I am in favour of speed limits. It makes sense to say to drivers in busy built up areas they should not go above 30mph when the road is clear, just in case something unexpected happens which requires them to brake or swerve. The national speed limit of 60mph is also a wise precaution on most roads where there is no lane segregation and no single direction access and exit from the road.

             The old rules were fairly simple. If you were driving in a built up area with street lights, the speed limit was 30. You were told this on original entry in to the town or village, and told of its end on exit by a simple sign. The rest of the time commonsense told you it was 30mph from the surroundings and the street lights. If you started your journey within the built up area you knew it was 30 from the environment.

           In recent years there has been a profusion of intermediate speed limits. There is no obvious logic to the choice of some of them. The other day I counted the number of changes of speed limit on a 15 mile journey locally. I counted 16 changes of speed limit. It varied between 20,30,40,50 and 60 mph. I did not go onto the motorway which would have added a 70.  There were pieces of road with street lights where the speed limit was higher than 30mph, without frequent repeater signs on  the lampposts to remind you of the different limit. Apparently similar roads through built up areas changed from 40 to 30 and back again.

           Research shows that drivers are best at obeying the 60 speed limit on non dual carriageway roads. They regard 60 as the upper limit of what is wise on such roads, and normally drive well below 60 given the bends and hazards on such roads. When it comes to the 60 limit most understand it is an upper limit, which you do not normally achieve.

          When I travel on motorways, seeking to keep to a steady 70, most traffic overtakes me. It looks as if most drivers judge around 80 to be a safe speed on motorways, and probably take the risk thinking  they will be unlucky  to be prosecuted if they stay below 80. There does not seem to be much driver buy in to the idea of 70. Motorways are our safest roads,  because traffic travelling in different directions is kept apart and because vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed on them. In this respect motorways are more like railway lines, which are also segregated and do not allow any other users to share the route.

              30 mph areas are more difficult. There is a stronger case for the 30 than for the 70 on motorways, and most people if asked would say they agree with the 30 limit in built up areas with single carriageway roads. Yet when it comes to driving modern cars with good brakes and steering, many drivers reckon they are safe at more than the speed limit and allow the speed to drift up. If speed limits are to work well, there needs to be general acceptance of them by the driving public.

            Many drivers do think the profusion of differing limits and frequent changes of limit can be counterproductive. Drivers end up studying road signs and speedometers more than is healthy  for keeping alert to what is going on on the road ahead. Traffic managers should be careful before introducing too much complexity. Speed control has to be part of helping get people to their destinations with   safety for all road users, not part of a policy to stop people using cars or trying to make the motorists task too difficult.

 

           Having plenty of suitable places for people to park their cars is a necessary policy on a crowded island like ours.

         If we can ensure more of our cars are parked off road when they are not being used,  more of the road space is available for when we do wish to use them. Taking cars off road should offer them better protection, and make getting into and out of them  safer and easier, especially if you have bags with you at the time.

          Having plenty of easy to use parking near shops is important to the success of shopping centres. You cannot easily go shopping by train, as it is cumbersome returning with the bags and packages, and they are not welcome on most trains. Buses too have their limitations when it comes to the weekly shop, though they can get a bit nearer the shops than trains can. Many buses have very limited space for luggage and shopping bags.

           Getting children to and from school by car as many do is also a hazardous and difficult process. Most state schools now prevent parents driving into the school grounds to drop off and collect, wishing to avoid danger on school territory and responsibility for safety. As a result many children are dropped off by the side of busy roads, often more dangerous than in the school grounds. Councils have countered in some cases, appreciating the dangers, by putting in lower speed limits at drop off and pick up times of  day. This still does not prevent accidents from opening doors without watching, pulling out too quickly, or a passing motorist unable to see a child darting out from behind a vehicle into the road.

           Mr Pickles has recently intervened in this debate and urged Councils not to see parking as just another money raising opportunity. Some  Councils can and do exploit monopoly positions on parking, others exploit a shortage of private sector alternative provision or work with private operators keeping spaces limited. That is why Mr Pickles suggests that it should be easier for people to rent out their driveways where they wish, to give them a new  source of income and to provide some competition to Council car parks to help keep prices down.

                  He has also asked whether we could have some greater tolerance of short term parking in resticted places to buy a single item or pick something up from an adjacent shop. In some places enforcement is sharp and unrelenting, whatever the circumstances.

