Category: Uncategorized

It has rightly long been against the law to urge people to violence against others or to send out messages to people to join burglaries, looting or rioting. It is an offence to discriminate against people for their race or religion and to use hate speech against individuals or groups. Recent On line Harms legislation has underwritten that none of this must be done online, though it was already a crime whether you used the phone, a placard, a leaflet or an on line posting.

There are now those who want to widen the law to ban so called fake news. They argue that someone can circulate a wrong fact about an event which then whips up racial or religious hatred if it wrongly accuses people of a crime they did not commit. This is still covered by existing law if the resulting comment or stimulus to action is based on hatred and on their race or religion, using an invented and wrong fact to reinforce that ill.
Trying to ban all fake news goes far beyond necessary protections of people and property, and desirable crack downs over invitations to violence. It implies there is just one truth, that the authorities can judge that truth, and that any other statements are false. Life is not that straightforward.
If people and institutions cannot make false claims which they believe  to be true at the time much debate and discussion will be banned. A government moving  in this direction might end up breaking its own fake news law all too often.

Consider some of the statements the present government has made. They said they will build 300,000 new homes a year for 5 years. Many think that unlikely. If they  do not build 300,000 a year for the next two years does that make their comment fake news?

Then there is their aim to make the U.K. the fastest growing G 7 economy. It is true it was the first half of this year but most  official forecasts expect others to outperform over the next few years. Would that also become fake news?

When it comes to issues like climate change and net zero policies there are big disagreements.Is government saying only one view is allowed of all the complexities? When the Bank of England told us two years before inflation hit 11% it would be 2%, was that fake news?

Of course we need to keep the ban hate speech and stop people promoting criminal activity. Why aren’t all the communications of all the small boat vendors taken down and prosecuted? We must not ban different ways of reviewing the big issues like climate change, migration and the economy as disagreement about cause, effect and policy are fundamental to democratic debate.

The new government solemnly promised that it would not make any important budget or fiscal announcement without a OBR report and forecast showing how it would be paid for. It condemned the Truss unfunded tax cuts though not her much larger unfunded spending rises made without a forecast. The tax Truss cuts were of course immediately cancelled and the Bank of England continued its erratic monetary squeeze disrupting bond markets.

We are living through announcements of large increases in public spending to pay a series of inflationary wage awards. There is no OBR forecast, no statement of how these will be paid for. The rail settlement brought a hopeless Transport Secretary onto the media to tell us she had no idea whether fares will be hiked or taxpayer subsidies increased to meet the bills. The government dropped the idea of offsetting some of the costs with productivity improvements from smarter and more flexible working.

Meanwhile we can always rely on the Bank of England to make things worse. They cut interest rates just as the government switched to an inflationary pay policy and just before the inflation index started to rise again. There has been no warning from the Bank about the dangers of large wage rises unmatched by improved productivity. I thought they were independent with the sole task of keeping inflation down. When might they do that?

One of the biggest missed opportunities so far from Brexit is the failure to rebuild a strong and sustainable U.K. fishing industry.

During the UK’s long stay in the EEC/EU the U.K. accepted its large and rich fishery was a common EU resource. Our fleets dwindled. The Spanish came in from far away to fish our waters. Various EU countries gained more quota to fish than U.K. vessels enjoyed. Very large trawlers and industrial  trawling pillaged our stocks and led to lower fishing quotas.

The idea of Brexit was to take back control of our fish stocks.  Government today could work with the industry. Fish caught in our waters should be landed and processed in the U.K. to rebuild our food industry. Government should help with finance to build a bigger fleet of fishing boats in U.K. yards. Quotas for foreign vessels should be cut back where stocks are under  pressure. Ultra large vessels and trawl methods that damage the marine environment  should be banned.

Take back control and rebuild our fishing fleets. We should not be importing fish we can easily catch for ourselves.

Labour governments usually like banning things. One good thing to ban would be the over 100 m industrial trawlers which come to damage our fisheries and take too much of our fish.

Even if the government reduced legal migration and stops illegal through its policing of the gangs the U.K. population is likely to continue to expand quickly from  migration over the next five years as during the last 20 years.

This means the government needs to get to its target of 300,000 new homes a year, which is stretching.

The government has floated the idea of establishing new towns or cities to achieve this new higher target. It has yet to identify where and how these will be established. Previous new towns were pioneered by New Town Corporations charged with assembling land and granting planning permission. Public money or guarantees were used to get it going, by harnessing large amounts of private capital and ending up with plenty of private ownership. Milton Keynes was one of the later examples.

At the recent peak rate of 750,000 additional people coming to live here you would need to build 3 Southamptons a year. This has not been happening and is impossible. There is discussion of building 3 or 4 new towns over a period of years. They could be near Bristol, York and Oxford. There is Labour pressure for a new town between Oxford and Cambridge along the improved east-west rail line being put in between them.

If they want to do this they will need to speed up the process and legislate to give them planning override and control of the area designated.

I would be interested in your thoughts on what is a realistic level of migration. Are new towns a good idea? Where should they be located? Is it right to override current planning controls and local opposition to large scale development?

