In the post Olympic euphoria about team games and individual sporting achievements we have become fixated by school playing fields.

          I am all in favour of schools having good playing fields. They need space to allow team games like football, cricket, netball and hockey. They need space to permit summer track and field events. A school set in fields offers a more pleasing environment in many ways, though this may not be possible in city schools where land is at a premium.

           Nor do I favour selling off good playing fields to make money from housing development where the school is then left with inadequate facilities or a cramped environment. I went to a state primary which had a modest field behind the school which permitted some team games and a green lung at play time. I appreciated that at the time.  My secondary school did have playing fields, though I remember the school often preferred to make us run a cross country for exercise which took us way beyond the grounds of the school. Local lanes became improvised playing fields. Not all sporting facilities have to be on school land.

             What is curious about the latest debate is the assumption that only the Secretary of State can be trusted to make the decision to prevent the sale of playing fields, and the implication that when he allows local people to sell a playing field this is always a wrong decision.

              I think Secretaries of State should be careful before using powers to block local people, Governors of schools, Headteachers and Council Committees, from doing what they think is in the best interest of their schools. The Secretary of State is a busy individual, and may not be able to go and visit and see for himself the circumstances on the ground. He rarely gets to talk the various interested parties.

               There may be good reasons why a playing field should be sold. If a school is closing, and future local students are going to other local  schools, there should be no objection to the sale of the playing fields if those other schools already have good provision. There should be no objection if a playing field is being sold because it has high development value, and the school concerned is picking up another local field to replace it. There should be less objection if the school selling still retains substantial land holdinsg to provide the space needed for all reasonable games use. There might be no need to object if a school is selling fields because the local authority is providing better sports facilities nearby which the school can use. Joint use facilities have a lot to recommend them, as school facilities often get closed throughout the school holidays, limiting their utility. More use of the available facilities throughout the year would be welcome.

   If we get ourselves into a world where no playing field can ever be sold we run the risk of setting educational  property in aspic and make improvement and development more difficult. If sports facilities are ony for the use of one particular school in term time we do not get full value out of them.  I have no idea of the wisdom of the various cases where Mr Gove has allowed a playing field to be sold. I assume in each case the leaders of the school and local community thought it a good idea, which is a good start. There may well have been sensible reasons in each  case. Maybe Mr Gove’s critics should wait and see more of the detail of the decisions. Or maybe they should set out some live examples, if they think they have a case where they think  he has got it wrong.

 

           I was an early moderniser. In the  mid 1990s I felt the Conservative party needed to change.  The old fashioned approach based on supporting the pro European UK establishment in conjunction  with Labour and the Lib Dems  had led to national economic crisis  with the Exchange Rate Mechanism. The Tory brand was damaged by association with the high interest rates, decline in output and the boom and bust which our membership of the ERM caused. Far from being too detached from the EU by the Eurosceptic wing of the then Tories, the party had come too close to the EU sun and its economic wings had melted. The Conservative party allowed its opponents to tell a story as if Conservatives revelled in making economic life tough, instead of the truth that the whole UK establishment  including the leaderships of all three main  parties had just made one of their worst collective mistakes which had cost us dear. It was the ERM, Euro ideology, which caused the high interest rates and the damage of the early 1990s recession. Once we cut free we ushered in a long period of expansion.

            With some others I began to seek change and modernisation. We fought and won the battle to keep the UK out of the Euro. Maastricht was the first EU Treaty the UK signed where we managed to keep out of the main point of it. I felt we needed to go further, and show that if we kept or restored more of our economic independence from the EU we could use the powers wisely, in the wider interests of the people.

            Of course I agree that Conservatives should be proud of the UK as it has become, and keen to unite the people who now share the fun of the Olympics and wish this country well. I do not think the Conservatives ever had the problem which Labour tried to pin on them. Conservatives do not wish people ill or seek to make life less pleasant. There is a long tradition of Conservative welfare policy to help those in need.   Many Conservative members have long had a proud tradition of being volunteers in other causes and charities. Mr Cameron’s Big Society is just recognising an old truth about Conservative concepts of public service and volunteering. Conservatives are often the ones who will roll up their sleeves and get on with whatever needs doing, instead of demanding a grant from the government.

