In 1941 Churchill and Roosevelt met on a U.S. warship to draw up the Atlantic Charter. It was before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and slanted heavily in favour of the USA reflecting the weak position of a near isolated UK fighting the Germans. It contained some important binding truths that have united  the two countries ever since. Its terms became more important once the USA was in the war. It set out a future peace based on the self determination of peoples, the reversal of occupations imposed by force, free trade and the pursuit of peaceful resolution of conflicts.

In 2023 President Biden signed an update, a revised Atlantic Agreement, with the UK. Reflecting the modern U.S. preoccupations of the Democrats, it set out a course of future economic development with more state involvement, more subsidies and more protection. It is a partial prospectus for a divided world, where the US will lead one alliance against a China leading the main contestant grouping.  The document wants onshoring, friendshoring and western technical superiority It wishes to impose a green revolution, seeking to remove fossil fuels from the western side by 2050. It identifies quantum computing, semiconductors, smart biology, artificial intelligence and advanced communications as crucial areas to develop.

The UK will hold a conference in the autumn on regulating AI and will push for a world regulator. It is difficult seeing the Chinese bloc wanting to submit their IP and plans to such scrutiny. It is difficult to know how to regulate before you know what you are regulating. My best advice to the UK is understand there is going to be a race to expand and adopt these ideas.The UK should concentrate on creating better conditions on tax and talent to help the UK stay ahead.The USA will naturally put America first and will expect her large subsidies to buy advantage.

Please find below my Interview with Times Radio, you can find it between 1:12:28-2:12:00

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/show/20230604-21435/2023-06-04

 

 

My lecture begins at 7:14

I am quite happy for any of my emails, texts and other messages received by  Ministers and the NHS during covid to be considered and published as part of the covid enquiry if that helps and results from their release by the Ministers and officials who lie at the heart of this consideration.

I would like the Enquiry to consider the issues I raised at the time, which are also recorded on this website and available by using Search.

Air purification in hospitals and care homes

I raised the issue of using powerful  UV air cleaners to kill the virus in circulating air within the ducts, and recommended checking and adapting air flows where necessary to greatly reduce the chances of passing on the virus through stale or infected circulating air. Whilst there seemed to be some agreement this could be done it did not seem to get the priority it deserved. It was a an obvious thing to do in hospitals and care homes, and in restaurants, hotels etc.

Isolation hospitals and wards

I suggested demarking some hospitals as isolation hospitals for covid and keeping some others open for other conditions to limit the build up of backlogs of other medical problems. I argued for continuing use of the Nightingale hospitals for covid to relieve pressure on beds elsewhere. Instead the Nightingales were little used and quickly shut down. There were some moves to create different entrances and to segregate covid areas from other areas in some hospitals. I was a voice with others for the establishment of the Nightingales which did take place.

Discharge of patients from hospitals to care homes

I was one of the early callers to ensure people were not sent back to care homes until there was reasonable certainty they were no longer infectious.

Alleviating drugs

I argued for more and faster testing of existing drugs that might have beneficial effects in treating covid symptoms. There seemed to be reluctance and delay in doing this, though some drugs were subsequently found to be helpful.

Duration and intensity of lockdowns

I worked with the group of Conservative MPs that argued against the intensity and long duration of lockdowns, and voted accordingly. We successfully opposed a final extra lockdown period, and note that Wales which locked down harder and for longer ended up with a higher death rate than England.

Use of statistics

I raised issues about the quality and reliability of the data, and the changes made to presentations of the statistics. I was particularly critical of the UK concept of a covid death, which included death with covid as well as death from covid. I was  concerned about the reliability of evidence from test and trace programmes.

John Redwood (Wokingham, Conservative):
If we reduced the waiting time from, say, a year to three months when making a decision on an illegal migrant, would that not cut the accommodation and other public service costs by three quarters and relieve a lot of the pressure? What is a reasonable time to come to a conclusion on whether someone is illegal and should not stay, or is welcome here and can get a job?

Suella Braverman, Secretary of State for the Home Office:
That is why I am encouraged by the progress we are making on our initial decision backlog, cases preceding last summer where people have been waiting for many months and in some cases years for a decision on their asylum application. It is essential that we bear down on that backlog, shorten the time that people are waiting for a decision and fundamentally reduce the cost to the taxpayer.

