Author: johnredwood

Anti driver madness at the crossroads

February 19, 2024 142 Comments

Anti green policies are now blighting many local communities. Individual Councils declare a climate emergency and take it out on motorists. They wish to grandstand whilst often adding to emissions. Create worse traffic jams and fuel use rises for a journey.

Lib Dem Wokingham Council hates drivers. They do not want us driving to work, taking children to school by car, going to the shops in a vehicle. They want to make the lives of delivery van drivers bringing  goods to our home  and truck drivers taking things to our shops and factories more difficult. They do not seem to like taxis, and see delaying the ambulance or fire engine  as acceptable collateral damage in their campaign to get people out of vehicles.

They spend large sums on closing some  roads altogether. They take well functioning main roads between villages and towns and place obstacles in one carriageway to make vehicles wait until the other direction lane  is empty for their use. This presents new dangers. They see roundabout junctions that flow well and spend large sums on reducing their capacity. In the latest scheme just to the south of my constituency they are spending £5.5 m on changes to a roundabout that the public strongly opposes.Conservative Councillors with the approval of the local MP tried to stop it.  Main roads at the junction will be completely closed or subject to one way light controls for six months. Local shops and the garage report lost trade on a big scale. Parents will be badly inconvenienced when the junior school returns. The Council has had to warn people not to take it out on the workers at the site as they are not to blame for such an aggravating waste of money.

People pay a lot of tax. They want the road money spent on mending the potholes and improving the safety and capacity of junctions, not on making life difficult for drivers. The Councillors who inflict this misery have a car park at the  Council offices, presumably take delivery of on line goods at home from vans and expect emergency vehicles and trucks to get through to handle crises and restock the shops. This latest example of anger about local government should be a warning to all that the wrong kind of green policies make people more distrustful of politicians and Councils. Why can’t they do things that make our lives better? When do they not do a proper carbon count of how much CO 2 all their tarmac, crazy paving  and traffic congestion causes?

Stop the bossing about

February 18, 2024 193 Comments

The continuing unpopularity of Green candidates for Parliament and most Councils is a notable feature of  the UK, only surpassed in the US. Their main preoccupation to get us to net zero is now however written into most political party programmes to a lesser extent. The Democrats in the US are very keen and the non Trump Republicans accept much of it. The Lib Dems whose opinion ratings remain low in the UK want an extreme version of net zero policies like the Greens. The UK Conservatives want a more measured and pragmatic approach, with a range of views from enthusiastic to sceptic within the party. Reform has now come out against many net zero policies, as has Mr Trump in the US. In these latest UK by elections when people could vote for their best preference without worrying about who would be in government, the Green and Lib Dem vote was tiny.

The public according to polls agrees there is global warming and thinks something ought to be done about it. However a large majority do not back going over to heat pumps and battery electric vehicles for themselves and object strongly to net zero policies that make them personally worse off or make their lives more difficult. The public shows more sense than green talking politicians. Many see the folly of the UK closing down fossil fuel activities here only to import replacements from abroad with more fossil fuel used as a result. Many see that pricing UK consumers out of using so much fossil fuel will do nothing to abate the fast growth in fossil fuel use in China, India and the world as a whole.  Many just want to keep their homes warm with a gas boiler and get to work by van or car because that works.

If Mr Trump wins the US election late this year global net zero strategy suffers a major blow. If the world’s largest economy goes for extracting and using more oil and gas,and sees cheap fossil fuel energy as a competitive business  advantage that knocks a big hole in the Paris Treaty targets. The world’s second largest  economy, China, says it  is committed to net zero. However China is still increasing  its output of CO 2 and adding more coal to its energy mix as well as building wind farms. China has not yet started to cut her output. Many emerging economies reserve the right to increase their fossil fuel use as a necessary way to boost living standards.If UK Greens really thought world CO 2 mattered they would be protesting daily outside the Chinese and Indian embassies.

This is why I argue against UK government and Councils lecturing  us to make big changes in our lives that many do not want to make. Worse still some  of these policies are a nonsense in their own terms. Buy an EV and plug it in to recharge, and we will need to burn more gas in a power station to meet the demand. Change all our homes to heat pumps and create large amounts of CO 2 doing so. Why? How ?

By elections

February 17, 2024 264 Comments

As most of you are so critical, this is your chance to have your say and to explain what change you want.