                    We do need a new parking settlement. New housing should have better parking provision to keep more cars off the road. Councils should look again at how they can provide safer access to schools, to lessen clashes with busy roads. Town centre improvements should include the supply of plentiful and sensibly priced parking to encourage more people  in, instead of driving to a bigger centre further away or using the out of town facilites  to the exclusion of the town centre. Some double yellow restrictions are crucial to the free flow of traffic and should not be relaxed, but other limitations, especially many single yellow lines,  could be considered for short stay parking without impeding the main highways.

                Councils should see parking as an important service to help keep town centres lively, to facilitate people getting to work and school, and to help local businesses. Just seeing it as a source of revenue forces parking prices up, frustrates people trying to find one out of too few spaces, and adds to the sense of injustice many taxpayers feel who put much money into the system but seem to get very little back.

 

 

           It was good news that at last RBS is making a profit. It was, unfortunately, a very small profit in relation to the massive amounts of capital employed, but it is a lot better than the run of losses we  long suffering taxpayer shareholders have got used to.  A bank with a balance sheet of £1.2 trillion needs to make £12bn a year just to provide a 1% return on total capital, or around  10% on shareholders capital assuming the conventional 10% ratio of shareholders funds to total assets. A return of £1.4bn in half a year is low.

          There is also a new Chief Executive in the wings, already working for the bank. What is needed now is a new strategy, a sense of direction and purpose, the promise of a better bank or banks to come. The Chancellor has set up a quick review of the future of RBS. Let me set out again the case for creating more banks from within the Group.

          RBS was never a successful conglomerate. The economies and scale and efficiency gains  from assembling a wide range of different banks never materialised. Instead the shaky financial structure and the overstretch the large rambling group imposed on the management brought the proto giant down. It had no time  to prove major  benefits from a series of mega mergers culminating in the ABN Amro one just before the crash. Some of us who opposed the mergers at the time could not see how a single management could weld these disparate banks and businesses into a more successful whole. Cross selling within a Group full of differing styles and practices is never easy, and prone to conflict of interest obstacles as well.

           The new team should have as its aims returning money to taxpayers and creating a better group of banks that can contribute to UK economic recovery.

            Selling Citizens, the US bank, is a relatively simple first task. It would release cash and management time, and allow a successful free standing US bank to make more progress under new ownership. A special capital  pay out could be made to RBS shareholders.

             Segregating Ulster Bank, the cause of many problems, would assist the recovery of the rest. Ulster Bank before it can be returned as a free standing competitor would need to be recapitalised, from some of the proceeds of other sales within the Group. It may also need some Treasury continuing guarantees or support as it works through its remaining difficult loans.

              The Investment bank has in the past been a  major contributor to RBS profits, or a source of profit to offset losses elsewhere. It is proving difficult to run a fully competitive successful Investment bank within the confines of public sector ownership of the Group. Investment banker remuneration and activity is difficult to justify if taxpayers stand behind it. There are two answers . One is to float it off separately. The other is to twin it with one of the clearing banks in the RBS group suitable for early sale. Perhaps adding it to Nat West, recreating the old County/Nat West relationship could be achieved. Delay in sorting out a future for the Investment bank is likely to damage it, as talent leaves to go elsewhere.

              Next we need to ask  how to sell the UK commercial banks within the Group. Management will probably favour keeping them together. Some progress has been made in rationalising the network and back offices. However, from the competition point of view it would be better to recreate Nat West, RBS and Coutts, for example, as independent brands with their own range of assets, liabilities, clients and services. This may take longer than a simple share sale, but would help promote more banking competition in the UK and woudl allow the establishment of more well financed competitor banks which can be sold off as soon as the work is done establishing them.

             The management may well be against. After all, they have spent time trying to find synergies and benefits from more integrated working. However, with the right leadership and incentives it might be possible to carry out this work relatively speedily and end up with a much stronger and better banking sector. If it is not, the best option is to drive harder for a more profitable remaining RBS and sell shares in it as soon as possible. Taxpayers owning banks, especially Investment banks, is not a good idea. One way or another we need to cut taxpayer risk and get some money back.

 

 

 

           The tragedy of the starvation and torture of a four year old is difficult to take. I am still profoundly shocked by evil, even though I have seen, heard and read about all too much evil over the years. It is particularly difficult to grasp how anyone, let alone a mother and acting father, could treat a defenceless four year old in that way over such a long period. Of course the murderers were the parents and they are rightly now condemned.

