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The UK is unique in being a world trading country with a long history of involvement in international disputes that can work with NATO, the Commonwealth, the TPP, the G7, and the Five Eyes. We need to work with who we can issue by issue, but concentrate on the UK national interest.

I have no problem in principle with PM Starmer if he wants to follow a different course from the USA on any particular matter. He needs to make his case and get it right when or if he disagrees with the President.  I supported as a youngster  the UK staying out of the Viet Nam war, and later  failed to persuade the Conservative opposition to oppose Blair’s involvement of the UK in Iraq. I have always thought a strong and friendly relationship with the USA a good idea. I  remember the failure of the US to join our war in Europe in 1939 until Japan bombed them into the conflict, and remember the reluctance of the US to help us liberate the Falklands by military means.  The UK has to be able to defend itself.

I do have a problem with PM  Starmer believing there is some proto EU defence scheme we can attach ourselves to. It is embarrassing to watch him asking France and Germany before he expresses a view of what the UK can and should do as if they would help or have the resources to defend us. Our history shows us that all invasions and military threats to these islands have in the past come from European countries and empires, though we are assured this cannot happen now. The French, the Germans, the Italian Romans, the Scandinavian Vikings, the Dutch, the Spanish and others have taken it in turns to seek to conquer us.  It is clearly a good idea to seek friendly and positive relations with European countries and with the EU, but a grave folly to think we can by becoming a rule taker from the continent somehow secure our own safety and pursue our own interests.

The modern EU has no plans to assail us militarily, but plenty of plans to make us  obey its laws, import more from them, pay them tax revenues and direct our policies. Their interests are clearly not our interests in these areas. It makes sense for them to tax us, but makes no sense for us to agree. It makes sense for them to want to send many of their young people here, but not for us as we are short of homes and jobs. It makes sense for them to demand cheap fees at UK universities for their students, but that undermines the finances of our great universities. It makes sense for them to want us to impose high tariffs on non EU imports to give their companies more chance to take over our markets. That will just harm the UK consumer more.

The EU is trying to establish a stronger role in European defence by taking powers from member states and borrowing large sums centrally to buy more control. It wants the UK to pay a large sum to have possible access to their defence orders. This comes at a time when the UK defence industry has a full order book and when the UK  should be spending extra money on buying more UK produced weapons, not on subsidising an emerging EU defence presence we do not control.

I am often asked who influenced  my ideas. I reply that my views on the economy and public policy have come from my experience in a wide range of jobs, from my many conversations with voters, and from my own reflections on what works best in the world around us.

If pressed I concede I read a lot of books in my youth that had little or no impact on me. I struggle to remember what they said. The one book that had a big impact was Marx’s Communist Party Manifesto which made me write rebuttals and publish  the Popular  Capitalism Manifesto alternative. The one book I read whose message impressed itself upon me was Parkinson’s Law. It is a great satire, but is also a documentary of the worst failings of our ever growing and sprawling public sector.

Parkinson explained how and why civil service bureaucracy expanded without delivering more service or useful output. He showed how the  Admiralty officials grew from 2000 to 3569 between 1914 and 1928 when the number of capital ships fell from 62 to 20. The officials reached 33,788 by 1954!

More modern versions of this analysis have  shown how in more recent years there has been a big increase in senior naval officers against a background of fewer fighting ships. 2 aircraft carriers, 7 frigates, 6 destroyers and nine submarines are directed by 134 Admirals and Flag officers  and 260 Captains. The individual  ships are mainly taken to sea by Commanders. Captains are too grand to command frigates and destroyers.

The navy is unfairly picked on for a phenomenon which grips most departments and services. Most have far too many senior managers but are badly managed. Managers make work for each other and place strains on those doing useful work to run a necessary service by demanding all sorts of internal information and policies.

It is high time UK government tackled the waste and poor management that its ever expanding bureaucracy causes.It is bizarre that the navy has money to pay 394 senior officers but was unable to send a single destroyer to defend Cyprus on time.

The UK has been a great naval power. In the 2 nd World war we still had a large fleet, and rapidly developed aircraft carriers when the war revealed they are crucial to  provide air cover for large surface ships.

