Not so long ago George Osborne rallied the nation with a ringing cry for a new industrial revival. He summonsed the march of the makers. It was a bold and enticing vision.

Yesterday David Cameron told the country it is engaged in a mammoth struggle to become more competitive and successful in world markets. The background to his remarks was a year of falling industrial output. The most recent figures for exports showed a £9.8bn deficit for August on trade in goods. The quarterly goods exports figures were 3.1% down on the previous quarter.

The government rightly points out that the Eurozone crisis is depressing EU markets more than official forecasters expected. The official forecasters as so often have been far too optimistic and too neglectful about the obvious tensions and problems with the Euro scheme throughout its life. However, the worrying feature of the recent export statistics is exports outside the EU have been falling more rapidly than exports within the EU. The UK in recent months has been going backwards when it comes to selling to fast growing markets, as well as understandably losing sales in the Euro area.

The government needs to revisit its policies for encouraging more manufacture. There are three areas above the rest that need immediate action.

The first is finance. There is still a shortage of bank finance for business, despite all the varied schemes. The government does have to create some new banks out of the embers of RBS and get them into the marketplace as soon as possible. We need more, better financed banks, with capacity to lend.

The second is energy. The UK along with the EU has opted for dear energy. The UK has gold plated the dear energy policies of the EU, and is busily shutting down its coal plants that currently supply substantial amounts of electricity. The US and the emerging market manufacturers have a huge competitive advantage from cheaper energy. The UK needs to wake up and make price central to its energy policy, allowing a new dash for gas.

The third is talent. It will take time for educational reforms to work. These may yield more science and engineering graduates. In the meantime the government as chief educator needs to look at ways at accelerating the retraining of people with scientific backgrounds who would be interested in a career in industry, and to look at shorter courses for talented people who may need some basic training in engineering to be able to operate well in a manufacturing environment.

The decisions taken on corporation tax are helpful, those on CGT and Income Tax are unhelpful. The government has promised to cut the costs of regulation. If done wisely this could be very helpful. We do not want unsafe factories or low quality goods, but we could do with faster planning decisions and less box ticking.

I was asked to talk about this question at a meeting at Conference.

Growth comes from people wishing to do new things, to buy new goods and services, to renovate and improve their homes, to transform their lives and their environments in ways they like and can afford.
All too often Councils are the official bodies who are out to stop them doing this, or out to tax and charge them for daring to try.

Most local businesses depend on the van. Plumbers and loft insulators, new goods deliverers and conservatory builders come by van. Most of us do not live next to the station. We rely on the flexible and ubiquitous van, which may not always be white, to turn up with the goods or the service. Professional and on line services often depend on the car to get the providers to their place of work or to the customer’s home if needed.

Many Councils see the van and the car as an opportunity to raise tax revenues, to charge them and to restrict their use. If Councils really wanted to help the local economy they would see that they need to do much more to allow reasonable vehicle access to potential customers, and to allow potential customers access to shops and other centres of trade. They could:

1. Allocate land for sufficient parking near town centres and residential developments, and provide it free or at low cost.
2.Ensure that all new developments have ample parking at or near people’s homes, to allow trade access as well as taking the residents’ cars off the main highway.
3.Work to create less congestion in existing developments. This includes the need for safer junctions, with sufficient space at the junction to keep pedestrians away from traffic and to separate right turning traffic from the rest.
4.Allowing the delivery of items to the door as long as the road is not blocked for traffic by the drop off
5. Reviewing all their local roads with a view to improving the flow of traffic
6 Making selective junction improvements, increasing the number of bridging points over local railway lines and rivers whicb usually create the main congestion.

