I have always stressed when saying we can afford to borrow to offset the damage done by anti pandemic policies to the economy that we should not waste money or undertake spending the private sector can cover as it did pre pandemic.

The Business Department budget shows that it should be possible to reduce future outgoings whilst still doing a good job for the UK economy and business sector.

The Business department has a massive £175 bn of accumulated liabilities. Many of these are possible future payments to close down nuclear power plants and to subsidise wind and solar power. The Accounts  may understate the possible outturn on contract for differences power costs, which are  currently priced at £89.6bn by the Department compared to the more modest  £16.5bn liability on the balance sheet.

All this needs managing to get value for money and to control outgoings.

1. Safety should of course be an absolute  override, but it would repay study to examine the pace of the nuclear closure programme and the speed and incidence of remedial and recovery work               thereafter. They currently assume 7 stations close 2023-30.

2.The Smart meter programme is costing a massive £20.1bn and is very unpopular with many users. Could this be rephased?

3. International contributions to climate change projects are in at £11.6bn. So far the public sector has contributed more than the private. Maybe it is  time to demand greater leverage from the private sector? Surely emerging countries would prefer profitable projects?

4. £85.3bn of accumulated business support for CV 1 9  was  necessary spending. As there are £69.1bn  of loans, what is being assumed about repayment schedules once we have a proper economic recovery post vaccination? It is important the government makes sensible phased arrangements for recovery or for the transfer of these loans to banking sector.

5. CFD payments for renewable power . It is time for a value for money review of options as this is becoming a large contingent liability, particularly for new nuclear.

The Business Department budget is a reminder of just what a complicated nexus of subsidies, regulations and interventions there are  now are to keep the lights on and the factories turning.

The EU has failed to approve the Astra Zeneca vaccine and have said they need to take more time to check  it out. Now they are also saying that they want more of it delivered than the company can currently produce. That is a matter to be sorted out between the EU and the company. Some in the EU then threaten to interrupt exports contracted by customers outside the EU as punishment for difficulties in supplying sufficient vaccine under another contract.

Supporters of  the EU are always telling us they uphold the legal and international order. This looks like the opposite.

The EU are also making life difficult for business in GB, Northern Ireland and the Republic by their interpretation of rules and the Protocol.It is high time the U.K. legislated to restore the integrity of the U.K. single market. No goods going to and from GB and Northern Ireland should face any additional impediments compared to transit of goods within GB. Any goods certified to travel onto the Republic from Northern Ireland can be treated in accordance with EU import requirements by agreement between the EU and U.K. or by the EU at their border.

Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I congratulate my Right Honourable Friend on the what she has been doing. Will she strengthen the law against people trafficking which remains a worrying danger and can she ensure the necessary travel controls do not stop essential work travel?

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel): My Right Honourable Friend is absolutely right. First of all, in terms of people trafficking, he has been assiduous on this. He has heard me a number of times in terms of the measures that we are bringing forward in terms of legislation and plans around tackling people trafficking and the smugglers. We have some good reports on that in terms of the some of the criminal penalties and sanctions that have been levelled against individuals.

Secondly, he is absolutely right in terms of fines we are putting in place and the exemptions that are required around key areas such as goods in particular coming into the country.

The Department of Health and Social Care has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (133606):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the progress that has been made in the testing of (a) anti-viral treatments, (b) immune modulators and (c) other existing medicines to help provide improved treatments for covid-19. (133606)
Tabled on: 06 January 2021

Answer:
Jo Churchill:
The Department is carefully considering all available evidence from clinical trials in the United Kingdom and overseas around the potential of different drugs across a variety of different modes of action for use in treating COVID-19.

On 7 January 2021, the REMAP-CAP clinical trial published results showing that two immunomodulators, tocilizumab and sarilumab, reduced the relative risk of death by 24% for critically ill patients and time spent in intensive care by up to 10 days.

The UK national priority platform clinical trials – RECOVERY, REMAP-CAP and PRINCIPLE – can test both licensed and unlicensed drugs. These are adaptive trials, meaning that results are monitored on an ongoing basis and treatments which are clearly ineffective will be discontinued. Trials may also add new potential treatments if other evidence suggests promise.

I am pleased the UK held a referendum in Scotland to see if people there wanted to leave the UK, after years of pressure from the SNP to break up the Union. It was a great contrast with the tactics used by the Spanish government to prevent such a vote in Catalonia over the future of the Spanish union. I agreed with the SNP in the Commons before the vote, when they said it would be a once in a generation event. These votes are of course divisive, as each side needs to heighten the differences to bid votes its way. They are necessary divisions to reveal  the views of the public and to provide instructions to the politicians.  They are not a good idea to keep repeating. They are also asymmetric, as the wish to have votes to ask if people want to be independent would presumably stop were a vote ever to be won for independence.  Seeking to re enter a Union you have left is altogether more problematic and would clearly require the consent of the Union as well as of the country which had left.