When Labour was thrown out of office in May 2010 they had just presided over a big recession and banking collapse. Unemployment was at 7.8% of the workforce. Inflation was 3%,above the 2% target. Real wages had fallen by nearly 1% over the past year. They mainly lost the election on the last few years of very bad economic performance.

When the Conservatives were thrown out of office at the beginning of July 2024 inflation was at the 2% target. Real wages had grown 2.2% over the previous year. Unemployment was at 4.2%. They lost office for a variety of reasons including their failure to carry out their promise to reduce migration and stop the small boats, and for the high inflation and higher taxes of 2022-3 which they blamed on Covid and the Ukraine war.

I will keep a record of these closing figures for what used to be called the Misery Index, Inflation plus unemployment, and for real wage changes. If Labour can improve on these figures I will give them due credit. If as I fear their policies produce a deterioration they will earn criticism.

The last government could have had a much better record on inflation and real wages over the full four and a half years if it had followed different advice on money policy and Covid lockdowns.

It was not just the big productivity loss that boosted the deficit and lay behind higher taxes in the last Parliament. I spent time throughout giving Prime Ministers, Chancellors and Chief Secretaries who came and went many ideas of how to save money in bloated state budgets.

There were the large sums being spent on energy subsidies as they intervened heavily to switch from coal and gas generated electricity to solar and wind. There were the over the top domestic energy subsidies for the better off as well as for those on low incomes. The Truss plan gave double subsidy to most MPs, as  anyone with two homes qualified for two subsidies. There were the large loans to Councils to let them buy up property investment empires. There were the grants to Councils to take road capacity out. There was overseas aid for bad schemes and for some developing economies with their own budget capacity. There was the large expenditure on housing for illegal migrants, and the big cost of housing and public service provision for low income and no income legal migrants. There was the wasteful HS 2 project and the escalating losses of the nationalised railway.

By the last year I was hammering my big 3. The annual  £20 bn plus of lost public sector productivity. The £20 bn of avoidable annual bond losses  incurred by bad policies at the Bank of England. The £10 bn to £20 bn of overall cost and lost tax revenue from high levels of economic inactivity amongst people of working age after the pandemic. The government tried to do something about the first and third of these, but the benefits were neatly put forward into years after the election in the main by officials who did not see the urgency of implementing the necessary changes. . They would not budge on the easiest cut of all, to stop selling the bonds at a loss.

The Covid lockdowns were too long and too extreme. I worked with the Mark Harper group of Conservative MPs to challenge the policy and propose less damaging ways of keeping people safe from the virus, with limited success.

I then watched in horror at the extreme volatility of output, employment and incomes that resulted, and at the colossal public sector costs to offset the collapse of many business activities.

It became clear that whilst  many private sector activities rebounded quickly on the ending of lockdowns, public sector productivity did not.  It took a massive 7.5% hit according to ONS figures looking at Labour productivity. I drew Ministers attention to this and persuaded them that they needed to review with their officials how this big loss could rapidly be repaired, The loss was great in the NHS where much non Covid work had been abandoned owing to the decision to put Covid cases into District General hospitals, creating cross infection control difficulties. Not enough use was made of the private sector hospital capacity the taxpayers were paying for and practically  no use of the Nightingale special hospitals.

Ministers were told that the coming of AI did present useful opportunities to raise productivity but it would take substantial investment,and many months t9 draw up the specifications for procurement and to see where AI could go. I countered by pointing out we did not need to wait for any investment in AI to get back up to 2019 levels of productivity, because there was no AI in 2019 and yet the government did hit higher levels of productivity then. Eventually Ministers settled for a possible £20 bn of productivity gains spread over a long period with the need to spend to save. The actual loss on the original ONS figures was more like £30 bn. Official figures were subsequently altered, as we were living through a period of experimentation  and change with all sorts of official figures to make it difficult to see consistent series and to effect comparisons over time. The balance of trade figures were changed substantially as well as productivity numbers.

I suggested a simple device to get the lost productivity back a bit quicker. I proposed a complete staff freeze on external recruitment for non front line staff. Each time someone retired or left employment the post should be reviewed  to see if it was one to abolish , amalgamate or fill from an existing staff member. Ministers ended up agreeing a one in one out approach to stop further rapid expansion of numbers such as we saw across the Covid period, with a few exceptions like Steve  Barclay at DEFRA who did go for a freeze.

The state recruited far too many extra administrators and policy advisers over the last five years. This big bulge in recruitment led to a plunge in productivity. There is also the issue of working from home. Some of us for some of the time can be more productive at home , often giving travel time to the job as well. However it is important to go into the  office regularly and to attend important meetings in person. Staff need to interact, to mentor, assist and socialise their ideas which are all easier in an office environment.Quite a lot of jobs require daily attendance at a workplace to serve the  public, supervise the machinery and train and direct staff.

In 2020-21 The Taxpayers alliance published a league table of MPs by how much in total it cost taxpayers to employ their staff, run their offices and pay the MP’s permitted travel and accommodation costs.  The dearest MP claimed £280,000. The average MP claimed £203,000. I claimed £106,000 as the second lowest cost MP.  My costs remained low by MP standards throughout the Parliament.

