The Governor of the Bank grabbed the headlines on Thursday night for hinting that official interest rates may go up earlier than  markets expect. As markets expect a rate rise by the second quarter of 2015, that could bring it forward to later this year.

The Governor’s speech was more balanced and careful than the headlines suggested. It is true he said rates may go up “sooner” than  anticipated. He also said “there remains scope for spare capacity to be used up before policy is tightened”. He went out of his way to remind us the Bank wants to see a good recovery and does not wish to take action which is too early or too tough which could damage the progress being made.

He drew attention to fast rises in house prices. He said the Financial Policy Committee of the Bank and the banking regulators would seek to prevent a mortgage inspired house price bubble. New rules have already come in making it more difficult for people to obtain a mortgage, and further  action is planned to prevent banks being too expansionary in the mortgage market and to prevent people borrowing too much money to buy a property. He does not think the interest rate weapon is the right one to tackle this issue.

The Governor’s speech also drew attention to two longer term weaknesses of the UK economy. He pointed to the large balance of payments deficit, and to the need for more business investment spurring productivity growth. He inclined to an optimistic view of how the UK will respond to these challenges. He thinks in due course as the rest of the advanced world recovery gathers pace there will be more opportunity for UK exports. He also hinted that the current strong pound may reverse at some stage if the current account does not correct naturally. Business investment is now picking up and may in due course raise productivity. As I have commented before, the decline in North Sea oil output and the movement  of high earning people in financial services to lower tax jurisdictions has of course hit the productivity figures.

He did not comment on one obvious reason for a poor balance of  payments performance – high energy prices and shortage of domestic energy. The UK is importing increasing quantities of high energy using products, and is importing more electricity from France and other energy from abroad. Cement, for example, is often now imported despite the high transport costs because UK production is so expensive given energy prices here.

The outbreak of religious war in Iraq should not lead to UK or US military intervention. Many people living in  the west are unaware of the issues in dispute between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and are not on either side. We are not well briefed over the theological. social and political differences, which clearly mean a lot to those involved.

When Western Europe lived through its own religious wars, with Catholic fighting Protestant, issues of national identity and borders came up in the conflicts, just as the religious wars in the modern Middle East also pose these secular issues and power struggles. The revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule was both a religious battle, and a quest for national identity and self government. It was good that Islamic armies and navies stayed at home and did not come to Western Europe to help one side or the other or impose their view of the right answer on the warring factions. If they had tried to intervene there might have been more deaths and a more complex struggle.

In today’s complicated world the great western powers do have duties as members of the UN. Where the international community thinks international law has been breached by one side in the dispute and not the other, and where they think their military intervention could put right the wrong, then there is a case for doing so. The liberation of Kuwait is a good recent case. Most in the Arab world thought the liberation of Kuwait was a just cause. Kuwait herself wanted military assistance. The west was able to do it quickly and successfully.

The internal wars in modern Syria and Iraq, part religious, part power struggles, do not pose the same straightforward moral issues. Nor is their the same opportunity for western military might to enforce a new and better solution at an acceptable cost in human life and destruction of property. The government of Iraq can ask for  military help, and it may be that technical advice or supplies of equipment are possible and permissible. Going further would be unwise. The West has taken sides, backing the government in Iraq  but against the government in Syria. It has wisely fallen short of backing the opposition in Syria, given the varied nature of that opposition and the difficulty of knowing how stable government could emerge from the violent overthrow of an unpleasant regime. Sometimes the west has to accept there should be limits to its interventions.

Mr Hunt is a breath of fresh air at the Department for Health. As a strong believer in the NHS, he wishes to raise the quality of the service and support high professional standards throughout our hospitals and surgeries. He has been shocked by reports of poor treatment and lack of care in some wards and some hospitals, and is seeking ways to ensure patients do not suffer in future as some have in the past from hospital infections, lack of food and water, or bad medical interventions.

The Secretary of State has decided the best way forward is to encourage and require honest reporting of incidents. Hospitals which fail patients need to record and report the problem, and then make sure it does not happen again. In the private sector many companies use quality systems which seek to design out any error in their process or performance. When someone reports an accident or mistake, the first issue is how do you put right what has immediately gone wrong, and the second is how do you redesign the process so it cannot happen in future. The main purpose of reporting is to improve, not to have a witch hunt over who made the mistake.

