Every year I have had the same email conversation with a small number constituents when they receive their Council Tax bills. They are ‘weekenders’ with a second home in the New Forest, whose main property is in London. They complain that their bill for their more modest Forest property is very much higher than the charge for their rather grander address in London.
I point out that the one in the Forest is, in effect, generating a subsidy for the other in London.
The reality is that shire counties get a poor deal. Government grant funding towards local authority expenditure favours large metropolitan boroughs at the expense of rural England.
The consequence is that rural counties will have to raise a greater proportion of their expenditure from local Council Tax. This is reason why a modest property in the Forest may attract a higher Council Tax than a bigger property in Greater London.

I am afraid that this discrepancy is about to get worse.
The Government published its Local Government Settlement at the beginning of the week and, though I voted against it on Wednesday, it is now a ‘done deal’.
The Government has been tampering with the formula that is used to distribute grant funding between local authorities. It has largely removed the element of the formula that compensates for ‘rurality’.
Delivering services in a rural area with sparse populations over greater distances costs more. It takes longer, it involves more vehicles, it may require more depots. The Rural Services Delivery Grant existed to address these extra cost pressures, but the Government has abolished it. It has only retained an element of ‘rurality’ compensation in the provision of social care for the elderly.
If that cost pressure exists in social care, then surely it also exists in school transport, waste collection, and also for everything else that the councils provide in rural England.
 As a consequence urban councils will receive 32% more from the Government than rural areas like Hampshire, and that difference will be reflected in our council tax

Another significant change to the formula that there is reduced reliance on population size and more reliance placed on ‘deprivation’. Nevertheless, research undertaken by the Government in 2018 suggested that deprivation “was not a major cost driver for the services included in the Foundation Formula”. The same research found that population was overwhelmingly the most important factor in driving the size of the variation in costs.
This change will have implications for us, as we are considered amongst the least deprived. Despite our relatively elderly population, the money is going to be heading north.

And I remember the Prime Minister telling us that Council Tax would go up by “not a penny” under his plans, just as we were also promised that there would be no tax increases for ‘working people’

As the furore about Peter Mandelson consumed attention, the legislative agenda carries on. Last week we dealt with the second reading of the Bill which will implement the Chancellor’s recent decision to lift the cap on additional Universal Credit payments for children, which is currently capped after the second child.

When Keir Starmer was campaigning for the leadership of his party he pledged to scrap the two-child limit. Nevertheless, when he became Leader of the Opposition, he dropped the commitment and it was not in Labour’s election manifesto. Rachel Reeves, as Chancellor made it clear that the policy would be unaffordable and the Government suspended the whip from seven Labour MPs when they voted for a motion calling for the cap to be lifted.
Yet now it is the official Government policy.
What has brought about this change.?
The cost remains at some £14 billion over five-year forecast period and the fiscal outlook, which determines the affordability of the policy, has got worse. So, it is even less affordable than it was when the Chancellor said it was unaffordable.
The reality is that this is an expedient to try and shore-up the Prime Minister’s support within his own party. It is to undo the damage of the Mandelson debacle. The policy is popular amongst Labour MPs (though polling indicates that the current cap is regarded as fair by a majority of voters). The bill we debated last week is a measure of the Government’s desperation.

This expediency is deeply damaging economically.
The benefits bill is rising and uncontrolled -the Government has abandoned its attempts to restrain its growth. Over than half of us are in receipt of more from state benefits than we contribute. Health and disability benefits alone are set to reach £100 billion in short order—that’s more than we spend on defence, education, or policing.

The debate in Parliament was dominated by the terrible ;cruelty’ of the current policy. This begs the question, if they believed it to be so cruel, then why did they let it persist for eighteen months and only seek to end it only now?
Merely seven MPs were brave enough to vote to end the cruelty earlier, and were suspended for doing so. The rest were sitting on their hands. As I asked in the debate, how do they sleep at night?

The cap is fair. If you have another child your salary doesn’t increase as a consequence. Why should it be different for those living on benefits?
Lifting the cap will be another damaging means of disincentivising work by making life on benefits the rational choice -where it pays more to be on welfare than in work.
When the cap is lifted, benefits for affected individual households will rise substantially. Nearly half a million households will receive around £5,000 more on average. A single parent on universal credit with five children could get an extra £10,000, taking the household income to more than £45,000 without it being taxed — someone in work, and taxed, would have to earn about £60,000 to be as well off.

The Government has made a choice. It has chosen to increase the rewards for those on benefits by increasing the taxes for everyone else. That is the cost of the Prime Minister’s political weakness – a cost of Mandelson.