This century all 3 parties in government ran defence spending down and reduced the number of ships. Conservatives realised it had gone too far and started to rebuild before leaving office. Instead under this government it has become a rout. The Secretary of State removed the last minesweeper from the Gulf and did not keep a frigate in the area,. He allowed most of our modern sophisticated an air attach destroyers be in for deep maintenance  at the same tine and failed to prepare Dragon for timely departure to support our Cyprus base. He approved both aircraft carriers being in home ports at the same time, leaving much of the world a long sea voyage away.

It looks as if this government was planning our disengagement from the Middle East and sea routes to India and China without announcing such a dramatic change of policy. Their wish to give Diego Garcia freehold away and to give the EU and Spain considerable control over Gibraltar is symptomatic  of their casual wish to end our influence and to undermine the navy.

They talk all the time of stronger links with the EU rather than NATO, oblivious of how we rely on US collaboration for our defence and in ignorance of the poor defences of most western members of the EU. The EU is not going to protect us.

The government pretends  to want higher spending on defence without budgeting the money. It needs first to tell us what extra ships, planes, drones, troops we need then go about procuring them. Urgently it needs to ensure many more of our current navaL vessels are at sea or ready to sail. We should be assisting convoys in the Gulf to protect our trade.

My Lords, I congratulate our maiden speech-makers today and join in the general welcome to them. I draw from the noble Lord, Lord Walker, a very wise remark when he reminded our governing party that it is indeed the Labour Party, not the “Benefits Party”. While I think that all of us here share the passion and the ambition to lift families out of poverty and to make sure that children can have fulfilling lives, in the strong words of the Minister, I think it is more difficult than just making a modest extension in benefit provision for certain families in our society. If only it were that easy, I am sure parties would have done it a long time ago. What we are embarking on, surely, is a very ambitious programme which is trying to help, without interfering unnecessarily, all those families in which the children do not get that right opportunity.

Some children in poor families are let down because there is simply a lack of money. They have loving parents, and if there were a bit more money, they would not have to make such invidious choices about meals and support for the children at school, and trips and outings. Others are let down by adults in their lives who control them, abusing them or spending the money on too much alcohol and drugs, and not concentrating on providing them with the stable financial background they need. Some children are born into families in which there may be plenty of money or too little money, but they lack those other important things. They lack love. They lack support. They lack ambition for the children. They do not provide the guidance that good parents and good grandparents try to provide.

The state cannot be everybody’s parent, nor do we want it to be. The state wisely says that the Government, or a local authority, will intervene and pre-empt the parents only in extreme cases. We are talking about influencing, encouraging and supporting the parents. That can be done by many of us. Everyone here has been on a remarkable journey in their lives to date. Many have overcome considerable difficulties, from background, resistance or opposition, and have achieved great things already, so the more we can get out and talk and engage and encourage, the more it is possible that we can turn on a light in young minds and that they can see that something is possible that the adults around them have not told them about. Or maybe we can enthuse their teachers, who need to put ambition into their lives. There is nothing wrong with ambition; it can be a force for good, and it is releasing children from poor backgrounds if we can communicate to them that maybe they can achieve great things too.

The noble Lord, Lord Bird, said it very well in his remarks on social mobility. But of course, we are interested only in one-way mobility: we want people to be able to move up. We are not so keen on people moving down, and we try to cushion or help if they move down too quickly. The more people we promote, the more people fall below the average; that is the way the  arithmetic works, but we want to live in a more prosperous society. There will always be people who are relatively worse off, but if it is around a much higher average living standard, then there will be so much more happiness in the world around us.

I say to the Government, given our shared ambitions to get more people out of poverty and give more encouragement to young people, that there are many other things than this Bill that they could or should be doing. The first thing is that it has to be much easier to get a job. Unfortunately, over the last 18 months, there has been a big rise in unemployment, and the combination of high taxes on jobs and on those businesses that need premises in our high streets—the shops and the entertainment and leisure businesses—has contracted the number of job opportunities. This will make it much more difficult for the Government to fulfil their ambitions, because this cannot be done without the good will and success of the entrepreneurs, as represented so ably here today by the noble Lord, Lord Walker.

