Category: Articles

Both sides in the referendum campaign tried to use non politicians to get out their message. They wanted to portray a different kind of politics. Both sides ended up spending large sums of money retailing highly contentious claims in a desperate attempt to grab some headlines and make this rather abstract topic interesting and important to people. Most of us were still left wondering why this was the issue above all others that the Coalition wished to test with the public, and why now was a good time to spend a significant sum of money on organising and counting such a vote.

It was difficult to believe that the extra costs of AV voting would make such life changing differences to the vast sums of public spending as some on the anti side said. It was impossible to understand the claim that AV would make MPs in safe seats more attentive and better MPs, when safe seat MPs already get more than 50% of the vote so AV would make no difference to their election. AV couldn’t even guarantee that after some had voted more than once each MP would have more than 50% of the vote, as some people would not wish to vote for more than one candidate.

Whilst all this was going on far more important things were happening in the world economy. Portugal is close to agreeing a very expensive bail out package with the EU and IMF. I fear this is yet another mistaken proposal, like the Greek and Irish ones. Countries with too much debt do not need more borrowing. They need help to grow their economies more quickly, and to get the deficit down by a combination of extra tax revenues from growth and better control of spending. Countries with weak banks need to force those banks to sort themselves out. I continue  to oppose any UK involvement in these expensive subsidies, both because I do not think they solve the problem for the country seeking help and because the UK cannot afford it.

The recent collapse in commodity prices is helpful. UK inflation has been far too fast, squeezing incomes and damaging recovery. If the lower prices persist it will speed the time when the emerging market economies can take their foot off the brake, and give us better prospects for world growth.  Over the first year  of the Coalition government current public spending was up by 5.1%. Further increases are planned for each of the next four years. Cutting the deficit relies heavily on getting more tax revenue out of a growing economy. I am urging the government to do more to promote growth by setting more realistic tax rates and levels of regulatory cost. Between the two Coalition budgets of June 2010 and March 2011 they decided to spend and borrow an additional £34 billion over four years. We cannot afford more such slippage, and do need to see those rising revenues from faster growth for the policy to succeed. Greece, Portugal and Ireland have shown how if a country spends and borrows too much it ends up in financial crisis, paying very high interest rates for the money it needs to borrow and making economic recovery that much more difficult.

When 250,000 people march in Central London to complain about cuts the government should listen, and should engage with their leaders in a sensible dialogue. There are many things I felt I wanted to say had I been invited to talk to them as Mr Miliband was able to do.

I would have started with a  reassurance. I do not represent Wokingham in Parliament to sack teachers or nurses or doctors. Nor did many other Conservative and Lib Dem MPs set out to sack such staff.  I am glad the Coalition has said it intends to increase  spending  for these core services that matter to many electors. With the extra money we have voted there is no need to sack any of these important workers if things are sensibly managed. Nor did I stand for Parliament to threaten constituents of mine who may work in the civil service or other public administration with compulsory redundancy. My figures show we could make all the adjustments we need to make to public budgets without compulsory redundancies.

The issue at the heart of the march was money. I would have pointed them to the figures. In last June’s budget the new government promised to increase current public spending by £92 billion a year over the life of this Parliament, compared to the last year of Labour. If public sector pay and costs do not rise too much that provides a realistic  basis for running good public services. If pay and prices do rise too quickly it is more difficult to live within the spending plans. The increases are smaller than over the previous ten years, and do require some parts of the public sector to do more for less, or to cut out less desirable activities.

If we compare that with the budget last week, we see that the government has been listening to the protesters before their march. The government has decided to increase spending by more. The new budget proposes an extra £34 billion of spending over the next four years – all of which will have to be borrowed. It is difficult to see how we could agree to a bigger increase than this. Maybe the protesters did not appreciate this large increase in the spending totals, as they were not generally reported.

The Opposition in Parliament says the government is cutting spending too quickly and borrowing too little. Before you rush to judgement it might be an idea to look at the numbers. The UK government has a debt of around £900 billion today. The Coalition government plans to increase this total debt by £485 billion over five years. Let me repeat that. The current plans assume an increase in state debt of more than 50% over five years. They assume this government will add to our national borrowings   more  than the total state debt in 1997. I find it difficult to think this is recklessly mean, or evidence of drastic spending cuts that cannot be managed.