           To me modernising is spreading the word that greater freedom can bring greater happiness and prosperity. The message should be that we want more self employed owning their own businesses, more successful small businesses, more people owning their own homes and other assets. We want a country of owners, a country where most people have a stake in our society, a country where hard work and enterprise are rewarded and risk taking admired, not condemned. Modern Conservatives need to be freedom loving, and to encourage individual and family enterprise and responsibility.

The government is said to be  working on measures to speed growth and raise economic performance. One of the worrying features of recent economic figures is the apparent poor showing of productivity.

 

I have been working on how the UK considers and provides  public service. This builds on a book I wrote entitled Third Way Which way? under Labour.

 

To improve the performance of the Uk economy we first need to  widen the definition of public service. I regard the bread supply as a public service as well as the water supply. I regard scheduled airline services  as public transport, just like train services. I see the internet as a public service, just as the post is a public service. A   public service is not limited to a service provided by public sector employees, or provided free at the point of use, or heavily subsidised. Some of the best public services are provided with user charges by competitive private sector companies.

 

I have identified a spectrum of ways of delivering public service. It is not a simple public sector good , private sector bad (Labour’s view) or vice versa (Some conservatives’ view). There are 8 different types of public service:

 

1. Public sector monopoly provided free at point of use by public sector   e.g. Roadspace
2. Public sector provision free at the point of use with some competition between public sector providers – hospitals, schools
3. Public sector monopolies provided free at point of use by private sector contractors  e.g. domestic rubbish collection
4. Private sector monopolies provided free at the point of use  e.g. free local newspapers, certain types of internet service, ITV
5. Monopoly activities provided by the public sector but paid for by users – e.g. Planning and Building Regulation services, passport issue
6. Competitive services provided by the  private sector but paid for by the state e.g. care homes for people without capital
7. Competitive services provided by the state but paid for by users – municipal or state trading – e.g. public leisure facilities
8. Competitive services paid for by users and provided by private sector – this is most public service in a free enterprise economy – everything from food to most  professional services

 

             All public service can be grouped according to whether the service is a monopoly or subject to competition, whether the user pays or the taxpayer pays, and whether the service is run with and by public sector or private sector employees.

 

            The importance of this understanding is to boost productivity, encourage new investment and innovation and raise growth. This can be done by moving more services from monopoly to competitive models, whether they be in the public or private sectors. It can be done by moving more services to user charges, allowing more private finance and providing a better market test of the efficiency and value of the service. That can only be acceptable if there are offsetting tax cuts, so people pay less, not more, overall.   Moving from public sector employment  to employee buy outs or other ways of organising effort  is often a good way of boosting performance.

 

            It would be good to make more progress in shifting services in these directions to achieve better outcomes. Some suggestions include:

 

1. Moving to competition for all users of water services when the government  take powers to introduce some competition into the industry. It is a prime candidate for new models and new investment. It can be allied to switching to meters when people change house as well as letting them switch if  they choose to do so.
2. Launching a series of new toll road projects to start to bring user charging into roads. You would only pay for a new road that the company was providing, not for existing ” free”  roads.
3. Reducing the number of areas where the private sector has to buy licences and permits from the public sector to operate
4. Allowing  profit making companies to provide schools and Colleges
5. Breaking up Network Rail and returning it to the proper private sector, with competition allowed between the differing regional railways that could create. Where train companeis wanted to  it could  reunite trains and track.
6. Splitting RBS into competing UK clearing banks and returning them to the private sector

       Improved performance in big areas like banking and water, where there is a substantial government involvement, would boost general productivity. The heavy loss making businesses like Network Rail and RBS are not contributing to our national wealth and prosperity as we would like, and are a drain on taxpayers.

 

 

 

 

 

             I want to return today to freedoms lost. Many of us feel we now live in a surveillance society. Some would add that now it feels as if we are in the EU prison camp, made to dance to the tunes of Brussels regulators in so many areas of our lives.

             I have recently enjoyed a few days holiday in the Scilly Islands. I returned there partly because the worst features of our bossy boots society have not yet spread to this English haven. I like to spend my holiday pounds at home.

              For me the holiday begins the moment I step onto the small Twin Otter plane at Southamptom for the flight to St Mary’s.  This year I was struck very forcefully by the contrast between the Scilly way and the Southampton way, and was so grateful the clumsy surveillance and security society has not yet caught up with St Mary’s airport.

