Dear Ministers

When you return from the holly and the Christmas pudding please attend urgently to the energy shortages. The gas price has shot up to  very high levels and electricity is expensive. The price caps will be moved upwards sharply in April hitting people’s heating and living costs badly.

It should come as  no surprise. The price cap policy has bankrupted a large  number of electricity suppliers. The policy of closing coal power stations, blocking more production of UK gas, failing to put in extra generating capacity other than wind and solar and relying more and more on imports was bound to lead to shortages and very high prices as some of us warned.

When thinking about how to abate the cost of living squeeze from dearer energy it is wise to remember the most basic lesson of economics. Supply and demand is balanced by market price. If something is in  short supply its price rises in a free market until enough extra is produced. If something is in over supply the price falls until the surplus has been absorbed and production cut back.

If government sets a lower price than the market needs to balance supply and demand then there will be too little supply and a shortage. The government has to allow market prices to rise to bring forward additional energy. If it refuses to allow the suppliers to pass on the  extra cost of the underlying energy then they will go bust unless the government subsidises them from taxes. Prices also of course hit or boost demand. On current policy energy will be worryingly dear for anyone on a lower income so government will need to boost their income somehow to make it more affordable. Taking VAT off fuel would be a welcome start.

The only reliable way to get the UK gas price down is to allow more domestic gas to boost supply. Much of this could then be offered as long term contract gas with sensible prices and price adjustments in the contract, to avoid more buying of very dear gas on an inflated spot market at times of shortage. The only reliable way to keep the lights on is to retain fossil fuel power stations as back up for when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, and to add more low or zero carbon generation from reliable sources that work in all weathers for the future.

There is also a crucial national security issue. Trying to rely more on gas and electricity imports from Europe gravely weakens our country. The EU is energy short and dependent on Putin’s Russia. Energy will increasingly be used as a diplomatic weapon against countries that cannot be bothered to generate their own power and extract their own energy.

No blog today. If you would like to send a comment normal service  resumes tomorrow.

Yesterday there was some comment on the way energy bills will leap up in April when the price cap gets revised.

I want the government to get to work on allowing more domestic energy supply as I have been arguing for well in advance of the predictable crunch.

We will otherwise pay an increasingly heavy price for relying on imports from an energy short Europe increasingly reliant on Mr Putin’s  goodwill.

I have throughout the pandemic pressed for more drug trials to improve treatments. We are now seeing some good progress.

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will list the drugs the NHS can use to treat covid-19 patients. (91820)

Tabled on: 13 December 2021

Answer:
Maggie Throup:

The following therapeutics are available to patients hospitalised with COVID-19 and in the community setting:

– Dexamethasone;

– Tocilizumab;

– Ronapreve; and

– Sotrovimab.

The following antivirals are available to patients in both hospital and community settings:

– Remdesivir;

– Molnupiravir; and

– PF-07321332

The answer was submitted on 23 Dec 2021 at 10:47.

John Redwood: We cannot continue being governed by scientific advisers

         I am writing to wish you a happy Christmas and to look forward to a better new year. I have been keen to support those in government determined to avoid any ban on family get togethers and visits to local restaurants and cafes over Christmas in contrast to 2020.  It looks as if we will enjoy some  of our traditional freedoms.

      I have not taken this view without considering very carefully the evidence of how we can best control the pandemic. Reliance on vaccines is our first line of defence and they seem to be working well. The gradual introduction of better drug treatments also helps cut serious case rates. I have been urging completion of more drug trials and more work on better air extraction and UV cleaning of circulating air to cut the risk of the virus in indoor public spaces.The government promise me they are pressing ahead with this. The early evidence on Omicron suggests this is for most  a milder version with less infection of the lungs which has been the danger in other variants. 

       We are going to have to live with strains of this virus for some years to come, just as we do with flu which can also be a nasty killer for some. The U.K. government did well to back and support one of the first successful vaccines and then to roll out a large and early vaccination programme to greatly reduce the risks of death for many people. Armed with  other improvements we should  now let people make more of their own judgements about how to cut the  risks of the disease themselves.

