In 1866 the annexation of Venice by Italy was endorsed by a referendum of the Venetian people. A remarkable result was achieved, with just 0.01% voting against. Subsequent historians have suggested the referendum was conducted under the watchful presence of the Italian military. They argue it was just a formal endorsement of an occupation that had already taken place and was arranged by the annexing power. The annexation was possible following  the victory of Prussia over Austria, as Prussia was the newly united  Italy’s powerful ally. Others say that swapping Austrian rule for Italian rule may have been the lesser of the evils  at the time, but Italian rule turned out to be no more enjoyable for Venetian nationalists than Austrian control.

So why isn’t the EU welcoming the decision by many in  Venice to hold its own recent  referendum  to see if people would like an independent Venice instead of staying with Italy? Why are they ignoring the substantial majority that has voted for an independent Venice in the unofficial referendum that has just been conducted, owing to the refusal of the Italian state to allow a legal referendum under Italian law? What will they and the Italian state do if Venice now follows the results of this v0te up by not forwarding tax revenues in future to the Italian state or takes other action to flex its muscles?

It appears once again that the EU picks and chooses which referenda to allow, and as we know is also often quite choosy about the results of any popular vote. Clearly independence for the Veneto is no more permitted than for the Crimea, though it is apparently allowed for Scotland where the existing mother country is more democratic and broad minded about these matters and has agreed to a vote. Even here the EU has intervened in the referendum campaign to make it clear it wants a No vote to independence.  Many countries in the EU have been allowed referenda on EU matters, though they are usually asked to vote again if the EU does not agree with the result.

 

If current energy prices are not high enough to shock people into wanting us to find more home based gas to use, the weak position of European countries  vis a vis Russia should be sufficient spur to find and extract UK gas.

Some in the government are keen – the Chancellor and the Minister of State for Energy. How keen is the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change?

It is true he is working  towards a large new Licensing round to prospect for onshore oil and gas. The 14th Round is due soon, and will grant licenses in many parts of the country to those willing to spend to find. However, the whole process is currently out to consultation. The consultation, which closes on 28th March, is mainly preoccupied with ensuring compliance with the EU’s Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive 2001 and the EU Habitat regulations.

The DECC website reminds us just how highly regulated all this is going to be. Now I entirely agree the interests of landowners and local communities need to be fully protected. Of course they need assurances that drilling will be safe and controlled and  will not take place close to residential areas. Of course if gas is found communities and individuals should participate in the good news, and should be protected against damage to their properties or their water supply. If any gas is found in my area I will want to help the local community get the sensible guarantees and a participation  they will expect, but I will not want to block the development in suitable locations.

Anyone wanting to look for gas will have to obtain landowner consent, DECC permission, planning permission from the local Council, Environment Agency consent, and Health and Safety approval. It might be a good idea if the government also offered some encouragement to this process. The oilfield at Poole in Dorset shows that it is possible to extract oil close to a beautiful landscape and a prosperous town without it being intrusive or a constant cause of conflict with the neighbours.  The drilling for that occurred years ago before all this latest regulation.  If we are to tackle fuel poverty and fuel a decent industrial revival we need to get on with finding and using the gas that probably lies beneath our feet.

 

Foreign policy is ultimately about war and peace. Countries which pursue strong foreign policies need armies and navies to defend them. The politicians who decide and pursue the foreign policy need to carry their whole country with them if their policy entails taking up arms. Sending our military personnel into conflict requires the loyalty and consent of the public in a democracy.

That is why I do not want the EU to have a foreign policy. I am pleased to say that Baroness Ashton cannot yet  command armies and navies. The EU’s foreign policy only has force behind it if the main military powers in the EU are prepared to commit their forces. The danger in the current situation is that the EU will become more and more assertive in foreign policy until the point is reached where member states will be expected to commit forces to support their policy or correct their mistakes. Who then will want to fight for a cause which unelected officials in Brussels have pursued, loosely organised by member states who may have disagreed about the policy at the time?