               At Southampton now, so much money has been spent on “security” that the passenger experience is no longer easy or enjoyable, in a way it could be at a small airport. You are no longer able to drop your bags or passengers off from the car outside the airport door. Someone has decided that a 20 seat plane flying English people within their own country is some kind of terrorist target.  Why? When was there ever any intelligence to suggest that the 10.30 am from Southampton to St Mary’s was a number one target? Now we have to go through the business of taking off belts, putting everything through scanners, throwing away any bottles or tubes with more than 100ml of fluids, as if we were  wanting to go on a jumbo to a  high risk destination.  There is no sense of proportion, no exploration of the risks.

               It is made to look silly by the return flight. At St Mary’s there are no security scans, no lectures on water bottles. You can keep your jacket and your belt on. I doubt anyone suspicious or anything worrying would escape the experienced eyes of the people handling the tickets and baggage. It is refreshing to deal with people who want you to enjoy a good holiday and who send you back home with happy memories rather than with a security lecture ringing in your ears. They make commonsesne judgements of risk. There has been no terrorist attack on a flight from the Scillies.

                      My fear is that the new Southampton is the future, not St Mary’s. If they need more money to improve St Mary’s airport doubtless the security people will crawl all over them,making the project dearer and the experience less enjoyable for holiday makers. There is already evidence of the bossy mainland society imposing its will on the islands. Two improved quays have appeared. They had to have ugly metal fences to segregate motor vehicles from pedestrians, on small islands with practically no cars. They have painted signs to tell you exactly how you have to walk down to the quay and get onto the boat, on a quay where the boat will nonetheless tie up at different points depending on the state of the tide. If you follow the painted signs you can end up unable to get on the boat! I wonder who thought that nonsense up and made us pay good money for it.

 

            I have been asked to produce some ideas on reducing needless or wasteful public spending, and getting the deficit down, for a closed session at party conference. I thought I would try some of them out here first, before deciding which main ideas to concentrate on at the event.

            My first set of proposals seeks justice for UK citizens compared to others. The main aim of UK public spending should be to look after and support UK citizens. There is a danger of allowing soft touch UK.

1. Anyone travelling to the UK should be told that if they need NHS services whilst they are here, they will be charged the cost of the provision. They will be  advised either to come with health insurance, as most travellers to the USA take, or to come with a credit or debit card that can be used should they need hospital or doctor service. The NHS should require the card or insurance reference before giving treatment. If the treatment is emergency treatment, the individual should be required to pay prior to discharge. The present rule that they should pay is too often not enforced.

2. Any foreign lorry or van arriving in the UK should be required to pay a temporary Road Fund payment to pay for the wear and tear they impose on our roads. This would also help level the competitive playing field between domestic vehicles paying a full annual road tax, and visiting vehincles who at present pay nothing.

3. The UK should make clear to the IMF that it regards members of a single currency as no longer sovereign states entitled to IMF programmes. Members of single currency areas, like London or New York, do not look to the IMF for loans but to their states and Central Banks. The UK should decline to make money available for Euro bail outs in any form. As the Chancellor wisely said, we should not be in the business of bailing out currencies, especially one which we sensibly did not join. This thought needs following through with appropriate action.

4. The UK should make clear to the EU authorities, as DWP is seeking to do, that the EU is based on the free movement of workers, not the free movement of benefit seekers. Arrivals from the rest of the EU should not  be entitled to benefits on arriving. People can come to take up an arranged job, or to seek a job using their own resrources to do so. They can stay on losing a job if they use their own resources to find another job.

5. Regional money routed around the EU has been well criticised by recent Parliamentary studies. The UK government should make it an important negotiating condition of the next budget round in the EU that we wish to repatriate regional policy. That would enable us to  save money and spend more on troubled UK areas.

6. The UK was promised CAP reform in return for surrender of part of our rebate of contributions.  The UK should seek the repatriation of agricultural policy, which like regional policy woudl allow savings and a more generous UK regime of subsidy where needed.

7. The UK should stop overseas aid to India and Pakistan, as these are two successful nuclear weapon powers.

8. The UK should cut its overseas aid research budget, concentrating its spending on the  most deserving countries and causes where  most lives can be saved and most progress achieved towards self sustaining development.

