Andy Burnham’s idea that if  the government delegates more money and power to regional Mayors the North will be transformed is a nonsense.

His actions in Manchester did lend large sums to developers to build high rise blocks of flats in the centre  to sell to the better off. He was criticised for not building more social housing and for working with a few rich entrepreneurs who got richer. There was no great strategy to bring industry back to the once thriving cotton City, no new successful initiatives for training and better paid employment for the young people of Manchester.

In a debate I had on LBC yesterday morning I pointed out that a large chunk of the railway/ transport budget went on HS 2 but resulted in the railway never reaching Manchester and Leeds as originally planned. This Labour government has no intent to restore the whole original point of the project, better North-south links. The absurd latest planned spend of up to £102 bn swamps transport budgets and kills off plenty of cheaper better projects.

If he delegates benefit money and spend to Councils  will there still be national rates and national policies? What incentives will there be for Mayors to get more people into work, and to make work more worthwhile?

If we are to start to grow as fast as the US it will take lower taxes and a pro enterprise and investment national policy. Letting Mayors borrow and spend more will not deliver the more prosperous private sector or industrial revival we need.

 

In recent days people have been told by their nationalised Network Rail  not to use the train services unless it is essential. Three hot days led to trouble on the tracks. Meanwhile the Minister after a two year wait produced updated budget forecasts for the costs of fully nationalised HS 2. These showed the cost has shot up to over £87bn for less than half the railway line originally planned. Even with construction contracts let and work underway there is a £14 bn variation in the forecasts with an upper figure of £102 bn.

Worse still are the delays. A new trainline first planned by the Labour government of 1997-2010 might be able to pock up its first passengers in 2040 or they might need to wait another three years til 2043. How come successive UK governments and their highly paid Chief Executives of HS2 have so failed? How can it take three decades to build a single rail line? Why do costs escalate beyond belief? Why have none of the senior managers responsible lost their jobs or even in some cases sacrificed their bonuses?

This dreadful performance makes nationalisation a hard sell. It also makes more nationalisation unaffordable for taxpayers. Taxpayers have been mugged by HS2. Why look for other ventures where the same  might happen?

My Lords, as a Member of Parliament, I was unable to vote for the original climate change legislation. It seemed to be totally unrealistic, it was likely to be extremely expensive, and I thought it would be self-defeating. It was quite obvious that a large number of important economies around the world would not adopt this. It was extremely likely that an economy such as China would use the huge opportunity of our self-inflicted wound to export more and more to us—burning lots of coal and gas and marine diesel to get it here—and that we would deindustrialise too rapidly. Of course, that is exactly what is happening.

Lord Deben  has just asserted that we have not deindustrialised, but he needs to look at the facts. We are losing massive amounts of traditional industry in petrochemicals, ceramics, glass and glass fibre. Many companies have gone down, many plants are being closed, and we are losing our traditional steel industry. It is true that we have had great success in industries such as pharmaceuticals. That may have been what my noble friend had in mind with the figures he was quoting, but he cannot get away from the fact that this is now doing huge damage: closing factories, closing plants, and causing a loss of jobs.

My first objection to the Government’s proposal tonight is that we should not adopt a very tough national carbon budget without knowing what the impact is going to be on carbon dioxide produced elsewhere in the world. You need to look at the net position, not just at the UK’s position. I suspect that the future will be like the last 20 years: there will not be a big net reduction in world CO2. There will probably be an increase in world CO2,because of all the extra marine diesel needed for the imports; because of a shift from gas down a pipe from our own fields to LNG, which my noble friend on the Front Bench has stressed is much more CO2intensive; and because, for traditional industrial products, we will be more and more dependent on countries that may use methods that are more CO2intensive—as well as all the obvious extra environmental costs those countries will incur, from the way they get the raw materials out of the ground, to the social costs of the conditions of labour that they use for producing the products, and the extra transport involved in the imports.

My second big objection to this order is cost. We are given a provisional figure of £880 billion, or £35 billion a year. My noble friend is right that this is likely to be a gross underestimate of the true cost.

I challenge the Minister on how much he thinks grid expansion will cost, because the grid expansion will have to be on a completely unprecedented scale. When all the energy sources come from renewables, rather than the more dependable gas-fired sources—which do not need nearly so much grid—the Minister will need a much bigger grid to deliver the current amount of power that we need. Further, since electricity is still a minority part of the power we use, if we are going to treble or quadruple our use of electricity to replace the gas that we burn in our home heating, and the petrol and diesel we burn in our transport, the mind boggles at just how many pylons there will need to be around the country, and at just how much grid capacity there will have to be to deliver all that extra power.