Let us take the case of EU policy towards the Ukraine. Many people in the UK and doubtless elsewhere in the EU think the EU overreached itself by supporting the uprising against an unpleasant elected President. The EU  pushed for a wide ranging Association Agreement between the Ukraine and the EU in a way which was bound to provoke Russia. The result of the EU’s rash action was entirely predictable. Russia had the force, the EU had none in the area, so the Crimea was taken over easily by Russia. Many people in the Crimea were willing supporters of this move, as they had been alarmed by the pro EU Ukrainian interim government’s stated wish to ban Russian as an official language in the Ukraine, before that idea was withdrawn. The EU now complains about how it was done after the event. Why wasn’t it able to foresee the likely outcome before it blundered in?

Maintaining support for our armed forces and committing them  where there is agreement about the national interest in so doing is a crucial role for a democracy. The UK has shown in recent years that where consent breaks down, as it began to with the war in Iraq, our forces are placed in a difficult position and our democracy strains to adjust. How much more difficult if in future our forces could be expected to pick up  the pieces from some crass foreign policy error made by the EU when many UK voters disagreed both with the policy and with the body undertaking it.

I do not detect much willingness to fight for the EU amongst most of my electors. Having a Foreign Policy Supremo and an EU foreign policy is many bridges too far for me. I am afraid that the EU will end up drawing its member states into ill thought through conflicts where there is insufficient loyalty and support for the policy.

 

Some  people as they reach retirement come to see their pension savings as a con. At the top end they saved when they were on low incomes, receiving modest tax reliefs, only to find in later years they will have to pay higher tax rates to get their money out. Some very successful people will find they have saved too much and now get caned by the new tax system above the lifetime limit.  Some on lower incomes will find their pension savings have not bought them much extra pension. At current annuity rates you need around £20,000 of savings to get an extra £1,000 pension a year. All will find that current low interest rates and  past costs of running the pension scheme leave them worse off than they hoped.

I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s proposal to give people more freedom to decide what to do with their pensions savings where they have defined contribution funds. It is far from satisfactory that people are made to buy an annuity  when rates are low and returns poor. The state seems to be saying that it regards people’s savings as in some way the state’s money, to be controlled for people.

In recent days numerous regulators and socialists have emerged from the woodwork to tell us what they really think of us. Apparently they do think left to our own devices we will behave irresponsibly, blowing our money on fast cars and cruises, instead of drawing down our pension savings over the years of retirement in an orderly way. Some even say that as we have received tax relief on pension savings the state has every right to decide how we can spend them. They clearly do not understand that the tax relief on pensions is largely a tax deferral, not a tax break.

I make this prediction. There will be very few people if any  buying a Lamborghini from  their pension pot. Most will have insufficient money, and the overwhelming majority will be far more sensible with their money.

I also say this. By what right does someone rule out any way that a person might end up spending the money they have saved? If someone was told that they had  only a few months to live, and they had saved substantial sums over their lives, who would begrudge them buying the car of their dreams or the holiday of their lifetime before death? People are usually better judges of how to spend their money than is the state.

The ending of the compulsory annuity purchase was one of the best things in a budget for many years. I will be pleased to vote for it, and to defend it. Those who think the state should control our savings belong to that school of thought which thinks that we are all on pocket money from the government. What a ghastly world to live in if we got to that position. Why then would people try harder or work longer hours, if the government decides what you earn and how you spend it? The old communist jibe was “the government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work”. That’s what kept them in poverty for so long.

 

 

Yesterday I debate the motion

 

“Excessive and unnecessary environmental legislation and regulation is seriously damaging the UK’s economic gr0wth”

before an audience of environmental lawyers and others at Simmons and Simmons. I will put up a video of the exchanges when it arrives with me.

 

Crimea is now part of Russia. The EU and the USA should understand this simple fact.  Russia has acted illegally and in ways which offend the West, but Mr Putin now has the Crimea under his control.

Imposing some sanctions retrospectively in a fit of pique makes the West look weak and is a kind of self harm. It looks like someone trying to play cricket in a glasshouse. The sanctions are not going to get Crimea back in the fold of the Ukraine.