Please see my interview with Talk TV where we discussed the need for tax cuts, scrapping IR35 and inheritance tax

You can find it between 2:09:01 and 2:19:00

 

Dear Kemi

The UK  vehicle industry is being badly damaged by the threat to ban sales of petrol and diesel cars from 2030. This is sooner than our main competitors, leaves insufficient time to create EV models people want and can afford and destroys a very successful UK ICE industry. Do you want all those factories to shut soon? Where are plans for new factories for making EVs with the batteries they need?  How would you stop people importing nearly new ICE vehicles they want from 2030? Why do both government and Opposition want to wipe our current factories off the map?

There is a threat to our gas and oil boiler manufacture and installation businesses from the proposed ban on these boilers in new homes from 2025. Given the very low take up, high cost and questionable performance of heat pumps it would be wise to delay this ban until more progress has been made with finding good value good performance alternatives to gas and oil boilers.

I am copying Grant Shapps in to the correspondence as these policies are also unhelpful in trying to cut CO 2 emissions. EVs require a lot of energy to manufacture, and need a lot of electricity to recharge the batteries. Most days in the UK the bulk of this energy comes from fossil fuel generation. Heat pumps also need plenty of electricity to run and again often work from power mainly derived from fossil fuels. It makes the extra  cost of the imports bizarre.

There is no point shifting industry from the UK to overseas to shunt round the CO 2, and no point in closing our oil and gas fields only to import these fuels instead. The UK needs to earn a living, to invest and create jobs here, not end up dependent on others.

Yours

John Redwood

The government is keen to promote heat pumps for others, yet the uptake by Ministers and senior officials is still low. I would be more impressed if those recommending them had personal experience of them first. The German government seeking to accelerate their adoption by proposing to end oil and gas boiler sales by the end of this year has suffered a blow to its ratings. The  policy  has acted as good stimulus for gas and oil boiler sales as people rush to renew before the deadline.

My electricity supplier tells me about heat pumps, presumably to encourage me. They say a heat pump costs between £5500 and £13000 with a government £5000 grant. They warn that I might need to put in bigger radiators and  pipes which would be costly, and of course propose additional spending on insulation to allow for the lower temperatures you would otherwise get. They say the hot water would be 50-55 degrees  not 60 to 65 degrees which they propose for a gas boiler. They suggest running costs would b e lower than a gas boiler.

I made enquiries for one for my small London flat where I am not allowed a gas boiler.  I was told they cannot supply one as I am not allowed to place a box or pipe on the outside of the building and am not on the ground floor to allow ground source heat. Flats present  a major setback for the heat pump movement, as many are unable to adapt to them.

Some users who have tried heat pumps report low levels of heating in cold snaps. Some report large electricity bills as they try to get their water and rooms up to temperature against a background of much dearer energy tariffs for electricity than for gas. Some experience difficulties in getting the systems to work. Installation is more complex and entails more work to the house than simply changing gas boilers.

These products are a  hard sell. They are dear. On windless days the heat pumps require a lot of fossil fuel to be burned in power stations to keep them working. I will wait to see how many Ministers and senior officials do buy them and listen to their experiences if they still want to recommend them.

I have long been arguing that the UK government should not be taxing, regulating and banning its way to net zero, as that will collapse business here, lead to more imports, and fail to save the world as they wish.  I have argued that the Green revolution can only work when it is a popular revolution, with people rushing to buy its products because they are better and  more affordable. The government needs to back off from its expensive and often self defeating ideas, and listen to the public. The innovators need to find the ways in which their products can be cheaper  and better as well as greener.

My critics here want me to take on the scientists over global warming which I have no wish or need to do. I accept that CO 2 like methane and water vapour is a greenhouse gas and I understand that governments and many scientists want a bit less of it. The case I am making is their policy proposals are wrong in their own terms, and damaging to economies and lifestyles for no good reason. Cutting CO 2 here to import more from somewhere else is stupid. Some of the green products fail to cut CO 2 despite the claims. So what is the point of them unless they are better and cheaper?

Yesterday I pointed out that it is the undue haste to make people buy electric vehicles that is doing grave damage to our car industry. Despite subsidies to buy, subsidies to install chargers, and plenty of publicity battery cars still only account for 15% of the UK industry’s sales. I have  not myself bought an EV, yet I have usually been an early adopter of new technologies. I had one of the first mobile phones, took to the internet early, moved from maps to sat navs and the rest. So why do I not buy an EV?

