Conservatives and greenery go together. We wish to conserve what is best in nature and our environment. Conservatives have often pioneered legislation to improve water quality, clean up our air, protect our countryside and conserve what is best in our landscape and heritage. Around the country Conservative Councils are often struggling with the dilemma of people needing affordable homes whilst many others regret the passing of woods and pastures to grow crops of new houses. Many of us share the passion for clean air and water and for the gentle contours of English rural landscapes.

The levelling up agenda provides a heaven sent opportunity to do something better. There is no reason why planning policies should continue to direct ever more executive homes to the hard pressed south east, when other parts of the country could benefit from the jobs and investment major new housebuilding creates. Now that in the post pandemic world more homeworking and remote working is becoming part of our lives many more people will be freed from the need to live close to London on a commuter pathway. More small businesses and start up enterprises could be encouraged to establish away from the lure of the capital city. That requires more attractive housing for the investors, managers and entrepreneurs who will help populate the growth and success of areas that are grasping the opportunity to level up.

Levelling up will be a vast series of personal journeys. For everyone in an area that is improving who does set up a business or brings in a new investment there will be many others who will seize the opportunity to get a better job, to use and develop their talents to advance the new enterprise. Every major company siting a business premise in a new area represents an opportunity for smaller companies to spring up to supply everything from the lunchtime sandwiches and coffees through to the technology support, the cleaning and components they will need. Every new housing estate creates first round jobs for the building trades to be followed by all the jobs to support new residents in their new homes.

Government’s role is not only to provide better planning policies, but also to help with high quality education and training. Working with business there can be a new can do approach in places which have been sidelined by investors in recent years. The main thing enterprises need is talented people to work for them and deliver great customer service and product excellence.

Over the last fortnight the UK government has valiantly tried to craft worldwide agreement over the issue of climate change. It was always a difficult task. India, China, and Russia, three of the largest producers of carbon dioxide on the planet were never going to agree to curb their appetites for burning coal, oil and gas. China accounts for some 30% of the total world creation of additional carbon dioxide, and has decided to mine more coal and build more coal power stations. The conference was divided on the very issue of whether coal burning should be completely phased out worldwide or not. In the end the assembled countries could only agree to a diluted sentiment that coal would be phased down, without timetables or pledges from the main users of the fuel. Germany kept a low profile, though she as an advanced country is holding out to burn coal in power stations through to 2038. The Greens are wanting to form part of the new governing coalition after the recent German election, and are pressing to bring this down to 2030 to bring Germany a bit closer to other advanced countries and the UN approved policy of phasing out coal quickly. It still shows how difficult it is to agree the end of coal when a major advanced industrial country clings to it as a prime source of energy.

The problems besetting COP 26 were not just the divided world over how feasible it is to decarbonise, nor even just the disagreement over how much money rich countries should send to poorer countries to help them change. Central to the whole debate is the question of people’s buy in to what the transition means for their own lifestyle. It is only when there are sufficient affordable and good products available to heat your home, to travel to work and to fill your plate with carbon free food will the green programme take off. So far the elites who come to summits have lectured the many that we need to change our lifestyles whilst they themselves fly in jet planes to air conditioned hotels to eat meat diets as if none of their advice applied to themselves. When challenged they might claim that they have spent money on carbon offsets, whilst seeing no choice for their own purposes but to carry on using jet fuel, gas heating, traditional food products and the rest. The digital revolution sweeps all before it without government requests or demands, without subsidies and taxes to drive it. People want mobile and smartphones, computer pads, entertainment downloads and the other services that the digital giants can offer. For COP 26 to succeed it needs to spawn a new generation of products and services that meet the carbon requirements whilst also being affordable and better solutions to the problems of everyday life.

Levelling up can of course help produce the range of new jobs and skills which a popular green revolution could generate. The main thrust is to electrify much more of life and then to generate more power from renewable or carbon neutral sources of energy. As governments bring this about they need to reassure people that there are ways of keeping the lights on when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. COP 26 set up various working groups of countries to explore new technologies to provide better travel, heating and industrial process. The sooner they produce results the better. If there are more breakthroughs with cheaper and better ways of doing these things that cut the carbon, then India, China and Russia will also want to adopt them. If there are not even the advanced countries will find it difficult to sell the practice of decarbonisation to their own electors.