The by elections showed many  former Conservative voters stayed home. Some went to vote Reform. The Labour vote stayed around 2019 levels, with a big turnout fall of Conservatives.

The Lib Dem vote collapsed and the Green vote stayed low. The electorate is not saying they want more net zero policies or a faster transition. Labour announced its cancellation of £28 bn extra spend a year on net zero but that clearly did not upset their voters.

Reform did better than in previous by elections, with a slogan of wanting  net zero immigration, not net zero. As a result if the voting pattern the UK now has two more Labour MPs.

The impact of Labour’s troubles over anti semitism will be seen in the next by elections, where they have now written off  Rochdale and have no candidate they support. In the areas where Labour want to alter current policy they would make things worse.

So what would you like the government to  do now? I have set out many if the things I am trying to change.

 

My visit to Tepeo

February 16, 2024 6 Comments

On Thursday, I visited a business in my constituency. Tepeo is a Winnersh based company that produces zero emission boilers and I was kindly show around their facilities by the CEO.

I have long campaigned for green products to be VAT free and will make the case for zero emission heaters to be included. Heat pumps are not practical or affordable for many homes so I welcome ideas to offer other heating solutions. The government should not use expensive subsidies to favour one heating solution over others when the market needs to develop new choices for consumers. I do hope new heaters can be made in the UK to ensure more people benefit from this technology here at home.

The Bank of England brings us a technical recession

February 16, 2024 162 Comments

The Bank of England printed too much money. They bought too many bonds at crazily inflated prices. They kept interest rates too low for too long. That gave us a big inflation, as some of us predicted.

They then blamed the inflation on rising energy costs following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They refuse to explain why inflation was three times target before Russia attacked. They are silent on why big energy importers Japan and China did not have the high inflation when energy shot up.

Too late  they shoved up interest rates. They destroyed money. They sold bonds at depressed prices. They sent the bill for all the losses to the Treasury to make taxpayers pay to  bail them out. This has now delivered the shallow recession and downturn some of us predicted.

So why do we put up with this level of incompetence? It was obvious to anyone who studies money and credit that they lurched from too much to too little. The Bank refused to comment on money and credit, and revelled in a model of the economy and forecasts that were wildly wrong. They forecast 2% inflation for the period when it hit 11%.

What should they do now? Change their model to get their forecasts more accurate. Strengthen the Monetary Committee with some who do think money and credit matter. Stop selling bonds at  huge  losses. Allow sufficient money and credit to accommodate a bit of growth.

Dear Colleague on NHS Dentistry

February 15, 2024 5 Comments

I was pleased to see the government adding to dental services through the methods set out by the Minister. I am keen to see Wokingham’s needs recognised, so I put to her the issue of ensuring we add additional dentists and dental surgeries as more housing is built and the population expands. She said she also wished to see this and understood the point.

Please find below the Dear Colleague Letter from the Minister which sets out the Government’s plans.

Dear colleague,

Faster, Simple and Fairer: Our Plan to Recover and Reform NHS Dentistry

The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have today published Faster, Simple and Fairer: Our Plan to Recover and Reform NHS Dentistry.

Our new plan will help patients can get the dental care they need when they need it and support NHS dentistry to deliver 2.5 million more appointments for patients.

The plan will address the series of challenges facing NHS dentistry which affect patients’ oral health and ability to access the care they need, as well as workforce recruitment and retention. Our plan will deliver faster, simpler and fairer access to NHS dentistry. The new measures being announced include:

  • Offering a New Patient Premium to support dentists to take on new NHS patients
  • Introducing dental vans to deliver care to under-served areas
  • Attracting dentists into areas of need with ‘Golden Hello’ payments
  • Launching our ‘Smile for Life’ programme to focus on prevention and good oral health from birth so that every child includes toothbrushing as part of their daily routine by the time they reach primary school. We are keen to embed good oral health habits at an earlier stage, given the evidence that doing so later – for example, through supervised toothbrushing programmes in the later school years – will have less impact on outcomes but add administrative burdens to primary school teachers.
  • Streamlining and tackling bureaucracy to support and maximise the effectiveness of our entire dental workforce
  • Expanding dental training places by 40% as set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan
  • The full plan can be found here http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/our-plan-to-recover-and-reform-nhs-dentistry

The plan is backed by £200 million across the next year and will immediately introduce the new bonus payment scheme for dentists taking on new NHS patients from March. As well as reforming NHS dental contracts to make NHS work more attractive and encouraging practices to take on new patients, the government is also boosting the number of dentists. There were 1,352 more dentists doing NHS work in 2022/23 compared to 2010/2011, and the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan will expand dentistry training places by 40% by 2031/32.

