Labour and Conservative agree the welfare bill is too high and growing too fast. They both agree it needs to be brought down by helping hundreds of thousands of people of working age into jobs. They are both particularly worried about 1 million young people not in education, employment or training.

Labour flirted with the idea of cutting the real value of Personal Independence payments.That was a bad idea. People need to be assessed and then paid extra  money to get the support they need to assist in managing their disability.

Second thoughts led them to decide to make it more difficult to qualify for the payment.

Labour also think they need to tighten criteria for other benefits, and remove entitlements for under 22 s. Presumably they will look into the surge in mental health cases. Some argue that whilst people with recognised medical conditions that need medication or other treatment of course need benefits, too many are unhappy or out of sorts but are not mentally ill. Getting a job and entering into the activity and social contact that work brings could be helpful to the person. There remains the issue of conditionality. How many job offers can someone turn down whilst still keeping full benefits?

It is difficult to achieve the change of behaviours government wants in such a large and expensive system. They are talking about a possible saving if £5 bn in five years time. They have promised an extra £1 bn spend on helping people into work. This needs legislation. Difficult see any savings this year or next.

They should cut back severely on work visas and legal migration and reverse the anti business budget if they really want to get many more off benefits and into jobs.

The attack on Shakespeare by a Trust set up to commemorate a great writer is yet another unwelcome essay in loathing our history, culture and traditions.

Many of us wish to be proud of our country, to remember its best days, its finest hours, its greatest people and its best achievements.

William Shakespeare is admired, read and enacted all round the  world. He is generally acclaimed as a great writer, able to capture eternal truths about human nature and the human condition. His words, characters and plots cross the centuries and national boundaries all round the world.

I will write occasional pieces about our history and the great causes and achievements our country has recorded. Today I begin with a brief comment on the great figures I particularly revere.

I rate Elizabeth I as a great politician who survived threats to her life whilst  her Catholic sister was Queen to emerge as England’s greatest monarch.

I regard William Shakespeare as the world’s greatest dramatist.

J Turner was a great artist. His Fighting Temeraire captures the passing of the age of sail to steam, as Rain, Steam and Speed  records the arrival of the railway.

Josiah Wedgwood was a great entrepreneur who changed the face of ceramics, developed marketing,  built  an advanced  factory and pioneered better treatment of employees.

Nelson was the greatest military captain, containing and defeating the imperial forces of Napoleon.

 

I am pleased to see my long standing interest in the collapsing productivity of the UK public sector has now  become a central government preoccupation . They are right that the public accounts have been driven out of balance by a £40 bn loss of productivity since 2019. There are things they can do to wrestle it back.

They should start with a freeze on all external recruitment of people other than medics, teachers and uniformed personnel,This would slim staff numbers by around 7% a year, or 140,000 posts. Ministers should have the  power to approve outside appointees where there is a bad skills shortage in the public sector.

Abolishing NHS England can help if good decisions are made about how much is still run from the centre  and by whom in the Health Department. Saving 9000 posts if they do achieve that is small in a service employing more than 1.5 million full time equivalents. If they are getting rid of senior managers redundancies can be costly and are upsetting to some  who stay as well as to those who are fired.

Sir Kier talks about deregulating and   stripping out unwanted independent bodies. The Lord Chancellor had the perfect chance this week to get rid of the Sentencing Council when she said she disagreed with its most recent report and decisions. Her failure to back a Conservative amendment to the law to sort this out shows this policy has yet to embed in government actions.

It is difficult to assemble a coalition of the willing to keep or enforce a peace which has not yet been negotiated. So far 25 countries including some outside Europe have been willing to talk, but there has been less clarity about how much money and or how many troops they would each contribute to peace keeping.

Meanwhile the possibility of  peace rests on the talks between the US and Russia and the US and Ukraine. Russia has made additional demands to the outline agreement the US has persuaded Ukraine to accept in principle. One of those is no troops from NATO countries to be in any peace keeping force in Ukraine. It has already been accepted that Ukraine will not join NATO.

It is possible Russia could give up this demand but unlikely. It makes NATO countries planning a peacekeeping force premature. It is a very long potential border between Ukraine and Russia, so it would need  a large force if the idea is soldiers patrolling a neutral area along the border.

Little is clear about this proposal, save the important point that the European countries of NATO have no power to commit NATO and have no intention of sending any personnel in to help fight the current war. The EU is struggling to increase armament supply to Ukraine to replace the US resources.

Yesterday’s figures showed another small fall in GDP in January and very little growth over 3 months. No surprises.

The industrial decline I and others have been predicting proceeds apace. Industry and oil and gas fell again. There are the high taxes on car sales with the attack on popular cars throttling the vehicle industry.There is the ban on new oil and gas exploration and development speeding the energy decline. There is the upcoming closure of our last blast furnaces hitting steel . There is the closure of Grangemouth and the persistent damage being done to high energy using industries by our high energy prices.

If the government wants growth and wants more to happen outside London and the south east it needs to reverse these  de industrialisation policies. The PM needs to reshuffle Miliband out of the Energy and Net Zero department and put in someone who does see the folly of switching to imports.

