Category: Articles

I have been working with the anti flooding groups in the constituency. Too many homes have already been built on floodplains. Too little work has been done by the Environment Agency and the other main players to dig enough ditches, lay enough pipes and keep conduits clear so when it rain heavily the water goes away safely.

One of the problems has been top down planning. The government has set high targets for new development. Government Inspectors over turn local decisions on appeal, where Councillors rightly reject a planning application because it would be on flood plain or place other stresses on our local services and environment. I raised this issue again in the Commons, only to infer from the reply that these Ministers still want to boss local government around and do not wish to give Wokingham freedom to make its own decisions about its green fields and water meadows.Nor do ther Ministers wish to reduce their targets so it is easier to avoid making the flooding problem worse.

Another has been the lack of action to tackle the excess run off of surface water, and the likelihood of the Loddon and the Emm overflowing their banks when it rains hard. I have been promised proper schemes for both the Emm and the Loddon, but we still await real plans with money to implement them. Local groups are energetic and are working with Council officers to establish what the Borough can do. We are all lobbying the Environment Agency to rise to their responsibilities for the rivers and streams.

This week sees the continuing passage of the Fllood Bill through the Commons. I will attend to make our points, but it’s schemes and cash we need more than additional legislation. Acts of Parliament do not turn back the angry waters – dams, bunds, channels, bigger pipes and deeper ditches are what is needed.

If there is a change of government we are promised greater freedom for each Council to make up its own mind on planning matters. I would welcome that, and would hope that Borough Councillors would then come to the veiw that there are limits to how many extra homes we can build in our District. Existing residents want to preserve what is good about their current enviroinment. Above all residents want to be free of worry when it rains. Today all too many are afraid that bad weather will bring fast run off from so much concrete and tarmac, and with it sodden gardens and wet carpets.

Surely we can do better than that? A bit of commonsense, and some pre-emptive work on the water courses would buy us some peace of mind.

Strange as it may seem, it’s a good time to have conservative values. After twelve years of grim socialism, we have had our fill of enforced living beyond our means. We are fed up with so much of our money being showered on nationalising banks and railways, on hiring a huge army of officials and expensive quango chiefs. We are tired of being subjected to the politically correct thought police. We don’t want a regulator making obstacles for every simple event we used to enjoy. Motorists don’t feel they are the cause of all the world’s ills, savers think it’s time they were rewarded rather than penalised, and people who pay their bills on time and look after their own families feel they should be offered a better deal.

The Conservative party is right to say “We cannot go on like this”. It is time for change. The change we want is change to a world where the doers, the savers, the strivers are treated fairly. We want to live in a state which respects other people’s freedoms and stops taking so much of our money.

There can be no change for the better without sorting out the dreadful national finances. This government carries on spending and borrowing, telling us that will get us out of the hole they have placed us in. It won’t. They are just digging us deeper into the mire of debt.

They say the government will borrow, the state will provide. Who is the state? All of us are the involuntary backers of the state and the paymasters of the government. The government’s debt is our debt. The more they borrow the more we have to pay interest. The more we will one day have to pay back.

The government says a state budget is different from a family budget. It may be in scale, but the principles are the same. If you’ve reached your credit limit you know you have to put off more spending until you’ve got the debt under control. If you are going bust you have to cut spending before it’s too late.

So it is for a state. Iceland,. Ireland and the Baltic states have already found out the hard way that sometime the bank manager – for them the world markets – say enough is enough. They have to cut spending. This week it’s been the turn of Greece.

The UK has overspent. As a nation we’ve built up huge debts, imported what we need from China, and put off settling the bills. We need to make more of our goods, grow more of our food, live more within our means. The public sector needs to deliver more for less. We are close to that worrying hour when the world’s money men tell us the game is up.

Gordon Brown says the cash they are borrowing will help lift us out of the recession. We need to remind him that he has already borrowed and printed record amounts, and yet we are still deep in recession. Over the last five years the government has doubled the national debt and almost doubled the money supply, yet they have achieved no growth at all. The stimulus has not worked.