         I am pressing the government to get on with measures to promote more prosperity, more and better paid jobs, and more U.K. self reliance in everything from energy to food. I am proposing how to cut supply shortages which lead to inflation and how to reduce the  cost of living squeeze which will be bad in April without further changes of approach. 

          There is some disquiet about the apparent breaching of covid rules by senior officials in government. The PM is right to commission a proper enquiry and will then need to take disciplinary action if offences occurred. 

I am all in favour of experts. I read a lot of expert opinion. Daily I learn something new from reading someone’s research findings about issues of public interest.

Reading plenty of experts has taught me several things. It has taught me that some so called experts are not up to the title, producing ill thought through material with insufficient proof.  The BBC is specially good at mistaking establishment propagandists for experts. It has reminded me that in many difficult areas the experts disagree amongst themselves, which is often a welcome  way of moving towards a greater understanding of the issue. I have also discovered in fields I study that there can often develop an expert consensus, held by many for fear of getting out of line. This can result in a catastrophic establishment failure because most of the tenured individuals dare not disagree. In economics the Exchange Rate Mechanism  boom and bust  and the banking crash great recession are two  examples of groupthink gone wrong.

The worst feature of recent years has been when the establishment consensus allies itself with political forces and tries to dominate the democratic debate about a topic. The Treasury and Bank of England forecasts prior to the referendum we now know were wildly wrong and were clearly designed to help the Remain campaign. They forecast a fall in house prices, a fall in employment, a rise in interest rates and a fall in the pound if we left. Instead in the early months after we finally left the reverse of all those forecasts occurred. In the year immediately after the vote as well house prices rose, employment went up and interest rates went down. This poor forecasting undermines public confidence in official forecasts. It also angers the majority who disagreed with the establishment political view on the underlying question.

Today expert epidemiologists need to grasp that their forecasts will be carefully scrutinised  and subjected to commonsense checks because of past forecasting errors by government advisers. Net zero advisers keen to speed the transition will need to ask why the public does not rush to transform their lives in the recommended ways. They will find they need to overcome scepticism about some of their claims.

Democracy places non experts in positions of power to take advice, to consider conflicting expert claims and to apply some commonsense to recommendations. It remains the best way of proceeding in a world where the future is always uncertain. For a democracy to thrive we need to debate the cosy and sometimes horribly wrong consensus views of a self selecting group of experts in any given area. No one peddling views gets a ride free from criticism in a thriving democracy.

We soon will need to put the worst of the pandemic measures behind us and concentrate on the promotion of prosperity for the many. Controlling the disease should rest on the offer of vaccinations, better treatments, individual decisions about reducing the risk of infection and better air extraction and cleaning in public buildings.

The Treasury needs to acknowledge that its policy is going to squeeze the economy too much in the first half of next year. If they persist with their raft of tax rises in April, hitting just when energy prices rocket with the shifting of the price caps, we will see an unwelcome relapse in confidence, incomes and output.

The Treasury should announce now that it will not impose the hike in national Insurance, a tax on jobs and on take home pay, at the peak of the cost of living troubles. It should remove VAT on domestic fuel to ease the large rise in energy costs for consumers.

The Treasury should work with the Business department to increase the supply of domestic energy. Gas is a so called transition fuel which will be much needed this decade before new nuclear and other reliable carbon free electricity comes on stream. Gas also remains the dominant way of heating homes, as people are not yet ready to adopt electric and heat pumps based home heating. The government should give the go ahead of additional UK gas production, starting with the Jackdaw field and other projects ready to go. The government should also commission more gas storage capacity to help smooth wild fluctuations in  spot market prices of gas.

The government should procure more reliable electricity supply from domestic sources as we are too dependent on imports when there is little wind.The Treasury should work with the Environment Department to fashion support schemes to promote more food production at home instead of offering money to prevent farming here, supporting imports.

All the time government advisers tell us to avoid social contact the Treasury needs to offer help to social contact service businesses.It needs at least to continue  business rates relief and lower VAT, and should offer direct assistance for cash flow problems of otherwise solvent businesses.