There are many parts of the patient expereience in some of our hospitals that needs improving. Do they control the drug round properly? Is eveything logged so the right medicine in the right dose is always offered? Is there a fail safe system to prevent the dispensation of the wrong mediicine, or the wrong quantity or at the wrong time? Do they control hospital stocks and supplies effectively, to ensure lower costs and shorter periods holding the items so they are fresher for use? Are staff used to best effect? How easy is it to transfer staff from less busy to busy wards or periods of the day? Are the staff effectively led and do they understand what good quality service looks like? Who checks that patients have the water and food they need? Who is responsible for ensuring reasonable patient requests are responded to promptly?

Shining a light onto poor performance is a necessary part of improvement. I would be interested in your obsaervations on the successes and weaknesses of our hospitals.

Behind the scenes work is advancing quickly on what should be in the manifesto for 2015. The Conservative leadership will want to have a good idea of what the party will be offering by this autumn. The Prime Minister will want his speech to conference to set the scene for the manifesto to follow. Doubtless Labour and the Lib dems are also well into the work on their proposals.

Central to the Conservative approach will be the renegotiation and the referendum on our membership of the EU. The other two main parties in Parliament think they can avoid discussion and much action on EU matters, offering a passive acceptance of all the powers that have already passed to the EU. Their line on a referndum is they will offer one only if there is a new Treaty transferring yet more powers. They say this knowing no such Treaty is currently planned. They will fail to set out how they think the UK can remain a full member of the EU when most of the EU is busily completing a political union to back its currency union.

Central also to the Conservative approach must be further measures to build on the economic recovery now underway, and to complete the task of eliminating the deficit. This is also likely to be distinctive as an approach, as both Labour and Lib Dems are likely to want to spend and borrow more despite the very high levels of borrowing already undertaken.

Today I would be interested to hear youtr ideas on what should go into the manifesto.

There is a general welcome for legislation to allow the recall of MPs announced in the Queen’s Speech. There is also a campaign email doing the rounds to say that the planned recall proposals do not go far enough. So today I am inviting comments on how a decent recall system could and should work.

The first issue to sort out is what is recall for? It should be a facility if an MP has behaved badly in ways which damage his work as an MP for the constituency. It should not be a chance to re-run the election in any given seat because people did not like the result. An MP who does the job should be able to do it until the next election, when people have the chance to persuade others to change the MP for political or other reasons.

The problem is how do you define bad behaviour. If the MP is convicted of murder or rape then we would all agree he can no longer represent the constituency and will go to jail. Of course there should be recall, though under the current system there would also be resignation followed by a by election in such circumstances. If an MP has to pay a parking or speeding fine then that would not presumably be a cause for them to face recall. Somewhere in between the different levels of lawbreaking lies a cut off point which the new law will enforce and lead to recall where the line has been crossed.

Bad behaviour does have to be proven. A system which allowed anyone to trump up an allegation against an MP they did not like and then force recall would create lots of by elections where the individual was innocent.

More difficult is bad political behaviour. Some constituents think an MP should face recall for breaking his or her word or reneging on promises made in an election. Tempting though this is, it could prove difficult to enforce and would probably lead to parties and candidates declining to make any promises at all that could later force their resignation.

Let us take the case of the Lib Dem promise to oppose tuition fees in the 2010 election. It was a clear promise. In the circumstances of coalition it was a Lib Dem Secretary of State who presided over the development and implementation of a tuition fee system. Should there have been 56 by elections immediately that happened, with a possible change of government and a period of instability? Or is the change of circumstance and the formation of coalition sufficient reason to change a party’s stance?

The issue also arises of who settles whether an MP or party has broken its word sufficiently to justify recall? Some say if a given proportion of an electorate demand a recall there should be one. In a marginal seat there might be 10% of the electors who feel very partisan in favour of the main losing candidate. Should they have the right to demand a re-run at the worst time for the incumbent MP?

Recall is a popular idea but the problems lie in the detail of how it would work. The fact that there has to be an election every five years at the longest means no-one is lumbered with a rotten MP indefinitely, if their neighbours agree with their judgement.

Read all about it. Michael Gove and Theresa May have had a disagreement involving an exchange of letters about how to develop a policy and respond to extremism.

This sort of thing should come as no surprise. In any active and lively government Ministers are always disagreeing with one another. Government proceeds by departments and Ministers setting out different views and proposals. These are then honed into an agreed common line which all Ministers stick to in public conversation.

