The UK will be more prosperous, more democratic and more influential by leaving the EU – or by accepting a fundamental change to our relationship which takes us out of the centralising treaties.

Leaving will be better for people.
The UK can decide whether to enjoy £300 a year for every family every year as a tax cut, or whether to increase public spending. That’s how much we currently give to the EU to spend elsewhere on the continent.

The UK can guarantee to match all the EU payments to farmers, universities and regional projects out of the money we currently send to the EU and get back.

The UK could pursue a cheaper energy policy, taking people out of fuel poverty and aiding the industrial recovery of the UK.

Leaving the EU will let us be a freer and more democratic country.

The UK will be able to make her own decisions through Parliament as guided and informed by UK voters

The UK will regain control of her own business, environmental, criminal justice, migration and foreign policies amongst others

Once again we will live in a country where Parliament can change any law that needs changing

The UK people will be sovereign again, able to elect people who do their bidding without the interference or prohibition of EU laws.

The BBC will I trust wish to be fair in the long run up to the EU referendum. We know they have a list of questions to ask to assist the stay in campaign, as we hear them regularly on radio and tv. Just to help them I am going to suggest some other questions they need to ask to show balance.

Let’s first take the case of interviews of business leaders. They nearly always ask for comments on the possible damage they think exit might do, but rarely ask about the gains. They could ask

Which countries would you like the UK to negotiate a free trade deal with on exit, as we would be free to do so? (The EU has no deal with the USA, China, India etc)

How much more could you export to markets like the USA, India and China if the UK was free to have its own free trade agreements?

Which EU laws, taxes  and regulations would you like a UK government to amend or repeal for business at home and with countries outside the EU, on exit?

Let’s then take the case of interviews with people from public sector organisations. The BBC is normally keen to see these bodies receive more money from government, as it usually aligns with public service rather than with taxpayers. It could ask all of them

If the UK leaves the EU how would you like the £10 billion we save from no longer having to pay a net contribution to the EU to be spent? Would you prefer it to be added to public sector budgets rather than offered as a tax cut?

If the UK stays in the EU, do you think domestic budgets should be cut as the EU budget grows and demands more UK cash?

Let’s take the case of interviews with representatives of the EU government, and with political parties in favour of staying in on current terms.

They should be asked

Do you agree with the 5 Presidents of the EU that rapid progress now needs to be made with economic, monetary, capital markets, banking and political union?

What should the UK’s relationship be with the Euro area and its emerging political union, given the fact that the UK is not about to join the Euro?

If other interviewees are also going to brought into the EU debate as most business people are they could ask

Which taxes would you most like cut when we no longer have to pay £10 billion a year into the EU?

I noticed this morning, once again the Today programme business section was in full propaganda mode despite Bernard Jenkin’s excellent critique of them on Tuesday. During a piece on the success of Aston Martin and the UK motor industry they had to ask how could Aston and the industry do so well with the uncertainty overhanging them about the UK’s membership of the EU! The interviewee rightly ignored this and talked about the excellence of Aston’s people.

My contribution to Tuesday’s debate on the Energy and climate change levy:

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): The two questions that the Committee needs to ask when considering this Government proposal are these. Will it will help or hinder the Government in their central task of making sure we have enough power in this country for our future needs? And will it help or hinder what I hope is also the Government’s task, which is to provide value for money and sensibly priced energy, so that we can tackle fuel poverty and have a plentiful supply of reasonably priced energy to fuel the industrial recovery and the general economic recovery that the Government wish to see? My hon. Friends the Members for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) made important contributions, but I would like to see whether there is any scope to bring them a bit closer to the Government’s position.

Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab): The right hon. Gentleman has set out the two objectives that he thinks the Government should have. Is he suggesting that tackling climate change should not be the Government’s objective?

John Redwood: I have made very clear the priorities for myself and my electors. In the situation in which the country finds itself, guaranteeing keeping the lights on and having the power for industry and commerce is a fundamental objective that I take very seriously. I also take seriously the need to ease what Labour used to call “the cost-of-living crisis” to ensure that people have more money to spend for a better lifestyle, so affordable energy is crucial. Those are the priorities I set out for these policies. I think they can be achieved while ensuring that we reduce pollution, which I am very much in favour of. I wish to have sensible environmental policies, but my priorities are security of supply and powering better-paid jobs and more activity, which requires lower energy prices.

Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green): rose—

John Redwood: I willingly give way to the hon. Lady, who always wants to price people out of energy.