 

The Minister also needs to understand that, while he is right legally that he can meet his commitments now by coming up with a—probably completely fictional—plan for the amount of carbon the country will produce over the next 12 to 16 years, he does not have to show in any detail how we might get there. My advice to all Governments is not to try to predict the future beyond 10 years, because nobody can. Everything is going to change. A year ago, we could not even predict who the Prime Minister of the current Government was going to be, but we meet tonight on the eve of a new Prime Minister. So how on earth can we predict how big the UK economy is going to be in 2040? How can we predict whether any of our industry of a traditional kind will survive or not? How can we predict what the technologies will be? It may be that the so-called new technologies around the lithium-ion battery—currently the main marketing ploy of those who favour this kind of policy—will be completely old hat in 10 or 15-years’ time. There may be something genuinely better. There may be an electric product that I want to buy because it works well and is genuinely cheaper.

My next challenge to the Minister is that I do not believe this line that electricity is cheap and will get cheaper with the more renewables we use. The evidence is there for all to see. We have gone further than most with renewables. We have the dearest electricity in the advanced world, and one of the reasons for that is the cost of renewable—a lot of renewable power is contracted at very high guaranteed prices. Worse still, we need the gas power stations, and we need to pay them for doing nothing, because you need the backup. Of course it is going to be a lot dearer to have electricity from renewables, because you have to pay twice to have two different lots of capital equipment. The Minister has wisely limited my time, so I will have to suffice with just those few very strong objections. I back my noble friend’s amendment.

We learn that Rachel Reeves is to be sacked as Chancellor. That is a sensible decision. She has systematically depressed sentiment and hurt investment by talking the economy down, by overtaxing anyone and any business that wants to  be positive. She has driven up unemployment and inflation. She has failed to restore lost public sector productivity, feather bedded ailing state businesses and services and allowed runaway energy and water bills.

Who should replace Rachel Reeves?

Front runner Ed Milliband would be a disaster. Doubling down on wasteful and damaging net zero capital projects, continuing with expensive fossil fuel energy made too dear by sky high taxes and carbon charges, and refusing to get our own tax rich oil and gas out would continue the anti growth and anti enterprise Reeves policies. Burnham would fail to keep his promises of wider investment prosperity and growth from the day he appointed Miliband.

Untested Wes Streeting is so ambitious he has not set out and stuck with any clear view of how to grow an economy or more importantly how to control the out of control public spending of the last two years. It would be best to put him back in charge of the NHS and tell him to see through the reforms he claimed to have started before  his resignation.

Yvette Cooper has some of the background and experience necessary, but her abject failure as Home Secretary to do the obvious things to smash the gangs, her number one policy objective, illustrates that she finds it very difficult to translate aims into working policies. Why take the risk again? As Foreign Secretary she has just been bag carrier to a PM who wanted to be out of the UK as much as possible, acting as his own Foreign Secretary.

Shabana Mahmood should stay as Home Secretary. She sounds the toughest of the candidates for that job and has a lot of unfinished work to do to smash the gangs and  bring down legal migration further. Give her more time to see if she can translate tough talk into good outcomes.

Darren Jones is a slick media performer who has until recently done his best to speak for an ailing Prime Minister. This has not afforded him any opportunity to develop an independent view of how to improve the economy and go for growth. He has  seemed more interested in the politics than in good government.  His pathetic attempt to run for leader by allowing speculation to run until yesterday morning when he tried to jump aboard the Burnham bus with a half hearted endorsement of the new PM shows he does not have what it takes for a senior job.

Pat McFadden would be my choice. He has been loyal to Starmer in public whilst being an honest adviser in private about the benefits and tax disasters of Starmer/Reeves. He understands the need to curb benefit spending is a priority and sees that there have to be limits on extra and higher taxes. He would send the least damaging signal to the markets.

The PM was not treated well by his party and suffered a major attack from Andy Burnham . I understand his personal sorrow as he comes to grips with the way his party abandoned him so soon after he delivered them a huge Commons majority.

I do not agree with his allies and friends who tell us he was a decent man who was a great success as an international statesman. He did not treat his closest advisers and supporters well, sacrificing and blaming  Sue Gray, Mc Sweeney, press secretaries and others as his errors became clear. He did accept a large number of freebies after years of criticising others  for similar conduct. He did not offer proper support to his Chancellor in the Commons when she was under such pressure she shed a tear.