I always thought MPs should try to set an example and provide great service at sensible cost. During my time as an MP I saw allowances  for staff and office costs go up a lot with many MPs expecting more staff to do things for them. I did my own research and made my own speeches. My two staff members helped me with constituency cases and keeping up with the voluminous email correspondence. I triaged cases and set out my views in response to new issues or problems. My staff took great trouble to follow up cases and seek a good outcome from public bodies for constituents. We set ourselves the target of replying by the next day to any email.

There was no pressure to contain costs or seek better value, until an MP approached the generous maximum allowed. IPSA did bring in rules about travel costs and provided standard form employment contracts for staff with salary bands. The only time I remember opposition parties taking an interest in my costs was to complain I did not claim enough of the allowances. They could  not point to how the service I provided was inadequate owing to too few staff, as we clearly turned emails round much more promptly than the average MP and I delivered more campaigns and content through this website and frequent Parliamentary speeches than many MP s managed.

MP offices do offer better value and higher productivity than a lot of public sector administrative   activity. That is the result of some cash limits for specified purposes on what an MP can spend. It also reflects  the much closer scrutiny of detailed spending of these small offices compared to the disinterest in exposing waste and inappropriate spending in many government and local Council departments. It  still leaves open the idea some have that they need to spend the full allowance, and can mean the MP does not do enough of the job for themselves. The more the MP does the better the MP usually is. There is nothing like reading all the emails and feedback and taking a personal interest in the cases where things are going wrong for people.

I am going to write a few blogs about getting better value from the public sector. I thought it provided a background to show that in my little bit of the public sector I was able to do what I preached, running my office for a little over half the average and for just over one third of the dearest. Most of the government departments I dealt with over the years did not manage the money and personnel well, and did not regard boosting  productivity as a key objective.

I supported a Conservative policy of reducing from 650 to 600 MPs at the next boundary review, which the government then failed to implement. I proposed a 10% cut in Mp numbers down to 585, as I often represented a constituency that had considerably more constituents than the Parliamentary average without finding it difficult to give them a decent service. It would also be quite possible to cut the maximum allowance total by 25% and still allow an MP to spend  50% more than I did.

When the railways were privatised there was a period of good growth in rail travel, and a more positive management enthusiasm for promoting rail travel and identifying growth opportunities. One obvious example was to add a short spur line to Heathrow airport. This  large centre for people on the move had been ignored by the nationalised industry.

The nationalised business usually followed a policy of shrink and sack. They wanted trainload traffic for freight, not individual waggon loads. They allowed or encouraged the closing of sidings and links into industrial premises. They watched as business shifted to industrial parks near motorway junctions in place of the older Trafford Park style based around rail links. They  ceased to actively promote U.K. holiday and events travel in the way the pre war railways  had.

Today there are opportunities for growth. To recapture more of the going to work trade they need flexible fares and tickets to attract and retain the 2 or 3 day a week commuter. To recapture lost freight and get many more Lorries off the road they need to actively promote waggon loads with more direct access into industrial sites and estates.  Single waggon marshalling and freight train assembly should be easier in a digital and containerised age.

They need to be more customer friendly in moving large numbers of people to and from events. A large concert or sporting contest struggles to provide adequate affordable parking and road access, and many people attending want to drink alcohol so they cannot drive. There need to be enough special trains.

The railway could work more closely with holiday resorts and other popular destinations. The railway did respond to the rise of Bicester Village as a shopping destination as an example of what can be done.

The railway can expand its capacity by introducing digital signalling on all routes. This allows central control and individual train visibility of all that is on the track, so more trains an hour can be run safely. As most track is one way only and as trains can only leave a track if points are changed it should be a very safe method of travel. Modern technology should eliminate crashes between trains on the same track,

The net zero policies followed by successive Labour, Coalition , Conservative and now Labour governments have left us dangerously short of electricity. The favourite option has been installing more and more inter connectors  with European countries, leaving us very dependent on imports when the weather lets us down with renewables.This is especially dangerous as Europe is very short of energy and may not have the power to send when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. French old nuclear  plants are  becoming unreliable and even Norways hydro system can struggle for want of rain.

The U.K. needs to install a new fleet of gas power stations. These should draw on more U.K. domestic gas as outlined in the oil and gas industry blog, as well as importing from Norway Qatar and the USA. There needs to be more gas storage to build our resilience. Old  reservoirs can be adapted for this purpose. Gas generated power at present gas prices is the most economic way of covering demand when looking at pre tax costs of capital and running costs.

The U.K. should replace the nuclear capacity it will lose this decade with new nuclear, and if possible add to the 4.8 GW that disappears. It is likely the cheapest and best way to do this will be to agree  to build a number of 300-450 MW generators to a proven design, pre fabricating  as much as possible to speed site build times. Designs should not be varied. Past nuclear sites are obvious locations with a settled community  and local workforce used to nuclear activity.

The U.K. with other leading renewable countries need to come to a determination about how best to store renewable energy when it is plentiful.Is this more  pump storage, or big battery or hydrogen conversion? It is expensive stopping wind turbines when the wind is blowing because there is insufficient demand or a shortage of grid.