Author: johnredwood

The Conservative Manifesto in 2015 could not have been clearer. It said we will “reclaim power from Brussels on your behalf and safeguard British interests in the single market”. It went on to say “No to ever closer union. No to a constant flow of power to Brussels. No to unnecessary interference”. I agreed with all that.

I now seek to implement it. It means not voting for Directives and regulations, as each one of those transfers more power to Brussels. It means opposing judgements of the European Court, like the one that will force us to put VAT up on green products. It means opposing the anticipated Treaty of Political Union in its entirety.

Because Mr Cameron’s renegotiation succeeded in getting no important power back from Brussels, surely it also means voting to leave the EU. I don’t see how voting to stay is compatible with the clear statement that we must get powers back and stop unnecessary interference. Mr Cameron did not even wrestle back the power to choose our own welfare policies, let alone the power to control our own borders and implement our crucial pledge on migration numbers.

I and a good number of my colleagues have stayed true to our Manifesto, by opposing a succession of EU measures. We will continue to do so all the time we remain in the EU. We do now need to leave the EU to do the democratic job properly which we promised at the last election.

We have a few more days left to explain to more voters just how much power has already gone and why it matters.When I write to constituents and explain that Westminster cannot right wrongs they suffer because we no longer have the power, they often express surprise. All those in government and the media who over the years have refused to talk about the EU and refuse to cover the stories of the huge transfer of powers have left the public debate denuded of important information now needed to help people make up their minds about how they wish to be governed In the future?
It is difficult to understand how Ministers can support the very truncated powers many of them now enjoyl

A number of Conservative MPs tabled an Amendment to the Queen’s speech . This is an unusual but available means to require the government to do something that Parliament wants but the government has omitted from its programme. It could also be used to seek to drop something from the programme.

The amendment Peter Lilley proposed requires the UK government to protect the NHS from the EU’s proposed trade with the USA, the so called TTIP. Many think the present version of the TTIP would allow overseas healthcare companies to come in and compete against the NHS, and many disagree with such a development. The government seeks to assure them that this will not be the case. The Labour opposition and the Conservative MPs moving the amendment point out that if the government has already secured the objective there can be no harm to them in accepting the amendment. It looked as if the government took this line and accepted it, but subsequently it appears the government would prefer the Conservative sponsors to drop it. They are unlikely to do so. Maybe the government wants to resist the amendment because they know it is not in their power to deliver what is asked.

This is a rare and important development. Because Conservatives were prepared to pick up a Labour worry about something from the EU, itself an exceptionally rare event to find a Labour EU disagreement, there is at last some debate about an important matter which is an EU matter and no longer in the power of the UK Parliament. As I pointed out yesterday, the UK has moved from being governed by a fanatically pro EU Labour government for 13 years who rarely disagreed or stood up against EU proposals, to being governed by a grand coalition of Labour, Lib Dems and Conservative Ministers on all matters EU. This grouping has sought to carry on rushing everything the EU wants through the Commons without proper debate or explanation. They have been successful in taking the oxygen of publicity away from those MPs who have regularly turned up and opposed important EU driven matters. Because Eurosceptic Conservatives have rarely had enough votes to threaten the EU consensus, most media and journalists have chosen to ignore what we have been saying.

Now we have united to offer a referendum to voters we are having to compress the missing 18 years of lost debate on all matters EU into a few weeks. Too many voters have no idea of just how much power and sway the EU has over us, because the mainstream parties and much of the media have conspired to tell us little power has passed and the UK can still govern herself. Now people are at last realising that we do not control many of our laws, taxes, budgets, foreign policies and the rest.

Vote leave is always being challenged to set out why Out is better. That is an easy task, and this site has done a lot of that in recent weeks. More difficult is we also have to explain just how undemocratic and unfair things currently are for UK people, and just how much worse they can get if we vote to remain in a thoroughly undemocratic, expensive and often wrong headed organisation.

The UK referendum contains within it a battle between the haves who enjoy the golden privileges of office and access to the corridors of power in Brussels, and the have nots, the rest of us who have to pay the taxes to keep them going and follow their rules, however unpalatable.

In a functioning national democracy public opinion can force changes to policies and decisions that are unpopular. This present government has rightly been required to abate its cuts to disability benefits and to alter its stance on tax credits. It is now coming under pressure to stand up to the EU and big business over some of the undesirable features of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which they are negotiating, mainly behind closed doors with too little transparency for the rest of us.

When governments do not listen enough to public opinion, and when they mess up the economy and life chances of the citizens, they get swept from power in an election. Revenge is sweet for the long suffering public, and hope swells as a new team is chosen.

The problem with the EU is it does not respond to public opinion in the same way. Nor can we remove the Commissioners by popular vote. The EU blundered on for far too long with its Exchange Rate Mechanism., causing recession. That meant lost jobs, lost businesses, a house price crash and much other damage.

Then the EU decided to do the same thing all over again to Euro member states. The long deep recessions in Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal were made worse by savage austerity cuts which no sensible democratic state would have embarked on. The election of anti austerity parties and even governments in member countries did not deter them from their chosen course.

The EU is determined to destroy a large amount of EU industry by its very dear energy policies, making so many firms uncompetitive on world markets.

The EU refuses to listen to UK public opinion when we make it clear we want to control our own taxes and spend our own money o n jobs and public services in the UK.

It is high time right and left combined to renounce the EU’s austerity economics, renounce their unwarranted interference in our budgets and taxes, and renounce their harmful fishing, energy, agricultural and other policies that have cost us jobs and lost us businesses.

