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Last week the national newspapers splashed the story that MPs expenses for the year 2013-13 were higher than in 2009, the last year under the old system. The national media made much of the fact that expenses had hit a new high. This is despite the strict reductions IPSA imposed on what MPs could claim when this new independent body took over running MP expenses after the explosion of anger about the old scheme.

Should people be worried? Can Parliament do a better job at providing value for money? So let me offer some comments to readers on what has been going on recently.

My own expenses for 2008-9 were £93,629, making me the fourteenth cheapest MP to keep that year. My expenses last year were £65,807, a fall of 29.7%. As I told people at the time, I took action to cut the costs of running my office a few years ago.

Meanwhile total MP expenses of £95.4million in 2008-9 rose to £98.1 m last year, a modest increase of 2.8% over the four years. This rise is considerably lower than the rise in public spending generally over that time period.

So why does the average MP office and related costs amount to £150,923? How can I run my office and personal expenses for under half the average?

The biggest cost most MPs incur is the cost of staff. I do most of my own research. I make all my own speeches. I usually talk myself to the media if they wish to hear my views or ask me about what I am doing. Many of my colleagues employ specialist staff to research for them, to contact the media for them, and to write speeches for them. Good staff need paying, and wages have rightly gone up since 2009. That is the biggest difference.

IPSA agreed that the majority of MPs need accommodation in central London for nights when Parliament meets late or because there is not time in a long and busy Parliamentary day to get back to their constituencies. They said they should no longer be able to claim mortgage interest on a property. As a result many MPs have switched to renting, which is often considerably dearer than the current low mortgage rates on properties often bought some time ago. The large number of new MPs elected in 2010 have had to pay high rents to secure a property. London rents are a lot higher than 2009. I carry on with the bedsit I bought myself, and of course do not charge the mortgage interest on it, so that keeps the bills down.

The media has also made much of the fact that a significant number of MPs employ family members as staff. I do not myself. It is quite legal under the IPSA rules, though an MP should of course demonstrate that the family member has the skills and puts in the necessary work to justify the salary. MPs who do this often say they can make more demands on family staff members, asking for their help out of normal working hours. What is important is that any MP doing this must be able to show a proper selection process was followed, and demonstrate value for taxpayers.

Parliament had a good week last week. We stopped the UK going to war in Syria.

It all began before the Parliamentary recess. I joined 80 other Conservative colleagues and sent a letter to the Prime Minister saying that if they wished to change their Syrian policy at any time they needed to recall Parliament, hold a debate and a vote.  We explained to Ministers that we did not think arming the rebels would be a good idea, though Ministers favoured that approach. The rebel forces encompass a wide range of movements and people and we could not be sure who might win the ensuing struggle for power and whether that would be an improvement. We also argued strongly against UK  military intervention. The government  promised us that we would have a debate and a vote.

Last week the government kept that promise. By the time Parliament was recalled, Ministers had shifted their stance. They now agreed with us that we should not arm the rebels. They agreed the UK should not intervene to try to shift the  military balance. They did however, want to intervene to retaliate for the use of chemical weapons.  Many of us were no happier about this idea than the idea of general intervention. Indeed, we could not see how you could confine  your military intervention to the issue of chemical weapons. The cruise missile hitting a Syrian target would not plant a poster explaining it had been unleashed just because of chemical weapons.  The government  did not  worry too much about convincing us as it was confident it had the support of the Labour party and so did not need our votes.

When Mr Miliband late on Wednesday afternoon announced he was no longer planning to back the government, they faced the reality that they would lose a vote to authorise the use of force. The government redrafted its motion, and promised us all that they would make no decision on military activity until after the UN weapons inspectors had reported. They also said that after the report they would come to a conclusion on military activity and then put it to the proper vote in the Commons.

I spoke in the debate against military involvement. During the course of a long Thursday in Parliament it became clear a very large number of Conservative MPs would vote against the subsequent authorisation of force. By the time of the vote on the government’s motion it was clear the government would not bring another motion to authorise military activity as it knew it would lose such a vote. As it turned out they also lost the bland motion they did put to the House on Thursday, as more than 70 Conservative MPs declined to vote for it.

