Author: johnredwood

The Prime Minister and Chancellor were right to say the UK will not pay the £1.7 bn the EU demands. The UK does not accept retrospective taxation. We are already paying too much for our membership of the EU, and support for the EU is not strong. The UK and the US that sprung from the UK have long traditions of imposing democratic control over taxation and expecting remedy of grievances before approving more money for the government.

Ministers will now be under enormous pressure to give in, to reach an accommodation. They will be told they have to give in for the sake of UK relations with the EU. They will be told they must not operate illegally. They will be told the UK has to pay the money as it is the inevitable result of our signature on the treaties.

Ministers have more cards than the officials and the EU tell them they have. It does need the UK’s signature on the cheque, which only Ministers backed by Parliament can give. All the time  Ministers refuse to sign the EU has a problem.

Conservative Ministers all voted against the last 3 treaties for good reasons. We all thought they went too far and endangered the UK’s relationship with the EU. The UK is not part of the Euro by common consent. We should not  be expected to pay ever rising bills for the political structure needed to keep the Euro going. At some point the UK’s unsatisfactory relationship has to be sorted out.

To make sure Ministers do operate legally they should ask Parliament to approve a simple amendment to the 1972 European Communities Act, which would confirm that they are acting legally in not paying retrospective levies. The large majority of the British people have no wish to have to pay a tax rise to send more money to Brussels. Their Parliament should speak for them and back Ministers in saying No.

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.