I read little about the wide ranging management reorganisation of the NHS underway as the institution wrestles with recovery from the pandemic and continues to fight the continuing virus. The reorganisation is one sought by the management rather than being a political blueprint, which may account for the absence of debate.

The NHS in England has been recruiting Boards to run 42 Integrated Care Systems. These in turn work with Integrated Care Partnerships. They are designed to promote collaboration and common working between GPs, Councils, providers of community and mental health services and Healthwatch. In parallel all the provider trusts – hospitals and other institutions providing healthcare and treatment- are to join provider networks, to work with others and to increase their scale of activity.

The Integrated Care Boards will be responsible for finance. They will procure the health services their area needs from a range of providers. Their budget will include “community commissioning money, GP budgets, specialised commissioning spend, budgets for certain other directly commissioned services, central support and national transformation funding.” They can delegate funds to the Partnerships based on their area.

The boundaries of these new bodies create bodies of different sizes and often combine several Council areas. Wokingham for example will come under Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West. Its eastern neighbour will be Frimley.

It has proved difficult to get much background information about the costs and benefits of these changes. It is important the new bodies are well primed to procure the services we need to cut the waiting lists and to maintain or  improve the range and quality of services on offer so that all are of a good standard.

The NHS needs more capacity to get the waiting lists down. During the pandemic the NHS did provide many more beds in the Nightingale units in case the pandemic caseloads became too great. They resisted advice to use these facilities for all covid work to keep the General hospitals infection free and able to carry on with their regular work. As a result we have a big backlog.

Large additional sums of money have been made available to the NHS to handle the one off  costs of tackling the pandemic, and to deal with the waiting lists. In order to  cut waiting lists we may well need more beds in the NHS. It has been one of the features of the NHS that managers have always chosen to operate with relatively few beds compared to the workload and have said they aim to make very productive use of these beds. It leads to issues over so called bed blockers, and how easy it is to send patients on to care in the community or recuperation in other NHS institutions beyond the District General hospital.

It should surely be relatively easy to provide more beds. Some of the beds and equipment acquired for the Nightingales might be available to get us started. The NHS could also set up specialist units in different properties to undertake procedures like cataract removal or other simpler surgery away from the DG hospital.

Apparently the new issue is the numbers of staff this will need. Of course just adding beds is no use without enough nurses and doctors to administer to the extra patients. I understand that the NHS has many jobs open for applicants currently, with many more posts allowed for in the budget than the NHS has staff. The NHS needs to see what it can do to encourage qualified people to return to its employment and  what  can  be done to promote more people through education and training . The NHS should also consider the balance of work between highly qualified doctors and nurses and other staff to see if more assistance can be safely given to the medically trained to provide great service to more patients.

The government is we are told working up an agenda to show how levelling up will take place. Under Secretary Gove all the main departments are being harnessed to the task.

They should begin with the Treasury. The anti enterprise policies of IR35, higher National Insurance and higher corporation tax have to change. The temporary super deduction from Corporation Tax for investment is not sufficient given the longer term big hike in rate. The treasury should take Corporation tax down to 15% and cut taxes for the self employed and small business.

Mr Gove’s own department should come up with a planning policy which encourages more house building in parts of the countries  with cheaper land and a shortage of new homes to buy. Now many more people are home working for at least part of the week there is less need to overbuild close to London.

The Business department should take more positive steps to encourage import substitution and more made in the U.K. It should revitalise domestic oil an£ gas to displace imports, and put in more reliable electricity capacity. An industrial revival needs more affordable anD reliable energy.

The Environment department needs to reboot its subsidies and regulations to foster more home food production, in place of its current model of wilding the U.K. and importing food.

I will look in another blog at training  and education, to help more people on a personal journey to job and business success.