I strongly welcome and support the government’s new policy on Syria. The UK will not arm the rebels, and will not intervene with military force. It will instead renew efforts to find a diplomatic and political way forward.

There are welcome signs that the UK economy is recovering. Estate agents report more transactions, allowing people to move home more easily. There is more building work going on, and service sector orders are up.

It is still tough for some. It is hard work running a shop, with more goods now being bought on line. There is plenty of service sector competition, so small businesses need to be good at winning and keeping customers, and savvy at telling people what they offer and why they are the right choice. Some businesses still have trouble getting or keeping the loan facilities they need to finance their properties and their stock.

In Wokingham the good news lies in the continuing low levels of unemployment. There are jobs available for those who need them, and there are good local entrepreneurs willing to establish or grow new businesses, creating more openings.

The world remains a very challenging place. Small market towns themselves have to be able to compete with each other and with larger urban areas. I look forward to working with the Council and the business community on the next phase of Wokingham’s development. Successful towns need to invest, reinforce success, and find new ways to make a living. Wokingham will soon have a new station to welcome travellers. The Council is about to embark on a range of town centre property improvements, and expansion. The Town Centre will soon have additional health facilities.

We need to think of new ways to promote Wokingham as a good place for business and to tell our friends and contacts of the opportunities the rebuilding of the town centre will yield. Henley has built on the success of its rowing festival, passed down by earlier generations, adding a literary festival and a music festival. The more you add events to a town, the more people you attract in, the more the shops benefit, and the better the services that can be sustained. I would be happy to help anyone with ideas on what Wokingham can add to its current offering of events.

Last Friday MPs at last had a chance to vote for a referendum on the EU. The Commons Chamber was packed, an unusual sight on a Friday. It soon became clear that if we wanted to get a vote and a decision before the end of business, some of us had to be willing to miss out on giving a speech.

A few Labour MPs and one Liberal Democrat MP argued that we should not be going on about the EU. They thought we should concentrate on issues like jobs, the economy, welfare and immigration instead. The truth is we cannot sort out all those issues in the way we would like unless we negotiate a new relationship with the EU. The EU has so much power now to dictate policy to us, thanks to the big transfer of authority engineered under the last government in the Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon treaties. Those of us who want cheaper energy for our homes and businesses, who want to be able to deport suspected criminals to stand trial elsewhere, who want to control the numbers of new migrants into our country, and wish to set fair and sensible benefit rules, need to change our relationship with the EU to be able to do these things.

They argued that offering a referendum would be bad for our country, as it created uncertainty. Gisela Stuart, one of Labour’s Eurosceptics, pointed out to them that on that argument we would never have a General Election, as that too creates uncertainty about our future government! Most speaking in the debate realised two central things. The first is that as the UK does not wish to join the Euro, we need a new relationship with the Euro bloc. To try to get their currency to work better they are going in for much more centralised government of a kind we cannot accept. The Euro forces us to find a new way of trading with them and being friends with them. The second is a majority of people in our country want a say in all of this. It is high time MPs let them have one.

The Bill achieved its second reading easily, with 304 of us voting for it, and none against. Liberal Democrats and Labour stayed away from the vote, implying they do not feel strongly that a referendum is a wrong idea.

Recently I have met senior management of both the local Health service and the local police, to pass on the comments and feedback I have received about these important public services.

This week the Chancellor will announce how much extra money it thinks the government should spend in 2015-16. Although all the talk is about cuts in public spending in certain departments, the overall total spending will continue to rise, as it has been doing all through this Parliament. Big areas like welfare, pensions, health and education are protected from cuts. In some cases, as with the new pensions uprating system, the more generous approach naturally costs more money.

It seems likely that Labour as well as the Lib Dems and Conservatives will all agree to the new totals, which will show slower growth in cash spending for day to day items, and a bit faster growth in capital spending on items like new railways and roads. The political argument will be about the amounts provided to differing programmes and departments within the agreed totals. All seem to agree that we have to accept more modest cash increases, as the country has borrowed so much already and is still increasing its borrowing at a rapid rate.