Gordon Brown’s intervention in the debate was predictable and unhelpful. It was his recommended policy of offering devolution that failed to stem the tide of Scottish nationalism, though he thought it would. He now wants to try it again. He as always  wishes to split up England into artificial regions, when England wishes to be afforded the same level of devolution and self government as Scotland enjoys. He has not taken on board the rejection of elected regional assemblies in England as an unwanted and expensive burden on the taxpayer.  A few of my  critics do  not like my wish to save public money by asking Westminster MPs elected for English seats to handle the devolved business for England and want an English Parliament with more politicians.

The UK government says it does not intend to legislate for another referendum as it is too soon to re open this issue. The government currently needs to show how the Union works well for all parts of the UK. It needs to revisit its Single market legislation to make sure we have full powers over GB to Northern Ireland trade which matters to Scottish, Welsh and English businesses selling into Northern Ireland. The government could set out clarifying legislation to say that any load certified as a load for a final consumer in Northern Ireland should not suffer any further or additional checks to those that applied prior to Brexit. The UK would of course police against smuggling product via Northern Ireland to the Republic without the EU checks they want and co-operate with the Irish authorities as they did when we were both in the EU where  smugglers tried to evade Excise and Vat differences between the jurisdictions..

The government’s scientific advisers come across as pessimists about our future. They seem to think the policy answer for wherever we are in combatting the virus is more and longer lockdown. If the virus is spreading more we need tougher lockdown. If it is falling we need to continue with lockdown as only lockdown can get it falling.  If a tough lockdown is in place and it does not seem to be working it is the fault of the public, as too many must be breaking the rules.

The government accepted nine months of variable lockdowns last year, and sustained it with the public by suggesting as soon as enough people have been vaccinated we can relax. Now the government advisers are telling us it is not as simple as that. They will not be satisfied even when all the people most at risk of dying from the disease have been vaccinated. They  say they do not know whether people who are vaccinated can still pass the virus on,  nor how long immunity from vaccination might last. The advisers leave most of us without reliable figures on bed occupancy, NHS capacity and Nightingale use. They have changed the definitions of what is a covid death, and  decline to tell us where the various numbers have to reach  before they would recommend a relaxation.

Ministers say they are following the science. They are of course following a few prominent government scientists, who speak for one version of the science. The science on the pandemic is fortunately changing, as scientists work hard to understand the disease and remedies better, and as they study the pattern of infection worldwide. There are also various divisions of opinion over what treatments work or work best, over vaccines and how much and how often they have to be administered to an individual, over what the rate of spread may be at any given time and how best to conclude someone died of CV 19 rather than other complex conditions that many elderly people also suffer from.

Ministers need to offer us guidance on how we get out of this latest long lock down. Either they need to show us mass vaccination is the promised game changer and they will relax as soon as all the vulnerable who wish have been  jabbed, or they need to come up with a plan for us to live alongside the virus better if vaccination is not going to ban it.

Government actions designed to limit the spread of the virus and reduce the burden on the NHS have done great damage to jobs, business and output. Knowing they would the government rightly made generous provision to subsidise employment, offer grants and loans to businesses, and increased benefits to people to sustain demand. This naturally led to colossal borrowing by the state and to the effective nationalisation of large parts of the economy from private hospitals to the railways.

The Treasury now rightly says we cannot go on with the excessive borrowing and very high levels of state spending needed during lock down. They should add that state borrowing will fall rapidly as soon as lock down is removed and a decent economic recovery is allowed and encouraged. A large number of people who have kept their better paid  jobs and been on full pay throughout the last year have money to spend as soon as they are allowed to buy services that entail face to face encounters. Many businesses will soon be back with revenue in the tills and staff on overtime again. As this happens so the amount the state spends on benefits, grants, loans and cushioning of the lockdown diminishes. So also tax revenue soars as people pay VAT on services again, income tax on earnings and transaction taxes.

The last thing we need is new taxes or rises in tax rates. In  order to promote recovery the Treasury should be thinking about lower rates and fewer taxes. We need a big expansion of business capacity. The danger is we lose a generation of entrepreneurs, of people working for themselves or running small businesses, as a result of the lockdowns. The  most energetic will of course flourish again, but we need to create conditions where the average, the not so highly motivated, those worried about risk taking are persuaded enterprise is for them and the odds are favourable to setting up and running a successful business.