The plan also includes new measures to attract dentists to work in the NHS, including supporting more graduate dentists to work in NHS care. We will consult on a ‘tie-in’ to explore whether dentists should be required to work in the NHS for a period upon completion of their training.

In 2022, 46% of new dentists joining the General Dental Council’s (GDC) register were from overseas. A lack of flexibility in international registration processes can create unnecessary delay to overseas-qualified dentists providing NHS services. That is why we are making it easier and simpler for NHS practices to recruit dentists from overseas by reducing bureaucracy and streamlining systems.

Geographical variation in access to dental care remains a challenge across the country, particularly in rural and coastal areas. To make access fairer, ‘golden hello’ financial incentives will be brought in for dentists who commit to working for three years in areas of need, and mobile dental vans will be rolled out to bring care and treatment to the most isolated and under-served rural and coastal communities later this year.

Tooth decay is a significant, yet largely preventable public health problem and is the most common oral disease affecting children and young people. In the plan we have set out a new emphasis on prevention and embedding good oral health in all parts of society, particularly babies and the youngest children, where outcomes are best, through an ambitious new programme called “Smile for Life”. The government will support nurseries and early years settings to incorporate good oral hygiene into children’s daily routines by the time children get to primary school and provide advice to pregnant mothers and expectant parents on how to protect their baby’s gums and teeth. This will include dental teams going into primary schools in areas of need and applying fluoride varnish to children’s teeth.

We will also consult on expanding water fluoridation, initially to the northeast of England, to protect more people from the risk of tooth decay. The northeast of England was chosen based on a combination of factors including the oral health needs of the region and water company experience operating schemes.

Our recovery plan is ambitious, with immediate impact on access through the new patient payment which will start from the 1st March, alongside proposals to deliver improvements through the rest of this year and beyond.

Our ambition is for everyone who needs an NHS dentist to be able to access one and today’s announcement puts us on the right path to achieving this.

THE RT HON DAME ANDREA LEADSOM DBE MP

Growing anger about anti driver measures

February 15, 2024 171 Comments

I was talking to a London plumber.His  invoices  for work include extra charges for parking, for ULEZ and for Congestion charge. It is a daily battle for him to get to a new job given the closure of so many streets and then to find an all day parking place. Protesters are still going out and putting boxes or other drapes over the London cameras to show their opposition without damaging these expensive spies prying into our lives. This site does not support law breaking protests.

This week Wokingham Borough has had to put  out a press release at our expense telling people not to argue with the workers carrying out another of their hated anti driver projects. Of course people should not shout at or threaten Council contractors. The need to say this shows just how much the Council misjudges the mood as it seeks to wind up all those of us who need a vehicle for work. Wasting £5.5 m of tax on a scheme which will cause delays and put people off driving to what were easily accessible local shops and a garage is a bad idea.

These cameos are part of a much bigger picture. Lib Dem and similar Councils show scorn and disdain for working people who need a car or van to get to work. They show no sympathy for  busy parents who need to drop children off at school so they can get to their job. These Councils consult and ignore. They revel in the misery they cause others. They explode with self righteousness if anyone argues back that they need to use a car or van. Yet despite this many of these preaching Councillors still rely on a gas boiler, go in fossil fuel cars and take jet planes to their holidays.

The collision of green demands by many in the governing class with the needs and pressures of daily life is becoming acute. Many of the green campaigners are hypocrites, flying  off to air conditioned hotels to hold forth again about the need to lower other people’s carbon footprints. If government press too far with their bans, their surveillance cameras, their schemes to fine people off the road with ultra low speed limits, special lanes and box junctions, they may find instead they become very unpopular. Going too far has already changed the Dutch government.

 

 

Dear Colleague letter – LONG TERM PLAN FOR HOUSING

February 14, 2024 6 Comments

13 February 2024

Dear Colleague,

Today, we are taking the next step in our long-term plan for housing, announcing a package of measures to ensure more homes get built where they are needed most – in our inner cities – helping protect the Green Belt and countryside.

We have a strong record of housing delivery. We are on track to meet the manifesto commitment to build one million homes this Parliament, and to have delivered over 2.5 million more homes since 2010. This includes almost 696,000 affordable homes, and supporting over 876,000 households into home ownership. Over this Parliament, we have delivered the highest number of new homes for over thirty years, with the greatest number of first-time buyers in a single year for two decades.

