Today we remember all those who lost their lives in conflict. They died to defend our freedoms and to allow a better world. We need to remember their sacrifice. We need to strive to defend and enjoy the freedoms they fought to preserve.
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Too many rules and taxes
Being an MP and maybe a Minister is a privilege. Any law or tax you disagree with can be removed if you persuade enough colleagues to vote with you to get rid of it.
Being an MP also brings with it plenty of accountability for your own actions. As an MP who wanted fewer taxes and rules I was very conscious I needed to ensure I obeyed all the ones I disagreed when I could not get them changed.
I set up a system of personal diary alerts to ensure I did not miss Council tax bills, tax returns, vehicle licensing, Congestion charge compliance and all the rest.
When parking I poured over the parking rules to ensure I had paid the right amount. I worried all the time about complying with so many rules and tax requirements. I did not think I would get much sympathy if I had made a mistake, with some bound to assume I had deliberately failed to pay or comply. I avoided any error.
Labour MPs should find compliance easier, as they are the ones who campaign for more rules and higher taxes. There should be joy in their heart that they have to pay more tax on making a profit on their home, or have to buy an expensive licence to rent it out. They should be model landlords always putting their tenants first if they have investment houses.
It is strange three Ministers have tripped up over these housing related issues where their government is so keen to boost tenants, regulate landlords more and tax people more who make money on their homes. We know the Chancellor was well aware of the landlord licensing schemes in general as she was promoting them. We know the former Deputy PM was keen on taxing better off people with property more as she argued that case. We know the former Homelessness Minister knew about landlord regulation to stop bad landlords as she managed that as a Minister.
Express article on too much change, published Thursday
King’s College latest research on migration tells us 86% of UK people now think there are tensions between migrants and people born here. In practice most UK people have been welcoming to many newcomers over recent years and have hired many of them to do work that needed doing. What angers people are illegal arrivals and people given advantages by the state on arrival at the expense of settled taxpayers who have to pay the bills.
It is not surprising there are current worries given the failure to keep out illegal young men chancing it on unlicenced boats across the Channel. Most UK citizens think it wrong that people should enter illegally and then be given free housing, healthcare and financial support when no-one agreed to their arrival. Some are housed in good hotels that until recently were places people aspired to go to for celebrations and big events. How come they are now for people who have broken the law to come here and are now given priority? Why are our hotels not available for their proper uses? We have seen many protests in localities where people object strongly to this use of a local hotel. Driving rents up to put them in HMOs can also cause tensions with locals seeking affordable housing.
The news is currently led by stories about the early release of foreign criminals from jail who have committed sexual crimes which naturally causes concern, adding to domestic crime in a high profile way. All acknowledge that we have home grown criminals but that is no reason to allow in some sexual predators, murderers, tax evaders, illegal business organisers and drug dealers without making sufficient check. Where they are allowed in by mistake and prove to be criminal people want them sent back to where they came from promptly.
The King’s survey reveals wider concerns about the pace of cultural change. With around half the country telling pollsters they would vote Reform or Conservative at the next election, the fact that 9 out of 10 Reform voters and 7 out of 10 Conservative voters think the speed of change too fast is a major worry. It means many people do think a country has to evolve, with new people welcomed in numbers that local communities can accept and absorb. We want evolution not revolution, with attitudes towards religion, national identity and democracy accommodating other views at an acceptable pace. Most conservatives want some change. Things can be made better. Progress in technology and living standards is welcome. Most conservatives accept we should grant asylum to our share of people fleeing torture and death elsewhere, but there are legal routes to do that.
The problem with very high levels of migration lies in making proper provision for the new people, and in reassuring the settled community that all will be well as they arrive. Inviting in too many leaves us short of homes. It pushes up rents as the government contracts for large amounts of accommodation for new arrivals. Hotels are switched to hostels affecting the facilities of an area. It adds to the need to put in new electricity and gas supplies, to enlarge water pipes and expand sewage works, to put in more rail and road capacity. The settled community is then told it needs to pay more for water and electricity, and to pay more tax to expand our infrastructure, partly owing to the pressure of numbers. That can lead to resentments, as many people did not feel they ever voted for a policy of major population expansion from migration.
