@john.redwood.official
@johnredwood
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Santa’s little helpers go green
Ho Ho Ho said Santa. No, No, No said the elves. They were fed up with such a predictable opening line to the 50 th weekly Zoom meeting to plan Christmas. It was the same every time.
The elves had got more unco-operative since they worked from home. The camaraderie and cold of the North Pole used to keep them together more. The work rooms were warm so they had used them a lot.
It’s true they were not planning a strike, but they had refused to make trips to the North Pole for a trial run in the days before the big event. They pointed out that they needed rest days before Christmas, not stressful flights burning up lots of aviation fuel to arrive in Lapland on their way north. If Santa expected them to work hard and long hours to prepare the presents he should not complain if they wished to do much of the work at home . They expected the reindeer to pick it up from them in good time.
Santa told them today they had at last got to the question of what presents to deliver to all those who worked in politics. Oh dear, said elf Wunorse Openslae, they are always difficult. What do you give to people who have so many opinions? And what do you give to the ones who have big ideas about what they want? We do need to think about how much the reindeer can haul you know. The politicians are all so used to spending other people’s money on big things like new trainlines.
Bushy Green who liked to show off a bit said these days people in the political world were very ESG. So what does that mean asked Santa? Well it means they want presents that help them green the planet. They would like electric cars or a wind turbine for their gardens. That’s not fair or practical , said Santa. We need to offer smaller gifts that fit on the sleigh, and do not cost the earth.
We could tell them we were just sending them love and good wishes said Pepper Minstix, as this year we are going to spare the planet all those things with wrappings that are just dumped. After all they are always complaining about too much packaging. No-one likes a clever clogs said Santa, and anyway that’s very negative. We need to try harder.
How about a smart meter for their home asked Alabaster Snowball, ever ready with an intelligent way round things. I doubt they would be very pleased with that said Santa. Most of them must have them by now as they’ve been available free for several years. They don’t need another one.
They thought about sending them a beautiful bound copy of the world net zero plan as they heard that is mainly what they read these days. Apparently that is what gets them motivated. That sounds too much like work said Sugarplum Mary who would rather send them some chocolates.
Why not offer them a four day week said Shinny Upatree who thought that would be a good idea for himself. Don’t be silly, said Santa. We do not interfere in how people’s jobs are organised. More’s the pity said the elf.
Eventually the meeting reached a great conclusion. They should send them a small wood burning stove to keep them warm as they economised on fossil fuels. Someone had objected that burning wood did not sound very green. On the contrary said Bushey Green, it’s not called wood you know if you do the right thing. We will buy them a biomass stove. There is no carbon to account for as long as they import all the biomass from abroad. The politicians will get that, as they want us to import all our energy to cut the carbon count. What a relief they all thought. At last a gift that will make the politicians feel good about themselves whilst being practical. It will keep them warm as they wrestle with the windless days that stills the turbines.
My question to the Immigration Minister about strengthening control of our borders
Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP (Wokingham) (Con): Will the Government introduce urgent legislation to strengthen control of our borders, and could that include a notwithstanding clause to guide the courts against using other laws that undermine the fundamental principle of the Prime Minister’s policy?
Robert Jenrick, Minister for Immigration: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out last week our intention to bring forward legislation early next year, and at the heart of that legislation will be a simple point of principle that we on this side of the House believe: no one should gain a right to live in this country if they entered illegally. From that, all things will need to flow. Nothing is off the table. We will take our obligations to deliver on that policy very seriously. That is in stark contrast to the Labour party. At the weekend, the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), could not even say whether illegal entry to this country should be an offence. That says it all. We believe in securing our borders and in controlled migration. The Labour party is the party of mass migration.
Strikes
The public sector has entered a period of rolling strikes from Network Rail and Border Force to nurses and the Ambulance service. Postal workers are also on strike in a service which still has a public sector service guarantee to meet, to deliver post to any address in the UK and preferably to keep down the cost of a second class stamp.
Most of these groups of employees negotiate their settlements with independent managements. The Health Service has an Independent Pay Board which makes recommendations which government usually as this year accepts. Whilst Ministers make the overall call on the NHS national pay scales in line with the recommendations, the senior managements of the Trusts and the national health quangos determine use of pay scales, promotions and other conditions of employment. The nurses are often raising matters about staffing levels and work organisation which are the preserve of the senior management to resolve. There are various issues over payment for parking, meal arrangements, shift patterns, use of Agency staff and the rest.Local managers should use more of the flexibilities to look after valued existing staff as the best Trusts are doing.
It is true in the case of the NHS most of the revenue to sustain the service comes as a Treasury grant, and Ministers are the decision takers over the budget totals for the NHS and over the national pay scale awards. There are too few medical staff with plenty of vacancies. It is the case that Ministers could ask the Pay review Board to think again, though this would be a new departure. They could also invent a one off payment not consolidated into pay rates going forward to deal with one off high inflation on family budgets. The Prime Minister has stated he does not think he should depart from the Pay review Body’s conclusions, and the Secretary of State has been forceful in saying a 19% pay rise for nurses is unaffordable for taxpayers.