We want out democracy back. The EU’s bad model is fuelling anger and more extreme parties across the continent in frustration at the way it will not listen, mend its ways and leave more to national democracies to manage and handle.

One of the strange things about the Labour leadership is their willingness to support any measure, however bad, if it is a requirement of the EU. Sometimes they put their party on a 3 line whip to vote for it. Other times they let them go home early or discourage them from voting, so Conservative Ministers and the SNP can defeat Eurosceptic Conservative MPs and secure the Euro measure.

Pro EU people are thankful that Labour behaves “responsibly” in this way. Critics of EU legislation are increasingly angry that the official Opposition in Parliament will not normally oppose anything that has made in Brussels stamped on it. Let’s hope the vote to leave the EU next month changes all this.

The need for Conservative Ministers to rely on Labour votes or abstentions to get through all the EU legislation they are required to pass is having an impact on the conduct of government generally. Yesterday’s Queen’s speech programme was clearly designed to build bridges with Labour, to avoid provocative policies which might jeopardise the implied informal coalition with Labour which is so necessary for the half of our law which now comes from the EU. Neither front bench wish to have a major row with Brussels over for example their insistence on the tampon tax or their Court judgement to make us put up VAT on green products. It is extraordinary that Labour will provide no effective opposition to these tax requirements from the EU.

The left in Parliament is generally quiet on the enforced and self defeating austerity of the Eurozone scheme. They decline to champion the cause of the unemployed in Spain or the poor in Greece, despite claiming to be good enthusiastic and committed Europeans. They confuse Europe with the EU, and seem to think it is their duty to defend all that the EU does, however indefensible. It creates a lop sided and dishonest politics, where the big issues of EU poverty, unemployment, slow growth or no growth are simply not debated. The more that Brussels does, the less a national democracy can function.

We have seen how the democratic will in Greece has to be overwhelmed by Euro area economic policies. The UK still has some democracy left thanks to our opt outs. In an increasing number of areas the UK, like Greece, has to accept whatever Brussels lays down. The refusal of the official opposition to oppose EU measures is the price we pay for this bad way of governing a once independent democratic country.

The government pledged to reduce migration substantially at the last election. One of its main reasons for doing so is the pressure rapid large scale migration places on public services and housing, making it difficult for the country to keep up with demand. When we welcome people to our country we want them to enjoy a decent standard of living and to be a successful part of a community which is well off by world standards.

Some analysis which shows low paid migrants make a contribution by paying more in tax than they receive in benefits does not tell the whole story. Some of it does not even tell the whole story on tax and benefits, by leaving out Housing benefit. Relying on averages can be misleading. It is clearly true that a low paid migrant will pay some VAT and other charges, even if their NI and Income tax contribution is low. What this analysis rarely shows is the capital costs the state and others need to undertake to provide for the needs of a large new migrant inflow.

The ONS in their National Balance Sheet work has a figure for the end of 2013 saying that each UK resident is supported by on average £119,000 of capital assets. Housing is the main asset in each case, but we all needs road, trains, power stations, water works, doctors surgeries and schools as part of the community backup for us and our families. If one extra migrant arrives there may be no need to build a new surgery or add a new power station, but if hundreds of thousands arrive we do need to expand physical capacity and add buildings and equipment as well as hiring more public service staff.

The £119,000 figure is an average, and includes a lot of expensive housing in some parts of the country. It would therefore be wrong to suggest we need to provide £119,000 for every new migrant, or that all that money has to be spent on public provision. It is , however, the case that every migrant will need a home and many will need state or social housing as they will find home prices too dear. Some will rent from the private sector, but will seek Housing Benefit assistance as rents are often high.

One of the reasons we need more accurate figures for new arrivals is to plan better. We need to ensure the right number of new homes, extra school places, GP surgery capacity, adequate water and electricity supply and the rest. Each migrant will need several tens of thousands of pounds of backing investment on average to ensure they can all be housed and provided for to a satisfactory standard. There are said by the government to be 64.5 m people in the UK, but there are 68.4 m registered with GPs.

The third EU Commission Report on progress in Turkey fulfilling EU requirements has changed the language a bit in its latest version, but still contains interesting comments on the EU approach to borders.
Item 10 requires Turkey to deploy sufficient “well trained and qualified border guards” (including military personnel)with “efficient infrastructure, equipment and IT technology, including through a more extensive use of surveillance equipment, in particular electronic means, mobile and fixed,video surveillance, infrared cameras and other sensor systems”. There are to be double lines of defence. “Land border detachments are based in border stations and observation towers near the border…patrolling…six kilometres into the territory from the border. A second line of surveillance is handled by the Gendarmerie.”
“The Turkish authorities have strengthened controls along the Syrian border through the construction of obstacles, fences, illuminations and patrolling roads”.
EU funded projects are helping strengthen these force deployments along the borders.
In other words the EU does now approve of physical barriers along stretches of the Turkish border to try to keep migrants out of Turkey and the EU. EU taxpayers are helping pay for better barriers, more surveillance and improved border defence forces. In return the EU becomes more dependent on the success of the Turkish authorities in policing their long borders with Iraq, Iran and Syria as the visa free area between Turley and the Schengen area of the EU takes shape.
It is a curious policy. Within the EU the EU is against physical borders and boundaries and in favour of free movement. The EU favours proper border controls on the EU’s external borders, but here along the Turkish border there is now an ambivalence as some of the attention shifts from the EU/Turkey border to the Turkey/Syria border. What is clear from the language and budgets is that the EU does now have a Trump element in its borders policy, helping finance tough border barriers to stop migration. The difficulty rests in the great length of the external frontiers and in combining this with visa free policies.