Caroline Lucas: I think I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He, like me, would like to see affordable energy, but given that nuclear power is one of the most unaffordable energies and that we are going to lock ourselves into extremely high prices for nuclear into times to come, will he be consistent in his position? If he does not want unaffordable energy, will he also oppose nuclear energy fees?

John Redwood: I have not seen all the figures on what the contract prices might entail, but I entirely agree that I want affordable energy. The advantage of nuclear energy is that it is reliable energy, and the problem with too much wind energy in the system is that it is very unreliable energy. It is therefore very expensive energy because a full range of back-up power is necessary for when the wind is not blowing. That means investing at twice the cost—investing in the wind energy and then in the back-up energy. With nuclear, only one investment needs to be made. The hon. Lady is quite right that it is crucial to get value for money if it is decided to lock into a nuclear contract.

Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab): The right hon. Gentleman may be aware that the interim report of the Competition and Markets Authority pointed out in June that customers on the standard variable tariffs are providing the big six energy companies with an extra £1 billion a year on account of over-charging? If he is concerned about the cost of energy, as I am, does he not agree that it is disgraceful that since that report we have heard nothing from the Government about how they are going to tackle this over-charging of some of the most vulnerable customers paying their electricity and gas bills today?

John Redwood: I have no more time than the right hon. Lady for over-charging vulnerable customers. I, too, look forward to an informed and sensible response to the report she mentioned. I do not think, however, that it is very relevant to the levy and the tax change that we are debating here today. The issue before us is whether this change to the levy will make it more difficult to keep the lights on and more difficult to deliver cheaper energy. I do not think it does, but the Government need to respond to the other crucial issues posed by my hon. Friends the Members for Selby and Ainsty and for Brigg and Goole.

Given that the margins are now extremely tight—in view of the huge reduction in traditional capacity that we have experienced, some people are pessimistic about the next two or three winters—can the Government do more, and do it cheaply and sensibly, at the same time as making the levy change? That should ensure that the great power stations we still have available can be either kept in the system and running to provide more power—preferably base load power, but it may have to be variable power, given how the thing is now run—or at least be kept available on standby. We may have to pay a price for that as part of that guarantee of supply. The three power stations we have heard about from colleagues this evening are part of the possible answer. We need to know that there is a future for traditional stations and that they can be priced into the system while we are in this period of transition, trying to work out what a modern electricity generation system will look like in five or 10 years’ time.

Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con): Will not this change in the levy, which is being made so quickly and with so little much notice—28 days—make things extremely difficult for generators such as Drax, and will not the likelihood of capacity that is safe for us all be greatly reduced over the next couple of years?

John Redwood: My hon. Friend has made a powerful case in defence of Drax. I hope that discussions are taking place between the Government and Drax about how Drax can continue to make a contribution and the Government’s intention—which I will be supporting this evening—can be preserved. I think it entirely possible to change the levy while also coming up with a solution for Drax.

Many people wondered about the advantage of switching from coal to wood, and about whether that was what quite what we wanted to do as part of a so-called decarbonisation strategy. Perhaps there is a better answer, but I return to my original proposition: I want an answer that will keep the lights on and provide the best possible value for money, and I think that there needs to be more discussion between the Energy Department and the big power stations to meet those two aims.

What I liked about the Minister’s opening remarks was his constant stress on the importance of value for money. That must be what drives Government policy. We want the productivity improvements that are now coming through. It is remarkable how, when Labour Members complain about something, that nearly always transforms it for the better. They complained about the cost-of-living crisis, and energy prices collapsed. Then they complained about the lack of productivity growth, and productivity started to take off. We are very grateful to them for those wrong calls, which seem to provide the stimulus that we need in order to create a better world; but if we are to drive productivity forward, providing more and cheaper power is crucial, because many modern processes, particularly in industry, are very energy-intensive.

The danger of some of the policies that have been followed by the European Union and by the last Labour Government is that we price ourselves out of energy-intensive industries—not in a way that spares the planet the carbon dioxide that those processes generate, but in a way that simply drives the businesses to another part of the world. No one should be happy about that. Those who believe that the fundamental priority is cutting carbon dioxide must take a global view; they cannot take a parochial, single-country view. Again, those whose main concern, like mine, is the prosperity and wellbeing of the British people cannot be happy if the decarbonisation policy has worked in one country, but has produced an equal or bigger amount of carbon dioxide somewhere else because the jobs and the industry have simply been transferred. That makes no sense whatsoever.

My hon. Friend the Minister will have my support—and, I am sure, that of many Conservative Members—if this proposal is tested shortly in the Lobbies, but we see it as only one part of a much bigger picture. We believe that if it is to work in removing the anomaly between different types of power and allowing some power from overseas to benefit, we must ensure that other elements of the policy mix are able to deal with the fundamental issues of supply, availability and value for money in the power system.