In addition to the desperate emails I’m receiving from the retail and hospitality sectors about the hike in their business rates, I’m also receiving them from enterprises for whom the rising cost of electricity now poses an existential threat.
The Government promised to reduce our electricity bills, indeed it says it has already done so. I confess that I hadn’t noticed any reduction in my own bill.
I often wonder if one part of the department of Energy and Net Zero is unaware of what another part of it is up to, because even as ministers insist they are acting to cut bills, the department is acting to put them up.
Here is a case in point. Last week I chaired a legislative committee to amend the UK emissions trading scheme, This scheme was established in 2020 as part of our commitment under the Climate Change Act 2008, to reduce carbon emissions towards the net zero goal.

Under this scheme, enterprises buy allowances at regularly held auctions, to generate emissions and are required to monitor and report their greenhouse gas emissions. This system is, in effect, a carbon tax on producers, raising revenue for the Treasury.
 Some producers, in sectors subject to fierce overseas competition, and consequently at risk of ‘carbon leakage’ , are given a number of allowances  free of charge.
Carbon leakage is a euphemism for forcing the businesses to go bust or go overseas where energy prices are much lower. In which case, we would end up importing the products, so there won’t be fewer emissions being generated, they would just be generated elsewhere.
The principal industries who need these free allocations are the big energy consumers; manufacturers of chemicals, cement, steel, gas power stations, oil refineries,  food manufacturers  and similar operations.

The purpose of the legislative order that we were debating was to reduce the number of free carbon allowances available, the aim being to put pressure on industry to invest in new technology so they can make their products without generating so much carbon.

The legislation came with helpful explanatory notes including an impact assessment. These state  that whilst the effect will be to put substantial extra direct costs on to business,
“our working assumption is that all costs are incurred to business, with no indirect impacts to households.”
But then in the very next paragraph it says the very opposite:
“we estimate that cost-pass through for most sectors could feasibly be at 80-90%”.
‘Cost pass-through’ in plain language means higher prices for consumers and higher electricity bills.
We all know which of these statements is the correct one. Clearly, squeezing producers with a higher carbon tax will prompt them to pass as much of it as they can on to the consumers, by charging higher prices.

About 12% of our electricity bills is accounted for by the carbon tax, that’s about £100 on a typical household bill. This measure is going to force it up, and consequently lots of other prices are going to go up with it.

The Prime Minister says he now wants to concentrate on the cost of living. He is going to have to concentrate a lot harder: he will need start by finding out what his government is actually doing, including in statutory orders like this one.

 

The recent defections from the Conservative Party to Reform have prompted a number of constituents to write to me demanding a change in the law which would require any such defection to trigger a by-election.  Voters who elected the defector chose a particular party to vote for, so they ought to be able to review the decision if their MP has left that party for another.
I disagree.
We don’t elect political parties, we elect named candidates. It is only in the second half of the twentieth century that a candidate’s party allegiance could be placed on the ballot paper at all.
(It was the purpose of the poster campaign to associate the name of the candidate with the political party because it would not be apparent on the ballot paper.)
I recall listening to the BBC election results coverage on the radio in the early nineteen seventies. When the returning officer gave the votes cast for each candidate, the BBC commentator would have to whisper the candidate’s party immediately after the returning officer read the name.

The chief duty that a member of Parliament owes to his constituents is the exercise of his judgement on the issues of the day as they affect the lives of those constituents. When you vote to elect a candidate, you are putting your faith in that candidate’s judgement for the duration of the parliamentary term. That judgement will include the political party with which he chooses to associate.

John Wilkes, the eighteen-century campaigner for liberty, took a different view. He believed that voters ought to be able to mandate their MP to vote in a particular way. Such a system might have been sustainable before the extension of the franchise, but it would be unworkable as soon as the number of voters in any constituency rose beyond any means by which they might reasonably be consulted.
I receive two hundred emails daily but I’m confident that 99% of my constituents have never shared an opinion with me. Overwhelmingly it is the same people who repeatedly email me.
An MP must represent all constituents, not just those who shout loudest.
I believe firmly that, once elected, an MP should exercise his judgement on behalf of his constituents uninterrupted for the remainder of the parliamentary term. Where constituents disagree with his judgement, they can vote to be rid of him at the following election.

The Independent contacted me for comment because I was, they assured me, on the ‘defection watch list’!
I referred them to my earlier blog when Danny Kruger defected: Kruger . My mind hasn’t changed,. And will not change

I believe that screen based, or phone based childhood is no childhood at all. We are in danger of abolishing childhood altogether.

