Author: johnredwood

The UK like many countries is prone to floods and to water shortages.

When we had a fully nationalised water industry in my youth we faced water rationing in summers with hosepipe bans and in some cases standpipe water. Since then we have had a large increase in population with regulated private monopolies not building additional reservoir capacity. They say they could not charge enough to pay for expansion. The Regulator never told them to expand capacity. Cutting UK CO 2 will have no impact on all the extra  demand a fast growing population creates. The government needs to tell the Regulators to require an expansion of capacity.

Our flooding matters more now than in the past because governments and Councils have allowed and encouraged too much building on flood plains. The Planning regulators have failed to put in sufficient drainage capacity. The Environment Agency has failed  to dredge rivers and expand capacity of ditches and culverts to get water away from buildings. Cutting migration numbers would help. A concerted programme of water diversion is essential Again decarbonising the UK will not stop floods on floodplains.

Sea defences need improving where spending can protect towns and cities. We should be working on a new London barrage further down the estuary.

Does Mr Miliband ever worry that his policies lead to black outs and energy shortages? We are living through a colder snap. We hear endlessly about it on the news as if it was unusual. It’s called winter and has happened most years. We have lived through far longer and colder spells in some past years than this December/January.

Despite this being a not so long or cold spell so far we find ourselves with wind and solar generating as little as 6% of our electricity, and regularly less than 15%. That means more than 90% and as much as 98% of our total energy comes from things other than wind or solar. Most comes from oil and gas.

This government has stopped any new oil and gas exploration or development at home and put  up oil and gas taxes even higher to try to force early closure of what is still producing. They think CO 2 heavier imported oil and gas better than home sourced. Why?

They are not rushing to put in more gas storage to make us more European. Why not? We had low levels  of gas storage capacity because our gas storage was our own productive  gas field reservoirs.  If we can’t produce our own we need much more storage, otherwise as now we have to pay much inflated prices to import when gas is short .

Why are we not putting in more gas fired generation? We need plants that work when there is no sun or wind. Instead again we are forced to pay sky high prices for imports when electricity is short in Europe as well.

UK policy has been to keep on putting in more pipes  and cables to the continent whilst closing down much our own power provision. They close  oil and gas, blow up all coal power stations, retire gas stations and decommission al but one of our nuclear plants. It is a policy to make us hopelessly dependent on imports from a Europe short of energy. It increases the shortages for Europe as well as ourselves.

Please Mr Miliband do something. Don’t be the Minister who presides over power cuts. Please Sir Kier don’t follow your removal of pensioner fuel allowances with policies designed to make gas and electricity even dearer.

Facts4eu sent out a good note highlighting the productivity collapse in the public sector. Productivity is now 8.5% down on six years ago. The government needs to reverse this quickly, as it is making public services unaffordable to taxpayers.

As someone who has led parts of the public sector as a Councillor with Council Executive responsibilities and as a Minister I know the need to work with the staff and system to get better performance. As a former Chairman of two international industrial businesses I know what you can achieve with the right approach and key staff.

The first thing for the  public sector to grasp is quality and productivity are two sides of the same coin. An efficiency drive must not be cost cutting above quality of service. It must be better and smarter working, mindful of the needs and views of staff.

Put in a quality system. Get things right first time  to save duplication of effort and more complaints. Fix things that go wrong as soon as they are identified. Manage error out by changing approach when a series of errors emerges. Keep service design and delivery straightforward and easy to understand. Reward staff that do well. Make managers experience what staff have to do. Dont put off serving a user. That means you need more than one contact, a holding reply followed by the reply or action. Don’t allow backlogs to build.

As Chairman I always asked to see the complaints. They present opportunities . They reveal what is wrong that needs fixing. Remedy something well for someone you have messed up can create a more loyal customer. They see they matter. Listen to customers or service users, as it is their needs that give you a job. Design a service they want, not one that is convenient for the provider.

I would be happy to help the public sector be better for both employees and users. Like productivity and quality they go together to create success.