Yesterday I drew attention to some of the many areas where carbon counting is the main driver of U.K. policy. As a few of you point out, it does not seem to drive the one policy where some of you want it most. One of the most obvious ways to cut the UK’s carbon footprint would be to cut inward migration. Every additional person clearly adds substantially to CO 2 output as a direct result  of their personal output and all the output needed to supply them with food, heating and transport. Indeed additional people are in the first years more carbon intensive as we need to build additional homes, surgeries, schools and utility capacity to accommodate them . Their very way of transport to get here is also carbon intensive.

The anger of people about the migration is increased when they hear leaders tell us the U.K. must do more to control CO2. The more people we invite in the more we need to throttle back to compensate for the extra CO 2 from an expanding population. The Home Secretary says she intend  to close down the people smuggling and trafficking. So when? When will the new legislation go through? How will she make it less attractive for people to come  here illegally? When will border enforcement crack these smuggling rings and arrest the boat owners and people runners?

The UK has been the most successful larger country at cutting its carbon dioxide output since 1990. Some of this was a gain for our economy and society a well as a win for the world, where new investment substituted more efficient fuel saving ways of making and growing things or generating power. Some of it was not a gain for us or the world where it entailed ceasing doing something at home and importing from somewhere else, often in ways which increased the amount of carbon dioxide produced in making and transporting them.

The world system for counting and managing carbon dioxide output is understandably based around the national production of carbon dioxide. As the policies to cut the output of CO2 are decided and implemented by national governments ( or the EU)and companies acting under national laws, that makes sense as a means of management. It does not, however, make global sense if countries decide to cease making or growing things that produce a lot of CO2 in order to import them and shift the CO2 onto another country’s budget. It is positively harmful both to the country ceasing production and to the wider world if as a result the addition of CO2 from long distance transport and or from more carbon intensive ways of production in the exporting country actually increases the total world output of CO2.

In the UK it appears that many officials and some Ministers regard national decarbonisation as the  main or only imperative in thinking through policies. In the energy department there has been a mad dash to close down coal power stations, to block new gas combined cycle stations and greatly increase reliance on imported electricity through interconnectors. If we end up importing power which comes from Russian gas or German coal that is  not a win. The same department has been keen to plan the run down of existing gas and oil fields in the North Sea and to prevent new connections to untapped reserves that are discovered. Instead they prefer we rely on increasing volumes of imported oil and gas during the “transition”. The agriculture department seems worried by methane from cows for  milk and beef cattle, so it offers grants to wild our land and to make us ever more dependent on imported meat and dairy products. It allows us to mainly import salads, flowers and other items needing greenhouse heating from the Netherlands instead of helping the UK create more jobs and cut the food miles with more home production.  The Business Department watches as the UK retreats from aluminium, steel, ceramics and other energy intensive manufactures, only to rely more on imports.

In each case departments need to give greater weightings to the need for more better paid jobs and more successful businesses in the UK, and the need to increase national resilience at a time of disrupted world trade and global shortages. They need to also see that even given their main preoccupation, CO2 output, there is a case for doing more at home to cut the food miles and to improve the fuel efficiency of processes in industry.

Some of you wish to post items based on Labour’s latest campaign about the conduct of Conservative MPs. Others wish to counter post, examining cases involving Labour MPs and their conduct. This site has no wish to do this and is not equipped to investigate the truth or falsehood of the various charges being made. Both sides need to understand that both sides will have their posts binned to be consistent and fair. Writing and  publishing an untrue attack on anyone could be a libel.

As we near a final text from COP 26 it appears the main producers of CO2 in the world are wedded to their fossil fuel economies and most plan to produce more CO2 over the next few years. China is planning more coal power stations, Germany is keen to keep hers at least for this decade, India thinks she needs to burn more fossil fuels to grow her way to  better prosperity. There will be no new Treaty out of Glasgow. The idea was to flesh out the Paris Agreement with detailed national plans and targets, and to move towards more global enforcement of action through sharing information and applying moral pressure to countries that are falling short. There was never any plan to have an EU like structure with enforcement in court and with sanctions against non compliance.

