Author: johnredwood

At the heart of the row in the Commons over the Gaza vote was a bitter feud between the SNP and Labour.

For many years the Standing Orders have been followed which state that on an Opposition Day the Opposition party that is given that day can table  a motion for debate and require a vote on it. This was done to prevent the government tabling an amendment, voting through the amendment and thereby preventing a vote on the Opposition party motion. It is an exception  to normal procedure on an amendment where we vote on it first then vote on the motion as amended or unamended depending on the outcome of the amendment vote.

Labour gets many more Opposition days than the SNP as allocation depends on number of MPs in the party. They chose not to use recent days to debate and vote a Labour motion on Gaza. The SNP motion went too far in criticising Israel  for the Labour leadership. They were worried about Labour MPs voting for the SNP motion, and concerned Front benchers would resign to do so.

Seeing the SNP Motion the government as it is entitled to do tabled its policy as an amendment to the SNP motion expecting Parliament to first vote on the SNP motion followed by a vote on the government amendment when the SNP motion was defeated. Labour also tabled an amendment.

The Speaker wanted all 3 positions to be heard but his decision to allow priority to voting the Labour amendment meant the SNP motion would not be voted if the Labour amendment passed. The government then said they would withdraw their amendment expecting the  Speaker  to restore Standing Orders by requiring  a prior vote on the SNP motion followed by a vote on the Labour amendment. Instead the Speaker determined to continue with priority for the Labour amendment. It also meant in the debate the Shadow Foreign Secretary took priority in responding to the SNP over the government.

Conservative backbenchers used up the remaining time so the Labour amendment had not been put to the vote by 7 pm when following the resolution of the House proceedings should have ended. Instead the chair put the Labour amendment after 7. There were howls  of protest against putting it and cries of No against the amendment. The chair declared the amendment passed  unanimously.

This was a bad day for Parliament. Meanwhile the Israeli Parliament voted against a two state solution for Gaza and Palestine. That was a vote that matters. It should  remind UK MPs that what matters  in Gaza is the views of Hamas and Israel.

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):

It is good news that unemployment has stayed low by European standards, and the economy is still generating plenty of job vacancies. Will the Government take more steps to help more people into those jobs, so that we can get faster growth, bring down the benefit bill and boost their incomes?

Bim Afolami:

The whole House knows that my right hon. Friend is somewhat of an expert on matters relating to the economy. To answer his point specifically, the national insurance tax cut was scored at the last fiscal event—the autumn statement—as significantly increasing the number of people in work. Although I will not speculate on fiscal events, that point has been very much noted by me and the whole Treasury.

UK Government Investments Ltd is another of these 100% government owned arms length bodies. It is meant to supervise and manage the governments substantial holdings in nationalised businesses and its stakes in private sector companies. Last year to March it ran up costs of £23.4 m paying its CEO over £260,000 and its staff a media salary  of  £91,000 each. The Treasury made £24 m available to it to pay the bills. The auditor agreed it is a going concern because the Treasury will make cash available to pay the losses.

So what magic did we get for this expenditure? Why not rely on  departmental  supervision of these bodies which happens as well, with Ministers being more involved? Just look at what has been happening under UK GI’s  stewardship.

Post Office. PO has accumulated losses of £1390 million. It has presided over the calamity of the sub postmaster accounting system. Recent stories suggest senior management is still not resolving the issues rapidly enough despite ministerial policy to do so.

Network Rail. Despite owning all the track and stations with a monopoly the remaining net asset value of Network Rail is just £15 bn. £ 55 bn has been expensively borrowed against its network assets. It lost £1140 million last year.

The British Infrastructure Bank  . A relatively new venture, this lost £21.4 m last year with costs of £35.8 m. It is planning to commit £22 bn to investments, with £10 bn of that being guarantees and the rest debt and equity underwritten by taxpayers. The Bank does not expect to be profitable anytime soon. I expect it will be able to deliver that forecast.