The strand in Labour which is about the promotion of work and better working conditions is wholly admirable. Whenever I have been fortunate enough to run larger enterprises or be involved in their management, I have always been very encouraging of that strand in Labour. I have wanted people to be better paid, but it must be through bonuses or working smarter, so that the company can serve the public well without going bust. I have always wanted people to see that there is the chance of promotion. Most of us started with jobs we did not really want to do and had to work our way up. That is what ambition is all about.

The Government must think of a much bigger, bolder strategy. Paying extra benefits is not going to do it.

I agree with the contributions from Northern Ireland. This order is discriminatory against Northern Ireland in favour of Scotland, and it will do considerable damage to consumers and business in Northern Ireland.

I also welcome the remarks of my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who told us that we are engaged in a much wider debate on this rather narrow instrument now that the Government are saying that this is an important part of the United Kingdom’s participation in a carbon border adjustment mechanism—or carbon tariff. They also wish to join the ETS at European level, in a carbon taxation scheme, which is even dearer than the United Kingdom one we have inflicted on ourselves. I urge the Government to think again. This has carried very badly in every part of the United Kingdom, represented here, that will be affected by it.

However, it is part of a much bigger error that government policy is creating. Over the last decade, the United Kingdom has been a world leader in reducing its CO2 output and has been dutiful to a fault to treaty obligations that actually relate to more distant years. As a result, we have seen a catastrophic deindustrialisation, which has gathered huge pace and momentum in the last two years with the intensification of the net-zero policies this Government have welcomed and introduced. To extend part of this system to the maritime sector would cause further damage.

Many years ago, I had the privilege to lead a big international industrial group. In those days, the group had its headquarters and most of its main factories in England. We were proud of that. We struggled to compete, but we did compete. Where we had a problem, we remedied the problem. We needed to raise our capital efficiency, so we had to spend money and investment on better plant. We needed to train our staff and use our staff better so that it was a better organisation. We stayed in the market, and we stayed producing. For example, we were responsible for a large part of the ceramic tile industry in the Potteries, with its very distinguished tradition of innovation—and domination, at times—in that very important market.

While I was there, we managed to make the investments and stay competitive enough, although the Italians were very good. I watched with sadness and shame as my successors gave up the battle through no fault of their own. At our current energy prices, we are so far away from being able to do even something relatively simple in industrial terms, such as making good industrial tile for all the homes with bathrooms and kitchens that need it. That is replicated sector by sector now.

We have heard the Green case, feeble as it is, briefly sketched today in this short debate. My response to that is that practically every policy initiative this country has taken to reduce its own CO2 has contributed to an increase in world CO2. Why on earth is that good for the environment, let alone good for our economy? We will not get our own gas out of the ground, and so we import LNG, which generates three or four times as much CO2 in the process than using our own. It is crazy, and we must stop doing this.

We need to have better-paid jobs and more investment in the United Kingdom. We need to rebuild our maritime industry. We heard from a very well-informed noble Lord, who told us that over his lifetime, supporting what was once a great industry, we have seen it almost disappear and vanish. This great maritime nation cannot now carry its own goods, because it did not create the right tax and regulatory conditions to sustain shipping in this country.

I urge the Government to think again. This is a small part of a big crisis. This is undermining our capacity to do well and make the things we need in this country. Dear energy is a killer. This is part of a package of measures that lumbers us with energy so dear we cannot make things for ourselves.

55% of the petrol price at the pump is tax. If any of the oil used to make the petrol is still allowed to come from a UK field then the total tax rate is much higher given the near penal levels of tax on oil production.

The surging oil price on world markets will put our petrol prices up more. As it does so the government tax take goes up, as VAT is charged on petrol and profits tax on oil production will also rise.

Motor fuels affect us all and put up our cost of living. All our food, drinks and many other items are delivered by truck and van. Most of us use a car or bus or diesel train to get to work, to shops, to schools.

The government tells us it will get the cost of living down. Once again with fuels it turns out they are main price gougers. Today they plan to collect a lot more tax from oil and fuel, whilst pretending to share our pain.