Councils also have an important role in promoting or limiting enterprise when it comes to planning. Again many Councils see this as an opportunity to tax and charge people more. Of course the Council has a planning role to prevent inappropriate devlopment which would annoy neighbours or damage the amenity and environment of the locality, but at times and in some places this is extended to a general opposition to change. Councils could

1. Lower their fees for seeking planning permission and Building Regulation approval
2.Speed the decision making process up
3. Require objectors to demonstrate that a proposal would have an adverse impact like more noise or the loss of light
4. Be more relaxed about a change of use where there are not reasonable grounds for objection
5. Ensuring all main settlements have land demarked for extra provision of space in all the main categories
6. Encouraging local plans to come forward for more starter units for businesses

A number of Councils and professional bodies involved with planning and town centres were represented at the meeting. There was a surprising amount of agreement with the proposition that parking and access were vital issues. Some cited examples of better and cheaper parking policies which had helped revive shopping centres.

The government had a good proposal to cut its administrative overhead by 30% over the 5 years. The latest figures show they seem to have done this already.

Certainly the Health,transport and Communities departments report a fall of around 30% in their overhead costs. The overall figures are greatly helped by large declines at Treasury and Work and pensions. A footnote tells us that some of their activity has been reclassified from overhead to service expenditure, so we cannot see how well they – or the overall government- has done. The largest government overheads are obviously at DWP and Treasury, where they have armies of people collecting the money in and giving it out again.

Within the list the 261% increase last year compared to 2009-10 at Culture Media and Sport is understandable for the Olympics. Presumably this will collapse next year. The increase of 51% at Justice is less understandable. The small falls in the non English departments, at the Cabinet Office , Education,. Business and defence are also important to question.

It is also interesting to note that expenditure on total pay has risen in cash terms since 2009-10, despite these cuts. It appears that the governmetn has spent a lot on redundancies, but has also put salaries up and has recruited some replacements, so the overall savings have been less than simply following a natural wastage policy.

Today I will be exploring the role of grammars in our state educational system, with Graham Brady and Janet Daley.

The hatred of academic selection at 11 is an anomaly in our system of education. All political parties and most in the educational establishment agree with rigorous academic selection at 18, to decide who will go to university, and to determine who will go to the elite universities. The places in the best institutions go to the students who do best at A level and in academic interview.

All parties agree that from 16 onwards students should have to take an array of competitive examinations. Those seeking vocational qualifications also have to achieve various standards in GCSE qualifiers, and in the subsequent vocational tests and exams. This means that from 16 onwards all parties and the educational establishment have to accept the failure of some as well as encouraging success for many.

When it comes to promoting high quality sporting achievement, dancing, art, singing, and other musical activities we base our system from an early age on competition and special training or instruction for those who achieve more and show a greater willingness to practice and learn. The UK’s all conquering Olympians were given special coaches, special training regimes and very special treatment. In return they had to work extremely hard and give their utmost to the task. They had to reach high levels of achievement to stay on the programmes. If someone wants to be a concert pianist, a premier league footballer, an England cricketer, an opera singer or a ballerina, they have to go through arduous training based on selection on merit.

We allow children with rich parents to go to good schools,giving them charitable status. We allow those independent schools to select their pupils as they wish. Some of these schools give great academic coaching and expect high standards. The grammars used to give an equivalent specialised academic opportunity to children without rich parents. Now that only happens in a handful of counties like Kent, Buckingham and parts of Berkshire.

The result is more independent school pupils proportionately get into the elite universities. Instead of trying to dumb down requirments for university, we need to foster a cadre of schools specialising in teaching the most committed students who have an academic aptitude and determination. It is the best way to social mobility into academic life and the leading knowledge based professions.

Tomorrow at conference I will be part of a panel discussing how public spending could make a bigger contribution to cutting the deficit. I will have very limited time to tackle such a big and important topic. Let me sketch a bit of the background in this post, in advance.

The first thing I have urged the government to do for the last two and half years is to avoid large external commitments at a time when we are fully stretched at home. For that reason I voted against the £20 billion of extra money being made available to the IMF, primarily because I fear that money will go to the unworthy cause of trying to avoid changing the Euro scheme to let it work for those countries who can live with it. I voted against the £3.2 billion special loan to Ireland and against the UK £8bn contribution to the European Financial Stability Mechanism for the same reasons.

