The Environment Agency has a budget of £2.2 bn from taxpayer grants, fees, charges and fines. Its main duties are river and flood water management, waste management, clean air and good landscape and soil management.

Despite this largesse they have allowed many large illegal waste sites to spring up with illegal tipping in broad daylight and plain sight. They have the powers to tackle this. Waste businesses need licences, they need approved sites with planning permission, they need to be inspected and should pay their taxes. The state has every reason to enforce all this. So can’t the Environment Agency do so?

If independent Agencies are to keep their funding and independence they do need to exercise their powers in the public interest and do worthwhile jobs. Most taxpayers want the Agency to stop illegal tipping.
The Agency makes other bad mistakes. On a stretch of the Thames where the riverside path should go over a wooden bridge the EA closed the bridge claiming it needed repair. As the years pass so the bridge tumbles into worse repair and the weeds and brambles ensnare it. Why? Get on with maintaining it. Remember a stitch in time saves nine. The EA should get better at looking after public assets.

On a much bigger scale the EA damaged the Somerset levels by allowing too much flooding. Ministers did need to intervene to save people’s homes.

President Trump is clearly unimpressed by the UN’s record in trying to resolve recent conflicts and establish peace. He has referred to how he has had to assume the peace mantle in Gaza, Ukraine and many other hotspots around the world, faced with a UN that does not seem able to get the parties to the table or to enforce a peace once there is a ceasefire.
As a result he is setting up a new Peace Board for the world which he will chair, whose aims will be to establish and manage peace settlements around the globe. He is inviting world leaders to join him and claims that 35 have so far agreed to do so.
European countries and the UK are reluctant or unwilling to join because Mr Putin is going to be a member. President Trump’s point is you do not get peace unless the main powers and regional protagonists are round the same table. He could also point out that the presence of Mr Putin at the Security Council of the UN with a right to veto does not prevent EU countries belonging to the UN nor prevent the UK and France being fellow Security Council members around the same table as Russia.
What can this new body do? The original sketch seemed to be to get interested parties together to help stabilise and rebuild Gaza after the war, but the remit now seems much broader. It would be good to know if this is seen as a ginger group to show the UN how to get progress to peace, or a planned replacement for a UN adjudged too unwieldy and wrong headed by the US President. Will this body end up concentrating on Gaza? Does Mr Putin’s likely presence make settlement of Ukraine any more likely? As countries wishing to be permanent members are invited to contribute $1bn, what will they do with the money? Will this body soon have staff and a prestigious headquarters? Will this body carry on after the Trump Presidency? What are the succession plans for its chairmanship?
There are plenty of questions to be answered before you can come to a fair assessment of this initiative. Many of us want peace and will back ways that can promote it effectively. A UN that works better would be great, or an alternative to the UN that works would be good, but a contest between rival bodies dividing the democracies over which to support would not be helpful.

No surprise that the inflation rate is up to 3.4%, 70% above target and above the rate Labour inherited in July 2024. No surprise the unemployment rate is up to 5.1%, 23% above the rate they inherited in 2024. This site has set out consistently how their two large tax rising budgets coupled to their wasteful and excessive spending was bound both to produce inflation and to slash jobs in an increasingly overtaxed private sector. Indeed, they made sure of that by making one of the biggest tax rises an actual tax on jobs through National Insurance.

The Official opposition and this site have pointed out the large climb in the number of people on benefits and said the benefit bill is out of control, along with good ideas on how to control it. Putting many more people on benefits for life with no work requirement, and cutting job opportunities so more are unemployed is a big part of the disaster of the public finances.

The latest figures also reveal another reasons why they have run out of money and are squeezing the private sector too hard. On the latest numbers public sector pay is up 7.9% compared to private sector pay up 3.6%. The Public sector pay growth rate is 120% more than the private sector pay growth rate. No wonder the cost of public services has gone up so much, and no wonder why the government needed to tax the losing private sector more in order to reward the public sector more.