There are two main  reasons why  there does need to be some limit on how much extra we borrow. The first is we or our children have to repay it with interest. The interest bill is already bigger than many government department budgets.  The second is, if a state tries to borrow too much there comes a point where the markets make that state pay through the nose for the borrowing. We do not want to end up like Ireland or Greece or Portugal, forced to make worse cuts, because there are  no longer affordable loans on offer.  

Last week I was unable to vote for UK military action in Libya. I wish our military  well there and hope there can be a rapid and happy outcome. I just felt it would be better if Arab states and the other near neighbours did whatever the UN thought appropriate, and not us. We have done so much, strained our forces so much, and need to economise on the money as well.

Public spending is still going up by 6% a year, though there are plenty  of discussions about cuts. One of the reasons is the surge in interest payments we now have to make, as so much has been borrowed in the last couple of years. It makes controlling the deficit all the more critical, as we need  to avoid further big rises in the amount of debt interest we have to pay from our taxes.

It made me reluctant to agree to a referendum on AV as this did not seem to be  a popular priority for more spending. Once it was clear the government had the votes to require one, I asked them along with some other colleagues to add a question to the referendum about the EU. The government has refused, and very few of us were prepared to vote for this   in the Commons. I know many constituents will be disappointed with this outcome. To many the issue of Europe is a more pressing area to ask the voters than the issue of the way of voting. Huge transfers of power from the UK to the EU have occurred since the last referendum was held in 1975. Many voters have never been asked their views on how much power the EU should have. More and more constituents write to me to complain about a particular policy, only to discover it was required by the EU so there is nothing the UK Parliament can do to stop or change it. The government’s new Bill to reassert Parliamentary sovereignty is saying the right things, but I fear it will not reverse the trend of power drifting away from  the UK. I spoke last week on the EU Bill, urging a referendum and other changes to give us  more democratic accountability here in the UK.

I have been putting in representations on what we need in the Budget. All agree it must be a budget for growth and a budget for jobs. The government’s whole plan rests on getting many more people into work and off benefit. To do this we need stronger expansion of the private sector, and a better background for small and medium sized enterprise to flourish. The more that can be done to cut the costs of taxation and excessive regulation on business the better. I have made various proposals, and am grateful to those who have written in with ideas for improvement.

I have had meetings with welfare Ministers, as I wish to stress to them that during their radical overhaul of the welfare state they should ensure that the disabled, the autistic and others do not suffer from cuts or reductions to services which they need, and should continue to be looked after to the best standard possible. No MP is keener than I on getting down overall spending totals, but I have no wish to do this at the expense of the most vulnerable. The way to cut the spending totals is by leading the public sector to higher levels of achievement and productivity, selling off the banks for a profit, curbing the EU budget, stopping overseas aid to nuclear weapons countries,  and above all by getting many people off benefit and into work.

I have spoken out against military intervention in Libya. There should be no question of western involvement without a UN resolution, and without a formal invitation from the democratic protesters and the neighbouring Arab countries. If a No fly zone is requested the USA from its carriers and Italy from its land bases is much better placed to do it than the UK. A No fly zone may well entail bombing Libyan airfields, radar installations and other property, bringing with it the danger of killing civilians on the ground. It is not an easy or risk free option, nor does it tackle the more burning problem for the protesters, the ground troops, tanks and heavy guns the regime can bring against them. As the UK has decommissioned Ark Royal and the Harriers, we are  not well placed to launch such an intervention any more.

The problem with Coalition governments is you can end up with policies that neither party wanted and few electors voted for. The Alternative Vote is one such idea. I fought the Wokingham election against changing the electoral system. The Lib Dems fought it in favour of a proportional system. We both agreed the AV system was not a good idea. Now the government is about the spend substantial sums on a referendum on just that system. I would prefer to save the money, and did not feel able to support the scheme put to Parliament. I did vote for a threshold so that a small minority of the committed cannot change our voting system, but that amendment was voted down.  I recommend voters turn down this proposal when they have a vote on it. Why should people who vote BNP or Green or Independent get to vote twice or three times, whilst the rest of us only get to vote once. Under AV it can be  the second and third choices of people voting for minority candidates which  decide who should be the MP.