I have been working with the Council on the need for more capital spending in our area, in response to the national policy for road and rail improvements. We need to bring our public facilities up to date, as we now are with a new station. We need to improve our transport system so it is easier and safer to get to work and to the shops.

In recent days I have been lobbied by constituents in Shinfield, complaining about Reading Council’s expensive installation of two new sets of traffic lights on the A 327 into Reading. These lights have greatly increased the congestion. The roundabouts we had before worked well, and kept the traffic moving at a suitable safe slower speed across the junctions. It is a good example of how the wrong kind of public spending can make things worse, making voters doubly cross that their road system is made more difficult to use and they have to pay a large bill for the privilege.

The government is encouraging road improvements. Replacing lights with roundabouts can often make a junction flow better . I trust Wokingham will show Reading how to do it, avoiding provocative decisions like the Shinfield Road one at a time when we need to make sure every penny local or national government spends is well spent. The first rule of local and national government spending should be “Do no harm”. Spending plans should be carefully examined to see how many people they can upset, before embarking on them.

Many people in the UK want a new relationship with the EU. Indeed, so many have warmed to this idea in the recent Prime MInisterial speech on the topic, that now all the pressure is on him to get on and deliver it far sooner than he proposed or thought possible. Many want it now, not in 2017.

Some people in politics point out that the EU is not a major preoccupation of voters according to the opinion polls. They tell us to change the subject, to talk of jobs and other matters that concern us in our daily lives. That can be good advice. People talk to me about their energy bills, about immigration, about the need for more industry in the UK and about the prospects for their children after education.

The trouble is these important matters are now heavily influenced by or even dominated by EU policies and laws. The number of jobs we can generate is affected by EU rules and regulations, which can get in the way of new businesses trying to set up or expand. Our high and rising energy bills are the result of energy policies set by the EU, requiring us to generate much more power fropm expensive windfarms and forcing us to close older power stations that produce cheap electricity. We have open borders with the rest of the EU, which makes it difficult for a UK government to pursue a migration policy that reflects the wishes of many. Creating more industry int he UK is difficult given energy prices and other EU imposed constraints.

One of the myths in the debate is we need to be in the current EU to trade with the EU. Last week I spoke to a gathering of senior business people and opinion formers at the annual German British Forum, in London. There were the usual warnings to the UK to understand that we have an important trade with the rest of the EU so we must stay in the current EU to enjoy that.

I asked the audience, which included numerous senior Germans, if they were seriously suggesting that if the Uk inststs on a new relationship or even leaves the EU, they would no longer want to trade with us. Of course they did not hold that view. I then asked them if we left would they seek to impose tariffs and controls on our trade,. Again, no-one thought that a good idea. It would, of coruse, be against international trade rules anyway. It woudl also invite retaliation from us, as they sell us more than we sell them it would be especially silly.

An increasing number of Conservative Ministers are in dispute with the EU, as they are unable to carry out the wishes of many electors to change things for the better. There are disputes over our borders, over extradition, over welfare eligibility, over energy, over financial taxation and over VAT, amongst others. I am pressing the government to engage more widely with the EU. We need that new relationship as soon as possible.

I awoke to the Today programme last week with a message to me from Nick Clegg. He told me and the other Eurosceptic Conservative MPs to stop playing games and to concentrate on the things needed to create more jobs and tackle the cost of living. This was a foolish message for him to send me.

We have not been playing games We have been trying to secure a new relationship with the EU for our country, a new relationship that would help us create more jobs, curb rises in the cost of living and make us more prosperous. It is his party which has prevented us from getting on with this immediately. Lib Dems support EU measures to force high and rising energy prices on us, one of the main causes of the difficulties with the cost of living. Many of the EU regulations which dominate business life add to costs and make it more difficult for small businesses to expand. We need them to be freer so they can create more jobs. It is EU regulations closing some of our power stations, forcing more windfarms upon us, banning overtime and making it very expensive for a business to recruit new labour.

