Retail sales in the Uk fell by 1.3% in April. Yesterday figures imply a further deterioration in May. Retailers reported a worse balance between those experiencing rising sales and those with falling turnover.

The squeeze on incomes has curbed some of our spending in the shops. We also now as a nation buy more on the web and less in the stores. Love of hi tec gadgets on broadband and a love of holidays takes money away from High Street clothes shops and from homewares and other domestic goods. We are changing our spending priorities in ways which hit traditional shops, and changing the way we buy which diverts from the High Street.

Speciality shopping now for many is a less frequent outing, probably including a coffee or a some fast food as part of the half day out. The daily or weekly grocery shop may still involve driving to the local supermarket, or placing an order of the web. It does not usually mean finding a High Street with a butcher, a baker and a greengrocer.

Trying to learn more about the state of the UK economy from the retail figures requires adjustment for changing fashions, tastes and technologies. It seems that the Uk economy is growing again, but the shops on many High Streets are having to compete with other ways of spending it and other uses for our money.

It was interesting to see the EU Commission at last recognise that the continuing deep recession in parts of Euroland is unacceptable. What a pity they do not have policies to tackle the mass unemployment of young people they have helped create.

The first response to the Japanese money burst was positive. The markets liked it, drove down the yen and celebrated by pushing up Japanese share prices. The commentators liked it, because it was bold and exciting. The real economy responded, with more growth. Some prematurely celebrated a break through for the new policy.

Then came the big sell off last week. Share prices plunged 7.6% in a day. Markets recoiled in horror, as bond prices fell and government bond interest rates rose, despite the very large buying programme the governemnt had announced. The commentators started complaining that the government was contradictory. It said it intended to keep bond interest rates very low by massive buying of the bonds, but it also said it would trigger faster inflation which they thought meant higher interest rates.

The government hopes for higher inflation before it loses control of very low bond yields. It can keep on buying trying to keep the yields down. As so much of this depends on gaining or retaining market confidence, the Japanese authorities have to work on improving their forecasts and making their script easier on the ears of the investors.

Meanwhile what really matters is how quickly they develop the third arrow of their economic archery – radical supply side reform. Only if they introduce more competition to Japanese commercial life, challenge restrictive practises and cartels, is the extra money released likely to do more good and trigger faster growth backed by rising productivity. In the end you need more and better products which people want to buy if you are to achieve sustainable growth. No amount of monetary tinkering can replace the need for innovation, higher productivity and good design. Competitve markets usuallly help secure those.

The Chancellor yesterday announced that seven departments have now agreed reductions in their spending levels for 2015-16.

Much of this spending will take place after the next General Election, widely expected to be in May 2015. It is normal for the outgoing government to leave in place a spending and tax plan or budget for the incoming government, even where as in 2010 it was highly likely they would lose. In 2015 the current government is not standing again as a Coalition government, so the new incoming government is free to change things if they wish.

Clearly there are good management reasons why this needs to be done. The country needs to have a budget for the first three months of 2015-16, the period of the old government, of the election and first weeks of the new government. As this remains an area of largely national competence for the UK,the new government in May 2015 is at liberty to change both the tax and the spending plans on taking up office.

Once the government has set its 2015-16 budget it is likely Conservative Ministers will say they would keep to that budget should they form a majority government. The pressure will then be on the two Eds for Labour to say what changes if any they would want to make to such a budget, as they will know the exact numbers broken down by department. Once the budget is agreed, there will be a standard to judge other budgets by, a centre for the debate over how much to spend and how much to tax.

It looks as if the government plans to keep the ring fence protection of the NHS in place. I think this is a sensible call, given the huge pressures on the NHS budget. Taking the NHS and the pension pledges together, that places more downward pressure on the remaining budgets, as over one third of public spending is protected. The protection afforded to Overseas Aid will become more contentious, local authority budgets will be under more pressure, and the government will need to consider for how much longer public sector pay can rise faster than private sector pay.

I am finding I am getting too many contributions from the same individuals each day, and too many contributions that need editing before posting, for me to handle. I wish to spend more of my time researching and writing my own posts and carrying out my other duties. Whilst I value feedback and different points of view, I do not have enough time to spend to edit all of this for publication.