Many of us would rather have a referendum on how much power the EU should have over our lives. Once again the Coalition has not given Conservatives who fought the election on getting powers back from Brussels what we want. Doubtless some Lib Dems would like the Coalition to go further in giving more authority to the EU in more areas, so they too are unhappy. I have found myself unable to support the government when it has given more powers to the EU, and voted against the EU budget as I cannot accept increases in EU spending at a time of austerity at home. We were unsuccessful in urging the government front bench to add a question on the EU to the AV referendum, which would have made it a more worthwhile expenditure of money.

The government has recently made several apologies. I must say I find it refreshing that a government can hold up its hands and say it got something wrong and can say sorry for it. That was not common despite all the mistakes of the previous 13 years. Better still, however, is a government which does not make the mistakes in the first place. Ministers need to analyse what went wrong in each case, and work at preventing more mistakes in the future.

Liam Fox had to apologise when the MOD fired people by email. Knowing Liam well, I know he was horrified when he heard of how it had happened. He had to apologise on behalf of his department for a mistake not of his making. Michael Gove had to apologise for a failure to consult enough people over his plans to replace  the expensive Schools for the future programme with a better value way  of investing in new school buildings. Again his department should have told him what process to follow, though he too has to take responsibility for the outcome.

David Cameron has recently apologised for William Hague, for the delay in arranging transport to get UK citizens out of Libya. We cannot be sure whether this was another  mistake in implementation, or whether the Foreign Secretary was slow to act himself. Finally, Caroline Spelman apologised for misreading the public mood over changes to the way we run our forest estate. That was a mistake by the politicians, who solemnly signed off a plan which they failed to explain convincingly to the public.

So what can we take away from these incidents? I  conclude that government  is far from easy. Ministers not only need to guarantee  there is commonsense and strength in their chosen courses of action, but also need to chair meetings and ask questions to ensure the agreed policy is followed up and implemented in a timely and successful way. Given the financial situation of the country Ministers will also have to get used to choosing the least unpleasant options for reducing costs, and then stick to them despite the inevitable lobbies urging them to think again or to give in.

During the General Election I explained  that the government had been borrowing far too much. I was clear that we needed to curb the rate of increase in borrowing and public spending, and warned that would mean cuts in some areas, and a tight set of budgets. I promised to do my best to ensure Wokingham did  not suffer unduly. I was keen to see increases in both schools and health budgets.

So let me today give you some good news. As other MPs keep reminding  the nation, Wokingham Borough Council got the best settlement of any Council for next year. Successful lobbying by MPs representing the Councils that get the least from the government has led this new government to give our Councils better protection from the cuts. Councillors locally rightly point out that Wokingham still gets a low settlement for its general non educational spending, but it is good news that this has been recognised in next year’s figures. As I have urged, schools and health spending will rise next year.

According to the Council’s website the Council is spending £260 million this year on general items, on education and on capital projects. £158 million of this, or 60.7%, is paid or from national grants.

Next year I am very pleased that the Council plans to go along with the government’s scheme to freeze Council Tax. I know this will be  popular with many voters, and means the Council like others will be receiving a special grant from the government in addition to other funding.

Local budgets allow for a variety of new projects despite the national financial squeeze. This year a new fire station is being built on the old site in Wokingham. A large programme of safety works to help the railway is being undertaken on railway bridges and roads adjacent to railway lines. I read in my Wokingham Times that next year the Council intends to make payments to build a new station and improve the railway crossing, at a cost to the Council of £1.5 million.   This is to be followed by a new road link near the station in the following year, at a cost of £5 million. This year, of course, the Council has found large sums to buy a substantial interest in the Town Centre redevelopment.