So what is surprising here is not the disagreement, which is common and healthy, but the release of a letter giving one side of the argument, and the briefings about the exchanges. This was quite common under Labour when Ministers and spin doctors often spun their side of disputes, most notably the many disagreements between Chancellor and Prime Minister under Blair. It is not so common under this government.

Mr Gove takes the very sensible view that in combatting extremism you need to deal with its verbal and non violent manifestations in schools before they could become major and violent manifestations outside the classroom and when the students are a bit older. This is also now the general government’s view. The disagreements are not as great as the spin would suggest. The Home Secretary clearly stated in the House yesterday that she is in agreement with the PM and Education Secretary that government has to tackle extremism in speech and teaching as well as extremism with bullets and bombs.

Most of us want to live in a peaceful community where we tolerate each other’s religions and allow a wide range of belief, but where certain human rights and home truths are self evident and inalienable. These include equality for men and women and the right to a decent state education which reflects our democratic values. It was good to hear Mr Gove say there will be a statement of British values to inform schools on the ethos and approach they should adopt to education and looking after children in their care.

There are suggestions in some places that now the economy is beginning to grow at a faster pace and confidence is picking up, we can somehow go easier on getting the budget deficit down. This would be a mistake.

Faster growth in the economy will accelerate the reduction in the deficit anyway because the economy will generate more tax revenue, and fewer people will be out of work claiming benefits. This effect will however be dampened where tax rates are not optimising revenue, and where many people coming into jobs from unemployment still receive substantial top up benefits in work.

An improving economy makes it easier to look for improvements to public service delivery at lower cost, as people know there are jobs available in the private sector where the public sector can no longer carry on recruiting as better ways of doing things are brought in.

The Conservative critique of Mr Brown’s approach in 2007 was correct. Near the top of the boom all state borrowing should have stopped. Today as we climb out of the Brown slump, we should continue to throttle back on state borrowing.

One way we need to examine is the issue of helping more people who live in the UK to take on the many new jobs that are becoming available. The government is seeking new powers to stop exploitation of labour coming in from abroad, and is wanting to limit benefit entitlement for EU migrants. More work on this will require a renegotiation of our relationship with the EU, but in the meantime when this Parliament has no majority for such action the government will see how far it can go within the current EU legal framework.

I have had a number of copies of a standard email and a few variants from constituents worried that oil and gas companies may be able to drill beneath their homes without needing permission from the land owner, and go on to frack where this is needed to produce gas.

With other MPs I will of course consider the proposed legislation very carefully. I have  no wish to see people’s homes damaged by seismic movements beneath their properties, nor to see chemicals leach into water courses, nor has the government. The proposal only allows new rights to drill more than 300 metres down. There will be compensation to local communities where drilling takes place.

More importantly, gas and oil companies have no wish to damage homes or contaminate water. They will be well aware of how much damage that would do to their reputations and bank balances. I do not expect the new law to be any more lenient on ensuring  a prohibition on the  pollution of water, nor to suddenly allow companies to damage people’s property.

Much of the possible drilling will be way below the surface level, so it should not in anyway disturb foundations and gardens. People who live in London have had many more large holes and tunnels drilled close to the surface to contain large water pipes, cables, tube trains and other underground services without damage. The extraction of any gas found may  be less harmful than water extraction licences which people accept water companies should enjoy, which can take water away from near the surface with more potential impact on structures.

We can learn from the problems coal mining created in the past. There a whole layer of rock was hewn out, and in some cases the rocks and soil above were allowed to collapse behind the miners. In other  cases pillars of coal were left supporting the strata above, but these too were subject to collapse. Taking gas out of a reservoir rock  at great depth will not have anything like the same impact as removing a whole stratum of rock.

Water companies will continue to have a duty to supply potable water to every household. They will continue to measure and monitor the water they put into their supply pipes in great detail to ensure there are  not adverse chemicals or dangerous  bacteria in it. They will have every interest in working with oil and gas companies to ensure the water courses remain clean, or to ensure proper treatment of the water before supply. The issues are not as difficult as the water company’s current task of cleaning up everyone’s foul water  before returning it to the river and sea. Handling all that foul water is a problem. People just expect the companies and authorities to be able to take it away and process it without harm.

I do think we need to produce some of the gas and oil we are now finding. It is not particularly friendly to say oil and gas should be extracted from under the homes of foreigners in their countries, but never here at home. It also leaves us worse off if we import more and produce less here. We do need to get our oil and gas from somewhere to heat our homes, drive our cars and fuel our factories.