Cut the petrol tax all the time oil prices stay high.

It is easy to start a war. It is more difficult to stop one.
President Trump’s military intervention was too late to give victory to the mass protesters out to topple the government.

Now he is bombing, the protesters are more circumspect because the Revolutionary guards still seem to be in charge and have shown their willingness to murder protesters in large numbers.

The US claims to have destroyed the Iranian navy and airforce, but Iran is still able to direct missiles and drones against US bases and to offer a credible threat to shipping.

The US can carry on bombing as they find other stocks of weapons. They could try to bomb Revolutionary guards, though presumably they do not assemble in obvious locations. Where they blend into the local communities they gain some protection as the US needs to avoid civilian casualties.

Maybe the best the President can do is to bomb as much military and kill as many top officials as possible and declare victory. He will have to have destroyed most Iranian missiles and drones to greatly reduce the threats.

It would help if he can urgently establish a convoy protection system for tankers in the area.

The Chancellor presented silly forecasts from the OBR that some of us said were out of date when published. How are they getting on with a forecast for oil prices staying around $65? What revisions would they now make to inflation and unemployment with energy costs so much higher?
Like the rest of the government the Chancellor does not seem to know there is a war on, or if she has now seen it does not think she needs to take action anytime soon to adjust our economy to new circumstances.
What should she do? She should get taxes on energy way down to offset the impact of the higher prices. 55% of the pump price for fuel is tax, so offset the rise in oil prices. Suspend VAT temporarily from domestic gas. Talk to the oil and gas companies about getting their taxes down to a level where they will maximise current output and put in more capacity with a big investment surge.
The Treasury will get a windfall increase in tax from higher energy prices. However, borrowing is still too high so the government needs to embark urgently on the spending reductions the Opposition has proposed to take the pressure off the bond markets and interest rates. It would help if the government cancelled all their proposed extra payments to foreign governments and the EU over Chagos re set, steel compensation, and the extra payments to illegal migrants the Home Secretary has announced..

This government just loves giving money away to foreign governments and companies. It is money we cannot afford, money they borrow which adds to taxpayers bills.

This time, as I warned, it is the offer of money to Jingye, the company that owns the blast furnaces ar Scunthorpe. Labour failed to nationalise them but passed legislation taking control of them to stave off closure. The furnaces were losing a fortune partly due to the UK ‘s sky high energy prices .

This meant taxpayers are paying the bills for the operating losses and stocks without making clear it took the assets unencumbered by debts for nothing. The blast furnaces were not worth anything given costs of closure or losses from running them.

The government promised to keep them open. How much will this cost taxpayers? They implied the blast furnaces would be replaced by a steel recycling works. When? How many jobs go when that happens? Will the government break its promises to the steel workers by sacking lots of them before the election? Or will it put taxes up again to pay the huge bills, meaning others lose their jobs as the higher taxes take their toll? Why pay any compensation to the owners when it costs so much to run the plant, saving the owners the closure costs.

I recently used the M6 Toll road again. Free flowing, good services area, no potholes. What a contrast with some of the nationalised motorways. In the last one a half years a government that hates motorists has starved them of maintenance so we now have the potholes we are used to on lesser Council roads on our most used and biggest highways. Hitting a pothole at 70 mph can do more damage than on a slower road. Motorists have to keep lane disciple to avoid other vehicles so they usually cannot swerve to avoid.

All my life our roads have been inadequate. Always too little capacity and under some governments and Councils badly maintained. In recent years the highways authorities have done their best to reduce capacity for cars and to make it mire difficult to drive anywhere.

We beed to put in more capacity to cope with the huge increase of population and to accommodate all the long haul trucks for imports necessitated by the government’s huge industrial plant and factory closure programme.

The obvious way to do it is to allow new toll roads or toll lanes adding to existing roads. The driver paying the toll for less congestion and a better road wins, but so does every other road user as the public roads paid out of taxes also become less congested.

The large number of prolonged road closures reflects dreadful public sector management. Toll roads stay open as much as possible as their owners and builders beed the revenue to lay the bills.