Author: johnredwood

Mr Tsipras has changed from firebrand advocate of change in the Euro and opponent of austerity into EU establishment poster boy accepting every term of a bad deal. His willingness to sign up for everything he once opposed is a far from reassuring sight. He says he is taking a painful but responsible approach. I see nothing responsible in what he is visiting on both Greece and the Eurozone.

Whilst Mr Tsipras and the zone have been at war over the deal the Greek economy must have suffered further substantial damage from bank closures, loss of tourist revenue, and the inability of Greek companies to pay overseas suppliers. The creditors will probably discover the Greek accounts are in a worse shape today than they have forecast for the new loan.

Germany says the IMF must be part of the new deal, but the IMF says there has to be Greek debt retirement or easing of terms which Germany thinks undesirable and unnecessary. Let us assume this is another gulf which can be bridged by compromise and ambiguous words. It still leaves Greece with more debt than it can repay anytime soon, and still leaves Greece struggling to get its fiscal deficit down. It will also leave a very unhappy German electorate blaming Mrs Merkel for giving ground.

The truth is the responsible course would be for the zone to admit now that if Greece is to continue in the Euro Germany and the other richer parts of the zone have to send grants to Greece to assist it. If they do not wish to do that, it would be best for Greece to leave the zone in a planned and orderly way, creating her own currency again and writing off some of the debt she owes to the EU, Euro area and IMF. For Germany an exit settlement might be cheaper now than at the end of another failed bail out plan.

The probability that Greece will hit the privatisation and deficit reduction targets, resume good growth and get back to her pre crisis levels of income is very low. This Greek saga is unfortunately far from over. This country is suffering from too little demand, too little money in circulation, badly damaged banks and a poorly managed and expensive public sector that has to make cuts. It now has the problem that the public voted for a different policy when they voted for Syriza, then voted again for it in the referendum, and have ended up with a worse version of what they opposed. They are in part the architects of their own crisis, because they want to stay in the Euro but don’t accept its rules, disciplines and lack of transfers from the richer areas.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I heard Jack Straw trying to explain why Mr Corbyn was wrong in arguing for People’s QE to build faster broadband networks and more homes. The problem for Mr Straw – and many others – is how do you persuade people that buying gilts with newly created money is just fine, but buying something else of more potential economic value is not?

My position on QE was I wanted other solutions to the UK’s banking and monetary crisis. I had after all warned of the impending crunch and suggested ways of avoiding it. I had urged the Bank and the government to offer more short term loans to the commercial banks against security to see them through the crunch once the authorities had created it. After the crunch I urged them to recapitalise the banks more quickly – not with taxpayers money but with asset sales and private equity with possible secured Bank of England loans, as I was always sure we could only have a decent recovery once we had banks capable of lending again to finance it.

Those who argued for QE and imposed it assumed it would do the following
1. Drive longer term interest rates down and keep them low – which it did
2. Force investors to buy riskier assets, driving up their price – which it did
3. Allow banks to sell their gilts so they would have more cash – which it did

Some also assumed it would boost lending. There was no obvious reason why it should do that, as at the same time the banks were forced to raise their capital to loans ratios, thereby preventing them taking advantage of the lower interest rates and possible increased demand for loans by offering more loans.

Some argued it would boost demand. It was never going to do much of that. Buying bonds from pension funds did not boost demand, as they were unable to pass on the rise in the value of their gilt holdings in the form of lower contributions, allowing people more spending money. Instead owing to the way pension funds are valued the lower interest rates increased the apparent deficits leading if anything to higher contributions! Allowing banks to sell gilts at a premium did not tackle their capital adequacy problem sufficiently and much of it was taxed back in fines and higher taxes. Some rich people maybe sold gilts at a better profit but overall this would not have boosted demand much.

The QE programme arguably made it easier to finance the large government deficit which both Labour and the Coalition allowed to run at high levels when demand was especially weak. It also probably added to the downward pressure on the pound, which increased inflation, cut living standards a bit more but may have helped some price sensitive exports.

The reason why all QE is usually wrong is very simple. It is pure inflation, if all other things are equal. IF you have functioning banks and reasonable use of resources in the economy and print a lot more money, you will find most of the printing just boosts the price of everything. Inflation is theft. You only get away with QE if the banking system is badly impaired and unable to lend all the newly created money on. QE to expand state spending is best left to Zimbabwe and Venezuela. Countries which try it on any scale usually end up with inflation, high debt and recession.

Deciding who can become a citizen of a country and who cannot, and deciding who is welcome as a visitor and who is not, is fundamental to that country’s sovereignty. Most UK voters wish to live in a democratic country where the government they elect and influence decides the policy on migration, asylum seeking and visitors, and enforces it at the borders.

