Category Archives: Uncategorized

MPs are receiving copies of a lobby email asking us to sign a pledge not to report illegal migrants if they come to our surgeries.  Let me explain the nature of an MP’s surgery and the legal position to those who send in this email. The main purposes of an MP’s surgery are to take […]

Here’s an irony. Mrs May says defending the Union of the UK is one of her fundamental principles. Yet in three of her  misjudgements over Brexit she puts its future more at risk. In Northern Ireland the upholders of the Union are the majority community who vote DUP and similar  parties. Mrs May instead accepts […]

The Health Minister has announced a welcome drive to get NHS equipment returned after use so it can be used again after cleaning, or recycled. Some NHS Trusts do this, and the Minister is now seeking to extend this to the whole English NHS. Readers of this site will know I have been pressing for […]

I read in one newspaper that we will be offered tax cuts in the budget. Just what we need to stimulate an economy being put through a combined monetary and fiscal squeeze. Then I read in another paper that the Chancellor will tear up the promises to raise Income Tax thresholds, and find some more […]

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): There has been a big decline in our self-sufficiency as food producers during the 46 years in which we have been in the common agricultural policy. As a result, we are now net importers from the continent of Europe, to the tune of £20 billion a year—a very large part of […]

The UK solemnly goes on complying with all requirements on a member state of the EU. This year they dutifully filed their “2018 National Reform Programme and their 2018 Convergence programme”. The Treasury has long accepted the EU’s demands that we keep throttling back the deficit and move to getting down the debt as a […]

In my speech to Parliament on the Second Reading of the Agriculture Bill I will ask the Secretary of State to improve his Bill. It should have at its centre the provision of laws and government policies that support growing food at home, and promote more UK output. Mr Gove presents himself as a champion […]

The UK establishment media are usually slaves to Treasury spin and Bank of England error. Throughout the Osborne years as Chancellor we were told the main thrust of economic policy was to bring down the deficit. 80% would be achieved by spending cuts and 20% by tax increases. I set out regularly from the Treasury’s […]

Many people over 50 have money on deposit. They would like interest rates to go up. Some retired people think it is unfair that they have been prudent, not spent all they earned, and now find tiny returns on the cash they put by to supplement the pension. Their children and grandchildren may see it […]

The Bank of England has pursued an energetic monetary tightening since the spring of 2017. Two interest rate hikes,a withdrawal of credit facilities to commercial banks and a major FPC tightening on car loans, some mortgages and consumer credit have helped slow the economy markedly. This has reinforced the fiscal squeeze,with higher taxes and a […]