9. More foreign prisoners should be sent back to their home countries to spare us the cost of looking after them.

10. More energy should be shown in requiring repayment of student loans by overseas students.

 

 

 

                 Yesterday’s announcement of a rise in the inflation rate to 3.2% (RPI) and 2.6%  (CPI) was a blow to the Bank’s promise of rapid falls to the 2% benchmark or below. It also puts another inflationary pressure into the system, as rail fares will go up by 3% more than the inflation rate in England. It means a further squeeze on spending power,as wages are still rising less fast than prices.

           The failure of the railway to control its costs and promote its revenues by selling more tickets is costing both taxpayers and rail travellers dear. The government  rightly says it expects the UK railway to get its costs down substantially to nearer comparable railway levels. The question is how and when will this happen? Why can’t the railway get on with it more quickly? Why does the current service pattern leave us so short of seats and capacity at times of day on routes where people want to travel, and so over provided with capacity on many other routes at other times of day? Why is the railway so unable to innovate, to use the tracks and trains more where and when needed?

           I received an unsolicited email yesterday from the railways. They were urging me to undertake some more rail travel. In was told  I could go to Brighton for £5, to Manchester for £12  and to Cardiff for £11.50 from London.  A little research on their site found a train to Brighton at 10.36 am  for just £7.50 single.  The £12 tickets to Manchester entail leaving before 9am from London, exactly the times you would have thought the business travellers would be hogging. My own recollecitons of these longer distance services  is of plenty of empty seats whenever I have gone by early morning trains. Clearly now the railway is dumping them at any kind of low price in an effort to boost seat occupancy.

           The railways are a wasted opportunity in the UK. They take their long suffering commuters for granted, providing too few seats and a poor service for ever escalating cost. Meanwhile they are having trouble filling many of the other trains, and are now dumping capacity at uneconomic fares in default of selling tickets at better prices. They do not seem to optimise the use of the valuable routes they command into our major cities, and they fail to innovate to put on more capacity where needed. When you have such high fixed costs as they do you need to be smart in using the network to maximise the revenue take, without doing it by large fare rises. The Channel 4 “interview” of the industry rep last night was lamentable. He was asked no questions about why the cost base is so high, no questions about how he might cut costs or take a lower profit. Mr Snow saw it as a great opportunity to conspire to say taxpayers should be taxed a lot more to pay all the railway’s bills, whatever they may be.

          It will be interesting to hear the Bank’s explanation of why inflation has picked up again, so soon after the Bank confidently predicted further falls. Air fares to Europe and fewer clothes discounts are said to be special factors, but there was considerable buoyancy in a whole range of prices and charges.

          It is interestign to note that the winning bidders for the West coast mainline reckon there is unused capacity on the line, at a time when the case of HS2 says we lack capacity.

Subsidy per passanger mile by rail franchise   2011 (DTp figures, some e.g.s)

Northern 34p

London Midland    17.8p

Trans Pennine   20.9p

SW Trains   2.4p

First Capital   -0.9p

 

       I picked this book up this evening  and could not put it down until I had read it all. It deals elegantly and comprehensively with why the UK cannot put up with the current relationship with the EU. It sets out why Europhiles think as they do, and how damaging an integrated EU is to UK interests.  He charts how a managed market and customs union is not the same as a free market, how the agricultural and fishing policies damaged the UK, how we have contributed too much in cash and had a bad deal on trade. He explains how the EU governors have plenty of interest in perpetuating their system, and how early idealism has been lost. He reinforces an argument we have often set out here, that the rest of the EU would not be able to retaliate against us and would see they have more to lose than us from UK withdrawal from their political and economic  union.

 

               I am full of admiration for the skill and determination of Team GB’s Olympic competitors. I am delighted for them, and share the nation’s joy at their success.

                 As someone who had a wasted youth from the sports point of view, I admire those who chose to spend their young hours training, training, and training some more. In my youth I read too many books and was too studious, as I sought to become an elite academic. It stopped me, or gave me the excuse, from turning out in all weathers to try to run faster or jump higher.

                 What I find most encouraging is the public reaction.  I  like my country and usually agree with my fellow countrymen and women about many things. I do not, however, like the politics of envy which can be a feature of UK life.  There are politicians and sometimes whole political parties, who specialise in attacking those who work hard and achieve things. There is a strong strand of political thought hostile to people concentrating on winning , and hostile to success itself. The politicians and tabloid newspapers sometimes  feed off negative  emotions in the wider public.