In an age of mass migration on a large scale across and between continents, the UK has a great geographical strength from being one main island and one shared island off the north west coast of mainland Europe. This makes controlling our borders so much easier. Remaining out of the Schengen common frontiers arrangements made sense and reinforces this natural advantage we have.

The UK needs to agree with its partners in the EU that the opt out we enjoy from the Schengen arrangements extends sufficiently to allow us to make our own decisions about all matters relating to visitors and citizenship. If we cannot control our borders inside the EU then it is another good reason why we should leave. The UK should immediately take action to ensure

1. People coming to the UK illegally as economic migrants are returned to their country of origin on arrival.
2. Airlines and ferries should not accept passengers to the UK from safe countries without proper documentation for legal entry.
3. People seeking asylum who come from countries where people’s lives are at risk should be treated with respect and their cases examined fairly. If they are at personal risk of harm they should be granted asylum. If they are judged not to be they should be assisted to leave the country.
There is everything to be gained by speeding up consideration of asylum applications. If the person is a genuine case they need to given entry as soon as possible and allowed to settle and work here. If they have lied, committed crimes to get here, have come from a safe country and are making a false claim they should be asked to leave promptly. We should not be putting people in camps for long periods, or delaying in sorting out their futures.

Conservatives for Britain have now launched the website. Those interested in offering support can register on www.ConservativesforBritain.org.

I do not favour condescension or a triumphant blast of how wrong Labour has been, should Mr Corbyn prove victorious. We need to recognise that Mr Corbyn speaks for an important minority, and need to understand why the things he says are both popular to his audience and in some cases may make some sense to a wider group of voters. We need also to recognise that even if Mr Corbyn finally fails to secure the job of Leader, he has changed the Labour party by challenging the ” left of centrist” cynicism of Blair/Brown politics and by driving all his opponents leftwards as conventionally defined.

It is easy as a Conservative to disagree with the old and discredited parts of Mr Corbyn’s creed. He wants higher tax rates on the rich, which would mean less tax revenue, not more. He wants to nationalise large chunks of industry that has been privatised. We do not have the money to do that, and when they were nationalised they were riddled with troubles. Working for a nationalised industry was one of the best ways to lose your job, and the customers usually got a raw deal. He wants to undermine private rented housing, which will make the housing problems worse. He does not seem to understand that the main part of the railways is already nationalised and performing very badly as a result.

Mr Corbyn has issued three major more modern challenges to past Labour leaders and to the wider political nation. He thinks it would be wrong to continue with more wars and bombings in the Middle East. I agree we have fought too many wars in the last twenty years and need to be more circumspect in future. He wishes to oppose austerity. I agree that our aim should be prosperity, not austerity, though I disagree with his understanding that austerity is all about public spending.He also seems unaware that real public spending has risen, not fallen, in recent years. He wants to remove nuclear weapons and take us out of NATO. I disagree, but accept this is could be an argument to re-run in the post Cold War world we now live in.

I want the Conservatives to be the anti austerity party, showing how strong private sector led growth, more and better paid jobs and wider ownership are the way forward.

Mr Corbyn’s tunes of anti austerity and anti war can be attractive, which is why he is doing so well in his party’s contest. Conservatives should take him seriously. We need to repeat the arguments against nationalisation, bigger government and higher tax rates, where we have the best case and considerable popular support. These Corbyn policies help create a poorer country, not a successful economy. When it comes to the issue of the Middle East we need to be more careful. He is not all wrong. As for austerity, we want prosperity, which also requires working smarter and better in the public sector to get the deficit down.

In the last Parliament I raised the issue of overseas visitors coming to the UK to get free treatment. Ministers told me they were taking action to stop any abuse of our system. This week the Daily Mail has revealed that a person could come to the UK from another EU country, register with a GP, then return to that other country and claim UK money for the costs of any treatment there. It is good that the government wishes to stop this theoretical possibility. I doubt much of that is happening, and the figures for how much the UK has to pay the countries mentioned implies this is not a big loss at the moment. It is part of a much wider set of questions.

In order to run a National Health Service rather than a free service for the world Ministers need to ensure the following happens:

1. No visitor from outside the EU to the UK can have free access to non emergency health care. Visitors should be advised to come with insurance, and told they will be billed for any treatment they need whilst they are here. Panorama ran a programme showing that there have been scams with visitors obtaining expensive operations whilst staying in the UK for non urgent conditions. GPs should decline to register temporary visitors as NHS patients and should see them privately and charge the consultation to the patient or the insurance company. NHS hospitals should not offer free treatment to anyone who is not registered with an NHS GP, other than emergencies. They too should bill any overseas visitor needing treatment.