Cultural change has also been rapid over sexual and personal identity. I welcome more freedom for people to express themselves and enter adult relationships based on consent as they wish. As a recent court judgement has concluded that does not mean losing the ability to distinguish between a woman and a man or allowing men to use women only spaces.
It is putting all these things together that has led to disaffection in the conservative half of the country. These worries spread across the right/left divide, with others sharing the feeling that change has been too rapid. That does not mean trying to recreate 1950s Britain or reneging on the freedoms we have gained since. It does mean slowing the pace of these changes, and being more tolerant to those who are alarmed by some of them.
Free lunch or magic money tree? How to pay for public services.
Magic money trees and free lunches.
When politicians tell us the hard truths that there are no magic money trees and no free lunches many do not want to believe them. In recent years a so called independent Central Bank wrongly created a money tree called Quantitative easing. It allowed government egged on by all the Opposition parties to spend and borrow a fortune to lock down the country for too long and pay people for doing nothing. It led to a predictable high inflation, vindicating those of us who warned against Latin American style government finances paid for by a printing press in the Bank.
It would be more reassuring if more officials from the Bank and Treasury would speak out against a repeat of the Magic Money Tree experiment. Instead when the Bank Committee yesterday met it did not even discuss and comment on its damaging bond sales programme, apparently oblivious to its importance to money policy, fiscal policy and the state of the economy.Getting off dependence on the magic money tree is coming at huge cost to taxpayers which the Bank top people will not even talk about.
Politicians occasionally hit back against disgruntled voters expressing anger at bad government. They complain the public want both lower taxes and better services. They say the public think there is a free lunch.
I think the public are right to want lower taxes and better services. They sense the public sector is awash with money and recruits many extra people year after year. It would not be a free lunch if the public sector spent its money more wisely, employed fewer people, and helped them work smarter. That is what all good private sector businesses try to do. It would be a better value lunch for the hard pressed customers, the taxpayers.
It is bizarre that UK public sector productivity is no higher today than in 1997. That’s despite 28 years of big investments in computing by all parts of government, years of more training and promotions in the civil service and wider administration of the public sector. So why has none of this resulted in efficiency gains to match those of the private sector? Big employing departments like tax collection and benefit spending were obvious beneficiaries of the greater productivity putting more on computer and on line could bring. Productivity fell under Labour 1997-2010 as they spent more and hired more staff. It rose a bit under the Conservatives 2010-19, as they tried to get some better value out of the public sector. It fell disastrously over covid lockdowns and still has not properly recovered despite heavy spending on remote working, on line meetings, better data handling and now AI.
Working away to capture the possible productivity gains in the public sector would give us a trend line of at least 1% gains in productivity a year. Some would say the public sector in catch up mode should be able to achieve 2% a year. At 1% a year after five years the public sector would cost £30bn less to run the current level of services. That would be a handsome free lunch, allowing service improvements and tax cuts without borrowing more.
Surely public sector managers, now well remunerated and plentiful, could achieve this? Why aren’t their bonuses dependent on it? Where are the plans to amalgamate posts and improve jobs as people leave? All this can be done without any compulsory redundancies as staff numbers fall around 7% a year if you do not replace them by external recruitment.
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Time for Ministers to own their problems
From the moment you are appointed a Minister you are on duty, on risk, and have powers to improve or prevent things that are wrong. The present government 16 months in still behaves like a dissatisfied guest in Hotel Government, blaming the previous managers for things not working. They are the managers now.
Worse still they are the managers whose actions to date are making things much worse, not improving them. Take the most sensitive issues where people wanted change for the better. Illegal migrants have increased a lot instead of smashing the gangs. Inflation has nearly doubled as they put up energy bills, water hills and the costs of employing people. The number of people wrongly let out of jail has more than doubled. The deficit has been greatly increased by a big increase in public spending with no matching improvement in service.
So why? Ministers have done things that were bound to make things worse – increasing prices and costs, removing past attempts to cut ilegal migration, cutting sentences that have to be served, giving more money without seeing what it will buy, hitting business, entrepreneurs and savers with penal taxes.
