pay the EU’s bills in return for being able to buy Mercedes and BMWs on EU terms, I read today Germany now thinks the UK should leave the EU.  I guess that’s progress.

If Germany cannot see the need for the UK to have a new relationship because we are not part of the Euro and do not wish to join the political union, then the UK people may well vote to leave.  Then Germany can have the pleasure of paying the bills for the rest of the EU without our help.

The UK has rightly opted out of all the criminal justice measures of the EU. Conservative opposition to centralising treaties in the last decade did at least persuade Labour to give the UK the option to keep out of the EU’s growing role in criminal justice. I suspect Labour had no intention of using the opt out, and thought by now the public would have forgotten or not mind if we transferred more and more of our power over the criminal  law to Brussels. Instead the coalition has sensibly opted out of all the measures, to restore the position to that prevailing under previous Conservative governments who always kept criminal justice out of  EU control and outside the Treaties.

Now there is a debate about whether the UK should opt back in to some of these measures. The biggest opt in proposed is to the European Arrest Warrant. Many Conservative MPs are against this idea. Labour and the Lib Dems are enthusiastic to opt in, along with some Conservative Ministers.

Those of us who oppose the measure have put forward three important worries about the operation of the Arrest Warrant. The first  is its use for less important offences, when we were assured by Labour that this was primarily for tackling terrorism, murder and other very serious crimes. The second is the absence of good standards over detention and trial in some other EU countries who can use the European Arrest Warrant against UK citizens. The third is the ability of another  country to use a Warrant to extradite a UK citizen for an alleged crime, where their conduct is not a crime under UK law.

The government has agreed with our three detailed complaints, and has said it has now taken action in UK law to prevent these abuses of the Warrant. UK courts are now directed by UK law not to allow a Warrant for minor offences, and not to permit one if the matter is not a crime in the UK. They think the position on rights elsewhere has been improved.  So, say some Ministers, we should now be willing to vote for this measure. They claim it helps the UK deal with violent and serious criminals who exit the UK for an EU country.

Some of us still have doubts about this device. Whilst UK law and courts may currently be able to limit the use of the Arrest Warrant, they will not be able to limit its use affecting UK citizens outside the UK. Once you go back under the EU controls, the ECJ could always settle a case against the UK which could then limit or prevent the UK law applying in the way Ministers intend. We supported the Conservative policy of not allowing criminal justice authority to pass from Westminster to Brussels for good reasons. Controlling your own criminal justice system and being able to change the criminal law is an important part of an independent democratic country.

Labour and Lib Dems respond by saying we need this warrant to keep us safe, as it is the way to bring back nasty criminals who have escaped our country so they can stand trial and be imprisoned if guilty. We have arrangements with most other countries in the world to let this happen through Extradition treaties. These treaties do not place our criminal justice system under foreign control but allow co-operation to bring suspects back for trial. We have long had good co-operative policing arrangements with EU and non EU countries when seeking to track down criminals.  That is what we would prefer for our dealings with the EU as we do for Switzerland or the USA.