When we got out of previous recessions we always did so with the help of spending cuts. The IMF forced that on labour in1976. A Conservative government did it in 1981 to sort out Labour’s mess, ushering in a good long period of growth and prosperity. You need to do that to keep lending rates down, and to find the money for the private sector to create the jobs we need.

It is not just sound money and sensible financial management we need now, to stave off a worse financial crisis. It is also some commonsense in everything else. If you want less of something you tax it. If you want more of something you subsidise it. This government is busy raising the taxes on enterprise and hard work, with their National Insurance and Income tax increases. They are busily subsidising banks and bankers pay, spending a fortune on unemployment, on quangos and on self promotion. If spin doctors and adverts could put a country right, we would be the most successful country in the world by now.

There are many good people in Britain who want their democracy back. They want a strong Parliament that can curb government’s appetite to spend too much and legislate too much. They want to be proud of their country knowing the main decisions are taken here in a democratic way, not in Brussels. They want to be left to make more of their own decisions, free from needless regulation and inspection. They want to feel they can pass on their savings to the next generation when the time comes. They do not want their children and grandchildren left in huge national debt.

I know that’s how I feel. I want a government which will reflect these conservative values. Hard work should be rewarded. Most people should be left free to look after themselves and their families as they see fit. The UK needs to be a country open to enterprise and willing to work harder to earn the standard of living it wants but currently cannot afford. Our government should control our borders, keep us safe, cut the spending and the debt, and allow savers and job creators to keep good rewards for their efforts.

There are many unsung heroes in a working democracy. Each of the main parties relies on volunteers to deliver leaflets, to tell the public about their local and national party policies and actions, and to support their Council candidates. They also rely on volunteers to come forward to contest seats where the prospects of winning are not good as well as where they are good. No greater love hath man or woman than this, to give up their evenings and week-ends to campaigning in places where in the past their parties have done badly.

I remember it well when I fought Peckham for the GLC and for Parliament before I came to Wokingham. I am therefore usually sympathetic to Labour candidates in Wokingham, who see the need to tell us about their party and its national ambitions and deeds, but who in the past have not found enough support to win. We need Labour to take Wokingham seriously, just as Conservatives should take Peckham seriously. A national party needs to feel comfortable in both places and to understand the needs and views in both. They are different in many respects. To be a national party you need to explain your views and actions in every constituency, and keep alive political activity in your name. National parties should not take victory for granted in some places, and write off their chances elsewhere. Upsets can happen.

I am pleased that Labour has an active prospective candidate sending out press releases and seeking attention in local newspapers. That is good news for democracy. No-one should resent a fair debate. Democracy is about choice, and electors should have all the main offerings before them when they vote. What I find disappointing is that our local prospective Labour candidate is silent on the big issues of the day. He does not tell us about how Labour will control the large deficit they have built up. He does not explain why the UK is still in recession according to the Chancellor when most other countries got out of it months ago. He does not explain why they spent so much money on propping up banks, yet small businesses are still unable to borrow enough at realistic rates of interest.

He has instead one main interest – my expenses. If he wishes to make that the big issue I think he has some explaining to do about Labour MPs’ expenses. In order to help him I have some questions for him that he might like to answer when he next writes about it.

In 2007-8 I was the 19th cheapest MP, with total expenses of £105,917. I set myself the task – before the expenses issue blew up in the papers – of cutting my costs by 10% in each of the following two years. I am pleased to report that my expenses will come in well below the £95,000 target I set for 2008-9 when we see the total audited figures, and should come in well below the £83,000 I set for 2009-10 this year. This compares with an average of £144,000 for all MPs in 2008-9 (this audited figure is now available at last).