I am afraid in future I will not be able to post most of the items coming in. I will skim each of them to see what they say, and study those with new points. I will not post if they are repititious, need editing, contain unproven allegations, abusive language ect. Regulars are still welcome but please try to confine your response to one a day and let’s have the edited highlights of what you want to say. Some days I may not have time to post anything, or only be able to post once during the day.

The EU is lifting its arms embargo against Syria. Many Conservative MPs are against us supplying arms to Syria once the embargo is lifted. Our advice to the Foreign Secretary is simple – do not use this new UK authority. Why not instead negotiate a new deal for the UK with the EU so we can always make up our own mind about these matters? Once we have the power back to make our own decisions on these important questions, use the right and opportunity very sparingly, to avoid making bad situations worse.

          Our current migration policy is heavily influenced by our membership of the EU. As the last government committed us to open borders with the rest of the EU, more of the burden of cutting the numbers of new migrants to the UK under the Coalition’s policy has fallen on non EU migration.

        As the Coalition has improved the controls over migrant entry and settlement  it has come to light that some people already settled in our country do not have the right visa or documents to do so. Many cases are coming to light of people who entered legally under a short term visa maybe a decade ago, who are still living here because the authorites never followed up. Often their applications for a right to stay are bogged down in  government pending files, or the decisions are subject to long appeal processes.

         It seems to me to get  more and more difficult to make a decision against an applicant the longer they have managed to stay in the UK without the proper entitlements. If someone has lived here for more than ten years, has children who were born here and have been educated  here without any authority denying their right to do so, it gets difficult to turn round and say the whole family has to leave.

           I would be interested in your thoughts on the balance of migration between the EU and the rest of the world, and your thoughts on what to do about people who are living here without the right paperwork.

 

           The party political spat over why Accident and Emergency centres are under pressure shows Labour at their worst. They have waded in to claim it is not the fault of the GP contacts they signed, but the results of more recent action. The truth is more complex.

            There was a good case to cut GP hours to ensure doctors are in good form when working, and to give them a private life as well. There is also a good case to say a GP should take responsibility for named patients not in hospital on his or her list and be able to see them and help them as much as possible to ensure continuity of care. If the doctor seeing a patient knows that patient well the consultation can be both speedier and result in better action, than if the patient is seen each time by someone different. A new doctor for that patient  has to read a bulky file, has to  try to come to an independent judgement about the person and decide how to treat  their condition with no prior knowledge.

          The new contract also required doctor practices  to put in good out of hours services which were easily accessible and gave the patients confidence they would be well treated. They also need to be authoritiative, so they can deal with any patient who has no need of out of hours emergency advice or treatment but requests it. Again this is easier if the doctors involved know the patients and their behaviour.

           There is a danger that if people do not know their GP, or do not have confidence in the out of hours service, they will simply admit themselves directly to the A and E department of the local hospital. This can overload an A and E department with patients who do not need to be there.  Do your out of hours services work well?  Are you now more likely to go to A and E?

 

         On Wednesday I debated fairness and the law at a seminar arranged by Middlesex University.

         One of the most interesting exchanges was about the supremacy of the European Convention of Human Rights over UK Statute law  passed by Parliament. The general view was that the UK like all other signatories to the Convention had to obey the international  law, and that law would be settled by international judges. Their decisions might be at variance with the wishes of the UK voters as expressed by their elected representatives. I was told that the inconvenience of losing a few court cases was offset by the advantage that the Convention would do more good in some countries with lower legal and democratic standards than our own.

          In the discussion we were reminded that the European Convention was the product of 1940s thinking. Its defenders accepted that in some areas opinions and general morality changes. They accepted that some opponents of gay marriage had appealed to  the Convention which implies the right to marriage is a right for a marriage of a man to a woman.  They just thought they can read the Convention in a different way to modernise it without needing to amend it. Some also accepted that some issues  aroused too many passions in particular countries for it to be wise to seek a conclusion through court action. Rights for migrants to change country could be such an issue in some cases.

