Dear Saj

Congratulations on your appointment as Health Secretary. I am glad you intend to make your main priority bringing the pandemic and the special measures it has required to an end. The great success of the vaccines and the vaccination programme make that possible soon.

I have been working on a number of suggestions helpful to combatting and treating the virus, and to seeing off future pandemics which I have put to your predecessor, other Ministers and senior officials. I would be grateful for your thoughts on progress with them.

1. Drug trials of drugs that may have therapeutic value in treating CV 19. After a relatively early breakthrough with dexamethasone, there was a long delay before reaching a positive conclusion on Regeneron. We are still awaiting more news on ivermectin, vitamins C and D and other established drugs.
2.The use of intense UV light cleaners with suitable safety precautions as a means of disinfecting health settings against the virus.
3. The modification of air flow systems in health buildings to ensure early extraction of virus bearing air to cut cross infections in a General hospitals or care homes
4. Improved protocols for the discharge of patients from hospitals to control transmission of infections
5. Designation of some hospitals in populous areas as pandemic hospitals and others as non CV 19 hospitals to make greater use of isolation to cut cross infection

I am also keen to see progress with the restoration of non covid work in hospitals, where there seems to be a substantial variation in rates of non covid work now being achieved.

With best wishes to you in this important new task.

John

The airwaves are alight with the demands of anti Brexit MPs and commentators to let more economic migrants into the UK to take low paid jobs in hospitality, care, agriculture and other sectors that got used to a steady stream of eastern European migrants to carry out the less skilled work. We are told of shortages of people to pick crops, serve in cafes and clean care homes. At least it provides a welcome refutation of all those anti Brexit forecasts of mass unemployment we used to get.

One of my main motivations coming into politics was to promote prosperity and wider ownership for the many. I have always sought to propose and support policies which would help more people find better paid work and to acquire a home and savings of their own. I do not like the cheap labour model. I have also recognised that we cannot simply legislate for everyone to be better paid. Each person who wants higher pay has to go on a personal journey, acquiring skills, experience, qualifications that justify the higher income. Every company and government department has to go on a journey to help promote higher productivity to provide the higher pay people rightly aspire to. One of the crucial debates in the referendum was the debate about free movement and low pay, with Brexiteers saying they wished to cut the flow of people accepting low pay from abroad, to help raise pay here at home and promote more people already legally here into better paid jobs.

Just inviting in hundreds of thousands of people from lower income countries in the EU is not a good model for them or us. Many of them live in poor conditions and sacrifice to send cash back to their wider families. They may not be able to go on a journey themselves to something better. It may work for the farm or business by keeping labour costs down, but only at the expense of pushing the true cost more onto taxpayers. Low paid employees may well qualify for benefit top ups for housing, Council Tax and general living costs which the state pays for. Each new person arriving needs GP and hospital provision in case of illness or accident. They need school places if they bring a family with them. They need a range of other public services from transport and roads to policing and refuse collection. The country has had to play catch up in many of these areas given the large numbers of people who have joined us in recent years. The EU once suggested a figure of Euro 250,000 was needed for first year set up costs for a new arrival. The biggest cost is of course the provision of housing where the state plays a big role for those on low incomes. The need to build so many more homes creates unwelcome political tensions in communities facing concrete over the greenfields.

There is also in practice a cost to the businesses they work for and a loss to the wider development of the economy. If a business has easy access to low paid labour it will put off looking at ways at automating or providing more computer or machine support to employees to raise their productivity. If farms find cheap pickers they do not provide the same support and demand for smart picking aids or machines. We live in a period of digital turbulence, when artificial intelligence, robotics and digital processing of data and messages are transforming so much. Harnessing more of these ideas could both power greater technological development and associated businesses here in the UK and could boost productivity and therefore potential wages in the businesses they serve.

The UK and the EU has spent the last two decades leaving much of the digital and robotic revolution to the USA. It is time to catch up. Successful harnessing of it will spawn more new large companies and offer the chance of higher pay from higher productivity.