What the Government must do—and what they are beginning to do in a way that is shocking some Opposition Members—is revisit the huge cat’s cradle of subsidies, environmental tax, environmental tax breaks and rules which are extremely complicated, and which may, indeed, be having perverse consequences. They may be driving carbon dioxide-generating business out of this country while not cutting the global totals; they may be jeopardising our security of supply; they may be making it more difficult to deliver what we wish to do for, in particular, lower-income consumers who find current energy prices very challenging; and they are obviously in danger of undermining important, big, traditional investments in this country that could serve us better for longer if they were not driven out of business by environmental controls emanating from previous Governments and, particularly, from the European Union.

I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to justify the support of our party for this one element by reminding us that it must be part of a bigger picture, and that that bigger picture must be driven by a more rational policy that can deliver both the security of supply and the cheaper energy that the United Kingdom needs.

On Monday the Commons resumed consideration of the Referendum Bill. Many of us had in mind three big issues to ensure a fair referendum. The first was the rules controlling the conduct of government in the referendum campaign. The second was the role of the broadcasters. The third was the question of how much money each side can spend. Labour only had sympathy for our concerns on the first of these, so where we disagreed with the government we only had the votes to make changes in that area.

The government understood our concerns about the so called purdah rules. Following a very unfair Welsh referendum Mr Blair’s government had put in the 2000 Act to regulate the activities of government during referendum campaigns. Conservatives had broadly agreed with their actions on this legislation, and the Coalition continued with it for the referendums on the AV voting system and Scotland. The rules limit what Ministers and civil servants can do during the short campaign period for a referendum close to voting day, to avoid the use of impartial civil service staff time, government money, powers and information in ways that could directly affect the votes and which had a bearing on the issues in dispute in the referendum.

The government’s Bill on the EU referendum had sought to remove these protections from the 2000 Act for this referendum. Seeing the force of opinion when we last debated it, the government moved amendments to its original Bill to restore much of the framework of the 2000 Act. They explained that the intention behind amending the 2000 Act was to allow Ministers in the four week campaign period to attend Ministerial meetings in the EU and if necessary to make statements and defend the UK’s position on issues which come up, without wishing Ministers to stray into the question of whether we should remain or leave. Ministers said they had legal advice which they could not publish suggesting problems for them if they did not amend the 2000 Act and went about their normal business in Brussels. Ministers sought a provision in the Bill that would allow them to exempt various Ministerial activities from the restrictions of the 2000 Act.

The Commons decided to back the cross party Public Administration Committee’s proposal to strengthen the government’s protections, by disallowing any changes to the rules governing Ministerial conduct for the last four months before the vote. The Commons after a good debate went further and decided not to accept the government’s proposed compromise limiting government conduct, and to opt instead for the restoration of the full protections of the 2000 Act, subject to the opportunity for the government more than 4 months before the vote to seek a further exemption from the House. Should the government come forward with wide ranging exemptions the House is likely to decline them. I will deal with the other two issues in later posts.

Last week Nissan made a most welcome announcement. They said the new Juke car will be made in the UK, with a £100 million investment in their Sunderland factory assuring its jobs and success through into the next decade. When asked by the BBC, their Chairman confirmed that this decision was not dependent on any particular outcome to the referendum on UK’s membership of the EU. The decision is a recognition of the efficiency and quality of work in the UK and the growing market for cars here.

Tata Motors have come to a similar decision, with their announcement of a £400 million expansion, including a new engine plant in the UK. They too have been impressed by the quality, efficiency and technology the UK is capable of delivering, and like the UK domestic market for their products.

I welcome this for its own sake. I too have been impressed by what has been achieved in recent years. The UK now has world beating factories achieving great results.

I also welcome what this means for the EU referendum debate. Some years ago three leading car producers with factories in the UK made clear they wished the UK to enter the Euro, and went on to say they would not carry on investing here if the UK stayed out. I will not repeat the quotes and name the companies, as I am pleased to report they all changed their minds, and all went on to invest more. It appears that this time round the pro EU politicians will not be able to rely on quotes from overseas car producers to justify their threatening and wrong forecasts that we will watch our car industry shrink if we leave the EU, as the main players are committed to long term expansion plans regardless of the decision.