           Maybe because most of us could never contemplate deliberately harming a child, no-one in the community around took any action to help, protect or save him as  no-one saw the danger to him from his parents. Let us hope the serious case review tells us more of why that happened. So far the media implies that those teachers, doctors, nurses, and neighbours who saw something was wrong were deterred from taking action by lies from the mother who apparently  always had a cover story for the boy’s conduct and state of health.

            The ultimate sadness comes from realising that the one small voice which was never heard in all this was the voice of  Daniel himself. Why was he never asked why he was scavenging for food? Why was he never asked if he wanted a school dinner? Why was he never allowed to speak about how he was bruised, or emaciated, or had a broken bone? Or was he asked but no adult listened intelligently to the reply or lack of reply? Did no responsible adult ever speak to him without his mother present? Did they never detect his fear or his hesitation in answering, if he held back the truth from a sense of fear of home?  Could he not trust any adult around him sufficiently so he could tell them the truth?

          One of the things the enquiry should look at is the way adults can and do communicate with children in  their care. Of course caring parents and  adults have a right not to be spied on through their children, and we need to remember children too can lie. But surely if we had healthier relations between adults and children, not weighed down too much by political correctness, fear of misunderstanding of the adults’ motives, or a simple reluctance by adults to listen to what children say at all, we might spot such a heinous crime as this before the death of its victim? We need to protect children against that  minority of adults who prey on children for their own vile motives, but we need to allow the rest  to engage with children so there is some mutual trust.

           In a recent BBC interview we were as always directed to resources, to local authority budgets and priorities. This surely was not a matter of budgets and priorities. Health care workers, teachers, and social workers all saw this child, all were paid salaries to help him. This is not a shortage of resources, but a failure of communications, a failure of many in society to take a little care for a helpless and tortured four year old. Rather than pick on one or two people who could have done better, maybe what we need to do is look at the general issue of how adults in caring professions relate to children and when they should ask the child to tell them what they think and feel when there are worries or suspicions.

                 Doubtless many good teachers, social workers and medics do just this and save children as a result. We need to spread the word to others who do not.

 

I strongly believe democracy is the least bad form of government. I would far rather live in a country where you can express disagreements with government, campaign to change government policies, and vote to change the politicians if all else fails, than live in various types of tyranny or bureaucracy.

Democracy, though, brings tribulations with it. Sometimes the minority is right but unsuccessful in persuading the majority. UK democracy in my lifetime has visited upon us the Exchange Rate Mechanism which did large damage to our economy, with the agreement of all three main parties and most of the UK establishment. Those of us who opposed it were censured and criticised. It brought the big Labour credit bubble, boom and bust. This time various voices including at times the opposition parties highlighted the excessive credit and inflationary dangers, but the majority ignored us at huge cost to the country.

Democracy has also encouraged an activist type of politics, where many politicians think the way to popularity and re election is to spend ever more of their constituents’ money on their behalf.  There is a tendency to overspend inherent in modern democracy, as it produces so many elected officials who think there is a government answer to every problem, and that the answer is usually the spending of more of someone else’s money to fix it.

The same impulse to activism makes of many MPs natural advocates of ever more regulation. Modern democracy is prey to well intentioned lobby groups, who marshall their case using PR and email camapigns. Many MPs think it easier to give in to whatever their demand may be, rather than arguing with them. Rarely do campaign groups campaign for repeal or for less government activity. They usually are completely signed up to the government must do something approach.

As a result pressures to give taxpayers a better deal and to limit the impulse to regulate and control usually comes in the form of an economic and financial crisis. After a period of build up in excess spending and government borrowing, market pressures, the views of the creditors, break through and force the elected government in crisis to take corrective action.  Democracy would work better if the pressures from lobby groups were better balanced between those urging the government to do more, and those urging the government to do less.

 

Macmillan asked me if I would like to review their book by John Shepherd and Keith Laybourn on “Britain’s First Labour Government”. I agreed to as I suspected it would prove very topical, and so it proved.