(First published on Conservative Home)

There is a big divide in our society about people who cross the Channel by small boat to gain entry to the U.K. Some presume these people are asylum seekers or economic migrants from poor countries that we should help. Others are angry that the U.K. spends its resources on picking them up from the Channel and the placing them in accommodation with free board allowing them plenty of time to try to establish eventual legal entry. They point out these people cannot be asylum seekers as they are coming from France, which is a safe country. The migrants themselves are often frustrated that they are detained and not allowed to work whilst legal processes grind on.

Opponents say why cannot we return them, having made clear they are breaking the law by seeking passage without permission. They have often given substantial sums to criminal gangs to help them reach our shores, and have risked themselves and their families in unsuitable and overloaded boats. They have sought to cross on of the world’s busiest shipping lanes in very vulnerable vessels. They must have calculated the U.K. will rush to their assistance because they and the people smugglers have chosen to put them at risk.

Supporters of the arrivals say we have a duty to rescue people from their own deliberate mistakes, and should show sympathy for people who are so keen to join us.

I would hope most could come to agree that people putting themselves at risk like this is undesirable, and devoting so much sea patrol and rescue resource to this dangerous criminal Business unsatisfactory. The Home Secretary has promised new clearer law in the U.K. and a more united effort to crack the smuggling gangs and put them out of business. It should be an aim which unites most of us. I believe the Home Secretary wishes to do this, but has found the current law unhelpful for the task and is looking to amend it. She has also initiated an enquiry into the recent actions of Border Force in going into French waters to pick people up, when the French should have taken them back to safety in France.

There is a part of the UK establishment that is always keen to belittle and run the UK down, claiming we are small and unimportant now we have left the EU. They ignore the facts that we are the second biggest contributor to NATO, a member of the UN security Council, the fifth largest world economy, a member of the G7 and the Commonwealth, and an important influence on world events. This autumn sees the UK chairing the COP 26 Climate conference, shortly after we chaired the G7.

There is however one important area where I agree with them that we are small and not very important, and that is in the list of countries and regions that put out the most carbon dioxide. Ironically here the establishment seem to think it is the UK that has to do so much more, when all the figures show attention needs to be focussed on the Big three carbon generators, China, the USA and the EU. Between them they account for 52% of the world output compared to our 1%. In other words if the UK eliminated all its carbon dioxide output it would have the same effect on world figures as the Big 3 cutting their output by just 2%.

China is still saying she intends to increase her massive carbon output further this decade before finding some ways to start to curb it. China needs to be challenged on her large and growing output. At 29% of world CO2 she is by far and away the biggest single source. If the UK eliminated all its CO2 that would not fully offset one recent year’s growth in output by China. The USA has just experienced four years under a President dedicated to increasing US output and use of cheap fossil fuel energy. He successfully boosted US output of oil and gas to help power an industrial renaissance by onshoring investments that had gone abroad and expanding US output. The new President thinks this was a wrong policy but has yet to announce the ways in which he intends to redirect US activities. We await a detailed plan with timetables on how to get US people out of their internal combustion engines cars, eating less meat and putting in electric heating. The EU too has a similar issue. Germany remains wedded to a major car industry which largely sells diesel and petrol vehicles. The country burns a lot of coal and says it intends to keep coal in its power mix at least until 2035. How is this compatible with the EU’s aims? The EU is around one tenth of world carbon dioxide production.

As Chairman of the Conference the UK needs to challenge the USA and EU to produce timely and convincing plans of how they will achieve demanding targets as early as 2030 as it is difficult to see them hitting them on current policy. All major participants need to see that if they do not get a much better offer from China and other leading emerging market countries world emissions will continue to grow. It is not fair to close down our industries and power stations whilst others carry on churning out the CO2.

The European Movement still will not accept the result of a big democratic vote. They have sent me and doubtless many others a glossy brochure designed to show what they see as the bad news of Brexit. They urge us “to build back our ties with the rest of Europe”, code no doubt for trying to rejoin. Had remain won I suspect they would have used such a win to justify every federal scheme and every further removal of power from the UK which the EU has in mind.

So what are their latest quibbles? Gone are the absurdly wrong forecasts of a house price collapse, a jobs collapse, a GDP collapse as the UK looks forward to its best year of growth for a long time now at last it is out. Instead of a jobs collapse the UK discovers it is short of people for all the jobs that are being created. They still want us to try to re enter the Erasmus scheme instead of backing the new UK scheme which will help many more UK students. They bemoan a loss of certain EU monies, when the UK has promised to spend more than we were getting under EU rules. They are worried about rights of refugees and of EU citizens settled here, yet this has all been taken care of.They are right to highlight problems with fishing and Northern Ireland, but these of course stem from having an Agreement with the EU instead of running our own affairs. They should blame their EU for those troubles.