As I have long argued, there is no way we wish to end up with tariffs against German or French car imports into the UK, even though they sell more to us than we sell to them. There is no likelihood of new higher tariffs on cars made here. Germany has told us she does not want higher tariffs on the car trade with the UK. The worldwide industry will go on investing in the UK all the time management and workforce do a great job on quality, efficiency and cost. If we vote to leave the EU we will still trade with them, be friends with them, and have many agreements and contacts with them.

The EU’s border and migration administration reveals a dithering, divided policy. In recent days we have seen Hungary try to keep migrants out of the EU altogether, but have to accept thousands without legal documents. We have seen Hungary tell migrants under EU rules they must stay in Hungary and claim asylum there or leave the EU, only to see Austria and Germany welcome them without Hungary doing its stated job. We have seen Hungary refuse to allow migrants to use trains and buses to cross their country, and then to offer free buses to some migrants who decided on a dangerous walk on a motorway. We still do not know if Germany really means she is only accepting Syrian refugees, or whether she will accept anyone from anywhere that has made the difficult journey to her border, refugee or economic migrant. The BBC said there were people from many countries crossing Hungary, and many were likely to be economic migrants. Will Germany send back those who are not fleeing violence against themselves in Syria?

We have seen Germany change the rules over how to assess and receive migrants unilaterally, and say there must be a quota system to take more. Germany has not explained how you make migrants go to countries within the EU that they do not favour, or how you stop them going to countries already above quota once the migrants have gained legal documents allowing them to live and work in the EU.

This muddled policy can also be dangerous. I am sure they do not intend it to be so, but holding out the hope of an EU welcome and citizenship to any who use people smugglers to make the hazardous journey from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere and who eventually arrive tired and troubled at an EU border is in danger of putting more at risk. It could simply fuel the people smugglers cruel bonanza. As we have seen, even when they arrive in the EU there are still travel dangers if the migrants walk with children on railway lines and motorways rather than have permission and tickets to travel safely.

I think the UK is right to say the best way to help Syrian refugees is to provide support and assistance close to the homeland they have left on a far bigger scale than the EU is thinking of doing for individual refugees coming to the EU by hazardous means. I also think the rich Arab states adjacent to Syria could offer more help and support. In the UK when our children in London and other at risk locations were threatened nightly in the Second World War bombing raids they were taken out of danger as evacuees to safer parts of the country. Shouldn’t the Middle east safer countries and areas be offering something similar to children at risk in the most troubled fighting zones, whilst the regional governments and politicians work out how to find a longer term solution to the wars?
There are so many tragic deaths of children in these conflicts, and many of them passed unnoticed as children are bombed or shelled in their beds at home in war zones or die away from western cameras on their long journeys seeking a better life.

Some of you write in protest any day I chose to write about something other than migration. There is plenty about migration in the main media at the moment. I have run three recent pieces on this topic, including a statement from the Minister about the policy they are following. I will return to it from time to time when I have something to add or when the government has taken further action.

One of the main things I do on this site is to release stories and commentaries that are different from those running from the main spin machines in the main media. Sometimes these different issues and stories do get picked up by the main media and/or the main political parties. This happened to some of my work on justice for England, stamp duty reform and home ownership last year. Today the Sunday Express featured the story about Network Rail’s losses on financial derivatives which I highlighted here last month.

I fully understand the importance of the migration issue but do not intend to turn this into a migration only website.

In 1973-4, the last year of a Conservative government, public spending was £33.4bn or 42.1% of GDP.

The Labour government that followed put it up to 48.9% of GDP, only to be forced into cuts by the IMF. By the time they left office annual spending was ££79.7bn, or 44.1% of GDP.

Mrs Thatcher’s government  left office in 1990. Total spending was then £216.8bn or  37.5% of GDP.

Mr Major left office in 1997, with spending at £324 bn or 38.2% of GDP.

Mr Blair and Mr Brown boosted spending to £686.5bn, or 45.7% of GDP by 2009-10.

The Coalition increased spending to £ 735.5bn, or 40.7% of GDP.

So taking percentage of GDP as many people’s preferred measure of public spending,  one Labour government boosted it by 2% and one by 7.5%. The Conservative government of 1979-97 reduced it by 5.9%  (Mrs Thatcher actually reduced it by 6.6%)and the Coalition cut it by 5% of GDP.

The fact that the high levels of public spending as a proportion of GDP led directly to an IMF crisis and forced cuts in the 1970s, and was part of a wider banking crash in the late 2000s should be a warning to all those who think the easy answer to economic success is to boost public spending. These periods of very high spending coincided with poor economic performance-  part cause and part effect. Each Conservative period in office has had to include getting public spending and borrowing back under control to avoid further interest rate and banking problems.