My questions are these. Why do Labour MPs cost the taxpayer so much more than I am doing? It’s not all additional travel for the ones that come from further away. Why do London Labour MPs on average charge more than I do? Why did the average Labour MP cost around £50,000 more or one third more in 2008-9 than I charged? Why did the Prime Minister have to pay back more than £11,000? Was he wrong to claim that money in the first place?

What would his budget be for the first year were he elected? If he thinks he could do it for less than me, can he explain why current Labour MPs cannot? I would give serious consideration to any sensible budget he cared to propose, as we can all learn how to do better with less spending.

I want Parliament to offer a lead in cutting the deficit. We have to show we can deliver more for less, because we are going to ask the rest of the public sector to do just that.

The mood in the UK towards the EU is currently one of angry resignation. We are angry because Lisbon has been such a dishonest and anti democratic process. The British people by an overwhelming majority opposed the transfer of more powers to the EU institutions under the Lisbon treaty. They were promised a referendum so they could formally express their view. Two of the three main political parties making this promise in the 2005 General Election ratted on it once elected, so the public will was thwarted. We are currently resigned, because Parliament ratified the Treaty against our will and we know in the short term there is nothing we can do about it.

We were thrilled when France and Holland voted the constitution down. What part of “No” don’t they understand, we bellowed across the Channel? Why can’t they get this democratic thing? If you ask the public you accept their verdict. Sometimes the people know best.

We were elated again when the Irish voted down the revised constitution or “Lisbon treaty” as it had to be called, to pretend something had changed to appease French and Dutch opinion. We were livid when they were made to vote again. Some of us think the Irish should have another referendum, so at least it can be the best of three.

It would be wrong to think UK resignation will grow into acceptance and acceptance into enthusiasm for a more integrated Europe. On the contrary, each anti democratic power grab creates more outspoken Eurosceptics. Each refusal to give us our say creates more cynicism and disagreement with what will happen next. The UK is fed up of being taken for granted, and being expected to pay the bills for an oversized bureaucracy it does not love and often does not want.

I appreciate how differently things look from the continent, and how differently people think who receive the hospitality and whisperings of presumed power in the corridors of Brussels. The EU enthusiasts think the UK will do what it always has done. It will grumble about the new powers for the EU. It will try a little to disrupt them. Then it will acquiesce, and one day will accept them fully. The Euro enthusiasts think that the UK will go in the same direction as the centralising states, only at a slower pace with more huffing and puffing.

That is not what I hear on the doorsteps of England. The sudden propulsion of the withdrawal party, UKIP, to second place in the European elections last time showed how the anti EU mood is firming. The Conservatives romped home in first place on a very Eurosceptic prospectus. English people see how the EU project is taking a crow bar to break up the United Kingdom. The EU’s policy of encouraging separate identity and government in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast is helping destroy the Union of the four countries.

The EU wish to break England up into a series of Euro regions is perhaps the most hated EU policy of all, as England wishes to have its own national identity as the other three parts of the UK press for more independence and more use of their national symbols. The fact that the EU will not welcome and encourage England is part of the cause of stronger English Euroscepticism. There is now a growing band of English nationalists as a result of the EU’s playing around with our identity. These English nationalists would like Scotland, Ireland and Wales to split from England. Their ideal would be that Scotland Wales and Ireland retain the EU membership so England can be set free of both the Union of the UK and more importantly the Union of the EU. Then England could follow her historic and natural instincts of being a free trading low taxed country dealing with the five continents and oceans of the world, building alliances within her English speaking global family.

What do I think will happen as a result of the Lisbon treaty? I fear more of the same. The EU seems determined to be an area of low growth, falling population and too much government. Every time there are choices to be made the EU chooses more regulation over more freedom, more public spending and taxing over less, more regional and Euro government over less, slower growth and a smaller private sector over faster growth and a larger private sector. The EU nations are weighed down by huge public debts, by politicians and quango heads who do not understand markets , people who do not realise what a battle it is to be competitive in this modern world. As the working age population on the continent plunges and as the rule books lengthens each month, there is a blind belief that the growing power and success of India and China can simply be ignored. The EU looks in on itself, growing older and relatively poorer gently whilst congratulating itself in an orgy of self importance.