                Maybe it is understandable that elite footballers, who earn such large sums for their skills, have to live in a gold fish bowl, with their lives automatically made part of some national soap opera that calls into question their marriages, their love affairs, their leisure activites and their general conduct.  When a whole sector of the economy, like banking, is vilified because some at the top behaved badly, or because the last government foolishly subsidised them, we need to ask if the politics of envy is starting to attack too many of the  wrong people.

             The Olympics has allowed people to celebrate hard work and competitive success. It is not just athletes who do that. Some in business or public service work hard, put in the extra effort, strive to be the best. They do not receive gold medals. Let us hope that the public enthusiasm for being the best, and understanding how much effort is involved in achieving that, rubs off. Let us extend those principles more widely. If the UK can be the third most successful nation in Olympic sports, depsite having a much smaller population than several other competitor countries, can’t we show the same determination and achieve the same success as an industrial and service sector nation in the markets of the world?

      If we are not jealous or censorious of elite athletes competing hard, and becoming rich and famous as a result, can we overcome some of the collective jealousy of others who chose a different route to fame or riches?

 

          Amidst the understandable UK media attention to the great performances of Team GB there has been little comment on the titanic struggle at the top of the Medals Table between the USA and China. China  spent most of the Games just ahead, though faltered at the end compared to the USA.  Doubtless China was not expecting a crushing victory over the USA on the scale of Beijing, when China won 51 Gold medals to 36 by the USA, with the benefit of home advantage and the massive effort she put into doing well as host nation. This year is however important. It reminds us all that China is now the serious and established challenger to the US in sport. There have only been two teams in the competition to lead the Medals table from the beginning.  This has come to represent a wider truth, in the economy and world politics.

           Olympic Games should be a celebration of sport and its ability to unite peoples from a wide range of countries and cultures to enjoy together a shared passion. However, there is often a political message or undercurrent, intensified by the convention that people represent their country and display their flags with pride.

               The political message of the 1936 Games in  Germany  that Germany was the power to be reckoned with, was challenged by the stunning victory of Jesse Owens from the USA in the 100 metres.  The unexpected victory of  Abebe Bikila, a late entrant from Ethiopia, in the Marathon at the 1960 Rome Games also told a political story. Legend has it that he surged to victory from the obelisk taken from his homeland by the Italian fascist government during their period of occupation of his country. Running barefoot made the story more poignant and more remarkable.

                In “Superpower Struggles” published in 2005 I argued ” The EU has its global pretensions, but  is unlikely to emerge as a superpower….A much more effective competitor to the US….is rising in the Far East…” “There was no more magnificent image of China joining the first world… than the Chinese Grand Prix, held for the first time in 2004….China will make an even more dramatic statement to the world when she unveils  the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.” I charted her economic rise, predicting rapid moves into second place by the second decade of this century.

                 Much of this has now happened. London 2012 should serve to remind us whilst we still live in an American led world, the challenger to the US is now primarily China, as an economy, as a sporting nation, and in due course as a military power.

 

           Mitt Romney’s choice of running mate has galvanised Republican support for their candidate, and has ensured there will be a big debate in the USA over how to tackle the deficit and promote faster growth. Paul Ryan believes in cutting spending and cutting tax rates. He will give Democrats under Obama, and the so called “liberal” intelligentsia in the UK, a new hate figure.

           Some in the UK have sought to contrast the USA, growing a bit under current policies, with the UK, not growing at all. They have suggested this is because Obama has carried on spending whilst the UK has “cut too far too fast”. The  arrival of Mr Ryan on the scene provides a useful opportunity to remember the published  figures.

          Since 2010 UK total public spending has risen by 6.1%, with fast growth in current spending of 11.4%  more than offsetting the cuts in capital spending which the Coalition have continued from Labour’s plans. Meanwhile, in the USA Obama’s 9.8% increase in federal spending has been partially offset by  a 2.5% cash cut in State and local spending, meaning that US total public spending has risen a shade  less quickly than the UK’s.

         The big difference between US and UK policy has been on the tax side. The US has continued with lower tax rates. As   a result it has an economy which has grown faster, and done better at increasing tax collection. The US has also been quicker at fixing its main banks, which has helped.