The railways are a series of disputes with different employers. Network Rail is a public sector company, and some franchises are now in state hands. The rest are under the control of competing private sector franchise holders. The railways are currently offering services which in many cases attract few passengers and in some other cases only have decent numbers by offering heavily discounted fares. The bulk of the money to pay the wages should come from the fares travellers pay to use the railway. The railway is short of passengers.
The state has been offering large sums of subsidy to the railways during covid lockdown, and is still providing substantial financial support. There must be limits to how much for how long, as the whole point of the railways should be to construct a timetable of popular services which largely pay for the costs of the industry from fares. That is why any further pay rises for the rail industry should be linked to improving working practices and improving services to attract more travellers willing to pay the costs of their journey. Working smarter could help bring down the costs of travel, boosting demand. The Secretary of State should not join in the negotiations between Unions and employers. The answer should not be for the industry to conclude wages should go up without improved working and service provision, requiring a yet larger subsidy from the taxpayer.
I would be interested in your thoughts on how these strikes can be resolved and what role if any you think the government should play.
Public sector pay, smart working and quality of service
Many in the public sector understandably want a rise to offset the cost of living squeeze. The government is alarmed by current levels of spending and borrowing. It offers the below inflation rises the Independent Pay Review Boards propose, based as these are on private sector comparators. Most in the private sector are settling for rises well below current inflation.
Meanwhile productivity, output per person has at best gone sideways and in many public sector services has fallen since lockdown. This is painfully true of the asylum/economic migrant section of the Home Office. On the railways the collapse of commuter traffic and of passenger revenue has slashed revenue per staff member needed to pay the wages.
In each case the way forward should be a something for something deal. Management should be striving to improve work processes, offering right systems, protocols, training and supervision to raise output per person which could lead to better reward.
In the case of the NHS management is talking more in public about limiting the damage strikes do than about how to end them. Within nationally agreed rises and pay scales local managements have scope to offer increments, regradings and promotions to encourage and reward good people and to attract new full time talent.
In the private sector managers and supervisors help out to keep operations turning in the event of a strike.
Managing the NHS
The NHS has thousands of managers. They tell me they do not know how many highly paid Chief Executives they employ, presumable because it is so many. Every quango from NHS England down, every hospital Trust has a CEO.
Suddenly we are allowed to see a couple of the top executives on tv. They are always given respectful interviews. They are never asked why they cannot get their staff on board, why they cannot get the waiting lists down , why we are always short of hospital beds. They are never asked what they did with last £10 or £20 bn of extra money.
Here are some questions that should be put to the managers
1 Ministers want waiting lists down. How could you do that?
2 The public want the nurses and doctors to be well remunerated and motivated. Can you use pay scales, increments and promotions to raise morale?
3 Why have you kept the service short of beds? Why hasn’t extra cash expanded medical capacity more?
4 Why do you expand the administrative and executive hierarchy so much? How much has the latest management reorganisation cost?
5 Why do you depend so much on agency staff? Isn’t this an expensive way of employing people who then cost much more than directly employed staff.
The Bank plans plenty of losses
From Chancellor Darling onwards The Bank has been granted a full indemnity by the Treasury for any losses on holding and selling bonds in their inflated bond portfolio. Successive Chancellors accepted Bank of England advice to keep on buying UK government bonds at ever sillier prices.
Today the Bank thinks that to get rid of the big inflation their policy of zero rates and bond buying has brought on requires them to sell all these bonds at big losses. Some will be sold in the markets, others await repayment when they mature. The losses on maturity will be less than taking market losses now. The ones they are keeping are said to lose us loads of money anyway just holding them, as the interest earned on them is now lower than the interest the Bank pays on commercial bank deposits with the Central Bank.
The OBR thinks the Bank will lose a total of £133 bn over the next five years on its bonds. Taxpayers will be expected to pay this bill. why am I the only MP who thinks this is wrong, and the only one to raise it? Why did the media fail to report the huge £11 bn spending priority for five months of Bank of England losses a few weeks ago? I will in future blogs set out how to reduce these big sums.
The Bank struggles to catch up
Most MPs and establishment officials tell us the Bank of England is independent. They tell us The Bank’s main task is to keep inflation to their single target of 2%.
Inflation is well over 10%, more than five times target. It has been above 11%, and was 5.5% before Putin invaded Ukraine and set off an energy crisis. Inflation in China is 2.1%, in Japan 3.8% and Switzerland 3% though they too import a lot of dear energy.
The Bank’s Governor has to report to the Chancellor and to the Treasury Select Committee.