We are told that now the EU has its own Foreign Minister it can strut the world stage and have more power and influence. I don’t think so. Without credible military forces that will be difficult. Look at the reluctance to either put serious forces into Afghanistan or to face up to the US and tell them we need to get out. The EU has had no influence on the war in Afghanistan and clearly does not intend to have any. Or take the recent climate change conference, where “soft power” might have been deployed. The only deal to come out of the conference comprised the US, China, India South Africa and the USA reaching an agreement. The EU was not even in the meeting that called the shots. The other countries simply had to respond to the US-Chinese initiative.

I don’t think the EU is serious about wanting to create a successful economy, open to talent, enterprise and innovation. I think it is a government construct which one day will presume too far and sow the seeds of its own undoing. The EU is playing around with strong emotions of identity and belonging. It has crossed the UK all too often, refusing to understand the UK’s wish to be part of a common market and be friends with EU countries but not to be part of a common government, a single currency and all the rest. If the EU wants to stabilise its north western frontier, it would be well advised to sit down and negotiate a new deal with the UK which England can accept. That deal would mean the UK opting out not just of the single currency, but also of the more obtrusive elements of the single government now emerging. We do not want a common army, a common defence policy or for that matter a common fishery or a common criminal justice policy. If the EU wants the UK to go along with closer integration for the core countries, the core needs to understand the UK’s wish for some more freedom and flexibility to follow our genius, which has always been different from the continental one.

(This is an article I was asked to produce for www.e-IR.info which they agreed I can reproduce here)

It is slowly dawning on the public sector that we need to do more for less. Spending and borrowing are out of control.

            I have found going into various parts of the public sector and into various companies that there are common themes to make something work better, and some common rules on how you can turn round an underperforming  organisation. The similarities in the leadership challenge are often more striking than the differences or special problems.

Stressing that we need to improve quality and control costs is not demanding the impossible. It’s what good private sector organisations do all the time. Nor is it just saying the obvious. Good leadership requires setting out what can be achieved, and the creating the conditions in which it is achieved. That requires knowing how far the organisation has got, how much better other organisations are, and how much to expect of your team,.

            Good management is about using the minimum of resource to deliver the best of service or product. It is about continuously striving for improvement. It is about getting the morale of your workforce up and keeping it up. A strong leader defines what success is, makes sure that success is stretching, but then helps his or her team reach it. Higher efficiency comes from the full engagement of the whole team in achieving that success.

           
            Parts of the public sector have too many spin doctors, managers, bogus consultations, management consultancy projects and partnerships. They need to slim down. The elected and official heads of each institution need to simplify, and set out a vision of higher quality core services to which they dedicate their organisations. You need a can do culture, a culture where the senior managers steps in only when things are going badly wrong to rescue them, or to praise and reward and demand more  when they are going well.

               The check list of areas to improve and the issues where costs can be cut and quality raised is  the easy bit. If your senior managers do not know that already then you have the wrong senior managers. There are too many noises off, chasing too many peripheral issues, and padding too many organisations with words that complicate and distract. It is time for change.

The government is busily printing money through the Bank of England on a colossal scale. As a result the Stock market has been rising strongly. The combination of money printing in the US and UK, and the actions taken to stimulate money in China, are leading to sharp increases in commodity prices, which we feel again at the petrol pumps.

It is not yet easing the problems facing local businesses. It is still difficult getting a loan for business purposes, and new mortgages are in short supply. Whilst the Bank of England’s interest rate remains very low, actual rates if you want to borrow are altogether a different matter. There are some signs that the violent de stocking by business in the first two quarters of the year is coming to an end, but that does not yet mean there is going to a resumption of “normal” business conditions similar to those before the Credit Crunch.

