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My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, is right to warn us all that our relative prosperity and power is waning.

I have always been happy to fully support this Government’s main aim, as set out in the general election and repeated in all the economic speeches that I have heard them make. They are right that this country can achieve so much more. It can grow much faster. It can unleash enterprise and develop more business. However, I fear that my noble friend Lady Finn set out in her brilliant speech just how, for almost two years now, this Government have done everything wrong if we wish to promote growth. They have clobbered entrepreneurs instead of praising them; they have taxed people instead of rewarding them; they have taken incentives out and made it more difficult to employ young people—they seem to have a grudge against young people. Now we are presented, in this gracious Speech, with what they think is one golden thread that I think will turn out to be leaden and depressing: the idea that an EU reset will somehow promote trade, which in turn will give us that missing growth.

Let me try to help the Government think this through. Quite often, Ministers here and elsewhere tell us that we have suffered a 4% GDP loss as a result of Brexit. But all the graphs and charts of what happened to GDP between 2016 and today, in the leading European countries and here, show that there is absolutely no sign of an extra 4% drop as a result of either our voting to leave or actually leaving. If you ask Government Ministers why they think there has been a 4% drop, they say that the OBR has said it. But the OBR report is a forecast, which says that between 2020 and 2035, the British economy might grow its productivity 0.25% per annum less than if we had not left the EU. It is not forecasting any drop in GDP at all; it is not even forecasting a drop in productivity—it says that it might grow a bit slower, and if you compound out 0.25% for 15 years, you get to roughly the 4% they all wrongly cite. Ministers must be honest with themselves and the public: there was no 4% drop, and their reset will not recover the 4% that they wrongly allege has disappeared.

Let us explore the idea that increasing trade would uniquely provide growth. I fear that Ministers are again mistaken, because our trade with the European Union results in a very large trade deficit, particularly in goods. It sells us a lot more than we sell it, so if we could agree a set of policies with the EU that might increase the exports of each side by, say, 10%, which is quite a sizeable number, the deficit would rise and our GDP would fall, because the EU would export much more to us than we export to it and we would have to close down things in Britain to receive the exports we decided were cheaper or better as a result of the changes. To have the same volume, we would need to grow our exports by 17% to match the 10% growth in

the EU’s exports. If you wanted to get more GDP, you would have to grow our exports a lot faster than the European Union because—I repeat to the Government—exports add to our GDP, but imports do not. If we import more German cars and close a UK car factory, our GDP goes down; it does not miraculously go up because our trade figures with the EU have gone up.

 

That is exactly the Government’s strategy, thanks mainly to their net-zero policies. My noble friend Lord Lilley set it all out very well. They are literally going to ban us making any diesel or petrol cars from 2030, five years earlier than they would stupidly ban them on the continent. Do they not see that that means that we would close our factories first, and definitely lose all the jobs, while Europe was still thinking about making more of these cars that people want to buy? The Government will say, “Well, we’re going to buy battery cars”. Yes, some people will buy battery cars if they cannot buy diesel or petrol cars, but most of them will probably be imported from China, or they might be made in eastern Europe and imported via that route, so the Government will not get more jobs, growth or economic activity from that source.

Here is my friendly proposal. I really want this country to do well; I want this Government to do well. I know that they are not about to fall—Prime Ministers might come and go, but they will presumably carry on governing—so I say to them: please govern well. Instead of having the wrong idea that promoting more imports from Europe and perhaps a few more exports to Europe will miraculously transform the position, I want them to put in place in Britain a series of policies for import substitution.

It is much easier for small companies to sell to people, shops and businesses near them than to go through all the hassle of exporting, however much red tape the Government think they can reduce. That would give our small businesses more chance by creating more opportunity for British production. It should be much cheaper and easier to replace imports than to try to develop exports to markets with different languages and customs which may not like what you are doing or offering. I know this well from my experience running industrial businesses, when we found that by far and away the most difficult markets to export to were France and Germany, although they were geographically much nearer. We always hired staff who loved the countries and spoke the language, but it was still much more difficult to sell there than it was to the English-speaking world, including America, or to Asian countries where English was the common business language.