The only way to get the deficit down to sensible levels and to slash additional borrowing is to promote a strong and rapid recovery. We need to be doing that from early in the new financial year, so that we just put behind us one year of huge state borrowings. Tax rises will delay and impede recovery, and will put off that new generation of businesses and self employed we will badly need to lead us out of additional debt.

The answers I have been  getting from DEFRA are worrying. They show no sense of urgency to use our new freedoms to promote more growing and rearing home grown food. They are not standing up for U.K. interests in interpreting the Trade Agreement with the EU. They are not bringing forward early plans to raise our fishing capacity or to expand our market gardening areas.

The thrust of policy seems to be to wilding our landscape instead of farming it better.There are too many proposed grants for so called environmental gains and not enough for food production. Many of us want  to slash the food miles, employ more U.K. people and enjoy more good U.K. produced food.That  means extending the season for vegetables and soft fruit with more glasshouses and polytunnels. It means working  with the food manufacturing industry to put more U.K. produce into imaginative meals and good recipes for ready meals. It means strong U.K. branding.

I see some of the supermarkets understand U.K. consumer wishes. Many fresh food items have the Union flag on. None carry the EU, Spanish or Dutch flags. Let’s go one  step further and have  a farming policy which delivers us more great British food. The world does not owe us a living and it is not  good to be so dependent on overseas supply of things we can grow for ourselves.

The President has boldly set as his main aim uniting a fractured and divided USA. He wisely accepts this will not be easy. Too many of his followers seem to think if they just insist more strongly on their  views of the world and claim the electoral right to enforce them  the country will come together behind a new left wing Democrat settlement. If they reinforce this with tough action against any who disagree, through court cases against certain types of  speech and protests, and censorship on media and social media, they will impose a more disciplined conformity on an unruly country.

They need to understand some things about how normally healthy democracies like the USA  work. They provide in the constitution for strong opposition to government or Presidential plans. There should always be a good democratic alternative government on offer, that has an alternative view of the more contentious or questionable policies pursued by the incumbents. A great democracy does not have 95% support for what the majority government does. It debates choices and options and exposes the chosen course of government to criticisms. Exercising majority governing power is a constant exercise in persuasion, listening, seeking improvement, compromising with the Opposition when they have a good point. A good Opposition know when to disagree and when to campaign hard against a policy or law. A good government gives ground when it is  wrong but does not compromise its main aims, pledges and beliefs.

A successful democracy as  the USA usually  is has top level agreement  between all the democratic parties over two crucial things – the system by which governments make  and sell their decisions to elected bodies and the wider public, and  the results of free and fair elections. There has to be a belief by the main elected officials that an election produced a fair and accurate result. In opposition  parties  need to believe they have sensible opportunity to make their case and to seek change peacefully. When the Commons has a government with  a decent majority the Opposition accepts that government  has a mandate to get through the main business from its Manifesto and from its statements of aim and principle. A good Opposition also makes it difficult every time government stumbles, wanders too far from its promises or principles, or offers incompetence instead of good administration. In the Commons an Opposition can only win a vote by working with governing party MPs who also think on that occasion  the government is wrong, which can happen quite often. Opposition is there to question, to ask for second thoughts, to offer alternatives but not to stop government governing. Only the electorate can do that when they come in an election to judge the result, short of a major governing party split and collapse.

The tragedy of the USA in the last few weeks is the breakdown in trust or belief in  the system by the main Opposition party. A large number of Trump voters think the results in a handful of key swing states were fiddled, but their side has been unable to persuade the courts or the Senate of that allegation. As those institutions  hold the reserve powers to order a re run or insist on a different electoral College result President Biden can fairly claim he won and passed all the checks and balances in  the system. It leaves Trump voters arguing that the whole system is corrupt and out to get their man. This impression is not going to be stilled or calmed by the Democrat decision to impeach President Trump after he has left office. It will build the sense of grievance amongst many Trump supporters. If President Biden is to heal his country he cannot avoid tackling and talking about  the issues around voting systems that perturb Trump supporters.

The Republican leaders have an important role to play. They need to show that they can now offer strong but sensible opposition to this new President. Going through his back history to try and find a way to impeach him as has become  all too common in US politics would not be helpful. Setting out a positive alternative vision to the left’s, and making it difficult in a 50/50 Senate to get through anything the Conservative half of the country disagrees with makes perfect sense. The Senate and House elections produced no landslide or big majority for a Democrat solution to US problems. Republican legislators need to show Trump voters they can use the power of opposition afforded to them to resist hated Democrat policies for their followers. For his part the President needs to show which parts of the Republican offer he thinks has some merit if he wants to build bridges. He needs to see just how divisive to Trump followers  the Democrat position is on  gun control, relaxation of abortion, bans on carbon fuels and completely open borders to name but four highly charged US issues .