Meanwhile the Chancellor’s high tax policy is hitting small businesses, services and confidence. Still to come is the full imoact of the NI increase this April which will hit employment and lead to more closures of shops, pubs and restaurants.

The top three priorities for a successful industrial policy are cheap  energy, cheap energy and cheap energy.

The Uk with the dearest electricity of the advanced economies is performing the last rites for energy intensive industry. There has been a stream of closures of steel plants, petrochemical works, oil refineries, ceramics,glass, aluminium, foundries and much else.

The Bowland shales run across England, from Lancashire through Lincolnshire to South Yorkshire. They are thought to contain enough gas to meet our domestic needs for several decades.

Cuadrilla spent £200 million on drilling five exploration wells which found gas in Lancashire. Today they are instructed to pour plenty of concrete down two wells that could deliver us gas, to prevent them from ever being used. Mr Miliband doesn’t merely want to stop them producing any gas for us now, but wants to stop them however serious our need for gas might become. Tipping concrete down these wells is needless and expensive vandalism.

The Uk now imports half its gas. Much of it comes byLNG  tanker. It produces three times as much CO 2 as UK piped gas given all the energy used to cool, transport and convert back to gas. It is dearer. All the tax revenue and well paid  jobs benefit the exporting country, not  us. This is madness, self harm on a huge scale.

Developing North Sea oil and gas in the 1970 s helped the UK economy pull through despite the bankruptcy of the state  brought on by Labour’s over spending. Today the government’s growth strategy desperately needs more energy. So drill, baby ,drill. Up would go tax revenues, investment and well paid jobs. Down would go world CO 2 as we stop importing LNG.

 

 

Whoever dreamt up the name Operation Chainsaw to describe Ministers’ efforts to get back some lost public sector productivity was clearly no friend of the idea. As the head of the civil service union, FDA, said “The idea that you can simply get more for less is rhetoric”. His statement swept aside the idea that better management and new technology allows productivity gains. He ignored the fact that productivity has been falling. He has to defend the proposition that year after year we should expect to have to pay more for less.

Ministers are right to highlight the fall in productivity since 2019 and to ask senior staff to get back the losses from covid lockdowns as the private sector has already done. It does not take any new technology or investment to recreate 2019 productivity levels in the pre AI age. AI gains could come  on top.

The principles behind the drive, to expect more of senior managers and to link bonuses to productivity delivery are fine. Ministers should also demand to see any new external recruitment before advertising, as natural wastage is a friendly way to shrink an overstaffed organisation.

We have suffered from the dangerous doctrine of the independent body. Many MPS and the main parties have accepted the idea that politicians cannot be trusted to make good decisions. Crucial areas are given away to independent bodies. They appoint panels and Boards of experts. All too often their group think and abuse of patronage leads to disastrous decisions and big waste of money.

I have often criticised the biggest loss maker, the Bank of England. Apparently most MP s think it is just fine for them to be planning total losses of £240 bn (OBR forecast) all to be paid for by taxpayers. Much better they think  to mug the pensioners and slap on a jobs tax instead. This  was the same

The world establishment cries out for peace in Gaza. It is less keen on peace in Ukraine where more think Ukraine should fight on to try to wrestle some territory back from Russia.

President Trump wants  peace in both places. He is more determined by his own efforts to bring it about in Ukraine. In Gaza he is challenging the Arab states to draw up a plan that could work.

The outlines of the deal in Europe seems to be for Ukraine and Russia to accept much of the changed borders brought about by the Russian invasion. Ukraine would not be offered NATO membership now any US security guarantee. The European countries are split. France and the UK have offered peace keeping troops but need a US guarantee. President Putin has ruled out accepting such forces near his border.

If Presidents Trump and Putin do outline an Agreement based around current borders redrawn by war what should Ukraine do? European countries have no wish to join the war on Ukraine’s side. They might be able to step up financial and military aid a bit, but cannot this year replace the US military contribution.

Meanwhile what would a peace settlement look like in Gaza?

 

 

The government came to power saying it would put jn an industrial policy. So far it has been running an anti industry policy for the UK.

It is banning all new oil and gas drilling and development, running down this tax generating high pay industry faster.

It is toughening the complete phase out and closure of all factories making petrol and diesel cars.

It has failed to sure up some of the promised investments in electric vehicle manufacture, and not attracted new ones

It has promised lots of green jobs, whilst the wind turbines and solar panels are still imported

It decided to allow the closure of the UK’s last blast furnaces to make new steel

It allowed the closure of Grangemouth oil refinery

It launched a big tax attack on businesses with its National Insurance and iht increases

If it wants an industrial policy it needs to

Reverse its tax rises

Set a competitive Corporation tax rate like Ireland, which brings in more tax per head

Get energy prices down a lot by encouraging more gas power generation as baseload

Lifting the bans on oil, gas, ICE cars

Using its planned increase in defence spend to commission more orders from Uk based competitive production