We need to lift the ban on making our own petrol and diesel cars, because they have always been one of our leading exports to the continent. We need to lift the ban on getting our own oil and gas out, because they too have been leading exports to the continent. We need to get energy prices down, as my noble friend Lord Lilley rightly said. We have in the past exported a lot of petrochemicals and refined oil product, and if we are shutting all our refineries, petrochemical works, ethylene plants and so on, we will not export anything like that volume in the future.

 

The Government need a dose of reality and common sense and an examination of the data. It is not good enough for Ministers to say, “We will get the British economy to grow as soon as we have signed away our powers to make our own business laws and given some more money to Brussels”. They cannot identify billions of pounds of extra exports we can make at a time when they, through their policies, are ensuring that we export fewer and fewer cars and chemicals and less and less oil, gas and refined product, and are in the process of closing 21 plastics recycling plants.

As my noble friend Lord Hunt set out in another brilliant speech, there is no plan to save steel. Indeed, I heard the Minister say in her opening remarks that it is still the Government’s policy to go over to electric arc furnaces. They need to be honest to the workers in Scunthorpe: the Government are not going to permanently save the Scunthorpe jobs. They still want to sack all those people, but just a bit later, after they have wasted billions of pounds of public money on keeping open a works that is struggling to compete, in the way that my noble friend set out. I ask the Government to please level with the workers in Scunthorpe about the fact that their plan is anti-blast furnace and anti-burning coal in any sense, and to come to a decent settlement with them. The workers should not think that the Government have a solution to steel, because they clearly do not.

I have some questions for those tipped to contend the   Labour leadership. My worry is any one of them could make things worse.

Angela Rayner

Why did she fail to pay her tax on time? As she lectures the rest of us to pay more taxes and to refrain from trying to find ways  to reduce tax bills, surely she should have paid up to start with, or as soon as she knew she had made a mistake? Isn’t it one  rule for her and different rules for others?

Why did new housebuilding fall whilst she was responsible for delivering 1.5 m new homes this Parliament? Does she now accept that target is a unattainable? When will she tell us the truth about new homes?

Will she accept that the Employment Rights Act has destroyed many new job opportunities for young people and helped drive unemployment up?

How would she describe Tories?

Ed Miliband

Is he proud of his accelerated closure of the North Sea oil and gas industry? What does he say to all those losing their jobs?

Why does he think we should import Norwegian gas instead of getting our own out of adjacent fields?

Why is it right to burden the world with 3 x as much CO 2 importing LNG than using our own gas?

Does he admit that for the next ten years we will have less nuclear power as he closes old stations and fails to bring any new ones on line apart from Hinkley he inherited?

Why has he been unable to cut our energy bills by £300?
Does he agree the UK will not be generating only carbon free power in 2030 but still needing gas power  stations?

Wes Streeting

Why has he not made it easier for more people to get a GP or hospital  appointment?

Why are Drs still going on strike after the big pay awards he made them to end the strikes?

Where is his alternative King’s Speech programme?

How would he get  the UK back to work?

Andy Burnham

Why would he  give up the big job of Mayor he  said he  wanted? Why should anyone believe his promises, as he promised to serve a full term and offered things he has not delivered?

Where is there a seat you could win in a by election? How does he win Makerfield with its small majority in 2024?

Why should the National  Executive change its mind over telling him to do the job he has  got?

Does he  have so little belief in 403 Labour MPs that he  thinks none of them could be PM?

Conclusion. So far a badly organised coup . None of the front runners have a good alternative programme to get people back to work, to control the cost of living and to smash the gangs. Pity the poor country with months of uncertainty and a badly damaged  PM who might now survive.

 

 

What a mess! The PM agrees to a short meeting on King’s Speech day with his Health Secretary. Someone tells the Times Streeting will call a contest today. We read he did not want to  go public yesterday to overshadow the Speech, yet someone in the know tipped off the papers to ensure the Speech was overshadowed. There was no early or any denial  from Streeting which any loyal Cabinet member would immediately put out.

So the King read out a turgid long list of lifeless Bills, many of them repeats of old  themes whilst Ministers had their minds on questions of whether to run, who to support, how to keep  their jobs.

Many of these Bills if pursued are troubled. What can another Steel nationalisation Bill do to correct the folly of the last one  that failed to agree transfer of the plant from the Chinese owners or agree to who has to pay off  old debts?