Ministers have proved incapable of leading their officials. David Lammy instead of taking the blame and working with officials when there was the first high profile wrong release, denounced his staff in public and announced a new way to release without getting buy in from the people doing it. No wonder there was another big embarrassment a few days later.Rachel Reeves has pencilled in big numbers for more efficiencies and productivity gains in future without setting out a joint work programme with departmental managers to deliver the savings. Wes Streeting has announced the abolition of NHS England without thinking how to pay the redundancy bills or get the work done that will still need doing.Ed Miliband Announces unrealistic targets then refuses the blame for the rip off costs and prices needed to try to hit them.
Ministers need some training on how to do these demanding jobs. Mouthing press releases about what they would like to do jars when reality is so different.
Rachel Reeves is right that our poor productivity is no puzzle, but is wrong about how to put it right
Rachel Reeves yesterday in her speech set out reasons for her poor performance. She is still claiming the problems stem from her inheritance, but she took over with 4% unemployment, now 4.8%, with 2% inflation, now 3.8% and a faster growing economy in the first half of 2024 than since. Most commentators see the damage was done by the run up to her first budget, hitting confidence by threatening all sorts of taxes, followed by a tax raising budget. Targeting extra tax on rich people, on companies, on small businesses , farms and above all on employing people was a sure fire way to undermine confidence, reduce new jobs and lead to closures of plants and shops and loss of jobs.
Food prices surged as shops struggled to meet the new higher wage and property bills. Energy prices surged as Mr Miliband’s enforced transition turned out to be dearer, not cheaper. Jobs dried up, and many young people now languish on benefits, unable to get their first foot on the employment ladder.
She says the poor rate of productivity growth is not a puzzle. I agree with that. She says it stems from years of underinvestment, Brexit paperwork and austerity economics. Wrong on all counts. The public sector collapse of productivity from covid was not owing to too little public sector investment, but to bad management. Just look at the wasted investment into the Post office and NHS computers, and into HS2. Our trade went up, not down after Brexit, with soaring services trade helping boost our economy. Far from 2019-24 being years of public sector austerity they were years of large increases in public spending and public recruitment, which lay behind the falls in productivity as too many people achieved too little extra.
So why is the productivity slowdown no puzzle? Because it results from the UK’s mad dear energy policy, closing high energy using factories and shutting down our highly productive oil and gas industry prematurely. It is because the public sector has greatly expanded its employee numbers and spending levels without delivering more service. This started after covid under the previous government and was clearly visible when Labour took over. Instead of demanding better public sector productivity they made the problem worse. They recruited more and boosted pay considerably without requiring smarter working. They intensified the closures of oil and gas, preventing any new wells being drilled or new investment being put in. They pushed up energy prices more in a dash to introduce more high cost renewables. The rate of factory closures speeded up. The ever higher energy taxation drove two oil refineries to close and two big olefins petrochemical plants to shut. No wonder productivity struggles as these are the capital intensive businesses that boost the national average productivity figure. People who serve in bars and restaurants work hard and are much needed but their labour productivity, the amount of revenue they earn for their business, is much lower than the revenue earned by the oil production worker or the refinery staff in very automated settings.
To get the UK back on the road to higher productivity, faster growth and higher living standards we need lower energy prices to price industry back into world markets from a Uk base. We need lower total public spending and borrowing to start to bring our very high long term interest rates down. Rachel Reeves drove those up well above Truss levels in her first year by spending too much. She is wrong to say our high rates are the result of international markets. Our rates have gone higher than others thanks to a very bad budget. She recognises the need to get more people into work to cut the benefit the bill the right way. The trouble is without other spending reductions and some tax cuts on investment and business she will not get all the jobs it needs to bring that about.
She needs to redouble efforts to help the public sector work smarter. Bonuses need to be aligned to doing things better and cheaper. There needs to be an immediate staff freeze on all external recruitment apart from uniformed staff, medics and teachers. That way the organisations can slim as people leave, amalgamating roles and promoting existing staff into more rewarding and demanding positions.
Government IT programmes
As this government embarks on a large AI investment programme in digital technology we should remember past disasters and learn from them. The infamous nationalised Post Office computer programme Horizon led to the false imprisonment of staff and haywire accounting. Taxpayers are picking up a huge bill for bad computers and big compensation.The contracts have cost around £2,5 bn with £1.4 bn on compensation and legal defences of the PO.