The second thing I have done is urged the government to transform RBS. RBS is too large for the UK state to back comfortably. It has been loss making and failing to deliver enough support for the UK economy. I have tried to get the government to speed its break up, sale of assets, reduction of taxpayer risk, and creation of new working banks out of its assets and liabilities. Getting the taxpayer out of majority ownership of a £1.5 trillion bank would be the single most important step it could take to cut potential risks and losses for taxpayers, and to improve the UK state balance sheet rapidly.

The third thing I have done is to set out case after case where the Uk government could spend less without damaging services or entitlements. There is the issue of the large derivative losses at Network Rail; the £800 million research programme of DFID; the £500 m overseas aid to nuclear weapons powers; the £1.3 bn of aid channeled through the EU that is not universally well spent; the large operating losses and inefficiencies of state owned Network Rail; the high level of subsidies to inefficient and expensive ways of generating energy; the persistence of high overheads at departments like DFID and the Energy department and many others;the high costs of legal aid owing to long winded and repetitious court processes for terrorist extradition, for example.

The fourth thing I have argued is that we spend far too much on UK membership of the EU. I have been pressing the governemnt to use its veto over the forthcoming 2014-2020 financial settlement. I have supported colleagues seeking a major cut in expensive and badly targetted EU regional assistance; pressed for a big reform of the CAP to cut its costs to taxpayers and food buyers alike; sought a general reduction in what the EU does in the UK and how much it spends.

The fifth thing I have highlighted is “soft touch UK”. With others I have asked the government to charge overseas users of the NHS for their treatment. I have proposed charges on foreign haulage firms using our roads. I have supported moves to curtail illegal immigration, and to tighten eligibility rules for benefits so they go to legally settled people.

PS I Am pleased to hear the Prime Minister is willing to veto an unacceptable EU budget settlement for 2014-2020, but disappointed that the government finds a “real terms freeze”acceptable when we need deep cuts to the EU outgoings.

I will be speaking at meetings at the Conservative conference on economic growth, grammar schools, the EU and public spending. They are all on Monday 8 October, which is Economy day at conference. The details for those interested are:

10.30 am “Local Growth” Hall 8B at the ICC (inside security) organised by Westminster City Council

12.00 noon “Are grammar schools a key to restarting socila mobility?” Conservative Home Marquee (inside security)

14.00 “Leaving the EU?” Bruges Group Main lecture theatre of Birmingham and Midland Institute Margaret Street (outside security)

16.30 “Cutting the deficit” Conservative Policy Forum Hall 1 ICC (inside security, party members only)

Just when it is very important Ministers look in control of government, a Senior Minister calls for the arbortion age to be lowered from 24 weeks to 12 weeks. This is followed by two other Cabinet Ministers saying they personally want it lowered to 20 weeks. Meanwhile Downing Street puts out that it will stay at 24 weeks. The Coalition government has no intention of changing the age limit, we are told. I doubt there is a majority in the current Parliament to reduce the limit to 20 weeks, and I am sure there is no chance of Parliament lowering it to 12 weeks.

I do not understand why we needed an argument about abortion if there is no plan to make any changes. I do understand that in a Coalition there will be occasions and issues when Lib Dem Ministers on the one hand, and Conservative Ministers on the other, wish to say their parties have different views and different approaches to big issues. That reminds us all when that happens that the resulting policy is a compromise, and heartens the supporters of the respective parties that their leading lights are thinking of what they wish to do should they win the next election with a single party majority.

I would be happy, for example, for Conservative Ministers to explain how they would change our relationship with the EU given a majority, whilst Lib Dem Ministers explained how they like the current relationship. That would be sensible political differentiation. That is what party conferences are for. I do not understand how a statement now of the disagreements between Conservative Ministers over abortion is productive.