What will a new Water Regulator do differently to the current one? Why cant the government just issue better instructions to Ofwat? Why  persist  with widely loathed digital ID, a solution in search of a problem? What will be yet another Criminal Justice Bill?

The worst Bill and the centre of the economic  and constitutional struggle is the EU re set Bill.  Based on the wrong notion that we could boost trade with the EU to boost growth, it will lock us into more bad laws, put  up energy prices and taxes, invite in many more young people in need of jobs and hones we do not have, and put up spending to give them money we cannot afford.

The PM is allowed to use the full dignity of the sovereign to launch his programme for the next session of Parliament. Lords and Commons have to listen without comment, before the PM sets it out in more detail to the Commons at the start of a five day set of  debates in both Houses, when the Opposition can reply.

This year the King has been placed in a difficult position setting out a programme for a PM struggling to keep his job and to keep a majority of votes for his plans. It will be made far worse by having at its heart a dangerous constitutional Bill seeking to give back control over many of our laws and some of our money to the EU against the clear mandate of the referendum.

The PM wants the EU to take much of our fish, to decide on student support to allow more EU students to come to the UK at our expense, and to require us to adopt many of their farming, trade and business laws. He wants us to face higher energy costs  by adopting the EU carbon tax and emissions trading scheme, He wants us to impose an EU like tariff or carbon border tax on non EU imports. He wants us to accept more people under 30 to come here looking for jobs, homes and benefits. He wants us to pay them  for this by sending money to the EU.

No wonder Labour lost so many seats and votes in Brexit favouring parts of England. The PM should not be giving our sovereignty away. This is an abuse of our King in Parliament.

As support for Keir Starmer slips away with public demands he goes from Labour MPs I would be interested in your thoughts.

It is bizarre that the favoured replacement for many Labour MPs would be Andy Burnham who is not  an MP. Who would give up their seat for him? Could he win a by election in these difficult conditions for his party?

The government wrongly says an EU re set will give us more economic growth. They think they can get non tariff barriers to trade in goods eased to promote more activity. Let’s look at the basic arithmetic.

In 2024 the UK imported 1.7 times as much as it exported in goods to the EU, running a large deficit. If they could get barriers eased so that they could expand trade by 10% both ways, our goods exports would go up by £17.7 bn and our goods imports by ££30 bn . GDP figures add in exports as that is activity and value added created in the UK, and subtract imports as that is activity abroad. So with a symmetric 10% increase in goods trade GDP would be reduced . The UK would need to find ways of creating or keeping barriers against imports to help growth from the EU trade route.

To keep GDP constant the UK would need to increase its goods exports by 70% more than its imports, given the much lower base of exports in our trade. So if imports rose 5% we would need to grow exports by 8.5% just to stand still.

In practice it is difficult to see how the UK will get non tariff barriers or  border bureaucracy so reduced that it will achieve a measurable increase in trade. A few easings for meat and dairy helps a tiny sector of our exports. Meanwhile our past leading   exports to the EU  include diesel and petrol cars, about to be banned in UK, oil and gas, put into accelerated rundown by Mr Miliband, and refined oil products where we have just shut one third of our refineries.

Exporting more goods to the EU is not going to be a source of more growth for the economy on current government policies.

If the relatively small admin costs of exports to the EU are such a big worry the government could give every exporting company a subsidy to cover them. The cost  would be less than 10 % of the money the UK is likely to give the EU each year for this alleged benefit.

UK government policies have  put up youth unemployment and made it more difficult to buy a first home. EU re set would make that worse.,

Their Jobs tax and extra employment regulations  have  destroyed job  opportunities for many young people and pushed up Youth unemployment

Their over spending and  over borrowing have put up longer term interest rates hitting housebuying.

Their failure to curb illegal migration and to build more homes makes it difficult for young people to get even a rented home of their own.

Their new Renting laws are reducing rented housing supply more, pushing up rents

Now they want to make this all worse by inviting in many more  young from the EU needing jobs, grants, homes and public services when these are all in short supply . Why? The UK is not short of unemployed young people  looking for a first home they can afford.

They are also taking away the opportunity through Turing for young Brits to study in non EU universities in the US, Australia etc.Going back into Erasmus will land  taxpayers with an extra £700 m of cost mainly to help EU students get places  at UK universities!