I fear we are in for a long slog of sorting out too much borrowing in the private sector first. Then we need to turn our attention to the huge debts being built up in all our names by the government. In the two years 2008-2010 the government will borrow more than they inherited as the total public debt in 1997! Taxpayers have to pay interest on all that borrowing, and one day have to pay it all back. It means as a country we will have to run with a much higher savings rate, and therefore with much less spending, than we have been used to.

The government says it needs to carry on spending and borrowing to save us from a worse recession. It is difficult to see how we could have a much worse a recession. The truth is if the government spends too much in the public sector the best it can do is to delay the painful adjustment, if it prints the money. If it borrows it, it means that those lending the money to the government to spend can no longer spend it for themselves. In those conditions it may not be reflationary at all.

I do hope the government and the pundits are right in saying the worst is now behind us. It is true that the rate of decline should now ease, and the comparisons will soon start looking better because we will be comparing with dire periods of declining activity. However, most seem to agree that unfortunately there is more unemployment to come. Wages and earnings remain under pressure. This all points to reduced demand, which makes business conditions more difficult.

Everyone apart from some Ministers understand that public spending has to brought under control soon. Those of us who want to see action taken have been clear that we see no need to sack teachers, nurses, doctors and other important service providers. What we want to see is the elimination of waste and undesirable expenditures.

Labour in opposition rightly campaigned against two types of public spending they claimed not to like. One was debt interest. It makes it even more ironic that they are now presiding over the biggest ever increase in debt the state has seen. The other was what they called the costs of “economic failure”, the benefit bills for those out of work.

In government they allowed the numbers of working age people without a job to exceed 5 million even before the recession hit. It is too many people to leave without work, and a large cost to taxpayers. A new government needs to put welfare reform at the top of its agenda, as Bill Clinton did successfully after his election as President. Cutting benefit spending by getting more people into work would be a popular cut.

We also need to tackle the large costs of public sector pensions. We need to tell any new recruits to the public service that they are not eligible for the generous deals that used to be on offer. We need to negotiate a new deal with existing members of public sector schemes for their future contributions. That should include the MPs scheme, where consultations are already underway to cut the costs of the benefits under the scheme.

Who will rid us of these turbulent banks? The government has landed taxpayers in a dreadful and expensive mess.

First they blundered by allowing banks to lend too much and balloon their balance sheets in the good times. The Regulators fell down on the job. The government encouraged them for political reasons, wanting to keep interest rates too low and credit plentiful. Few were to be denied a mortgage, regardless of whether they could pay it back.

Next, they made the crisis worse by hiking interest rates too high for too long and starving the money markets of cash, leading to the crash in 2007 and 2008.

Then they panicked, buying shares in RBS, Lloyds, and Northern Rock without valuing all the dodgy loans properly. They didn’t ask for a discount or protect the taxpayers interests. Vince Cable became the apostle of nationalisation, given large amounts of airtime to help the government dig us deeper into the mire of owning too many risky banks on bad terms.

Messrs Darling and Cable tell you they had to intervene to buy all these nasty bank shares at high prices and then watch them fall once in public ownership. They claim it was the only way. They want you to think they saved the world.

Their actions were damaging and costly. Far from saving us, they have lumbered us with huge debts for years to come. So what should they have done?

In the good times they should have raised interest rates earlier and told the banks they needed to be more careful. When the bad times started they should have slashed interest rates much more quickly, and lent money to the banks in trouble on tough terms to see them through. There was no need to buy shares in RBS or Lloyds. Northern Rock need not have gone under if they had seen the obvious warning signs in August 2007 and done then what some of us recommended.

We are now being mugged by these bad banks. The government makes us stand behind them as their owners. On top of that the government is offering to take all their worst loans off them and give them to – yes you’ve guessed it – us the taxpayers. What ever did we do to deserve that?

So what should they do? How could we get out of this catastrophe?