It is unusual for the Treasury to comment on market changes. Yesterday they did as  the 10 year yield soared to 4.8% and the pound fell another cent against the dollar, now down 6% from the last year high. Today the rate is up again and the pound down more. It is a bad sign that the pound is falling as our longer term interest rates go up. It confirms the lack of confidence shown in the surveys and shows how a high tax low growth strategy puts off investors in government bonds.

I warned yesterday that the Chancellor has to avoid putting up taxes,  crushing  growth, cutting tax revenues and then seeing government borrowing rising too far. She should see that doing that in her ill judged budget meant  interest rates rise, state borrowing costs rise and government finances are in a doom loop. Rachel Reeves must be regretting saying 4.38% rates for a day in 2022 meant  crashing the economy now she has helped put them up and keep them up higher for longer.

A rethink of the budget is urgently needed. The spending round will now collide with a Labour party  that wants to spend more when Treasury advice will be to cut the burgeoning deficit. The Chancellor ruled out higher taxes again, and they would make the situation worse. The trouble is Labour Ministers and backbenchers will not want to cut spending. Pity Rachel   Reeves ignores the easy cuts I have suggested to Bank of England losses, productivity losses and net zero excesses like carbon capture.

When the cost of ten year borrowing for the government hit 4,38% for a very brief spike in September 2022 Rachel Reeves claimed Liz Truss had crashed the economy as this would put up interest rates. At the same time as a budget which announced a bigger deficit the Bank of England was putting up base rate, threatening more rate rises, announced a huge sales programme of government bonds and watched as the pension funds geared bond investment plunged causing another big wave of selling. The  Bank quickly reversed the bond market fall by buying up some bonds, The ten year rate was down to 3.1% by November. A change of Chancellor cut the deficit a bit.The Bank after the event agreed its actions were mainly responsible for a lower  the bond market

The ten year rate is now 4.68%.No hint from the Chancellor she has crashed the economy or upped the mortgage rate. This time you cannot blame the Bank for much of the fall as it is easing short rates down and is not going to up its sales.Nor can you blame pension funds and LDI as those have been reined in. This is about the impact of the budget which increased borrowing, hit confidence and undermined the growth rate.

Now the Chancellor is in a bind. Interest  charges will now be higher on state debt, so her leeway in hitting spending and borrowing targets has gone.If the economy stays slow growing the government will need more tax rises and or spending cuts. More austerity will keep growth low.

Most people agree with our constitutional theory. We are all beneath the law. The law should be evenly enforced. The more severe crimes of violence against  people should be given priority by the services set up to prevent  crime, to investigate crime and to prosecute suspects.
Punishments should be related to the severity of the crime. Long periods in prison should be used for those who did most harm to most people, to protect the public and act as a Deterrent.

The law against racial abuse should be enforced. It should not be used as an excuse not to prosecute or investigate a suspect. If a suspect is from a minority group others should  not generalise from the conduct of a criminal from that group. All racial groups contain small criminal minorities.

Many people are shocked by what has emerged over grooming and rape gangs. The call for a further enquiry is frustration that the previous enquiry did not go into the full extent of these horrors or propose suitable  remedies. There is a feeling successive governments and Crown  Prosecutors have let people down over a wave of serious crimes. The government needs to come up with a stronger response.

I rarely comment on Opposition parties, but today given that way important issues about Reform have been prominent in world social media I thought I should let those of you interested pass comment.

Elon Musk is a very talented entrepreneur and a titan of social media. When he speaks the world listens.
His recent attack on Nigel Farage was unexpected after reports of friendly relations between the two. It has revealed a couple of splits in Reform over the constitution of the party and over who should be allowed to join.
Mr Musk sides with those in Reform who think it should change from being a private company where Nigel Farage controls a majority of the voting shares, to being a more normal party where members have votes, can approve budgets and direction and can have a voting say in who leads them . Nigel Farage is promising change to the constitution but others are frustrated with delays.
Rupert Lowe put out a very carefully worded statement that fell short of supporting Nigel as leader. Rupert is the darling of many members and some media for his continuous strong opposition to the government. Maybe Mr Musk has him in mind to replace Nigel.

Mr Musk also seems to think Tommy Robinson should be allowed to join Reform. Nigel Farage strongly disagrees given Robinson’s past brushes with the law and his views on religion.