Yesterday we looked at what Ministers can and should do. In my sketch I left out the crucial issue of who runs the department?

In theory the Permanent Secretary runs the department, and the Secretary of State runs the department’s relations with the outside world. They come together to agree policy.

Any Minister who trusts this split between policy and implementation is unwise. In practice a good Ministerial team work closely with their officials in the development of policy, and with them on its implementation.

Ministers do need to carry their officials with them when setting out policy. Good officials respect the right of an elected government to implement new policies which they have sold to the electors or which they believe will improve the lives of people. Good Ministers respect good officials, and value their criticisms, comments and suggested improvements to policy. A good Minister also knows when to say he has heard enough, and takes a decision.

Similarly officials need to recognise that in the case of the major policies and functions Ministers have every right to be involved in how a policy is implemented. A good Minister understands that forming and announcing a policy is just the start, not the end of his task.Ministers can apply commonsense and their knowledge of a very wide range of different people in their constituency to help the civil service design ways of delivering the service that work well for the beneficiaries.

Ministers also need to be very concerned about value for money. They should be the taxpayer’s voice in all discussions. Whitehall has an understandable wish to pad the accounts and to ensure enough resource is committed to each initiative. The Minister should be the one who queries the budgets and seeks to ensure the department is always striving to deliver more for less.

A good Minister needs a formidable range of skills. They need to be able to analyse and criticise proposals rapdily and well, to lead a team of officials to get a task done accurately and promptly, to keep morale up in their department whilst ensuring sensible pressure for better quality and better value for money. A Minister needs to be able to see ahead, to help the department avoid future problems, to challenge the way things are being done and introduce new ways of working or new policies that can work better.

It is not easy splitting implementation from policy. Ministers need to sit down and help hammer out how something will be done. They do need to take an interest in the detail as well as in the high levvel press release and soundbite.

Constitutional theory has changed a lot about the role and responsibilities of Ministers in recent years. The old idea that the Secretary of State was responsible for every decision of his or her department, whoever had taken it, has long been modified. No-one today thinks the DWP Secretary is personally responsible for a staff member miscalculating a person’s entitlement to benefit, or the Health Secretary is personally responsible for a cancelled appointment by a doctor. The doctrine of implied proportionality has emerged, where the decision has to be large enough to warrant personal intervention by the politician prior to it being taken.

All three parties in power have also developed the doctrine of the accountable quango. Secretaries of State do not accept responsibility for the decisions of the Bank of England or the Environment Agency. These bodies are appointed by Parliament, have budgets and founding Statutes from Parliament, and do things which the government used to do for itself before they were established or had their functions widened, but they are largely independent.

All three parties also accept the Michael Howard amendment to the doctrine of Ministerial accountability. Ministers can now delegate management functions to senior officials, and make them responsible for managing to an agreed policy. If they make a mistake in carrying out the required policy, the fault is their’s and not the Minister’s.

I have sympathy with these evolutionary changes. I do not think, however, they should become a reason to excuse Ministers from responsibility for the things that matter. Whatever the politicians may wish the doctrine to be, the voters regard the government as to blame for the big things that happen in government in its widest sense. It is time to ask what is a Minister’s job? What should we expect of them? Do we perhaps expect too much, when they in turn are very constrained by international law, domestic law, and the complexity and range of tasks of modern government? Or should Ministers take more of a grip over the army of quangos, the EU and international bodies that affect them?

A Ministerial job is a part time job. Ministers are also MPs, and have to do their main day job as well as being Ministers. They are more than Non executive Chairmen, but less than full time Chief Executive Officers in their departments. Unlike the Chairman, they do have to take or approve the CEO type decisions. Unlike the CEO, they are not full time. They do not appoint, promote and reward the staff they rely on. They may well be appointed with little knowledge or technical background in the area of their command. Their tenure may be short. This limits their ability to challenge or to decide on many technical matters.