He was certainly no great promoter and defender of UK interests abroad. His foreign policy was one of his worst features. His needless attempt to give away the Chagos islands and to provide a 99 year dowry of payments to Mauritius helped undermine the US relationship, sought to burden UK taxpayers when taxes were already too high and ended in failure.

His craven conduct towards the EU sacrificed twelve years of very valuable fish to the EU with no benefit gained in return. He refused to ban their damaging 100 meter plus industrial trawlers harming our seabed and raiding our fish stocks. He gave far too much money to re enter the Erasmus Student scheme. He did not see that Erasmus made UK taxpayers pay plenty of money to finance EU students coming to the UK, and offered less choice and support to UK students wishing to study abroad. Our UK Turing scheme was cheaper than Erasmus, only financed UK students and let them go to non EU universities as well as to EU ones.

His negotiations to accept more and  more EU rules and charges, especially in the food and farming area are doing more to harm the prospects for UK agriculture. The idea that the UK should accept dynamic alignment, the system where the EU imposes laws on us without us having a say or a veto, is rejected by 59% and supported by just 27% in a recent poll.

To influence big world political events the UK needs strong military forces to back up its seat on the UN Security Council. Instead PM Starmer withdrew our last frigate and last minesweeper from the Gulf region just before the Straits of Hormuz and the commercial waterways of the Gulf were blocked. He undermined the UK’s position in NATO by his failure to provide the money to back the Defence Investment Plan.

His errors over pensioner winter fuel payments, disability benefits, the steady climb in unemployment, the explosion in sick notes for life and the continuing poor performance of the economy are things even his friends disagreed with.

It was great news 10 years ago that a  majority of voters in our biggest ever election/referendum wanted the UK to be self governing again. We should put people elected by the voters in charge of our government, and should be able to get rid of them if they fail or displease. So many things were wrong or unhelpful from the EU, but UK voters could not vote out of office the people who made the decisions.

We have already enjoyed some big wins from leaving.

We are now saving around £17 bn a year as we no longer have to surrender some tax revenues to them and no longer have to pay a large membership fee.

We have reached agreement with India and the TPP for new trade deals, and improved  some of the trade deals we had via the EU when we rolled them  over.

We have been able to improve animal welfare standards by for example ending the export of live animals.

We have been able to cancel tariffs on 24% of our imports where we buy things we cannot make or grow for ourselves, making products cheaper.

We switched from Erasmus to Turing to give more help to UK students going abroad, with more choice of university outside the EU as well as just within the EU under Erasmus. It also cut the bills for UK taxpayers as we did not have to pay for EU students to come here.

We regained our seat on the World Trade Organisation, giving us more influence to shape world trade policy

We have avoided a large number of new rules and regulations the EU has passed since we left, giving an advantage to our AI and services industries.

We have made regulatory changes to help our pharmaceutical and plant development research based industries

Migration into the UK for lower paid jobs has been reduced from the EU with the ending of freedom of movement

We have avoided any liability for the massive Euro 800 bn borrowing programme the EU is embarked upon. We could not afford more debt.

This current government has been able to offer huge subsidies to the steel industry, and to put VAT on school fees which the EU would have prevented. These would not  be my choices but they show our elected government  using Brexit  freedoms.

There are so many more wins to be had

We can get rid of carbon taxes and emissions trading, EU originated policies which make our energy too dear.

We can negotiate trade deals with more places around the world with faster growing economies.

We can avoid putting the coming  EU carbon tariffs or border taxes on our imports which will make things dearer.

We can cut migration from non EU further and get proper control of our borders now we are out of free movement. The last government was wrong not to do so.

We can cut and remove VAT from products, as we have with green items.

We can favour UK suppliers in public procurement

We can reduce the inherited regulatory EU burden on businesses

 

 

 

 

The hopeless self serving Establishment of the 1970 s , 1990 s and 2000 s accepted mediocrity, excessive bureaucracy, endless humiliations for the UK and ever growing bills as they sheltered in the closing vice of EU power. They lied to us all, telling us we were just joining a common market, that it would boost growth and leave our sovereignty untouched. Whenever the EU inflicted more damage we were told the EU needed more power over us amidst denials that the EU had caused any harm. Many senior politicians, civil servants, judges, executives in large multinational corporations took comfort in the EU making our rules, telling us what to do and sending us bills.

Instead in the EEC/EU our growth rate halved, membership wrecked once flourishing industries, took our fish and our money, and forced thousands of new  laws upon us.