When people ask me what have been the wins so far, I say the biggest win is the right of our country to decide for itself what to raise in tax, what to spend, what to pass into law, who to negotiate Treaties with and how to contribute to the great causes of prosperity and democracy worldwide. It is true that many of these freedoms have not yet been used. Much opportunity lies ahead, as a Brexit public seeks to educate an anti Brexit establishment into the joys and advantages of making our own decisions and making government accountable directly to us through elections in a way Commissioners never were. There are so many areas where we can do better now we are free to do it our way,which I have often set out here.

We have already seen the big advantage of attracting our own vaccine solutions and production capabilities, drawing on the excellence of UK science. We will create Free Trade Agreements with Australia, New Zealand and the TPP as well as keeping all the FTAs we and the EU held jointly. We have detached ourselves from the pressures to join the Euro or to send ever bigger transfer payments to relatively rich countries on the continent.

Dear Grant,

I am glad the railway has considered the issue of season tickets and discounts in a new era of flexible working where many full time employees will become part time in the office . I raised this early in the pandemic with Ministers and the industry.

The response of a 15% discount for eight tickets a month is disappointing and inflexible. It is in the railway’s interest to encourage more use of the excessive  capacity it currently provides. No one can be sure they want just eight returns a month.

The model to adopt should be a rising discount model. The more you travel your chosen route the cheaper the extra journey should become. The accumulating discount could be a quarterly system, or a longer or shorter period. The first time you went to the office it would be full fare. The second time there would be a small discount, with a progressively higher discount. Frequent  users would end up paying  perhaps just a 20% fare for an additional journey.

This would give most of the advantages of the season ticket which allows additional journeys over the basic five returns a week free, whilst always giving the railway marginal revenue from more travel. It also incentivises  travellers to go more often. If a traveller choose off peak the fare would be an off peak one. The railway will need to see if the peak changes and be ready to change peak  period pricing  to reflect travel reality.

I support the Government’s passion for home ownership. They are right that we need to do more to extend that opportunity to a new generation. It was, after all, an opportunity that previous generations took advantage of, enjoying the pleasures that can come from owning one’s own home and doing with it rather more of the things one wishes to do.

I support the Government’s wish to bring forward more brownfield development, because there are still many sites around the country that could be tidied up and better used. I trust that, within that, the Government wish to ease the planning system sufficiently so that where we need to convert tired or redundant commercial buildings into residential properties there will be no great planning impediment in doing so.

I strongly support the wish of the Government to do something extra to make sure that developers with planning permissions build out the permissions they have under a proper local plan. In the borough of Wokingham, of which I represent a part, we have been afflicted in recent years by some landowners and developers gaming the system. Thousands of planning permissions are outstanding, and yet the local plan, which tries to protect areas, has been overwhelmed at times by people lodging appeals on land not within the local plan for development and inspectors deciding that we did not have enough land because of the slow rate of build against all the permissions that are there.

Above all, we need a planning system that can reconcile our wish to protect the green gaps, the green fields, the farms and the woods—indeed, to expand the woods—and at the same time to make enough land available for housing. The Office for National Statistics has shown that, in the year to March 2020, we welcomed some 715,000 extra people into our country.

Although 403,000 people also left, that meant that there were still 312,000 extra people to house, and not all of those going freed up homes in the right place for the incomers. We need to have sustainable immigration. Of course we need to welcome people into our country, but they should expect decent standards of housing, and the gap is too large. We now have a backlog of demand and need, and if we keep inviting in hundreds of thousands of extra people, we are not going to catch up. I urge the Government to make things easier so that the trade-offs between environmental protection and more concrete for housing are not so difficult.

Finally, on levelling up, which I strongly support, over the years a large number of executive homes have been built in Wokingham and places like it, attracting people with great qualifications—people capable of commanding well above average earnings. We need to provide that kind of housing if we wish to attract companies and the investment to level up, and we should not put all that housing into the areas that have already been very successful.