I am very supportive of the Council’s plan to keep the Council Tax down. I am surprised at how it has been possible for the Council to commit to so many new projects at a time of financial stringency. A new station further down the railway  line, and a much better transport interchange and new link road would be good for Wokingham. I look forward to work starting, as they have set a tight timetable for it. I just hope the railway has consented and is fully on board for this initiative.

We also all look forward so feeling benefits from the £9.5 million the Council is spending on “transformation”. We wish them well in ensuring this money does deliver a lower overhead more efficient Council.

Last week we started work on the Localism Bill. This legislation underwrites the government approach. More matters should be settled locally, by the Borough Council or by groups of people concerned about local matters. National government and MPs will interfere less with all the local services, from education and social services to planning and transport.

The Bill gives Councils for the first time a general power of competence. This means that in future a Council can do anything its electors and Councillors wish, as long as it legal. Today, Councils may only   do those things that local government  legislation lays down. In the short term given the tightness of public money I would advise against Councils going out and finding new things to do, but it is an added freedom. It also invites local people to offer to run  local services for the Council, or to take over public facilities locally.

The Bill sweeps away regional planning as promised, and completes the new settlement for planning. Major issues like national highways, new railway lines, and large projects like power stations will be settled by Ministers answerable to MPs.  The rest will be settled by Councils, who will set out in their local plans where homes and other buildings can go. There will still be a right of  appeal to national Inspectors if you are turned down, but the appeal will be settled not in relation to some regional or government strategy, but based on the local plan. In Wokingham’s case the Council has signed up to a plan which allows more than 12,000 extra homes over the years ahead, including 2000 outside the Council’s four chosen areas for larger developments. This will mean Inspectors will tend to allow new housing applications outside any reserved areas of greenbelt or other special designation. If the Council wished to prevent building outside the chosen development areas, it should make that clear in a revised local plan. It is good news that Councils will now have more discretion over how much building and where it should go, as Councillors  can be more in touch with local opinion than remote regional planners and Inspectors.

Constituents often write to me about local planning applications , school catchment areas and other matters that the Council settles for us. I am always happy to hear from constituents, and like to know local feelings. However, in the new age of localism the important thing is to lobby the Council where they have the sole power to make the decision. As MP I have no power to override the Council on a planning or housing or school matter. There is  not even a formal procedure for an MP to make special representations and for them to have to be taken into account as opposed to anyone else’s representations.

There can be, of course, the need for both levels of government to work together. I am very happy to support the Council on appeal where it has turned down an application and faces a challenge to that decision, where the decision was legally made and reflected the terms of the Council’s own local plan. I am always willing to clarify or lobby Ministers where a Ministerial decision is an important part of a local matter. I am still trying to get an answer from Ministers over the future of Arborfield Garrison, which remains a crucial decision for Wokingham’s future plans. I am also seeking clarification of how a new Free School would work, given the interest in this to the west of the Borough and the Council’s wish that it should not use the old Ryeish school buildings.

In the twelve months up to last October just 137 new homes were commenced by builders in my constituency. (NHBC statistics). This puts into context the big arguments underway  about how much new building the Council  should allow. Wokingham Borough is of course bigger than my constituency, but current build rates are way below the 623 new homes each year set out  in the Core Strategy.

 The truth is the big boom in housebuilding is long since over. Banks are not able to lend nearly so much money as they did before the Credit Crunch. People wanting to buy a first home need to have a large deposit to put down.  Families wanting to trade up or move on find the market is slow at best. The prices they get for their existing homes are no longer booming away, no longer allowing them to spend substantially more on a luxurious new home.

I have been approached by the Council concerned that developers may put in planning applications that do not conform with the Council’s expansion plans in the approved areas. Of course I will support the Council on any appeal, where they have turned down applications for good reasons and wish to see some limits on development. However, as some of us have warned, the Council’s own new settlement plans do not prevent all other applications and each one has to be dealt with on its merits. Within the approved areas for development, the fact that the Council itself has said it is a suitable place for development is part of the applicant’s case as to why they should be able to build there. The Council has much stronger grounds to say “No” outside its chosen development areas.