The first thing to understand is that RBS and Lloyds/HBOS are simply too big and too risky. They should be split up. Their profitable foreign banks should be sold off as quickly as possible. There are buyers out there now for good overseas banks.

Investment banks in the private sector are coining it in again. The investment banking arms of RBS and Lloyds should be put quickly on a commercial footing and sold as well. The taxpayer should not be expected to stand behind casino banks. RBS had £500 billion at risk playing the markets at its last year end. That is far too much for taxpayers to have to underwrite. They are playing with almost as much as the government spends in total in a year.

The loss makers, including the UK banking arms, should be told to cut costs and get back into profit quickly. There should be no bonuses for senior executives in nationalised loss makers. If they want top drawer remuneration they should produce top drawer results – or do it with someone else’s money, not the taxpayers.

Meanwhile, the government and its regulators need to get their act together. Mr Darling has recently lectured the banks on the need to lend more. He has told them he did not make all this public money available for them to sit on their hands.

Oh yes he did. For at the same time as grandstanding and lecturing them, the FSA, his regulator, is telling the banks they need to keep more of the money they have in liquid form. That means they are not allowed to lend it to you or me or to companies. The rules stop them.

The authorities have created a self serving money go round. Taxpayers put money into the bad banks. The banks are then told they need to keep more of the money handy and lend it back to the government!

The government was wrong to allow all the mega mergers that created a bank on the scale of RBS. They could have blocked some of them. They were even more foolish to urge Lloyds and HBOS to get together. Merging a bad bank with a good bank does not create a good bank, as we have seen in the latest figures showing huge HBOS and Lloyds losses.

We the taxpayers now support banks that risk more than twice our total national income, what we all earn. I warned when they embarked on this crazy course that they could easily lose us the equivalent of the defence budget. It is going to be more than that. HBOS alone lost £13,400 million in the first half of the year, which was close to what we spend on our armed forces. What benefit are we getting for that?

It is time to try a different approach. This government can no more suspend the rules of sound finance and the laws of arithmetic than the rest of us. If our nationalised banks go on losing us money on this scale, it means much less available to spend on other things. It is high time they were put under some pressure, to shape up and sell off their businesses. And in the meantime, don’t insult us by sending us the bill for large bonuses. Can’t Mr. Darling at least sort that out?

According to government Ministers and Spin doctors the choice before the public is a stark one – Labour investment or Tory cuts. At the heart of this battleground is the NHS, the largest single spender amongst the public service departments. So often these days Mr Brown’s statements are flanked by pictures or comments on the NHS, as he thinks this will be the defining issue of the coming election.

The Conservatives have been very cautious about the NHS. Mr Cameron has strong personal experience of its importance through his family. Any Conservative politician who wants to be re-elected knows that the pledge of care free for all in need is an important one. There are no votes in wanting to close wards and sack nurses, and I don’t know any elected Conservative who has ever wanted to do that. Yet time and again Conservatives are wrongly represented by their opponents as wishing to do just that.

This week David Cameron went further than before in talking about NHS spending. Instead of just repeating his pledges to look after the NHS , he also said that the NHS like the rest of the public sector, had to make economies where it could, whilst raising the quality of what it offered. He will doubtless again be wrongly accused of wanting to cut the NHS, rather than wanting to cut waste and bureaucracy within the NHS. The government often implies no cuts of any kind are possible without damaging front line services.

So who said the NHS should face value for money savings of £8.2 billion by 2010-11 compared to 2007-8? No, not David Cameron, but the government. Whilst implying in the political debate that the NHS is fully efficient, the Ministry is busy telling the NHS to become more efficient at the rate of 3.5% a year in 2010-11, after demanding a 3% improvement this year.

Ministers and the Treasury have become alarmed by the lack of any growth in efficiency and productivity in the NHS. Between 1995 and 2001 productivity fell slightly. From 2001 to 2005 productivity fell by a massive 2.5% per annum, or by more than tenth. The following year saw a smaller fall of 0.2% . This led to the demands that the NHS cuts its costs and internal prices.