Before the last election the Lib Dems said we needed an In/Out referendum on our whole relationship with the EU, not just a referendum on the latest Treaty then going through, the Lisbon treaty. Now we Conservatives are offering such a referendum, Mr Clegg says it is wrong and will not support us or vote for it. I find that flip flop unacceptable.

I have been calling for the Coalition government to rule out arming the rebels or intervening militarily in Syria. The opposition forces in Syria are not all peace loving democrats capable of forming an entirely different style of government to the thug regime they currently suffer from. It is by no means clear how we would send arms in successfully, how we could distinguish the well intentioned democrats from the rest and how that could lead to a new and good stable government.

I have also been calling for early exit of our troops from Afghanistan. Our armed forces personnel have worked hard and bravely in the Middle East in recent years. All too many lives have been lost. The Afghans have received considerable training from our service personnel. It is surely time for them to take on the responsibility of enforcing the law in their own country. We should not be willing to lose more lives there. Nor should we carry on spending so much on these Middle Eastern military activities.

The issue of Europe will not go away, much though the federalists wish it would. The BBC have gone back to saying the Conservatives are obsessed by Europe and split over it. The truth is somewhat different. Most Conservatives want the UK Parliament and government to be able to make decisions in the interest of the British people. In all too many areas the Coalition finds it cannot do that, because huge powers were given away at Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon in the more recent treaties agreed there. The last Labour government surrendered control of our borders, our energy policy, our financial regulation policy and much else besides.

The government would like to decide who is eligible to receive benefits in our country. Should someone recently arrived from a continental country qualify for a full range of benefits if they cannot find a job or should their own country support them? Should they qualify for all the UK top up benefits and public services if they do find a low paid job? Ministers discover the EU has views on this which entail UK taxpayers paying out full benefits to people who have not made any previous contribution themselves to UK taxes, who are not going to become UK citizens, and who may keep their family in another country.

The government would like to decide who we invite into our country. It cannot do this when it comes to people arriving from the rest of the EU. The government has stated it wishes to cut the numbers of migrants, as in recent years very large numbers have imposed strains on the provision of housing and public services in the popular parts of the country. As a result the government has to be less fair to the rest of the world to accommodate more arrivals from Europe, but struggles to tackle the overall problem.

Many of us want cheaper energy. The UK’s energy bills are particularly high. The US is benefitting massively from gas prices half the level of our own. That boosts people’s spending power, and helps the US economic and industrial recovery. Here in the UK standards of living are cut by high energy bills. Industry is moving activities abroad to get the benefits of cheaper fuel. When Ministers try to do something about it, they find much of it is laid down in EU rules they cannot change. A number of older power stations are being closed to comply with the EU before replacements have been built, leaving us dangerously short of power.

There are many more examples of how the EU dominates our daily lives in ways many people do not like. That is why many of us Conservative MPs are demanding a new relationship for the UK with the EU, and seeking a popular vote on our relationship with the EU. Far from being split on this issue, most Conservative MPs think the EU has too much power and often uses it in unhelpful ways. We all want to see a changed relationship where UK democracy can flourish again. In this Parliament where no party has a majority, expect plenty of lively debate as we try to find a way forward. We are busy trying to persuade the federalist parties that they too need to help us restore our right to self government in the areas that matter.

The UK economy grew at an annualised rate of just 1.2% in the first three months of 2013, whilst the US economy grew at double the pace by 2.5%. I Have been urging the government to ask why, and to copy more of the policies that the USA has used to get better growth.

Some in the UK debate have been misleading the public into thinking the UK grew more slowly because we had more cuts in public spending. The opposite is true. Public spending in the US was cut at an annual rate of 4.1% in the first quarter of this year, whilst in the UK real public spending continued to rise.