However, even outside the four areas of the Core Strategy the Council plans to allow around 2000 new homes to be built by 2026. This fact will also be taken into account by any Inspector hearing an appeal.

I have been asking Ministers for clarification of what might happen in Arborfield. I was promised a firm answer to the future of the Garrison in the Public Spending Review. Now the answer has been delayed, as Arborfield is part of a further review. I will continue to press for an early and definitive answer, as we need to know where we stand  on this important local issue. Redevelopment of the site within the wire of the present Garrison is the least bad option for new homes, but we do not know whether this is going to be possible. Arborfield is the largest of the proposed four major development sites in the Core Strategy.

Local plans need to take account of the slower pace of growth in this era of damaged banks and less credit. Councillors are very keen to concentrate development in particular areas so they can get money for necessary infrastructure. It is important to include good transport links in that provision, as our local roads are already overburdened, and to make sure the new investment goes in at the beginning of any housebulding project.  Councillors understand that voters will not be happy if large new housing estates are added without improvements to roads, schools and other public services. They need to ensure their officers do good deals for local taxpayers where development is planned.

             The last couple of weeks have been taken up with the Euro crisis. The Greek bail out on May 2^nd did not stop the problem spreading. As you have seen it is now Ireland’s turn to take the Euro misery of higher taxes, cuts in spending, and wage cuts.

             I was not happy with the way the European authorities converted a serious problem into a crisis. They briefed against Ireland when the Irish government pointed out it had the money it needed  to spend until the middle of next year. They said Ireland needed a loan immediately. The European Central Bank (ECB) let it be known it did not wish to carry on lending to the main Irish banks on the scale it has been doing. This precipitated the need for an large Irish loan to replace some of that ECB support. Doing all this in public undermined market confidence in Ireland and in the Euro area generally and created a sense of crisis. That did not seem wise to me. It would have been better if the ECB had continued to supply the cash the Irish banks needed, whilst  conducting firm talks in private about how the risks and losses could be reduced and assets and businesses sold to start to cut the borrowing needed.

              I have been seeking guarantees from the UK government that they will not lend money for any future bail out of any Euro country. One of the successes of the long Conservative years in opposition was to help keep the UK out of the Euro. I see no reason why we should pay the bills of Euroland when we are not members. The Euro area has several large and prosperous countries that now owe an obligation to their neighbours as they share a currency with them. They also need to decide amongst themselves how much central discipline there should be in future, to prevent a recurrence of too much borrowing in some of the member states of the currency area.

                 When I wrote a couple of books urging the UK to stay out of the European single currency I argued that a successful single currency area needed a single economic government which can control the amount each state borrows. It also needs to have generous transfer  payments, so that the richer areas within the currency zone can send money to the poorer parts to keep things fairer and more even. That is what we do in the sterling single currency area, with large transfer payments flowing from the richer to the poorer parts of the Union. One area cannot devalue to price itself back into the market, so it needs help from other areas that are more successful.

                I do not think the massive loan bail out for Ireland ends the crisis or solves all the problems. Both Ireland and Greece have to show how they can rebuild their damaged economies and banking systems and generate enough extra tax revenue to pay the bills. The European authorities have to get smarter to stop exactly the same type of crisis blowing up in Portugal or Spain or somewhere else. Meanwhile the important thing is for the UK to use its flexibility to set a competitive exchange rate to export its way back to faster growth. The UK needs to avoid more spending abroad which it cannot afford, as it undertakes the difficult task of reining in its large public deficit.

Conference platforms and Parliament have been alive with attacks on bankers. Treated as a caste apart, they have been the butt end of jokes, the subject of barbed comments, and the object of policies designed to tax them and curb them. I would like to be a brave politician, and to speak up for many bankers.

Most bankers are people doing decent jobs for reasonable salaries. I do not think the ladies that help me pay my bills in the local branch of the bank I use earn large salaries and mega bonuses. Nor do I think they were in an any way to blame for the credit crunch. Critics should at the very least exempt to the vast majority of bank employees from their strictures.