So what is curious about the political debate is that the two main parties have very similar policies on the NHS, yet Labour tries to make it such a huge defining issue as if there were major differences around their false analysis. The truth is very different. Both parties are committed to avoiding cuts in front line services, and both want to see more reductions in waste and inefficiency. So the real issue is, who will be more successful ae generating value for money? How feasible is it to expect major gains in quality and productivity from this huge service? How would you go about doing it?

There is a bigger difference over this between the two main parties. The Conservatives want to delegate more power and authority from the centre and the quangos, to the wards and surgeries themselves. Labour believe in the efficacy of many national interventions, endless orders and requirements from a large number of national quangos, with regional authorities offering direction and budget control. Their approach has led to the expensive national computerisation scheme, often resented by those who have to use it, and to events like the handling of swine flu leading to the creation of a new network of call centres offering advice and drugs outside the normal NHS framework.

My experience of management tells me you are more likely to succeed if you empower and trust people doing the work, than if you try to second guess and micromanage from a headquarters far away. Cutting out bureaucracy, form filling and box ticking from the centre and regions could free resources and raise spirits in the hospitals and GP centres, so more can be done for less. If there were fewer central targets distorting priorities, more sensible decisions might well be taken by doctors, nurses and other medical decision takers.

When I supervised the Welsh Health Service in the 1990s I found it was possible to take out cost and raise quality at the same time. I settled for one main executive branch under the control of the departmental Permanent Secretary, doing away with a separate CEO and his office. We invited the pharmaceutical companies to deliver drugs directly to the wards when they needed them, instead of us holding expensive stocks centrally. Many modern hospitals rely on too many expensive agency staff, which makes quality and efficiency more difficult to achieve as you are not working with experienced people who know your hospitals routines all the time. Absence and low morale are staff problems in part of the NHS.

Cutting out errors raises quality and lowers cost. Making fewer mistakes means less expensive litigation (now £1.1 billion a year and rising) and higher morale. Building and valuing experienced teams of people and giving them more say over how they do the job should cut cost and raise quality.

The real row over Health spending is not Tory cuts versus Labour investment as the government wants you to believe. It is between Conservative claims of devolved efficiency and Labour’s centralised waste. Even the government admits that, when they say they are now looking for large savings from within the huge NHS budget.

The latest figures show that the recession is biting badly. Unemployment has surged in recent months. There are all too many young people out of work. It is especially difficult for school and College leavers to find a first paid job.

In Wokingham we are helped by the get up and go attitude of so many people, and by the high level of skills and good motivation. Our unemployment as a result does not reach the alarming levels of some other places in the UK. However, we should all be worried by the rise, and seek to do what we can to make it easier for people to find employment.

I look forward to progress with the plans for Wokingham Town Centre redevelopment, and have been briefed recently by Councillors on where they have got to with the project. They need to create a more vibrant shopping and service centre in Wokingham. It requires three things. It does require some property redevelopment, to provide extra and more modern space. It will require successful marketing of the town once we have the outlines of the new space to fill. It will require improvements to traffic flow and car parking. Wokingham as a centre needs to attract the car trade. People will want to come to a revitalised centre to shop, to eat or to drink a cup of coffee and meet friends, but they will expect to be able to drive in and park easily and close to the centre.

In the meantime we still need changes to national policy to give the economy more chance of a decent recovery. The public sector has to do more for less, to place less of a strain on the public finances. The current levels of public borrowing are unsustainable. We have to pay interest on all of that debt and then in due course we will be expected to repay it. The banking regulators have to get better at their jobs. They were too lax 2003-7, and have been too tough ever since. There will only be more money for business to borrow or for mortgages for first time buyers, when the regulators accept that the banks have enough capital and can take a bit more risk again.