          I reminded the audience that one of  the greatest statements of democratic rights and freedom, the American Declaration of Independence, has been much amended by changes to the US Constitution subsequently. One of its main architects was a slave owner. The authors of modern demcoracy saw nothing wrong with rights only applying to freeborn males, with little regard for the rights of women and no regard for the shared humanity of the slaves. These bad features of the original American settlement needed amending at a later date. These amendments occurred thanks to democratic actions and to protests.

       All those who rely on Treaty law from the EU and from the ECHR need to grasp that these methods of imposing morals and standards on us run the risk of being inflexible and becoming dated. Statute law designed by a free and sovereign Parliament has two great advantages over these Treaties. The first is Parliament can regularly improve and update the moral standards and viewpoints behind the laws as opinion evolves. Secondly the public can remove members of a Parliament that make a mess of it and insist on urgent change after a new election.

          The IMF sees a lot of worse cases than the UK economy. The summary of their report starts positively, recording “some improvement in economic and financial conditions.”  They praise the strong private sector employment growth and forecast some increase in activity this year.

         The IMF is on an ideological journey. Under its latest Euro friendly management it wishes to detach itself from the old IMF formula of cutting public spending, raising taxes, loosening money supply and devaluing for countries with large public sector and balance of payments deficits. After all, Euro member states cannot undertake the monetary expansion nor the devaluation for themselves, the two most pro growth parts of a traditional IMF package.

          They want the UK to “rebalance”, to export more and invest more. The shortfall in private sector investment has several causes. Weak banks with insufficient loans available do not help. Large pension deficits created by artificially low interest rates force companies to keep more cash on their balance sheets to meet future pension costs. Falling demand in Euroland undermines one of our export markets and leads companies to wonder if more capacity is a good idea.

           They praise the loose money policy being followed and ask that it continue. Indeed they want the Bank to buy more of its own bonds and promise to keep interest rates very low for longer. They want the banks to raise more capital, and want the government to sell RBS and Lloyds back to the private sector. The Chancellor in his public statements seems happy to oblige.

          The IMF also favours cutting corporation tax more and paying for revenue loss by further property taxes and VAT on a wider range of items. Did they not follow pastygate?  Their tax recommendations are toxic. I cannot see why people take their advice so seriously, when they seem to be all at sea in this crisis, and did not foresee any of it.

In view of the continuing interest in the topic of immigration I am reproducing in full below the latest report from the Minister on progress in controlling migration :

“The latest migration statistics were published today(23.5.13) by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). They demonstrate that we continue to make good progress on bringing immigration back under control – net migration is down by more than a third since June 2010 and is now at its lowest level for a decade.

Our reforms are creating an immigration system that is more selective and which works in our national interest. We are cutting out abuse while encouraging the brightest and best migrants to come to the UK.

Key facts:

• Net migration was 153,000 for the year ending September 2012 – down from 242,000 in September 2011, and a fall of 89,000. Once again, this shows that we are on the right track to bring net migration down to the tens of thousands by the end of this Parliament.

• The ONS highlighted that while changes in net migration over the period 2008–10 were mainly driven by changes in people leaving the country, ‘since 2011, declining immigration has been the main cause of changes in net migration.’

• Of total immigration, 55 per cent was from nationals outside the European Economic Area (EEA), 30 per cent was from EEA nationals and 15 per cent was returning British citizens.

While continuing to bring net migration down, we are also supporting economic growth by welcoming the brightest and best to the UK:

• There was a 5 per cent increase in work visas issued for skilled individuals under Tier 2 in the year to March.

• There was a 5 per cent increase in sponsored student visa applications for the university sector – demonstrating that our reforms have deliberately favoured universities and that we continue to have a great offer for international students. There is no limit on student numbers; universities can apply their own language tests; and graduates can stay and work if they get a graduate job.

• There was an overall increase of 6 per cent in the total number of visas issued to Chinese nationals in the year to March 2013, including a 10 per cent increase in study visas issued to Chinese nationals.

Once again, these are encouraging figures – but we recognise that there is still more to do. It is still too easy for illegal immigrants to access public services to which they are not entitled and too hard for immigration officials to remove them from the UK. This is why we have announced there will be an Immigration Bill in this parliamentary session. This Bill will stop migrants abusing public services to which they are not entitled, reduce the pull factors which draw illegal immigrants to the UK, and make it easier to remove people who should not be here.

Mark Harper MP”