We should also remember the Blair government launching the very large £6.2 bn digitalisation National Programme for IT in the NHS. Doctors and hospitals found a centralised solution did not work for them so the system development was abandoned in 2011.
The Home Office Emergency Services Network has experienced large delays and cost overruns. Their eborders system had to be terminated.
The government has so far failed to set out how it is spending its budget of an extra £3.25 bn for AI over three years. What will we get for this? How will the contracts be drawn up? How will it be distributed between departments and Agencies? Will it be carried through without the extra costs and stress of redundancies? When and how will the staff savings be achieved?
Past experience of too many programmes is cost overrun and sometimes big project failure. Both the expensive National Programme for IT for the NHS and Post Office Horizon started under the previous Labour government and had to be terminated/ remedied under a successor government.
Crimes of violence
There are too many crimes of violence. Knife, bomb and gun attacks against people on the streets, shopping, at entertainments or on public transport naturally alarm many people.
Much of this is also now being seen by the public through the lens of the failure of governments over all too many years to take the Pakistani rape gangs seriously and to follow up for the children and young women who suffered in many towns and cities. That has led to distrust of the various authorities including Councils and the Home Office who should have pursued the allegations properly.
The current Home Secretary needs to get better at handling these tragedies. Yesterday she did not tell us anything about the man being arrested for the woundings of many people even though he was apprehended at the scene of the crime and is presumably being charged with attempted murder.Her long silence meant people could speculate about who carried out the atrocity and why, in ways which could make false allegations about groups who were not to blame.
The Home Secretary needs to keep the public informed. She needs to stress how justice will be applied impartially. She needs to work on policies more likely to deter people from random and wanton violence.
COP 30
What is the point of COP 30? The US does not believe in man made climate change as a threat and is pursuing growth through producing more cheap okl and gas to give it a big competitive advantage against the EU and UK with their dear energy. China has been expanding its CO 2 output in the ten years since the Paris Treaty Agreement for others to get it down, whilst building a dominant position in renewables, batteries and battery cars to sell to others as well as for home consumption. Other leading CO 2 emitters including Russia, Iran, India, Indonesia are still expanding their CO 2 output.
It is stupid for the UK and other parts of Europe to cut its CO 2 output by closing down industry, only to import the goods instead. This increases world CO 2 output with all the extra transport.
The Climate Change advocates want to cut air travel, air conditioning and meat eating as all these add to CO 2. A COP Conference in Brazil will increase all of these are many people fly out to air conditioned hotels with grand dinners. Doing all this on a government expense account is unwise. People hate hypocrisy and waste. This Conference looks like both on stilts.
The UK cannot spare more money for the usual whip round the richer countries to give to the poorer. The UK should not promise to hit tougher targets as it is already signed up to targets that are too high.
Don’t do as I do, do as I say
When I was an MP railing against more rules and higher taxes I still knew I had to pay all the taxes and obey all the rules I disagreed with. I would not have been a hypocrite to ignore them but I would have been breaking the rules and the laws.
Labour Ministers want higher taxes and more rules, especially on people like them who are paid more than three times the average wage. It means when they are breaking the rules they may not only be breaking the law but they are being hypocrites.
Angela Rayner thought she could carry on despite misunderstanding tax rules on her complex property portfolio. It turned out she could not. Blaming advisers did not help. She is a tax hawk who thinks people like her then on a big salary with large capital gains should pay more tax, not less. No surprise she had to resign.
The Chancellor has called for more places to require someone letting out their home to have to buy a licence and file various certificates to prove the house systems meet modern standards. It is therefore surprising she did not check the need for and the provision of a licence in her own case. We now have two different statements from her over why the licence was missed.
I think it is all too easy to miss a requirement when you do something new in an over regulated world.I think there should be a bit more tolerance of honest mistakes. I cannot see how this extends to the Chancellor who not only knew about licencing but was urging it to be more widely adopted. Failure to buy a licence and show the certificates is a criminal offence with a large possible fine. Surely the Chancellor should consider her position. She cannot say this was an over the top rule as they will not get rid of it. Why go easy on enforcement with a Minister who believes in this imposition.