Mr Farage may well strengthen his ability to detach more voters from Labour by standing up to Mr Musk over the issue of the Robinson  tendency joining. He will also lose some others who want very strong messaging on religion and migration.

Meanwhile we await a possible big change to the party constitution. Who should be able to change the Leader of Reform, and in what circumstances?

The government is keen on nationalisation, pressing ahead with completing rail and regulating private utilities to get similar effects. Lifetime study of UK nationalised concerns has taught me that they are bad for employees, for customers and taxpayers. They invest badly, fail to innovate and fall behind in productivity.

Employees of nationalised concerns are more likely to go on strike. Sickness and absence rates are often high, signs of an unhappy workforce. There is more likely to be a work to rule or I know my rights Union mentality than a We are here for the customers approach. There is insufficient flexibility over pay, so there can be staff shortages where pay is below market rates alongside  above market pay for others who have benefitted from comparability awards. Management often  fails to work with employees to get a better answer for them and the customers.

Customers usually face a rules based system, not a problem solving one. Its a world of do not reply to email addresses, complex on line forms and customer inconvenience.

I recently tried  to buy stamps in a Post Office. There were huge queues for the 3 staffed positions. I queued in a shorter queue for a machine to serve me. When it did so it then took several minutes to print out one at a time a different proof of post paid to a normal stamp, Why? No wonder there were long queues.

Potential passengers for HS2 are subject to years of delays and cancellation of substantial parts of the  planned new all nationalised railway .

Taxpayers get the worst deal. Every loss and every pound of investment is  a charge on government revenues. Over the years accumulated losses have been enormous. Many investment programmes have been disastrous. Horizon and the delayed  HS2 are just the latest examples .

It is best if senior politicians avoid comments that are derogatory about their counterparts abroad in case they end up in government. The old rule of do not interfere in the politics of a foreign country usually is wise, unless in government you need to respond in our national interest to actions or statements of a foreign country.

The UK government is led by senior Ministers who ignored these rules when in Opposition. They welcomed President Obama’s endlessly cited intervention in the Brexit referendum for Remain, which turned out to be a clumsy mistake that backfired. They went on to make nasty personal attacks on President Trump which have now come back to haunt them.

President Trump did not intervene in our General election despite their provocations. He has not made personal attacks on them .He is now as an ally and trade partner criticising their energy and industrial policies. This poses a further problem for the government . They had hardly complain about him commenting given their track record.

When President Trump points out US companies are pulling out of North Sea oil and gas investment owing to penal taxes he is stating a fact. When he says a strong economy needs to use more of its own oil and gas rather than importing he is again stating an obvious truth.

Why can’t  the government see its energy policy of relying on imports which increase world CO 2 is bad for jobs, for energy security and the environment? Giving away all that potential tax on home produced energy stretches budgets and means the Uk can afford less defence to contribute to NATO where the US assumes a large burden to help us and Europe.

Political parties have spent years talking to each other, off and on, about finding an agreed system of social care. They all claim they want a system they all accept, unlike other policy areas. They fail to find one, with Labour, Conservative and coalition governments backing the existing system in the absence of agreement on change.

There are a number of different issues and aims to consider. Most people wanting reform are not considering the needs of those in care , but are considering who pays the bills. They think taxpayers should pay more and the people in care should pay less so their families can inherit more.

Social care is largely administered for the state by local government. The NHS is a national service, so there are border  disputes over who needs medical care in a hospital and who should be discharged to a care home  with GP support. Healthcare and  stays in hospital are free for all whilst social  care has to be paid  for if you have savings and or a private pension on top of the state pension. Councils pay for those without means, arguing over the  adequacy of government grant to do so.

The current system rests on a central distinction between hotel services, lodging and food provided by a care home which remain an individual responsibility, and medical services which are paid for by taxpayers. There is a good case to make that it would be neither affordable nor fairmotivated workforce.  to provide full hotel style board and bed in a care home free whilst other elderly or disabled have to pay  for  their own home, heat and meals. Both those at homes and those in care homes should only have the bills paid if they lack capital and additional income. The review needs to consider the current system as a serious runner to continue with a few tweaks.The important issues are quality of care and how to recruit a skilled and