I would suffer badly from range worry. My modern clean diesel car went 630 miles on the last tank full of fuel and still said it could do another 55 miles when I filled it up. It means I can go anywhere in England from my home and return without  needing to refuel. I read test reports of EVs where journalists sympathetic to the new  vehicles have to report problems finding the right kind of charger with the right kind of payment system available and ready to use when they go longer distances and need to recharge.

I would suffer from impatience waiting for the recharge. I can refuel at any one of thousands of diesel stations, pay and exit in less than five minutes. That’s good service.

I would worry about the costs of refuelling. Electricity is mainly a secondary fuel, made from burning gas or biomass or coal. We are a long way from most electricity reliably coming from renewables. With all the generation and transmission losses it will be dearer than simply burning a primary fuel in your engine. In due course the government is bound to put a tax on it, as they cannot afford the loss of fuel duties and VAT as and when more people  switch from petrol and diesel. If they put a similar level of tax on electricity for cars as they do on diesel it would be very expensive to run.

I would worry about possible damage to the battery should someone run into my vehicle. It must be dearer and more hazardous to repair an EV given the way the battery is part of the chassis and vulnerable in a shunt.

I would worry about weight and tyre wear, as these  vehicles are heavier.

I would dislike the way they are trying to be mobile phones on wheels, with too any things controlled through a touch screen. Touchscreens in cars get clouded from fingers touching , are difficult to read when the sun is shining on them and often do not respond to your first or second touch. Switches are easier to see , always work and are more positive generally.

I am told they are fast. The truth is you cannot use extra speed these days as all roads are speed controlled and frequently heavy traffic usually impedes even reaching the permitted speed. My current car is potentially faster and more powerful than I could ever use on our roads.

I am told they cut CO 2 substantially. I do not think so. On a typical day only 20% of our electricity comes from wind and solar, with no solar at  night. Most EVs on many occasions are  mainly refuelling using electricity generated from fossil fuels. Scrapping a diesel car with some life left in it and buying an EV adds to world CO 2 because of the amount generated when making the  new car and destroying the old.

I am not surprised that EVs are still only 15% of sales. They have only been high in countries with large subsidies to boost purchases. Contrast that with the pads, laptops and mobile phones that fly off the shelves with no subsidy and no government urging. They are part of a popular revolution. I will look at other green products in future pieces. I await an electric car that I would like to buy.

The UK government actively encouraged and supported by the opposition parties wants to shut down all the UK’s manufacturing capacity to make petrol and diesel cars by 2030. It is true their method is to ban UK purchases of new vehicles, but the intent and the likely consequence is to close down the factories. That is nearly 800,000 jobs, plus all the jobs and factories making components.

The UK was a great centre  for clean car diesel engines, that all have to close. Nor will the industry want  the fuel tanks, drive trains, gearboxes and the rest that goes with an ICE model. Instead  the UK will need batteries and electric  motors needing very different suppliers. I read that the government is close to attracting a Jaguar battery plant. It will apparently cost several hundred million  pounds of taxpayer subsidy, and will be just one of several battery factories we will need to try to replace the job losses from ending ICE cars. It runs the risk of setting a high cost for attracting any other battery plants. The UK becomes a soft touch in a weak position by moving to wipe out its current industry so early.
Remain who said a 10% tariff on Uk car exports would do damage say nothing about the enormous damage the  banning of ICE  cars will do. Some in the industry worry they will face a tariff to export an electric car where they have imported the  battery and much else and just screw it together. Again this is missing the main threat. Relying  on electric cars when we do not have battery or other electric component manufacture will of course damage our industry.It’s  not the trade rules that demolish the industry.It is not being able to make most of car here.

The government needs to realise that asking the Uk to retire popular technologies and replace with products the market cannot yet afford or want at scale will not save the planet but will gravely damage our industry. The UK should not lead the bans on ICE cars. We also need to understand that getting someone to prematurely write off an older ICE vehicle to  buy a new battery car can add to world CO 2 unless they do many more miles   than average. They may be unable to recharge with renewable electricity. There is no point in plugging  it into the mains  on a no wind day.