The West should believe in democracy. That means we should have worked with the Ukraine for a new election to find a President of the Ukraine who could speak for all and hold it together. That means we should have helped the Ukraine organise a legal referendum on the future of the Crimea so they can settle their own future. Instead the West allowed or encouraged the overthrow of an elected President without an early election to replace him, and condemned the referendum in the Crimea as illegal without having a positive way of letting the Crimea have its say.

In the UK defenders of the Union in the Union Parliament have given Scotland the right to a voice on their future, showing the EU how these things should be handled. Identity and loyalty are important emotions in politics. Unfortunately elsewhere in the EU there is a determined attempt to stifle popular opinion and distort or change loyalties. The EU and the Spanish state are against Catalonia having a vote on its future. The EU and the Italian state are against Venice and the Veneto  having a vote on its future, though an unofficial one is currently underway. The EU and the Ukraine have been against the Crimea having a vote on its future, and partly as a result they have lost the Crimea thanks to Russian actions which the West  condemns but cannot stop.

If the West thinks Mr Putin might be emboldened to do the same again elsewhere, then the West needs to make clear in advance their disapproval and take the diplomatic and defence actions necessary so next time they have some control over events. The rest is just huffing and puffing. The best defence against the splitting of nations is good democratic government in each state that can command the loyalty and agreement of its peoples. Seeking to suppress or deny the existence of demands for self government cannot be the right way ahead.

 

There is a big gap between what the experts say and what is going on. The experts say we are cutting the deficit primarily by cutting public spending. When people hear that 80% of the task of deficit reduction comes from spending cuts, they think that means public spending is actually declining in cash terms.

Starting with an inherited deficit of £160bn people would think that meant cutting £128bn off public spending to remove the deficit, with the remaining £32 bn coming from tax rises. Of course nothing like that is happening, as all elected politicians agreee you cannot cut that sort of money out of the budgets given the importance of many public services.

Instead public spending will go up every year in cash terms during the period of deficit reduction. They used to say that it would be cut in real terms, though the figures for the first three years of the programme of deficit reduction show there has in practice been small real increases in current spending each year.  Far from causing low growth or no growth as the opponents of austerity have argued,  public spending has made a positive impact to total output and incomes since 2010. Within the spending totals welfare, debt interest, overseas aid and health take a rising proportion, so some other programmes are experiencing cash cuts.

So how is the deficit being brought down? It is coming down for one simple reason – tax revenues are rising. The idea of the gradual programme is to make the task  easier, by allowing more tax revenue to arise naturally through the growth of the economy. Where the government has tried higher tax rates on income and capital gains it has actually damaged the revenues, not increased them. If any government tried to reduce the deficit quickly through a series of tax rate rises, considerable damage would be done to the economy and tax revenues might fall.

Growth has always been the main requirement to help correct the large imbalances in the economy without pushing it into a deep recession. Growth results from change to the economy, with more successful and more helpful activities increasing. We need more exports, more homes, more domestically produced goods to replace imports. The budget seeks to help bring that about.

 

               There is some good news in the budget. The increase in the ISA allowance for savers to £15,000 and the ending of the disticntion between cash Isas and the rest is a welcome simplification with more generous tax relief. The forthcoming Pensioner bonds from National Savings may well offer a reasonable and secure income.  The offer of much greater flexibility of what to do with your pension saving is also welcome, though the details still need to be worked out in some cases.

              Total public spending at 42.5% of our national output  next year  is still too high a proportion of the total economy, but is down from the excessive 47.5% of 2009-10. The aim is to get it down to 38% by 2018-19.  Total spending  rose this year in real terms.  As expected, the Tax threshold was raised to £10,500 for next year.  There was also a small increase in the 40% tax threshold.

               The Chancellor recognised the need to do something to cut energy prices. He himself highlighted the dangers of UK energy prices twice the US level, and has extended and improved a scheme to subsidise high energy using industries for their energy costs. The better answer must be to find and produce much larger quantities of cheap gas for ourselves. The Chancellor is offering tax assistance to North Sea oil and gas developments, and states that he supports shale gas extraction. The Uk still remains way behind the US in finding and using this new hydrocarbon source.