Yesterday Parliament debated the proposed planning changes the  governments is consulting about.

I will post my speech later this morning.

I made two main points. In order to eliminate the shortage of homes the government needs to set sustainable levels of immigration.

As the government wishes to level up it needs to encourage the building of more Executive homes in places that want to attract more investment  and jobs. The construction of many larger homes in the South East has led to a lot of well qualified and experienced people buying homes in the area which in turn attracts more businesses and investors who wish to recruit the talent. Levelling up requires more balance of dearer homes and talent around the entire country.

I see in the press stories about alleged tensions between the Treasury and the PM’s Office about the magnitude of future bills and  the affordability of the government’s programme. I agree with the PM that the U.K. should be willing to pay to support the economy, individuals and business all  the time some jobs are banned and businesses shut to contain the pandemic. The Treasury largely did this but was unhelpful to some small businesses and the self employed for no good reason and is reluctant to continue the support for the delay in Freedom day. The budget deficit last year was very large but came out well below Treasury forecasts. It is highly likely it will contract quickly as soon as we have a full and vigorous recovery. Threatening tax rises or ill judged spending cuts now will delay recovery and might worsen the deficit.

It is however important the Treasury  provides a voice for value for money and for sensible priorities on spending. Let’s look at a couple of the alleged battles looming up.

 

The first is the issue of the next upgrading of the Retirement pension. The Conservative Manifesto promised to maintain the triple lock, which says the pension will go up by the largest of  2.5%, inflation or average wages. Most of us Conservative MPs want to keep the promise. This April wage growth hit 8.4%, showing how distorted the figures are by the affects on the base from lockdown and massive shedding of lower paid jobs during the emergency. Most people have had nothing like a 8.4% pay rise. Maybe as we see the next few months figures some of the distortion will unwind, removing the anomaly. Maybe the July  figures which will be used for the September pension updating will still flatter.

 

If the Treasury wants  to rid itself for one year of the wages part of the triple lock then it needs to tell us why and what it thinks would be a fairer figure. It should consult and trust the public. It should not simply insist  on tearing  up a Manifesto promise. It would need to set out what it thinks the underlying increase in wages and living standards is adjusted for the distortions on the CV 19 labour market and see if enough of the public agrees before venturing change. Clearly recent figures for wages are not a good representation of a general increase in income which the triple lock was designed to copy for pensions.

We also read that the Treasury is not in favour of a new U.K. ship to help represent us diplomatically and commercially around the world.The capital cost is modest relative to the HMG capital budget and the costs will be spread over several years. The vessel must be built in the U.K. which would generate some offsetting tax receipts. It is strange the Treasury did not sort this out before No  10 briefed all the main outlets and released an illustrative picture. Sometimes you should be bold and spend a bit to boost future business and influence. Such spending would be better than a bigger advertising budget for example. The Treasury could find more offsets.

 

The big changes that come from ending lockdown must result in early and big savings. Ending all the special support measures and cutting back all Covid related spending should make a big difference. Implementing the ideas I and others have put forward to get more discipline and control into quango budgets would also help. Controlling public spending is hard graft and lots of detail. The Treasury needs to work away at raising productivity and getting better value for money whilst not cutting priority spending on health or education or promoting a strong U.K. recovery.

The voters of Chesham and Amersham sent a message to the Conservative party. It is a message they have been trying sending in other ways for a long time, and one that is shared with many other constituencies in Conservative England. They want a green Conservative policy that is relevant to their lives, landscape and locality. As Conservatives we all wish to conserve and  look after the best of our local natural world. We  understand our relationship with fields, farms and forests and the need to treat them well. The voters  do not welcome  excessive new housing development taking away their  countryside. In Chesham and Amersham they have long fought against the way HS2 will cut swathes through their open spaces and woods and leave many of them living close to a very noisy fast train line.

 

            The battle of greenery will be the defining one of our age. The Conservatives will not be able to outbid the Greens and Liberal Democrats, parties in opposition, when it comes to tougher action to cut carbon and match ever more difficult targets. A carbon target is easy for those not in office, and very difficult for those in power who need to persuade or force  millions of people to change their behaviours to deliver. The way Conservatives can reassure most that we are the party of good green is to set out a new and positive green agenda.