Meanwhile the rich and powerful of the world turn to carbon offsets to allow themselves to enjoy private jets, air conditioned hotels, grand meat meals and the rest. Faced with charges of hypocrisy when they lecture the rest of us on stopping travel by passenger jet or diesel car, and criticising our reliance on gas boilers and meat from the supermarket, they tell us they have offset their more extravagant carbon based lives by buying pardons. They identify an investment in trees or windfarms or solar panels somewhere and claim that part investment as an offset for their carbon generation. The offset market can grow massively, as there is a plentiful supply of potential projects that some agency will rate as suitable as an offset.

The EU has also established a system of carbon permits. If a company wishes to burn fossil fuels to make steel or cement, it needs to buy or be granted carbon permits to allow it to burn the necessary fossil fuels in the process. There is much discussion about what the price of the carbon permits should be. The market in them has recently driven the price up to Euros 60 a tonne of carbon. This is now a substantial added cost on industrial activities that require a substantial fossil fuel input.

I would be interested in your reactions to this activity. There is a need to avoid scams and greenwashing. There has to  be an understanding that this will make things dearer as the cost of carbon taxation enters the industrial calculations.

I was talking to a London taxi driver yesterday about the new electric cabs. He pointed out that they also contain a 1.5 l petrol engine which can be turned on to keep the battery charged. Apparently to get the range for a day’s work the petrol engines are much used. Such developments need to be taken fully into account when trying to work out how to decarbonise transport.

The UK’s national income per head is higher than France, Italy and Spain,  but a bit lower than Germany. All are massively lower than Ireland’s. The Republic of Ireland has a per capita income more than twice the UK’s and three times Spain’s. The main reason is Ireland has held its company tax rates down to 12.5%, far lower than the other larger European countries. As a result large US and other overseas companies have wanted to set up in Ireland and book more of their activities through Ireland to take advantage of the lower tax rate. Far from collecting less company tax through lower rates, Ireland collects far more company tax as a percentage of the economy than the countries setting higher rates.

President Biden’s success in getting leading countries to approve his idea of a minimum level of corporation tax worldwide will mean Ireland will lose a little of its advantage, being persuaded to put its rate up to 15%. This will still leave it below most of the other larger European countries.

The UK should use this opportunity to increase its company tax receipts by lowering the rates. The UK could now match Ireland with a 15% rate. This would doubtless be a good draw for large companies to locate more to the UK, and  would remove the big competitive advantage Ireland gives herself by her current very low rate. Why don’t the Treasury want to increase the tax take from companies and boost National Income? How much more evidence do they want that lower rates are successful?

Figures in US $ from World Bank Per capita GDP

France   39,030

Germany   46,208

Ireland  85,267

Italy  31,676

Japan   39,538

Spain 27,063

UK    40,284

USA     63,543

The EU has as it would say “broken the law”. They have reneged on the UK Agreement.

Article 1 of the Northern Ireland Protocol states

 

“This Protocol is without prejudice to the provisions of the 1998 Agreement in respect of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the principle of consent which provides that any change in the status can only be made with the consent of the people”

The loyalist community sees that  the Protocol has cut them off from important parts of the UK state and placed them under EU rules and controls. They are losing their right to import from GB and to have the same laws as GB without their consent.

The Article affirms that “This Protocol respects the essential state functions and territorial integrity of the UK”. Not the way the EU is interpreting it.

 

Article 6 of the Protocol states

“having regard to Northern Ireland’s integral place in the UK the Union and the UK shall use their best endeavours to facilitate trade between Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK”

Instead the EU has gone out of its way to disrupt GB to NI trade and to divert trade to NI/EU.

 

The opening to the Protocol sets out the overarching aims for help in interpreting the text. These include:

 

Having regard to the importance of maintaining the integral place of BI in the UK’s internal market

Recalling that NI is part of the customs territory of the UK

Determined it should impact as little as possible on the everyday life of communities in both Ireland and NI…

 

All of these have been violated badly by the EU

 

Article 16 allows the UK or the EU to  take unilateral action to remedy issues where there are “serious economic, social or environmental difficulties” or where trade is diverted. These tests are clearly met.

The EU would be wise to apologise for breaking the Agreement, and should take action to correct the difficulties it has created for NI and the UK single market.