At the moment we see a bizarre money go round. The Bank of England prints money which goes into the banks, which they in turn are required by the regulatory demands to lend back to the government. It’s a way of getting the deficit financed for a bit, but it’s not leading to more lending to individuals and companies by the commercial banks. They are in effect being stopped from lending more by the new tighter rules.

I have talked to local small businesses and to local bankers. The situation is still difficult for some businesses. Bankers are all too keen to base their lending on the security of someone’s house, rather than on the prospects for the business. This model means retrenchment in lending during periods of falling house prices, often the times when business needs most help with its working capital.

We should have seen the worst by now. The second half of the year should look better compared to the collapse in output we saw in recent quarters. The problem is that the longer term recovery will be held back by the need of many to cut their debt, and by the still weak position of the banks.

Travel is not as easy as it should be in the Wokingham District. We are served by three railway lines, the Great Western mainline, one from Reading to Waterloo, and one from Wokingham to Gatwick and Guildford, and by four main roads, the A 321, A 327, A 329 and the A 4. The M4/329M also links into our local system. There is substantial congestion at morning and evening peaks on both systems, especially during school term time. For years we have been starved of government money for major capital investment in our transport systems, though required by government to build many extra homes.

The railway is especially short of capacity at peak times, limiting the number of trains that can run and therefore the numbers that can use it. Congestion into the main centres allied to poor or dear car parking , especially in Reading, makes it difficult for all but those who live within walking distance of the station to use trains as much as they might like. The advent of the cheaper Crossrail scheme may make capacity problems on the rail network worse for other users. The existing technology of heavy trains with relatively poor braking and older signals means the tracks have to be empty for much of the time to allow long safe distances between trains. It is going to take some new thinking on rail technology to make a break through, as running fewer than 25 trains an hour on any given piece of track is not sufficient for our needs. We need easier vehicle access to town centres if more use is to be made of the railway for inter city travel.

The railway is also a far from safe mode of travel unless strong precautions are taken to prevent any straying of pedestrians and vehicles near the tracks. Trains cannot stop or steer away from an obstacle in the way a car of lorry can, so there have to be strict signal controls, one way movements on any given track, big gaps between trains and no other types of vehicle or pedestrians anywhere near the tracks. The Council, worried about this and putting rail safety first , is spending a large part of its limited capital budget for transport on safety barriers (£750,000 this year, a £6,250,000 5 year programme), £260,000 on the Loddon viaducts, and bridge strengthening and improvements (including the very expensive £2,000,000 for the Shepherds House railway bridge). This leaves nothing in the capital budget for road capacity improvements.

The problems of the road system are made worse by the presence of the railway. The railway intersects the road with level crossings at Wokingham Station, Star Lane and Waterloo Road. The latest safety requirements entail long periods of the day with the gates closed against traffic owing to the wish to have a long period before the train arrives to make sure of safety, as trains cannot usually stop in time once they see a vehicle in the way. . If the railway does succeed in using the tracks for any more trains, the gates will be closed for longer to cars causing yet more congestion, pollution and delays.

Capital money to build new transport facilities and other new buildings for Council purposes is likely to be very limited in the years ahead. The current programme includes £750,000 for dealing with asbestos in Council buildings, £500,000 for improved access to Council facilities and £650,000 on legionella tests. It would be good if there could be some some rearrangement so there could be some investment in safer and freer flowing main roads. Much can be achieved by junction improvement, both to reduce conflicts between different types of vehicle and traffic moving in different directions, and to optimise light sequences to maximise road use. The Station road roundabout junction and Winnersh crossroads are both bottlenecks, and both linked to railway crossing points.

Maybe it is also time for the Council to persuade the railway companies that they have an interest in improving the flows around the Station road junction with Waterloo Road, and to make further improvements to their car parking and access arrangements. The Council did tackle the A327 junction with the B3270, which now has much more capacity. . Maybe the railway companies should be asked to make a contribution, so more of the £11 million developer contributions in the budget for this year could help sort out polluting congestion on the roads.