It started badly in the 1970s. Whilst much of the economic damage was done by a Labour government overspending, over borrowing and ending up with an IMF recovery plan, the 1970 s also saw mass redundancies and many factory closures. Removing all tariffs protecting UK industry in a hurry on joining accelerated closures. We lurched into  permanent heavy trade deficit in goods with the EU as they took advantage of our weakness. Car output halved, steel and shipbuilding slumped.

In the 1980 s the UK rebuilt, attracting big overseas investment in automotive and entering a telecoms and City revolution , but the EEC continued to damage agriculture through its Common Policy and its fishing quotas,whilst preparing an avalanche of new laws for the so called single market.

John Major took the UK into the deeply damaging European Exchange  Rate Mechanism against my advice. This gave us boom/ bust,leading  to the nasty recession in 1992. This predictably led to the Conservatives being thrown out of office for 13 years and badly set back the UK economy. Too many people lost their homes faced with unaffordable mortgages and too many businesses went bust.The EEC never apologised and refused to help us when the markets tore the stupid scheme apart.

The EU used the outbreak of BSE to ban UK beef exports for an over the top 10 years. They harmed dairy farmers with insufficient quota , forcing us to import milk products. We lost big market share in meat and dairy. They paid us some  of our money back to grub up our orchards to shift us over to importing French and Spanish fruit. Subsidised gas and greenhouses in the Netherlands replaced some of our market gardens.

This century the EU turned to demolishing our coal, oil and gas industries in the name of net zero. UK Ministers were willing to accept this  and imposed penal bans, rules and taxes on fossil fuels to make the UK an importer.These were great strengths of the UK economy in the fast growing 1980s.

The UK became enmeshed in thousands of new laws. Most of them were needless for trade. All you needed for a common market was the simple rule that something sold of merchandisable quality in one country could be offered for sale  in the others. (The cassis de Dijon judgement). Instead the single  market was used as an excuse for a massive EU power grab.

Voters got more and more fed up that changing governments could not change so many bad laws and taxes. We voted to get our freedom  back.That led the Establishment to seek to thwart our will. They like being locked up in the EU prison. They accepted crazily  high bills to stay in , helping burden voters with unrealistic levels of tax. We had to watch the lower taxed advanced countries of the world  growing faster and prospering more as the EU fell  further and further behind the US.

I am proud of the voters voting to leave. We were right that the EU and its single market did us harm. Tomorrow as we celebrate 10 years from the vote I will set out our gains so far. There is so much more we can now do, now we have our freedoms.

 

 

Andy Burnham’s ramblings before and after election are designed to create warm feelings. They are not thought through  policy or a working plan  to change government.

He says former industrial areas have been neglected, their voices un heard. The truth is far worse than that. His political chum Ed Miliband has intensified the attack on UK industry and production by going for extreme net zero policies that shut our factories, wells and furnaces and make us depend on imports.  Kemi Badenoch has set out how to alter this, and helped the Conservative candidate to win the Aberdeen South by election on policies that could start to reverse the precipitate industrial and energy decline.

A government that is serious about backing UK industry needs to

1. Lift the ban on new oil and gas wells imposed by this government
2. Lift the ban on making petrol and diesel cars, brought forward to 2030 by this government
3. Abandon this government’s plan to link us into the EU carbon tax and emissions scheme, which means dearer energy
4. Abolish the UK carbon tax imposed by the last government, and the windfall tax on oil and gas introduced by the last government and increased  by this.
5. Abandon plans to introduce a carbon border levy or tariff
6. Reach agreement with the Chinese over the future of Scunthorpe steel
7. Arrange for new gas fired power stations to restore self sufficiency in electricity
8. Accelerate development of smaller nuclear plants to replace the losses from closures of old nuclear
9. Install new reservoirs to meet demands from the expanded population, and the needs of data centres, overcoming big planning delays
10. Repeal most of this government’s employee rights legislation
11. Cut National Insurance and Business rates, taxes on jobs, paid for by benefit reductions

I cannot see Burnham doing these things if he does manage to become Prime Minister.

Voters backed the Conservative campaign in Aberdeen South to stop the close down of our oil and gas industry. The government needs to change policy urgently. Dear and imported energy is the main cause of de industrialisation and no growth in production industries.

Voters in Makerfield backed Andy Burnham to replace the PM. That too was a vote for change, a cry for help. Unfortunately  flip flopping Burnham is unlikely to cut taxes, reform benefits and stop net zero self harm which is what is needed.