I am all in favour of better paid public sector employees, but have always stressed this needs to come from measures to raise productivity and improve the quantity and quality of service they produce. This may need better training and investment to back them, but is fundamental to having an affordable public sector that is well paid. Instead we have seen larger increases in public sector pay than private, whilst the public sector has still not overall got back up to 2019 levels of productivity, let alone achieved another 7-14% productivity gain for the missing years. Meanwhile the private sector has boosted its productivity but been unable to afford better rises. More of this delivers low or no growth, means business flees to other countries and leaves the growing public sector imposing unacceptable strains on tax demands.

When the Lords ended its consideration of the Bill to give away the Chagos islands the Conservatives decided to table a motion condemning the policy rather than forcing a vote to stop the Third Reading of the Bill.  Had they opted to vote against 3rd Reading instead they would have lost the vote and the government could claim the Lords supported their bad policy. Instead the Lords passed a very critical motion urging the government to change policy. The motion said

“the UK-Mauritius Agreement  does not secure the long term future of the Diego Garcia base, creates uncertainty over the continuing unrestricted use of the base, imposes £35 bn of costs on UK taxpayers, was signed without consultation with the Chagosian people”

Conservative Lords pointed out the lack of control over the protected marine environment, the anti nuclear stance of Mauritius, the right of Mauritius to issue fishing rights and allow settlement of islands adjacent to Diego Garcia and the unity of Chagosians that their islands should stay under the UK.

In yesterday’s Telegraph Graham Stringer, Labour MP, made a strong case to stop the give away, pointing out that it violates Manifesto promises they made about UK overseas territories and ignores the rights of the Chagosians themselves.

The President of the USA condemned the give away on Truth Social yesterday. The PM used precious political  capital in his early meetings with the President to reassure the US that the base would be safe and secure under new ownership. The President gave him the benefit of the doubt but has clearly now had second thoughts on getting more briefing about what could happen with the base under new ownership. The two main propositions of the PM that the UK could be forced to give up the islands, and that his deal would make them secure were both wrong.

At a time of tension between the US and UK, and between the PM and some of his  backbenchers, it would be a good idea to quietly bury this policy. The Chancellor should be pleased to save the money, the Chagosians pleased they have at last been listened to, the US reassured the UK could still make a key base available to them without Mauritius changing the rules and Labour backbenchers would have one less violation of Manifesto promises to explain. What’s not to like?

It was  very odd of Andrew Rosindell to complain the Conservatives were not reliable on Chagos when the Conservative peers had just delivered a critical motion and avoided a positive vote in the Lords for this wrong policy. Too many people have commented on this issue without reading what has happened.

There are some things Nigel Farage gets right. He has been a good campaigner highlighting the scandal of too much illegal migration.  He is right to say Councillors should not ask the government to  cancel elections they clearly do not want to hold for fear of bad outcomes. By the same logic Nigel Farage should say if an MP wants to switch from the party that helped elect him to a new party within the same Parliament they should request a by election. Voters should be given the chance to back their MP with his new beliefs and party allegiance, or to elect someone who will carry out their original intentions of supporting the party they voted for. Most people vote mainly for a party, with personal votes for individual MPs usually being a minor part of the candidate’s total vote.

As a Conservative MP who always stood whilst issuing  a related  personal pledge to work for an EU referendum and then exit  I was under endless pressure to switch to the Referendum party, to UKIP, to the Brexit party. I always made clear I had promised my electors to usually support a Conservative government whilst using my position to urge them to the Eurosceptic answer. I correctly argued that only by being a Conservative MP could I help secure a referendum on leaving the EU, and after doing that I could help make a Conservative government get us out of the EU in line with the vote.

So it proved. I would have felt honour bound to resign and stand in a by election if I had changed my view on how to secure exit. As history showed, the Referendum, UKIP and Brexit parties only succeeded in getting one MP elected between them in the various general elections they fought.It was Conservative MP votes that secured the referendum and secured the eventual exit from the EU.It was a few Conservative MPs including myself who prevented the civil service/ Mrs May terms being imposed on us on exit.