The changes we made to national planning policy in December were designed to support delivery by addressing legitimate concerns about weaknesses in the planning system, which in turn led to frustrations about the nature of development. That is why we moved to protect the Green Belt, clarify how housing targets should be set, safeguard the character of suburbs, and ensure urban authorities play their proper part in meeting housing need. The further targeted action we are announcing today builds on those changes by making it easier to pursue the right kind of development on brownfield land – because we want to see more new housing in the hearts of our cities, rather than the unnecessary tarmacking over of the countryside.
Brownfield development

Last summer, I used my speech setting out our Long-Term Plan for Housing to draw attention to the particularly poor record of housing delivery in London, where housing affordability challenges are most acute. Only 35,000 new homes were delivered in the capital last year, which amounts to just over half the 66,000 homes the Mayor of London’s own plan identifies as needed each year. That is why I urged the Mayor to take urgent action, and when he failed to do so, commissioned an independent review of the London Plan led by Christopher Katkowski KC.

This review, which we are publishing today, reveals the problems plaguing delivery in London – concluding that “the combined effect of the multiplicity of policies in the London Plan now works to frustrate rather than facilitate the delivery of new homes” and “four years into [the] ten-year [London Plan]…there has been an undersupply of more than 60,000 homes, more than a year of equivalent supply”. It recommends that to tackle this under delivery, a presumption in favour of brownfield development is introduced into the London Plan.

The Government intends to deliver the spirit of this recommendation – but believes it is important to tackle under delivery not just in London, but in our other major towns and cities that serve as engines of jobs and growth. We are therefore proposing to introduce a new ‘brownfield presumption’ in the twenty most populous cities and urban centres in the country, where housing delivery has dropped below expected levels. These twenty places, which include London, are the ones to which an ‘urban uplift’ already applies when determining the need for homes. This new presumption will make it easier to get permission to build on brownfield land where an authority is underdelivering, by raising the bar for refusing applications – ultimately helping more young families to find a home.

We also want to support brownfield development more widely, by making clear to every local authority in England that they need to be more flexible in approving planning applications on brownfield land. To make this happen, we are proposing a change to national planning policy that would require councils to give significant weight to the benefits of delivering as many homes as possible where there is a shortage of land for homes. This change would also tell councils that they need to be pragmatic in applying policies on the internal layout of developments – cutting through what can sometimes prove too complex a web of constraints that misses the prize of building new homes.

I want to note that neither proposed change affects the definition of previously developed land in national policy and so would not alter existing protections, including for residential gardens, nor amend other relevant policies on the character of suburban neighbourhoods. A consultation on these two proposals launches today, and will close on 26 March. Subject to that consultation, we will introduce these changes as soon as possible, through an update to the National Planning Policy Framework.

Permitted development rights

Complementing these changes on brownfield development, we are also helping developers overcome tiresome bureaucracy by slashing red tape that stops appropriate commercial buildings being turned into new homes. Following a consultation last year, the relevant secondary legislation will be laid in Parliament today to extend current Permitted Development Rights such that commercial buildings of any size will have the freedom to be converted into new homes – this means shops, offices, and other buildings all quickly repurposed, resulting in thousands of quality new homes by 2030.

In parallel, we are launching a further consultation on proposals to support millions of homeowners to extend their homes outwards and upwards, freeing new extensions or large loft conversions from the arduous process of receiving planning permission, while ensuring continuing protection for neighbours’ local amenity. Our proposals will also allow homeowners greater freedoms on installing heat pumps and Electric Vehicle charging points, ensuring these rights deliver what people want for their homes.

London delivery

These planning reforms are important, but our changes to policy come alongside additional funding too. We are announcing £50 million of investment to unlock new homes and improve the quality of life for existing residents through estate regeneration in London. Working closely with the London Borough of Camden, we are establishing a new Euston Housing Delivery Group to explore maximum regeneration and housing backed by £4 million. We are also announcing £125 million loan funding from the Home Building Fund Infrastructure Loans portfolio and Long-Term Fund for sites in East and South London which will unlock 8,000 new homes – and to help tackle undersupply in the medium-term, we are announcing our intention to legislate at the earliest opportunity to remove the current block on Homes England’s role in London.