             The Red Book warns that “Energy intensive Industries pay almost  50% more for their electricity than they do in France, and the cost to business of policies to deliver low carbon energy infrastructure  is set to increase by about 300% by 2020.” This is a massive threat ahead, and should persuade the government to demand changes to EU energy policies so that the UK can opt for cheaper energy which could help power an industrial revival. The goverbnment is offering £500 m in subsidies a year to energy intensive industries from 2015-16 to compensate them for dear green energy, subject to EU approval.

               The long term reforms to achieve a low rate of Corporation Tax now give the UK a competitive advantage with a 21% tax rate. The Chancellor added to that a £500,000 investment tax allowance for business.

                 The main figures in the Budget are little changed from the December Statement. Growth is forecast to be a little higher, unused capacity a bit lower. The Budget concentrates on trying to assist industry to invest, savers to save, and individuals to enjoy some real growth in income.

 

We know most of the main numbers of the Budget. These days they are given to us in the late Autumn (December) Statement, with full forecasts from the OBR. The revisions to these this March are not likely to be large.

The Chancellor may be able to anticipate a bit faster growth, and therefore more growth in tax receipts than planned at the end of last year. He will doubtless wish to increase the tax threshold as much as he dare. He might even allow some of the benefit of this  to accrue to 40% taxpayers as well as to 20% taxpayers.

Growth will come from most parts of the economy. Current public spending contributed with a real increase of 1.7% in 2012, and  a further real increase of 0.7%  in 2013, according to the OBR. They anticipate another 0.4% increase in real current public spending in 2014, with a good pick up in government investment as well that year after  cuts in previous years.  Public borrowing was forecast at £111bn in 2013-14, and at £96bn next year. There may be some improvement in those numbers thanks to faster growth.

There will be various schemes to promote extra growth. We have already been told of the planned new town at Ebbsfleet. This was the subject of my publication “Thames Reach a new city” which made proposals for the brownfields near Ebbsfleet. We are told that Help to Buy money for newly built homes will continue until 2020 if there is a Conservative government elected in 2015. I would expect more tax relief and assistance for companies taking on extra labour, especially of younger people.

The Office of Budget Responsibility may well have to revise its forecasts again to catch up with the reality of faster growth now coming through very visibly. There may also be rises in real wages before the end of the year, after the slump  in people’s spending power in 2008-10 and the continuing stresses on real incomes since.

 

THOSE SPENDING “CUTS” IN FULL

Total Managed expenditure

2012-13       £701.9bn

2013-14      £717.8bn

2014-15       £730.5bn

2015-16       £744bn     (OBR figures Autumn 2013)

 

            During the Labour years I responded to their Barker Review into housing supply. That government identified four major areas for housing growth – Ashford, Cambridge, Milton Keynes and the East Thames corridor.

            I agreed with them about the fourth on their list. Fresh from the success at encouraging major development in London Docklands, extending the renewal eastwards seemed a natural idea.  I proposed a new city called Thames Reach to rise between the M25 and the Crossways Park in the west, and Gravesend in the east.

            Piecemeal developments have proceeded in this area, reclaiming land and  filling in old quarries. Now we learn that the Coalition government wishes to turn the Ebbsfleet area into a garden city. That implies lower density developments with good public spaces and a mixture of sizes and prices of homes.

            There is a substantial shift going on in our country from north to south. In parts of the north we have a surplus of accommodation and weak house prices. In   most of the south we have a scarcity of housing and  high and rising prices.  All parties would like to find ways of stimulating more development in the north, and relieving some of the pressure on the south. The problem is the economy of a Cambridge or a Milton Keynes is taking off, creating many more jobs and offering a good market for anyone wanting to set up in business. Just as Liverpool grew and grew  a hundred years ago thanks to the dynamism of its dock based activities, so today Cambridge grows and grows owing to the success of its knowledge based activities.

      We need both to reinforce success, ensuring lack of transport, homes and other infrastructure does not stifle the fast growing parts of the country, and to find ways of harnessing that success to more parts of the country. We will need a new garden city at Ebbsfleet and more besides in the south. We also need more triggers for private sector led growth in  the big northern cities. Meanwhile Wokingham is offering builders scope to construct 12,500 extra homes just in the one relatively small district.