A week ago Monday I bumped into Robert Jenrick in a corridor at Westminster when I was going to sort out arrangements for my new role. I congratulated him on the work he had been doing on law, order and migration issues as a Shadow Cabinet member.  I said I thought Mr Zahawi had made a big mistake for himself  by joining Reform and speculated on how he would get on with Richard Tice and Mr Yousef who both have wishes to be leading on  economic policy for Reform.  Mr Jenrick seemed to agree with my remarks and added an unsolicited unfavourable description of Mr Zahawi. Mr Zahawi had not taken a more Reform style line on issues like immigration when he was in government with some influence though now claims to support the full Reform approach. Both Mr Zahawi and Mr Jenrick now  have to explain their recently discovered support for  removing  the two child cap, for proportional representation, for expensive pledges to nationalise big industries.

The public want their politicians to have principles, to say what they mean and do what they say. Whilst of course it can make sense to change a view on a particular policy or approach when the facts or circumstances change, it is more difficult to convincingly change views on things as fundamental as the desirability of large scale immigration or whether the UK should be an independent self governing country or not. Robert Jenrick was a Remain supporter.Mr Zahawi supported high rates of migration.

If we all agree Council elections must not be delayed for a year  to let people decide, we should also agree if an elected MP wants to change parties he or she should seek a new endorsement from electors as 2 Conservatives going to UKIP did.(Clacton and Rochester). Only one of them survived the subsequent general election so he did not help us  secure Brexit.

Tax this, tax that. It is all the government wants to do as it stumbles from budget to budget, from OBR forecast to OBR forecast. Tax employing people. Tax family farms. Tax small businesses. Tax motorists. Tax people who save. Tax people who buy food wrapped in hygienic plastic. Tax people who earn more. Tax people who dispose of their waste legally. Tax people for driving battery cars. Tax people more for buying diesel or petrol cars. Tax people with gas boilers. Tax companies with windfall taxes that sell us petrol and diesel. Put VAT on school fees. Tax rich foreigners more. Tax banks more. Tax landlords more. Tax people making capital gains more .

The reactions to this tax attack are predictable. Very rich people move to  one of their homes in a less hostile tax jurisdiction and take their savings and businesses with them. Younger people planning to work hard and set up businesses go elsewhere to do that. Employers offer fewer jobs. People are deterred from promotion or working longer hours by the tax traps higher up the earnings scale. People stop buying so many cars. Voters become angry about a  government that seems to want to stop them being better off. Consumer confidence falls leading to slower growth and less tax revenue. Landlords stop renting out homes. People with assets hold them for longer to avoid capital gains tax.

No one is happy . The government collects less tax from less activity, and from fewer better off people staying to pay. People are unwilling to take so many risks, to try new things, to build new businesses.

Lower tax rates can lead to higher tax revenues. If we halved our corporation tax rate to match Ireland’s we could grow our business base as they have done,. They collect 3 times as much business tax per head as we do with half the rate.

If we lifted the bans on new oil and gas and removed the windfall additional tax, just leaving in place double corporation tax, we would get a lot more tax revenue from the new oil and gas we would be producing for ourselves. We do not get anything like the same tax on all those imports this government prefers.

If we reduced taxes on capital more money would flow into the country, and more domestic savers would create more transactions and jobs as they rearranged their property and share holdings.

Instead of a gloomy outlook based on dividing up a shrinking or small cake, we could have policies that grew the cake giving scope for many more to be  better off. More cake would bring more tax revenue. Lower tax rates would assist in faster growth and a better financed public sector.

Anyone sensible given the task of growing the UK economy and helping more people to prosperity would start by saying current levels of public spending and borrowing are too high. The government is in a doomloop. hiking tax rates only to get an adverse impact on growth and the deficit. It comes back for further tax rises.  Its critics get this, and say it should look at the spending side, but many of them too are terrified by the establishment view. That says  all current government spending is necessary,  current government spending is too low, not too high, and  no government that wants to get elected can afford to cut spending. Suggest spending cuts and the government and public sector immediately retaliate by wrongly asserting you want to sack nurses or remove payments from the disabled.