     For 287 days in 1924 the UK experienced a Labour government for the first time. It was a minority government which relied on Liberal votes to keep it in office. The Conservatives under Baldwin called an early General Election in December 1923, wrongly anticipating a win. The result produced 258 Conservative MPs, 191 Labour and 158 Liberals. Baldwin decided to carry on as  Prime Minister despite his clear defeat. Shortly afterwards he lost a vote of No confidence in the Commons and the King rightly called on Labour to see if it could form an administration. Labour was able to govern for almost a year driving through some reforms they wanted, despite the lack of a majority.

          The authors capture the suspicion of the Establishment over asking Labour to form a government, and over its people and attitudes. They point out that many of the Labour Cabinet members had little formal education, and were not used to being part of the UK governing clique. They were, however, schooled in Labour and Trade Union politics and administration, and supported by defectors from the Liberal party, which was in those days much more used to government  office. Some like John Wheatley rose to the challenge of office as Housing Minister and made a lasting impact on UK society.

          They chronicle the twists and turns of the relationship with the Unions.  Then as now, this was to prove pivotal in Labour politics. Labour MPs owed much to the Unions that had sponsored them or supported their party on its way to office. The leading figures, especially the Prime Minister, felt they had to show independence from the Unions to justify their position in government and to woo people to the idea that Labour might govern in the interest of the many, not just of the Unionised workers. The air was full of accusations of treachery as Labour withstood strikes or tried to bargain with their argumentative sometime  supporters.

            I have some sympathy myself for Ramsay Macdonald, the first Labour Prime Minister. Maybe it was inevitable that he ended up disliked by his own party for the compromises he felt government and power forced upon him later in his career. My own sympathy comes from his brave and widely unpopular decision to oppose the Great War in 1914-18. Whilst I do not share the pacifism of part of the Labour movement that was more common in the early twentieth century, I do think we have fought too many wars.

        Sometimes, as with the Falklands or Kuwait, recourse to arms is necessary to restore international order. It is more difficult to  see why most politicians thought fighting the 1914 war could conceivably be in the UK’s interest. They were led to war by a collective outburst of patriotism without proper thought for what the peace might look like or how many deaths might occur before victory.  The gross tragedy of that war, with slaughter on an industrial scale, was made worse by the knowledge we now have that the subsequent victory and peace with Germany did not settle the German question but led to a even greater but necessary war to deal with Nazism. Churchill himself was impatient with the establishment for risking too many lives in attacks by men running across No man’s land, and not turning more to machines to settle the impasse of the trenches. Men who opposed the war risked accusations of cowardice. It was one of those most bitter conflicts, where the higher the casualties the more the impulse to revenge and the desire for victory.

         The main achievement of the Labour government was to establish the idea of Council housing as another means to try to complete the popular promise of homes fit for heroes. Whether you agree with Council housing or not, it was an idea that became an important part of twentieth century UK reality. Less progress was made with pr0moting female equality and with the need for more and better education. That was to come later, and not just from Labour.

          The General election that followed Labour’s period in government was overwhelmed by the Zinoviev Red letter implying Labour’s links with communist Russia made it an unreliable party for government. It fed a prejudice of the day that was not accurate, and left Labour in opposition with more time to try to reconcile the continuing central struggle – how much power over policy should the Unions expect in return for all the support they gave the party?  This timely work reminds us of other periods when no party had a majority, and how they handled that situation in a lively Commons. It is a good read for those who wish to understand more of Labour’s origins and of the role of the Commons when no party is in charge.

 

 

 

On Monday I sent the following letter to the longer serving members of Network Rail, who are meant to be the taxpayers’ representatives holding the management to account:

I am writing to you to ask what actions you, in your role as a Public Member of Network Rail, have taken in recent years to protect the interests of taxpayers in the way Network Rail spends money and adds to its borrowings.

I would be grateful for a brief guide to the main issues you have raised and where you have tried to secure improvements to the value for money and financial security of taxpayers’ investment. I am not looking for an executive Network Rail reply to my queries, but to your Member response.

In particular I would like to know:

1. Why you have backed borrowing in foreign currencies for a business whose revenues and grants are all in sterling, exposing it to currency risk?

2. What is your appraisal of the use of derivatives by Network Rail? What is your forecast of the likely gains and losses from the derivative strategies being used?

3. How long will it take to achieve the efficiency improvements identified by the external review of Network Rail?

4. Have you examined the issues arising from the development and use of railway land, and the issues arising when other developers and land owners wish to gain access to their land across the railway?