2. No visitor or worker from the rest of the EU should receive free treatment on the NHS without the GP or hospital filling in a claim form for the costs to be recharged to the country of origin of the individual concerned. Other countries are better at sending the UK the bills for our citizens needing treatment abroad, than we have been acting the other way. There is an agreed system for recharges.

I am writing again to Ministers to see how much progress has been made with enforcing these commonsense rules over access to care free at the point of use.

The Sunday Times raised the question when will the march of the makers speed up? When will the UK make more items and export them? It was a good question, but the answer was disappointing. The article concluded the government’s target to double exports by 2020 would not be hit, and gave as its main reason economic weakness in Euroland.It doubted the ability of the manufacturing sector to increase as a proportion of the whole economy.

The background is the relative strength of the UK service sector, and the resulting inability of manufacturing to grow faster than services. The reasons are more complex than recent weakness on the continent.As the article rightly pointed out there are some good successes in UK manufacturing. There has been strong growth in vehicle manufacture. UK pharmaceutical and aerospace are still good strengths. The main reason the proportion of the economy represented by manufacturing is not growing is the strong growth of the much larger service sector, itself no bad thing.

Over the week end I went to the shops. I saw a stunning array of manufactured consumer products available. Some of them were on sale at very low prices, making one wonder how the supplier of the raw materials, the manufacturer, the shipper and the retailer could all make a worthwhile profit from selling them. I bought a plastic handled washing up brush for 99p, only to given a free one as they were on two for one offer. I bought a pleasant looking and practical dustpan and brush set for £1.99. Leisure shirts were on offer for a few pounds each. I could have bought two excellent folding armchairs with carry cases for £10 for a pair. There was a stylish metal and glass table, four carver chairs and a centrally mounted umbrella for under £50 for the set. Meanwhile a two course lunch with a soft drink and coffee in a typical chain restaurant in the shopping centre would cost about £20 per head.
The value added seemed to be in the service sector. As always, the biggest winner from my shopping was the UK public sector, with a high car park charge, VAT, and fuel duties on my travel.

The UK is unlikely to find investors wanting to make simple plastic or textile items in the UK to compete with these prices, at a time of excess capacity in Asia. The UK’s skills lie in finding ways to retail and use the cheaper items. UK manufacturing is impeded by high energy prices, a common EU problem. Ceramics, aluminium, steel, glass, bricks, cement, tiles, petrochemicals and a wide range of other manufactured materials and products have very high energy costs. Even assembly activities these days may well incur energy costs several times the labour cost given the high degree of automation. UK manufacture usually needs to include strong branding, good design,and a high technical content, to be successful.The branding and marketing requirements in turn provide value added opportunities for the business service sector.

The UK’s long march of the makers will take time. It requires more engineering and science graduates, more manufacturing entrepreneurs, better transport links to raw materials and to final markets, and above all cheaper energy. The government has policies for these, but they are not quick fixes. In the case of energy EU controls make it very difficult to get competitive energy prices here in the UK. Meanwhile services are adding considerable value and are attracting more and more custom. The maker of the cup and saucer or the grower of the coffee or the farmer producing the milk may make less money than the coffee bar selling the finished product of the perfect latte or whatever. Brewing the beverage, retailing and providing a place to relax and drink adds more value in current markets, so that’s what more people do in the UK. If they sell these services to foreign visitors then it helps pay for the imports. If we sell the services to each other it generates incomes.

We are getting close to the time for the ballot papers to go out to Labour party members old and new. I would like to see some better questions put to the four candidates so we could know more about how they would conduct the Opposition in the next year when a number of important issues will be before Parliament. Their voice and vote could be immediately relevant to national decisions, given the small Conservative majority in Parliament.

1. Should Labour support or oppose bombing in Syria?
2. What should Labour demand from the renegotiation with the EU?
3. Are there any circumstances in which they would lead Labour to vote for Out of the EU?
4. What is their view of EU austerity policies? If they are against Euro and EU austerity policies what could they and the UK government do to amend or stop them?
5. Do they wish to reduce the level of migration into the UK? If so, what reduction do they seek? How would they achieve it?
6. Should Labour support Conservative measures to reduce EU migrants access to benefits and subsidised housing?
7. Should Labour vote against English votes for English needs? If so, what would they propose to give some justice to England in some other way?
8. Would rent controls and a private sector tenant right to buy diminish the supply of rented housing?

Labour has the power to decide whether the UK bombs Syria or not given the likely number of Conservative rebels. Labour could also have some influence over the renegotiations with the EU if they were prepared to engage and accept that the EU currently has too many powers.

Let’s hope our independent media puts these questions more clearly to the candidates soon. These are decisions Labour will soon have to make as a Parliamentary party and as the UK’s official opposition.