The Minister is clearly responsible for setting the main policies of the department, on advice from officials and the wider public the department serves. The Minister is solely responsible for repesenting the department in the Commons and satisfying the Commons concerning its budgets and actions. Senior officials can be asked to appear before Committees. The Minister is primarily responsible for representing the department to the wider world through the media, conferences and the like. Senior officials play a supporting role. The Minister is the complaints department, the person who asks the difficult questions if things are going wrong. He will chair the relevant meetings to put mistakes right or change systems to prevent future error.

The Secretary of State is as far as the public is concerned responsible for all the main decisions the department takes. He or she can demand papers and people to cross examine. He or she can speed decisions up or slow them down. They can overturn official advice or ask for a second opinion. Ministers need to show they are prepared to do this when it matters.

Sometimes Ministers are appointed to jobs they know well. Occasionally a Minister is appointed with relevant knowledge and qualifications. That enables the Minister to do more and to make a better contribution to the work of the department.

As we have often said on this site, Ministers collectively need to wrestle power back from the EU, the ECHR and from some quangos. The public wants Ministers who do respond to public concerns and needs, and who have the power to do so effectively. We also need to consider what qualifications and training would Ministers ideally have?

It’s as bad as the old days of full nationalisation. The railways run at a huge loss. They fail to serve the commuters well, the main body of high fare paying passengers. They sell large numbers of very cheap off peak tickets to try to fill the unpopular inter city services at off peak times. Now we see it will cost taxpayers at least an extra £40 million to compensate private sector companies who took part in a competition to run trains that was badly managed by the Transport Department. In many ways Whitehall has more control over the partially nationalised railways than it had when they were fully nationalised. People forget that all the tracks and signals are nationalised, and the other companies using them are highly regulated and controlled by government imposed contracts.

I feel sorry for the incoming new Transport Secretary. It is certainly not his fault that the west cost franchise competition was bungled. He has the unwelcome task of trying to pick up the pieces. He has to find a way of running the services on expiry of the current franchise. He needs to lead his Department to higher standards of administration and adjudication on contracts.

What is curious is the attention the Opposition and media will give to this relatively minor losss – a mere £40 million – when they conspire to ignore the much larger losses I have been talking about revealed in the nationalised Network Rail accounts through dealing in derivatives. Why is a £40 m bungle on contract award a scandal, and another £560 million loss last year on derivatives all part of good management? I have released the information about the losses on local radio (BBC) and through the Wokingham Times, as well as on this site. The national media is not interested.

The reason is simple. The contract award can be attributed to Coalition Ministers. Justine Greening can be dragged into a difficult debate about responsibility. The losses at network Rail are losses from an arms length company set up by Labour, so they have to be ignored or explained away.The media will either ignore it or accept the company’s view that it was necessary because they chose to borrow in foreign currencies. Quite why a company earning its money from the UK wanted to borrow foreign currency money has never been explained satisfactorily.

So was Justine Greening responsible for the bungled contracts? The Opposition will claim she was. They can say that Secretaries of State are responsible for all the decisions taken in the department in their name. In theory they can challenge all advice and overturn all recommendations, as long as they stay within the law, so they are ultimately responsible. In office, of course, Labour Ministers often had reasons why this tough doctrine did not apply to whatever mistake their department had made at the time.

In practise I suspect Miss Greening was assured the complex homework had been done well. She would have received a high level submission summarising the findings on all the bids. She probably signed off on that, wishing to trust her senior officials who had supervised the work. She would have been briefed to claim the process had been “robust”.

I suspect the establishment will decide this was one of those unfortunate errors made owing to an imperfect system. The suspended staff will be allowed back to work. Lessons will be learned. The storm will be ridden. Meanwhile the railways will continue to lose far bigger money than the odd £40 m error with a wonky calculator.

Some will perversely think the answer to all this is even more government intervention in the railways, as they deliberately duck difficult questions about the mounting losses at Network Rail. I don’t suppose they will rush to re-examine the assumptions and figures on HS2, which remain far from convincing to many.