The austerity in the UK has been visited on the private sector far more than the public sector. Private sector wages have gone up less quickly than public sector wages. Both Labour and the Coalition government increased tax rates on incomes, on energy and petrol, and the Coalition government added in VAT, Stamp Duty and Capital Gains tax increases as well. Many of my constituents have been dragged into the 40% tax band for the first time, taking a bigger chunk out of their incomes.

I think the government should do more to lift the austerity on the private sector. Selected tax rates should be brought down. The 40% tax threshold should be raised. Inflation needs to be controlled better. Savers need to be given a fairer return on their savings. Some of the lower tax rates will bring in more tax revenue. Raising the 40% tax threshold will probably reduce revenues, and should be balanced by charging more foreign governments in the EU for using our health services – as they charge us – and limiting the eligibility of newly arrived people from the rest of the EU to receive benefits.

I am still seeking more improvements from the banks. Local businesses and individuals are still rightly complaining about the difficulty of getting a bank loan, the high cost of many bank loans if you can get one, and crippling bureaucracy which surrounds more or less any financial transaction. The Chancellor has agreed to lend more money to the banks if they will lend it on. There are some signs that mortgage lending is at last on the rise, but small business lending needs more encouragement.

Parliament is having another of its all too frequent breaks from meeting at Westminster. Next week when we return for the new session, I will set out more of the details of what I think this Coalition government has to do to banish austerity from the private sector. The long Queen’s speech debate gives us MPs the opportunity to range more widely and set out some strategic priorities that we think the government should follow. In the words of Mr Crosby, the Prime Minister’s new adviser, they need to “get the barnacles off the boat”. That means stop doing some of the less important or really annoying things, and concentrate on what matters most. At the moment that is restoring family and individual prosperity. That in turn means government keeping its hands off more of my constituents’ hard earned money.

Today I wish to remember the life and achievement of Margaret Thatcher.

It was my fortune and privilege to work closely with her in the middle years of her administration, and to be a helper and Minister in the later years. The woman I knew was kind, keen to do the right thing, honest, and ever willing to consider a new approach or criticisms of what was happening. I was twenty six years younger than her, but as her chief policy adviser I did not need to worry about my lack of years, only about the quality of my research and the strength of my arguments. She would argue and argue, with no personal antagonism. That was the way she learned and the way she strived to improve. It was my job as her adviser to understand when the arguing was over and a decision had been made, and my job to argue on with new evidence where I was concerned for her and the country she loved.

She was no ideologue. She did not start out with a set of unalterable views, and refuse to listen or to change. When I arrived in Downing Street she was still an enthusiast for the European Economic Community. Events and the ruthless pressure for more integration slowly changed her into a Eurosceptic. She told me in the 1970s that she would not be able privatise. By 1983 she was ready to liberate telephones, gas, and electricity from state control. She was rumoured to believe in tight or honest money, yet when she welcomed in Alan Walters as Economic Adviser she readily accepted his advice that money was too tight and needed to be loosened to stimulate a much needed economic recovery. Toward the end of her time in office she was most concerned about global warming, but later came to think there were dangers in the policies pursued in its name.

Nor did she set out to demolish old industry, close old mines, and replace them all with services. She inherited a country with a long past of industrial decline. 465,000 coalmining jobs had gone in the post war years before she took office. There were only 235,000 left in 1979. As a chemist she was proud of manufacturing and wished to see it flourish. As a Prime Minister in her early years she found it as difficult as her predecessors to stimulate a UK manufacturing revival. Later it did start to happen, with a successful reconstruction of the motor industry through substantial inward movement of money, talent and design from overseas.

Apart from my many personal memories I will always remember her well for two great developments. The first was domestic. She did give voice and votes to the cause of wider ownership, to a society where many more could own homes and shares. That was a vision I argued for then, and one I wish to encourage again now. The second was her important contribution with President Reagan to liberating eastern Europe from communism. Their joint steadfastness against intense USSR Cold war pressures was crucial. So was her own ability to speak to both leaders and led in the communist bloc, so they turned away from their tyranny as her period of office neared its end. If you would like to see my speech to Parliament or other views on politics after Thatcher, please turn to www.johnredwoodsdiary.com.