No Conservative government has cut cash spending. Over all the years of alleged cuts public spending has risen substantially in cash terms and has usually gone up in real terms as well.

Manchester grew prosperous on the cotton industry. At its peak there were 108 cotton mills in the city, and fortunes to be made in designing, spinning, weaving, garment making, selling and financing. Sheffield has long been famous for its cutlery. It pioneered new steel making techniques and sells Sheffield plate to the world. Leeds grew as a large woollen textile centre with a range of services for the Yorkshire industry. Liverpool grew rich and famous on its shipping and transatlantic trades.

The twentieth century was not so kind to many of these industries. Under governments of all persuasions we watched as the wool and cotton industries were challenged by new rivals abroad. The transatlantic liners were largely replaced by airplanes from Heathrow and much of the goods trade shifted to east coast ports. The steel industry also faced new cheaper competitors.

Most of the political debate about a Northern powerhouse is about what government can do for a city, and about who should govern a city. These are important issues. I don’t doubt that good transport links, strong universities, high levels of education and training for local young people, and good housing can help a great city grow and flourish. It may be that local politicians can do a better job than Whitehall at spending the large sums of public money that are on offer, but they will need to prove that by their actions.

There remains the larger question of how are these important cities going to develop and rebuild their private sectors? There are signs of progress, with Manchester’s airport related commercial expansion and with the Leeds financial services developments. To catch up with London all these cities are going to need much larger private sectors, with more modern business activities adding jobs and making profits.

Better rail and road links are needed to export more goods and services to the south, more than to encourage more long distance commuting into the capital. These cities need more higher -priced housing for sale as well as affordable housing to rent, to attract the investors and entrepreneurs. Whilst it is largely up to the private sector to make its own judgements about what it can make and do, the cities that succeed have to show a positive wish to recruit and nurture new business and sometimes need to kickstart sectors or themes for business clusters.

London has recently attracted more hi tec business to the Old Street area by theming Silicon roundabout. Cambridge has been successful at attracting medical and science based businesses to its campus style business parks. The Reading area in recent decades has been successful at attracting a cluster of computer based businesses to the Thames Valley. The Northern Powerhouse can also power ahead by such initiatives. Modern cities cluster excellence and enterprise, just as Manchester has been the foremost technical and financial centre in the world for cotton textiles, and Sheffield was the dominant world leader for steel innovation.

The European Central Bank has a good way of setting out its agenda whilst protecting its boss, Mr Draghi, from any flack. The talkative Central Banker, Benoit Coeure, is a senior member of the ECB Board. He regularly gives interesting lectures gazing into a more integrated European future. These lectures appear on the official ECB website and are given in his ECB capacity. So they are official bank statements, but Mr Draghi falls short of putting his own name to them which might make them more newsworthy.

In his latest, Mr Coeure explains the urgent need for a Euro Treasury, the very Euro Treasury which Mr Draghi did in outline support when he added his name to other 4 Presidents in their statement of common policy. He tells us “Our (EU) institutional framework is not yet sufficient to complete EMU when it comes to economic, fiscal and financial matters. The ECB does not currently have a strong political counterpart in these areas”. He recognises the huge economic and social damage being done by the current Euro scheme: “The crisis (Greece) showed that excessive imbalances and fragilities have been allowed to develop in a number of Euro area countries in the absence of sufficient safeguards… the consequences are not just economic, they are also political. Unemployment hits the young hardest, creating a lost generation.”

His remedy is a Euro Treasury. This would both be able to enforce budget discipline on each member state, but also able to route money from rich to poor. “We cannot advocate a Europe of solidarity (transfer payments ed) while believing that the economic policies of each Euro area country are the business of that country’s Parliament alone”. Exactly. He and his Euro friends wish to sell the Euro Treasury to the Germans as the way to stop excess spending and excess credit in places like Greece, Spain and Portugal, and wants to sell the Euro to the struggling countries as the means for them to gain access to solidarity payments from the richer areas.

He sees this raises issues of accountability. He helpfully suggests ” The joint implementation of a political project and an economic strategy also assumes that our political union will be strengthened… I have spoken out in favour of the creation of a finance ministry for the whole Euro area under the oversight of the European Parliament”

This has serious repercussions for the UK. We are rapidly moving to a world where the Euro drives major political changes with decisions shifting to the centre. Mr Coeure wishes to use the single market as part of the mechanism for his reforms where the UK is directly involved. The banking union too increasingly envelops UK banks in its fold. Are we going to have two categories of MEP, those from Euro participating countries and those from outside? Or do we get to debate and vote the spending of their currency union money?