Yours sincerely

The Rt Hon John Redwood MP
Member of Parliament for Wokingham

I have made the constitutional case before for a renegotiation of our relationship.. If you wish to live in a vibrant UK democracy the main decisions have to be taken by the UK Parliament. Then the electors can influence them, or throw out the MPs who give them the wrong policies and laws. They can persuade the Parliament to their view, or change the Parliament to change the policies. If too much is decided at the EU level you lose your democracy, as voters can no longer throw out the lawmakers and require a change of approach.

Today I wish to look at a few of the examples of policies enforced by the EU that the UK would like to change if we were in charge.

Many of us want cheaper energy. We would like to relieve the pressure of high and rising energy bills on family budgets. Fuel poverty gets worse each time the energy price goes up in real terms. We want to back Mr Osborne’s vision of the “march of ther makers”, an industrial revival. To do so we need to offer competitive energy, energy for business priced at US levels, not at EU levels.

EU policies require a high proportion of our energy to be generated from renewables. EU policy also imposes a carbon tax on European activity. EU energy policy forces us to have dearer energy than our US or Asian competitors.

Many UK voters want controlled immigration. The EU common borders policy does not allow the UK to impose controls on migrants coming from another EU country, making it very difficult for any UK government to deliver what many voters want.

Many UK voters want wasteful or less desirable public spending to be reduced, so taxes and borrowings by the state are lower. Some of the worst examples of wasteful spending occur at EU level, where UK voters and politicians have no control and little influence.

Many UK voters want UK fishing grounds to be sensibly regulated in the UK interest. They feel that the Common Fishing Policy has conspired to damage our fishing grounds and at the same time not protect our fishermen.

There are many other examples, which you can help supply. In a UK democracy these matters could be changed for the better. In the EU reform and change is usually impossible.

The pro European Union minority are always telling us how much business likes the EU, and how it is a superior arrangement to our other trade, business and investment agreements with the rest of the world. Yet when it comes to where business puts its money, they shy away from the EU.

The figures for UK investment abroad by UK companies show that they have invested just £20bn in Germany over the years, only a shade more than in non EU Switzerland, a far smaller country. Meanwhile corporate UK has invested a mighty £210bn in the USA and £40 bn in Hong Kong and China. £36bn in Australia and £27bn in Canada compares to a total investment in Italy with a much larger population of just £11bn.

All this goes to show that the selective pro EU voices of UK business do not tell us the truth about the relationships. After more than 40 years in the EU we still have a much much larger business commitment to the Commonwealth and the USA than to the main EU countries. It is true the figures show large investments by the UK in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, but that is not a set of underlying investments in these countries. It represents a tax efficient means of investing elsewhere, usually outside the EU. The large £40bn invested in our own non EU offshore islands (Isle of Man and Channel islands) also reminds us of the power of lower taxes to attract business money.

Pro EU people always talk about trade in physical goods. They do not talk much about trade in services, where we do far more business outside the EU than in the EU, and always ignore the figures for overseas investment by UK companies.

Investing in a foreign country is a far greater commitment and far deeper and longer term relationship than buying manufactures from abroad. Judged by that standard, UK business thinks the US is the most important place by far to do business, followed by a range of Commonwealth countries. Tax rates, levels of regulation and the cost of government are amongst the features that put UK business off investing in the rest of the EU.

The lack of such investment flows should worry EU enthusiasts. It should lead the Brussels government to ask why is such long term commitment so unpopular? They could start by looking at the whole range of policies they pursue that are not business friendly.

 One of the worst examples of large scale spending of questionable effiicacy is the big UK railway budget.

I am going to take up again the whole issue of the unaccountability of Network Rail. An independent review has found that it could be much more efficiently run, with large cash savings. Its strange structure designed by the last government tries to hide the fact that it is in effect a nationalised monopoly.

Ministers need to examine how and why members of the company are appointed and reappointed or dropped. They need to find out whether these members – who are meant to work on the taxpayers behalf – ask the right questions and create the right atmosphere to encourage more efficient operation at Network Rail.

The members should ask why Network Rail has a reputation for holding up development projects adjacent to the railway, and why they often demand ransom payments for anyone wishing to bridge the railway or develop adjacent to it.

They should ask why Network Rail has taken on foreign currency and index linked debts, and how it plans to repay the massive £30bn debt built up so far.