Looking for cuts even this government has fallen for this absurd way of managing the public sector and running the debate. They tried cutting pensioner benefits but decided the outcry was too great. They fingered disability benefits and backed off, granting many more people access to them instead.  At a recent meeting I attended of  conservative policy specialists (Conservative/Reform/no party) and thinkers some of them  too were mired in the idea that the necessary cuts a new government will need to make have to come from making painful and unpopular choices. They were agonising over the triple lock for pensioners, the exemption of pensioners from NI and other ways of reducing the spending power of the elderly who they thought had had the better deal this century. Those policies were part of a successful strategy to reduce pensioner poverty. Why aim to make them worse off?

I find it odd that so few people concentrate on vast areas of public mismanagement and over reach where large savings can be made. Why does no-one else see that  the huge Bank of England losses on selling bonds in the market and sending taxpayers the bill is a needless self harm that no other Central Bank inflicts on its sponsoring taxpayers? Why do we put up with a military procurement system that spends £6bn on developing a very conventional small tank vehicle only to find it causes harm to  its users? Why do we let a nationalised railway spend £30bn a year so it can fail to complete new track from Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester and fail to put in a new line from Manchester to Leeds?

Why do we spend a fortune on trying to force people to buy heat pumps and battery cars they do not want? Why heavily subsidise wind power when it is so dear and leads to deindustrialisation and loss of jobs on a large scale? Why when looking at benefit reform do too many think the level of benefits needs cutting when the issue is why do so many people have to be on benefits. How can we make work more worthwhile and help more people into work?  Core  benefits are not so generous that they need cutting.

The UK public sector is brilliant at defending every last penny it wastes, and good at demanding more. Too many politicians, commentators and lobbyists miss the main point. Far too much of the money going to the public sector is wasted, leaving us with very poor value for the large sums we pay in tax. The productivity collapse is costing us another £20bn to do the same thing.

Ever since Labour got into office they have told us everything they inherited was broken. They have broken a good few things, blamed the previous government and told us it takes a long time to fix it up. Meanwhile practically everything they do makes things worse. Now we have Mr Jenrick also telling us Britain is broken, as he flip flops from opposing the end of the two child cap to supporting it , from opposing proportional representation to welcoming it, from telling us in vivid language why he disapproved of Nigel Farage to telling us he now worships him.

In July 2024 on change of government inflation was on target at 2% Labour almost doubled it in their first year with energy, fare and other public sector price rises. In July 2024 unemployment had come down to4%, only for Labour to put it up by a quarter. UK educational standards were high, ready for Labour to attack the policies that had led to such good progress. Belatedly the previous government had toughened legal migration policy substantially with numbers beginning to fall, only for Labour to want to relax the new laws. Illegal migration was down by a third from an unacceptably high peak, so Labour relaxed the laws and saw it surge again. The UK had grown the fastest of the G& in the first half of 2024 after the damage of lockdown. Labour slowed the economy with two tax raising budgets that sandbagged the private sector.

When you take over government of course you can say the past government had made bad mistakes. But if you do so you need to promptly rectify the errors and by the second year be able to point to improvements. Instead Labour claimed everything was bad and instead set about making much of it worse. Conservatives hit their target of building 1 million homes in 5 years. Labour have presided over a fall in new housebuilding, particularly acute in London, so they have no chance of hitting their enlarged target of 1.5m homes in 5 years.

The UK despite its government is still growing a bit faster than the EU . Our exportable services are doing very well, and our technology sector is stronger than most EU countries. Manu UK people work hard, show enterprise and innovation and achieve a great deal despite the government and the taxes. It is not Britain that is broken but its government.

The government will switch from the usual 3 monthly growth figures to a one month figure for November as it showed a 0.3% positive advance. The three monthly figure to November was still in the mire at 0.1%. What the figures show is despite all the bad policies dragging down all too many sectors, there remains some life in UK services sufficient to give the UK a slightly higher growth rate than the Eurozone and EU which the government wants us to copy more closely.