Why is there no criticism of the Bank’s failure to control inflation ? Why did so few of us warn in advance of Bank Errors? Why do the Bank refuse to monitor, comment on and report money and credit growth? Why did the Bank print an extra £150 bn in 2021 thinking well into recovery that would not be inflationary?
Why has it taken the Bank so long to get Bank rate to 3.5%? Why now we are entering a downturn does it think it needs further hikes? Why doesn’t it put rates up immediately to the rate they think they need to throttle inflation? I argued against the extra bond buying in 2021, forecast higher inflation and urged higher base rate this year.
Now I want Treasury and Bank to work together on a growth policy to shorten and lessen the recession the Bank is now determined to create.
My Intervention to the Minister during the SNP Opposition Debate on Scotland’s Future
Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP (Wokingham) (Con): The SNP was very critical of the electricity and energy regulation in the UK, and said that it wanted change in it. It did not seem to realise that all our current regulations are those of the European single electricity market, and that it is only because of Brexit that this Government are now consulting on changing those unsatisfactory regulations.
John Lamont MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland: That is a useful reminder that, while the SNP advocate breaking away from the rest of the UK and breaking away from Westminster and London, it wants even closer ties with Brussels and all the challenges and bureaucracy around that. I always welcome the opportunity that the SNP gives us to talk about the benefits that we all get from being part of the United Kingdom, and all the positives and strengths that come from working together across the whole country. The United Kingdom is the most successful political and economic union that the world has ever seen. In challenging times, we are stronger together. We are better prepared to deal with any crisis, particularly an issue on the scale of the energy crisis, or of the very thing that created the energy crisis—Vladimir Putin’s awful war in Ukraine.
In these volatile times, I continue to believe that the last thing people need is greater uncertainty. This is a time for unity behind a common purpose, not division that would split us apart. The challenges facing all of us across Scotland and the whole of the United Kingdom demand all of our attention.
On the substance of the motion, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East well knows, the Scottish people do not see another referendum as a priority. There is no consensus across Scotland on another referendum and all the division and distraction that that would bring. We already know the process by which a constitutional question can be asked, because it happened back in 2014. We had a referendum and the people of Scotland decided our future by an overwhelming majority. That happened after there was consensus across political parties in the Scottish Parliament, in civic society and among people across Scotland. That is not where we are today.
If SNP Members want to focus their arguments solely on opinion polls, then what do they have to say about the polls, including recent ones, that show that people do not want another referendum on Nicola Sturgeon’s timetable? No matter how many polls there are that show a majority of Scots against another referendum, the SNP still wants us to go through the distraction of an all-consuming constitutional debate. It is all it cares about—another referendum at all costs.
My Intervention to the SNP Spokesman during the SNP Opposition Debate on Scotland’s Future
Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP (Wokingham) (Con): As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman wants Scotland to pull out of the UK but join the European Union. How easy does he think that would be, given the EU’s stubborn attitude towards the Catalan claims and its support of Spain resisting even a referendum?
Tommy Shepherd MP, SNP Spokesman: The difference, of course, between the EU and the United Kingdom is that Scotland can leave one but not the other. I can imagine how the right hon. Gentleman might have felt if he and his Brexit colleagues, who wished for Britain to leave the EU, had been told, “Well, you simply can’t do that. You have no right to do that,” because that is the situation that is being presented to Scotland with regard to the UK.
In my view, which I think is accepted, Scottish independence requires two things. First, it requires the majority consent of the people who live in Scotland, and they need to express a wish for that to happen. Secondly, it concerns a negotiated settlement with this place and it will eventually require an Act of this Parliament. Those two things were fused together in the 2012 Edinburgh agreement, but because of the UK Government’s reticence, we will have to decouple them and take them separately.
Our ambition now is to find some means to allow people in Scotland to express their view. It does not sit well for the UK Government to take a stance of actively trying to frustrate and deny that happening. This motion, if they were to vote for it today, fixes the problem, because it gives the Scottish Parliament the power to organise the first of those things—to determine the view of the people. We are asking for the Scottish Parliament to have the power not to legislate on the Union or on becoming an independent country, but merely to consult the people and to articulate on behalf of those who elected the Holyrood chamber. That is the opportunity that is offered by the motion’s proposed Bill, and I hope that hon. Members will take it.
The more that we tell people that they cannot have something, the more they want it. We have seen that in recent opinion polls with the surge in support for independence. Most significantly, in last week’s opinion poll, we saw a clear majority of people saying that there should be another referendum on this question before the end of the Scottish Parliament’s term in 2026—that is the first time that there has been a clear majority on the timing of the referendum.
All that is happening as a result of the UK’s obstinance, insistence and denial of the democratic mandate in Scotland is that the case for independence is being fuelled. If it comes to a situation where there is a conflict between the British constitution and the claim of right of the Scottish people, it is our responsibility, which we will not shirk, to make sure that the latter triumphs over the former.