 

            First the government must show how we will limit excessive migration and too many demands to build more homes. We believe in  treating people well that we welcome into our country, including helping them with good housing. There has to be a limit on how many we can accommodate, given the shortage of good housing and the need to  cater for the wishes of the many already legally settled here for  better provision for them and their families. The current pace of housebuilding in the most popular areas is unsustainable whilst the need is very great. If hundreds of thousands of  new people come every year to join us that is a lot of extra housing.

 

            We need to demonstrate an intuition about what people will do for the green cause. We can make common progress with the many by encouraging, incentivising and promoting better home insulation. Lower fuel bills is a winning proposition.  If the aim is to substitute dearer power for cheaper power, and more interruptible power for reliable power, it will be a difficult sell. The government still hasn’t even removed  the EU’s VAT levy on insulation materials, boiler controls, draught excluder and the rest. Surely that would help promote the virtues of keeping warm whilst burning less energy. The public reluctance to take up smart meters should worry the government, as these are offered free. People see little advantage for them for the work that has to  be done in their home. They already know how much power they are consuming, and what makes the most difference to their bills. Social media is full of chat that may be misinformed fearing that a smart meter will lead to differential pricing by time of day and even temporary removals of power as the authorities seek to balance a system with more interruptible wind and solar power, and with more heavy demands from car battery recharging and electric heating.

 

         The emerging government agenda to be kinder to animals is a positive. We are a nation of animal lovers. There needs to be some commonsense about how far to go on rewilding with the introduction of dangerous species to areas people may wish to use for recreation or food production. There is considerable support for the government passion to plant many more trees. Many a Conservative would rather have a wood nearby than another housing estate. As the trees grow we should also encourage sustainable forestry. It is  a disgrace that we import so much of our timber needs, often from colder countries where the growing times are longer. The government could be greener by offering to cut the wood miles. The economy would be stronger for producing more of our own material for  roof trusses and floors, fuel for biomass electricity plants and timber for furniture.

 

           At the heart of the new agriculture policies being set out following our exit from the Common Agricultural Policy the emphasis is all on nature. I am  in favour of encouraging areas of wildflowers, good hedgerows and attractive woods and coppices. I am also very keen on cutting the food miles. For too long we have been dragged into dependence on continental food at the expense of our domestic agriculture. Our dairy industry was kept small by shortage of quota, our fruit industry was offered grants to grub up our orchards to replace Cox with the  Golden delicious. Our market gardening industry for flowers and vegetables was undercut  by the Dutch and others, with arguments over subsidies and the price of gas to heat glasshouses. Defra should as a matter or urgency bring forward support systems to encourage a big expansion of our domestic capacity to grow fruit, flowers and vegetables, and to expand our meat and dairy activities to reduce imports. Our competitors use a range of trade barriers and subsidies to benefit them. Our market share has fallen a lot in the last fifty years. Today there is strong demand for more UK produced food which super markets are struggling to meet. Note how anything home produced sports the Union flag to reassure, and note how anything from the continent has its origin  in small letters with  no national or EU flag to entice  us, presumably for fear of deterring those who want domestic produce. More fields honestly tilled and more orchards full of fruit would add to the beauty of our landscape.

 

           I have no problem with an electric revolution, but it can only proceed with popular consent. That means working with the private sector on the better and cheaper ways of travelling and heating that electricity might afford us. It also means proceeding at a pace which ensures we have enough electric power to meet the needs of the buyers of the new electric products. The UK has been pushed into dependence on importing electricity from the continent. We should be self sufficient and building extra capacity to allow for growth. Staying short of power and dependent on unreliable imports points to higher prices and disruptions ahead. We need more hydro and pump storage to smooth out interruptible power and more biomass for  baseload based on UK wood pellets.

 

            In Australia and in Canada in their 2019 General elections the left of centre parties went too far with their decarbonisation proposals. People dependent on fossil fuels felt threatened, and voted instead for the Conservatives who took a more moderate line. We need to learn from that. Transitions have losers as well as winners and they have votes and rights. An opposition party can demand the closure of all traditional vehicle factories and the end of North Sea oil and gas. Government has to decide what happens to replace them and what happens to all the people who would lose their jobs by being on the wrong side of change.