The worst news in the figures is the continuing fall in construction output.  That was down 1.15 for the three months and down 1.3% in November. You would expect construction of new shops and offices to be depressed by the lack of investment and the high taxes. You would expect private sector housing to be depressed by the squeeze on incomes and by high house prices. What was more surprising from a high spending government was the biggest fall came in public sector housing. A Labour Housing Minister has some explaining to do.

Vehicle manufacture figures have been distorted by the impact of the cyber attack on JLR, with the national figures sharply down in September and recovering somewhat in November. It all helps to disguise the growing impact of the policy of demanding more battery cars and fewer petrol and diesel cars be sold, which will mean a much smaller UK industry going forward if the government persists with its damaging tax/subsidy policy.

Mining and quarrying are well down with the bans on oil and gas having a bigger impact as time passes. The UK is reluctant to get things out of the ground here, preferring to pay the extra price of imports and the loss of tax revenue and jobs that goes with that.

What is perplexing is why the government thinks that it will grow faster when

1. It pursues ever higher energy prices
2. It bans our oil, gas and coal extraction
3. It raises taxes on jobs
4. It taxes successful and wealthy people out of the country
5. It(along with the Labour Mayor) will not allow much new  housing development in London which is where demand for extra housing is strongest and prices are highest
6. It tries to stop people buying things they want and tries to get them to buy things they do not want in  the name of net zero
7. It offers subsidies to farmers to not grow food, and taxes those who dare to grow food
8. It wants to adopt more EU rules that will impede innovation and investment at home  and cheaper imports from non EU sources

On current policies the government will not be happy until the UK is growing as slowly as Germany, adopting all the same rules and taxes that hold it back.

The UK has suffered from a largely nationalised railway for 23 years since Network Rail was brought into 100% public ownership in 2002. All the track, signals, power systems, stations and all the land are in government ownership and control. The result has been an expensive mess. Another Transport Minister has sat studying things for a year and has now announced £1.1bn for more studies to answer the same question how to improve Northern Rail.

For the last 14 years successive governments have announced their decision  to build a new high speed track from Manchester to Leeds but there is still little doing. Over this time period HS2 has seen costs quadruple and time delays lengthen, with both the previous and the present government accepting they cannot afford to press on with the two legs from the Midlands to Manchester and Leeds that were the original point of the scheme. HS2 has been completely nationalised throughout and given tens of billions of pounds more than budget. It will end up delivering half the railway for maybe three times the cost.

The government likes railways for environmental reasons, yet every new railway line is bitterly fought over by people who dislike the big impact rail tracks have on their landscape and for the noise and emissions from the trains. The Green lobby claim rail travel is greener than cars, as they assume it will be in an electric train and assume the power for the train will be all renewable. Both these assumptions are miles from the truth. Only 39% of the track is electrified so diesels are the dominant force on our railways. The power delivered to the system from the grid is only around 50% low CO2 and can be as little as 15% low CO2 on no wind and sun times. So overall only 20% of the trains meet their wishes.

Why given their views have governments failed to electrify the system and put in the renewable power they say it needs?

The Transport Department’s 2024-5 Accounts tell us the railways cost taxpayers £28bn in that year. £7bn went on a year’s spend on HS2 and £17.9bn on publicly owned Network Rail, with £3bn of other rail items of spending.  The Expenditure Review 2025 forecasts £30bn for the current year. Network Rail last year only managed to collect £3.3 bn in Access charges from the train companies running the services and needed as always to rely on large sums from the Treasury. Whilst rail was spending £30bn the Department only spent £7 bn on the much more extensively used national road network. Even with Council spending on other roads it means government spends 30 times as much per rail mile travelled on trains as it spends per mile travelled on roads.

The capacity and speed issues could be eased by accelerated spending on digital signalling. If every train knows where every other train is on the network in real time and if there is an override control by the system operator more trains can be run safely per hour on the same stretch of track. More fast trains could be combined with stopping trains by building more short sections of by pass or overtaking track along key routes. These are much cheaper and quicker solutions than a scheme like HS 2 which was meant to both raise capacity and average speeds starting from now, only to find we are years off a single train making it from London to Birmingham, let alone Leeds or Manchester.