Many of us are angry about the extent and the depth of the credit catastrophe that was unleashed. First we had the unacceptable boom up to 2007. Then we had the even worse bust, up to the autumn of 2008. Some Directors and senior executives of some banks were responsible for big mistakes in the business they took and in the way they ran and financed their banks. So too were the senior regulators to blame, for their failure to demand enough prudence on the way up, and for then demanding too much prudence in a hurry on the way down. The Bank of England was far from guiltless either. It set interest rates that were too low for years, then set higher rates and starved the markets of money just when the crisis began, which made it worse.

We need to be careful what reparation or punishment we seek to impose as a society on the guilty people. In the case of individual banks that went down or lost large sums of money, shareholders should take the necessary action to ensure those responsible lose their jobs. The government has decided to wind up the FSA, the banking regulator, and to create a new one in the Bank of England. The Bank has had a lucky course through the crisis, in view of its mistakes.

It is now fashionable for governments to impose extra taxes on banks. It is also popular. There are, however, limits to how much any government should do this. In the end higher bank taxes will be paid by all of us, bank customers. Taxes on banking balance sheets will persuade banks to have smaller balance sheets. That means they will lend less money to first time buyers seeking homes, to small and medium sized businesses wanting loans to expand, to anyone who might like to borrow money.

So why not then tax the bonuses and activities of the Investment banks more? Surely we can all agree about that? It is there that we see the concentrations of highly paid people earning mega bonuses for playing with money. Even here we need to think before we act. The large amount of this business transacted in London has brought in large sums in tax revenue for our government, and the spending power of these highly paid people has helped the shops and service businesses of London. Do we want that to go elsewhere? How do we strike the right balance between fair tax, and maintaining our tax competitiveness as a business location?

There are no easy answers to these issues. I want to see the UK get all its money back from the banks in trouble. I want to see well paid people stay here and pay a decent whack of tax. If we allow our feelings to become too heated we risk maligning the many innocent and lower paid bankers, and risk losing the high earners who do have their uses.

This year the Conference season has come to disrupt a new September session of Parliament. Taking three weeks off so all three main parties can have their conference seems an old fashioned indulgence. It has been made more vexatious by the changing nature of party conferences.

The Conservative party conference used to be a big annual event, when the members competed by ballot to get a place at the seaside. The conference allowed members to speak and vote on important issues, to criticise Ministers and senior officials of the party, or to lobby them to make things better. There could be a sense of danger for the platform and the leadership, forcing them to think and to defend their positions.

Today it is very different. There will be no great debates on the floor of the conference about the things that cause disagreement. There will be no knife edge votes, as the membership tries to assert a different view. There will be lots of lobbyists from companies and organisations, well mannered presentations on a range of topics, and a bored media looking for trouble when it is in short supply.

There will still be lots of fringe meetings, but many of these will be paid for by interest groups and will be polite exchanges on a number of technical and professional matters with no great issues of principle or politics intruding.

I will go again this year to the conference, because I have been asked to speak on various topics at various meetings. I do think, however, it is time for the parties to move on, to recognise that the modern world does not want a four day party conference. Members think it a dear week and not always a fruitful one, which is why we no longer need a ballot box to settle who can go.

The death of the conference is a product of the era of spin. It is, apparently, bad form to show disagreement in public. It would put people off, we are told, to see that within a large party which is naturally a coalition of views and interests there are people with differing views and voices. I take the opposite view. I think it a sign of party strength and democratic vitality if people within parties disagree and debate. They should of course stick to the issues and avoid venom and personality abuse. Proper debate about things that matter is what we should be offering. Parties have democratic ways of settling disagreements and need to show the public how a view has been formed or a position arrived at.

Now we have a coalition government between two parties, we can have some debate between the coalition partners. Mr Clegg has assured his party that they will be fighting as Lib Dems at the next election, scotching rumours of the Lib Dems and Conservatives entering an electoral pact. In Wokingham my advice to Councillors is to continue to run the Council with two parties, one as the majority and the other as the opposition. On Parliamentary matters I have always avoided personal attack in elections on the Lib Dem candidate anyway, but am happy to debate openly differences on tax or Europe or anything else that makes us two different parties.