Sheffield Forgemasters is a government owned defence supplier. It lost £5 m pre tax last year but does have positive assets and provides some important products.

Nat West. UK Government Investments says it engaged with Nat West as  shareholder over culture and values . It was very quiet over the leaks from Nat West and the resignation  of the Chief Executive. Clearly its engagement did not prevent serious problems.

OneWeb   This investment is now sitting on big losses. It has been rolled into EUtelsat as a UK minority holding, only for those shares to fall more. Difficult to see why the UK taxpayer should be losing money in a 10 % holding of a European business like this that it is not currently making us  money.

Sizewell C   Much delayed and over original budget.

The government should get rid of this body and go back to more detailed supervision by ministers advised  by their departmental official who currently help supervise these businesses . This track record is very poor and not worth £24 m a year.

The continuing unpopularity of Green candidates for Parliament and most Councils is a notable feature of  the UK, only surpassed in the US. Their main preoccupation to get us to net zero is now however written into most political party programmes to a lesser extent. The Democrats in the US are very keen and the non Trump Republicans accept much of it. The Lib Dems whose opinion ratings remain low in the UK want an extreme version of net zero policies like the Greens. The UK Conservatives want a more measured and pragmatic approach, with a range of views from enthusiastic to sceptic within the party. Reform has now come out against many net zero policies, as has Mr Trump in the US. In these latest UK by elections when people could vote for their best preference without worrying about who would be in government, the Green and Lib Dem vote was tiny.

The public according to polls agrees there is global warming and thinks something ought to be done about it. However a large majority do not back going over to heat pumps and battery electric vehicles for themselves and object strongly to net zero policies that make them personally worse off or make their lives more difficult. The public shows more sense than green talking politicians. Many see the folly of the UK closing down fossil fuel activities here only to import replacements from abroad with more fossil fuel used as a result. Many see that pricing UK consumers out of using so much fossil fuel will do nothing to abate the fast growth in fossil fuel use in China, India and the world as a whole.  Many just want to keep their homes warm with a gas boiler and get to work by van or car because that works.

If Mr Trump wins the US election late this year global net zero strategy suffers a major blow. If the world’s largest economy goes for extracting and using more oil and gas,and sees cheap fossil fuel energy as a competitive business  advantage that knocks a big hole in the Paris Treaty targets. The world’s second largest  economy, China, says it  is committed to net zero. However China is still increasing  its output of CO 2 and adding more coal to its energy mix as well as building wind farms. China has not yet started to cut her output. Many emerging economies reserve the right to increase their fossil fuel use as a necessary way to boost living standards.If UK Greens really thought world CO 2 mattered they would be protesting daily outside the Chinese and Indian embassies.

This is why I argue against UK government and Councils lecturing  us to make big changes in our lives that many do not want to make. Worse still some  of these policies are a nonsense in their own terms. Buy an EV and plug it in to recharge, and we will need to burn more gas in a power station to meet the demand. Change all our homes to heat pumps and create large amounts of CO 2 doing so. Why? How ?

As most of you are so critical, this is your chance to have your say and to explain what change you want.

The by elections showed many  former Conservative voters stayed home. Some went to vote Reform. The Labour vote stayed around 2019 levels, with a big turnout fall of Conservatives.

The Lib Dem vote collapsed and the Green vote stayed low. The electorate is not saying they want more net zero policies or a faster transition. Labour announced its cancellation of £28 bn extra spend a year on net zero but that clearly did not upset their voters.

Reform did better than in previous by elections, with a slogan of wanting  net zero immigration, not net zero. As a result if the voting pattern the UK now has two more Labour MPs.

The impact of Labour’s troubles over anti semitism will be seen in the next by elections, where they have now written off  Rochdale and have no candidate they support. In the areas where Labour want to alter current policy they would make things worse.

So what would you like the government to  do now? I have set out many if the things I am trying to change.