The government seems to forget there are six times as many people  in the EU as the UK so any EU/UK scheme is bound to help many more  Europeans than Brits, at our expense.

Doing nothing is not an option. People are angry about the current situation. Doubling down on current policy of higher public spending, higher taxes and a faster drive to net zero will make everything worse and hasten the  demise of the PM to be followed by his party.

Labour needs to try to be the party of the workers again, not the Benefits  party. It needs to reach out to the UK settled population and put  an end to illegal migration and excessive legal  migration. It needs to rebuild our defences instead of running them down.

It should be scandalised by the way net zero policy is rapidly de industrialising the UK. It should lift its bans on domestic oil, gas and car manufacture. It should drastically change energy policy, reducing taxes and high prices of energy  for business and homes.

It should reform welfare to get many more people back into work, cutting the big bill.It should stop giving away money and islands to foreign governments. It should cancel the ill conceived and damaging EU re set.

Those  who debate whether Labour should turn  right to confront Reform or turn left to tackle the Greens do not get it. The public want results on clear problems. They want the promised economic  growth. They want the end to illegal migration.  They want the pledged  lower energy prices. They want more  jobs not more unemployment. They are not asking for more politics, more  spin, a choice between two wrongly categorised other parties. They just want the government to govern well. They want them to solve problems, not make them worse as they have been doing with the wrong changes.

I have just spent a lot of time researching and editing contributions because they were inaccurate. I do not normally have time or inclination to do this, and will delete serious lies . I allow people to use some lies to develop their antagonistic views as long as they are not libels about people.

The first type were submissions alleging fraud or crime in Councils without evidence or based on a mis reading of a news story. You should not make allegations of criminal conduct without evidence, and if you have good evidence you should send it to the prosecuting authorities. I do not have any evidence of crimes, but if I did I would refer the evidence in private and not publish it here.

The second type were spin, hype or lies about Reform Councils cutting spending. I will be delighted by any Council under any political management that does cut spending and taxes without damaging services, which is quite possible. There are no current examples to share. As soon as there are I will write about them, and will be happy to publish comments about them. Conservative Councils have in recent years delivered the lowest average tax rises and I look forward to seeing how Reform does.

Too many people accept Council lies when they say government grants have been cut as they usually go up, and when they say they have to spend all the money under government orders. Councils have wide ranging discretion over spending in many areas, and usually overextend their remits and spending to indulge themselves, employ too many staff and seek to compete with private sector leisure and sport facilities with subsidised offers. They are keen to draw down grants for spending items they do not have to do just because there is a grant available. They are often wanton with capital as they have access to plenty of subsidised borrowing.

If you want to make your Councillor more accountable, ask them a simple question. What is the total spend of your Council this year? Most will confess they have no idea. A few will venture a figure. The figures given are usually well below the true total. They often miss out all the capital spend and borrowing. They often miss out the Education budget as it is usually covered by a full government grant. They sometimes offer a figure that is net of all government grants. They rarely know if you ask a supplementary what the actual definition of the spending figure they have been given is.

The officers often produce extremely complex figures making it difficult for Councillors to see just how much spending they are in practice approving. Years ago when I was a County Councillor I needed to insist on simple total cash spend figures, as the officers in inflationary times always wanted to show us inflation adjusted so called real figures to disguise the large increase in cash outgoings. Looking at  Council websites on finance today there are a variety of ways of netting off grants, trading  income, and borrowings to give the impression of a lower total.

Councils are usually desperate to spend more. They grab any grant going, however undesirable the purpose of the spending as it does not directly bear on the Council tax. They are desperate to get up their trading income by milking motorists with high car park charges.  They ignore the fact that their Council tax payers are also national taxpayers having to pay for the grant, and ignore the way the grant may buy a capital asset or put in a service which then comes to impose costs directly on Council taxpayers in later years.

I did persuade the last government to get some control over wanton buying of commercial property as “investments” just before a likely collapse in shop values from the growth in on line retail. There need to be stronger controls on municipalisation, on buying up property in the Council area, and on “investing” in green technologies which should be done by the private sector under a market test.

NB Government grants, business rates, Council tax and schools grant for English  local government was £77bn in 2019 and £145 bn 2026. What cuts?