Today I will write about UKIP, as they like attention. I will offer the talkative UKIP contributors to this site the chance to answer two simple questions. Which seat or seats do they think they will have most chance of winning in May 2015 as they set about a further quest for their first seat in Parliament after 20 years of campaigning? Which seat will Mr Farage fight, or will he conclude he has an important job as an  MEP? The polls continue to indicate no UKIP seats after May 2015.

The failure of UKIP to win either Eastleigh or Newark in more favourable by election conditions for the challenger poses them a problem. The fact that Mr Farage has not chosen a seat to contest for 2015 yet shows he himself is unsure of where he would have the best chance or indeed any chance at all.

Those of us serious about winning and holding Westminster seats live and work in the area we want to represent before standing for election. I bought my home in the constituency.  I spent more than two  years living in the Wokingham constituency, visiting many organisations, companies and community leaders, and playing a part in local political life before fighting my first election there. It enabled me to learn many of the things I needed to know to be able to represent people well, and it showed the electors my seriousness about wanting the job. It helps to know all the local leaders and people involved in local and national government in your prospective constituency so you can do the job properly from day one after being elected. Some of my colleagues who have managed to win more difficult seats have spent more than one Parliament offering free help and service to their local communities before being chosen by the electors.

The worry for many of us Eurosceptics is the way a modest UKIP vote in May 2015 could still  thwart us from the renegotiation and referendum we need to settle the EU issue. UKIP say they could resolve many of the country’s problems by taking us out of the EU. I agree we would be better off out of the current EU, but UKIP will break their key promise next time as they have in every other election they have fought. The simple truth is UKIP have no power to take us out of the EU, and are very unlikely to gain  the power in May 2015 to do so.

UKIP after 20 years of trying have to still to win  control of a single council or to win a single Parliamentary seat. Their result in  Newark came in almost 20% of the vote behind the Conservatives after a strong challenge with many leaflets. Newark,  the last local elections and the opinion polls show that the choice  on May 7th 2015 will be between Labour and Conservatives. The choice about  the EU is do you want a party in government that likes the current degree of federal control and may add to it, or do you want a negotiation to see if we can cut the power of the EU followed by a popular vote on whether to stay in. I know which of those two I prefer. I want to be part of making that historic choice. Come the day many UKIP inclined people may decide they wish to help make that choice, by voting for the referendum we need.

Conservative policy has changed a lot towards the EU in recent years. The biggest change came with the Prime Minister’s decision to require a renegotiation of our relationship with the EU and to then let voters decide with an In/Out referendum. Supporting decisions have included the veto on the Fiscal Treaty, keeping the UK out of it, the demands for a lower EU budget, and the extrication of the UK from further financial support for Euro area countries and banks in trouble.

The mood in the Conservative Parliamentary party is supportive of all these initiatives, and understanding of the limits on immediate action imposed by the Lib Dems and the lack of a Conservative majority. This has not prevented us from thinking of other ways of trying to accelerate the change to the relationship we want, despite the present Parliamentary constraints.

There are two immediate opportunities that require decision this Parliament. The government was rightly persuaded to opt the UK out of all the Criminal Justice measures of the Union, using a right Labour put into our version of the Lisbon Treaty as reassurance at the time but would not itself have used. The Lib Dems and Labour wish to opt back in to many of the central measures. If we do so then these powers pass from the UK to the EU in perpetuity or until we leave the Union. Many of us are urging the government to come to separate extradition arrangements with the EU similar to those we enjoy with other non EU countries, to avoid this area falling under EU and ECJ control.

The second is the government needs to respond to a wide ranging and important unanimous report from the European Affairs Committee. This Report recommends that the UK government amends the 1972 European Communities Act to reassert Parliamentary sovereignty. We could for example reinforce our version of the Lisbon Treaty which expressly opted the UK out of any move to include the European Convention on Human Rights in European Union law. A recent ECJ Court case appears to have done just this despite the Treaty, so the Committee recommends asserting Parliamentary sovereignty in this respect. It would be an important precedent, and would mean the UK Parliament resisting erosion of our right to self government in an important area.

These are matters which we have been working on for many months. They are nothing to do with UKIP or the political response to UKIP. The serious business of the UK Parliament struggling to combat excessive EU power and legislation continues daily as it has done for many years, against a background of too many Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs who vote for any extension of EU power.