Support for SMEs

It is right that we do what we can to unleash the capability of housebuilders across the housing sector. SME housebuilders play a vital role in our communities, and we are already backing them through our £1.5 billion Levelling Up Home Building Fund and £1 billion ENABLE Build guarantee programme. Today we are going further by expanding the ENABLE Build scheme to cover more lenders and increase the availability of SME finance to the sector. To support access to land for building, we will also introduce SME-only sales of Homes England land, with pilots starting this year in the Southeast and Midlands. We will also update the Community Infrastructure Levy guidance to discourage higher rates being charged on smaller sites, responding to feedback from the sector.

Public sector land

It is also crucial for Government to play its part to release more land directly. That is why we are working with the three main landowning departments – the Department for Transport, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Health and Social Care, as well as Homes England – which have pledged to set aside suitable unused or unwanted land for housing. So far departments have pledged to release Government owned land for at least 15,000 homes before March 2025, and we have set up a ministerial Taskforce to assure and accelerate delivery over the longer term.

Second staircases guidance

Finally, our focus is of course not just on building more but building safely. I have already announced my intent for second staircases in new buildings above 18 meters, and the associated transitional arrangements that will allow projects that are already underway to continue as planned. The Building Safety Regulator will publish detailed guidance to support a second staircase by the end of March, and this guidance will set out that the second staircase will not come with additional provisions such as evacuation lifts, providing housebuilders with the clarity they need to progress developments.

I would welcome your support as we take the next step in our long-term plan for housing that will ensure more safe, warm, affordable homes get built in the places that need them most.
With every good wish

RT HON MICHAEL GOVE MP

Secretary of State for Levelling up, Housing and Communities

Minister for Intergovernmental Relations

California Crossroads The Council fails to listen .

February 14, 2024 6 Comments

There is huge local anger about the decision to spend vast  sums on disrupting the California crossroads  junction which works fine.

Residents should not take it out on the workers undertaking the contract. They should continue with strong legal  protests against the Council. We told them well in advance not to mess with this junction. We told them not to waste an astonishing £5.5 million of taxpayers money. The  current MP for this part of the Borough disagrees with this scheme.

People are incensed by the Council’s costly anti driver agenda. People need to use vehicles to get to work, to take children to school, to do the weekly shop and to get to sport and leisure activities. It is heartless  of the Council to block roads, put in endless temporary traffic lights, and create more dangerous spaces where there once were clear roads and pavements. This long building project will do plenty of damage to local businesses who will lose customers over it.

Why does the Council hate us so much? Why do they delight in making busy lives more difficult?

The costs of net zero policies

February 14, 2024 147 Comments

Labour’s decision to abandon most of its planned £28 bn a year extra investment programme for net zero has served to highlight the costs of the policy. It should also lead Labour to ask how they could both afford and achieve their wish to accelerate the UK’s progress to net zero compared to very exacting existing government targets. Under Mr Sunak the government has been relaxing some of the requirements, recognising that for the policy to work it has to be undertaken at a pace that people will accept. Much of the investment needs to be made by individuals and by private companies, so it needs to be realistic. The faster the government wants to go the more subsidy and direct public spending it will need to bring it about.

Labour say they are still wedded to the idea of zero carbon electricity generation by 2030. How can this be?  That would require the closure and write off of all our gas power stations and the remaining coal ones. If Drax is staying it would require a carbon capture and storage scheme to be up and running at great cost for that facility. It would require a massive expansion of the grid to handle more interruptible power and the planned expansion of electric heating and vehicles. It would need a major further investment in wind and solar power. It would require big battery installations to store power, and probably some new pump storage schemes as well. No-one seriously  believes this can be done by 2030. Nor could be it be done for part of a planned  £28bn a year let alone without £28 bn a year.

Two of the big areas where net zero requires different conduct by individuals are  transport and heating. Labour’s faster progress would mean ripping out far more gas boilers far sooner, which most people show no wish to do. It would require a fast replacement of diesel and petrol vehicles with electric. It would require an end to many holidays abroad or a rapid roll out of synthetic fuels for all aeroplanes. It is time interviewers on main media asked these crucial questions of those who advocate faster moves to net zero. It is simply wrong to be told wind energy is cheaper than fossil fuel energy when the figures do not take into account the costs of back up power today from fossil fuel. Nor do they take into account the full costs of extra grid, the costs of battery and pump storage , the costs of smart meters and the costs of rolling out charger points and extra cable capacity into homes for a more comprehensive renewables system.