              So, I am rather pleased to have had my inbox inundated with hundreds of emails following Kemi Badenoch’s announcement that, if elected, she would follow Australia’s lead by banning under-sixteens from social media. The Prime Minister too, has jumped on the bandwagon, not by making a firm commitment, but by saying that ‘nothing is off the table’ .
Of the hundreds of emails that I have received, one hundred to one are in favour of the proposal.
The principal objection of those few that disagree is that this ought to properly be a matter reserved for parents to decide, and that parental responsibility should not be usurped by the state control. It is a fair point, but my judgement is that it is outweighed by the harm that unrestricted access can have. After all, we do not allow parental discretion to extend to allowing their children to purchase alcohol, go to X-rated movies, or drive the family car.
Children are now spending record amounts of time online, exposed to violence, pornography and extremist content, with experts warning this is contributing to deteriorating mental health, poor sleep, isolation, and knock-on effects for learning and behaviour.
The introduction of a legal ban will help parents to enforce boundaries. One might say that, rather that replacing parental authority, on the contrary, it will assist parents.
The other objection is of a different order: it’s that the proposal doesn’t go far enough because it will exclude WhatsApp and other limited communication tools. I think making this exception is fair. WhatsApp does not use algorithms to feed users with content in the way that so many other applications do. In fact, many families, including my own, use WhatsApp as a means of keeping tabs on their children.

One cannot but admire the sheer efficiency, capability and prowess exhibited by US forces in capturing President Maduro of Venezuela. Their might is truly awesome.
As for concerns about the ‘rule of law’, when did that concept ever trouble the Maduro regime?
To be frank, Maduro had it coming.
It says something about the regime’s trust in the loyalty of its own forces, that Maduro’s security detail was provided by Cuba.
Some of my colleagues have asked what message the US intervention sends to Russia regarding Its war on Ukraine, or to China regarding its threat to Taiwan. Forgive me, but Russia’s five years of brutal warfare in Ukraine, with its deliberate toll on civilian life, with the kidnapping of thousands of Children, will not be informed by, nor should be compared with, the US surgical operation in Venezuela.
As for Taiwan, China’s actions will be determined by the strength and readiness of Taiwan’s own military capability, and China’s assessment of the strategic ambiguity surrounding potential American involvement.
Much of the European reaction to the events in Venezuela, and comments about the future of Greenland are a product of our own impotence and lack of military capability. The fault is our own. We took a ‘peace dividend’ by cutting defence expenditure drastically after the Cold War when, in reality, there was no peace.
Incidentally, though I would seldom find myself in agreement with Lord Mandelson, he is right about Greenland: there isn’t the remotest chance of US military action.
European Governments need to wind in their necks and start being serious about defence expenditure.

Brigitte Bardot’s Funeral this week prompted fond memories. I am of a generation of men who, when asked about beautiful women, immediately call to mind the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Raquel Welch -the great film stars of our youth.
Though I admired her, and her concern for animal welfare, I thought her politics were ‘wired to the Moon’.
Actually, I once performed as Brigitte Bardot in a class play at school. It would have probably been nineteen sixty-eight. The play was written by our French master, Mr Speight, who we affectionally referred to behind his back as ‘Spidget’. I can’t remember much about it except that Brigitte had been the victim of a robbery. The only line that I recall was yelling “o mes bijoux, mes beaux bijoux”.
Mr Speight died a year ago. And next week I will be attending the funeral of yet another of my former teachers. I often reflect on the profound impression that they made upon me, and of the humanity and passion with which they taught.
In addition to being a brilliant linguist and remarkable teacher, Spidget ran the model railway club and his jacket pockets were always bulging with jars of jam and pickles. He would often take a lucky half-dozen of us out for a ride on a Sunday afternoon in his 1965 Citroen DS, with its hydro-pneumatic suspension.

Oh, that these days might come again.

At this time of year I’ve often used this column to reflect on doom-laden prophesies about what to expect in the year ahead. After all, It’s that magnificent time when we can wallow in the short dark days and add to the gloom with blood-curdling predictions of disasters.

For those of us who do wallow in predictions of the dreadful prospects that the future holds, I recommend my favourite book of all time: The Coffee Table Book of Doom, which was published a few years ago by Art Lester and Steven Appleby. Here is a flavour from the advertising blurb:
“…with the apocalypse at hand, don’t fret about dying uninformed. The Coffee Table Book of Doom is a revelatory, brilliantly funny, superbly illustrated and erudite compendium of all the 27 doom-laden horsemen we need to worry about – personal doom, gender erosion, asteroid impact, pandemics, super storms, sexual ruin – and much more besides.”

Anyway, a new ‘horseman’ has arisen in the form of Artificial Intelligence.
I previously opined on AI in this column last July: Artificial Intelligence
Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights of, which I am a member, (‘joint’ because it is comprised of both MPs and peers) is currently conducting an investigation into the human rights implications of the technology.
The principal near term threat is to employment opportunities. Technology has always changed the nature of employment, replacing all kinds of labour, but presenting the possibility new and better opportunities elsewhere. The jury is still out, as to whether AI will replace most of us, or create sufficient new employment to keep us satisfied. The need to do useful work is part of our basic psychology.  We learn in the Bible that even Almighty God worked on the creation before, seeing that it was good, and rested.

Nevertheless, a new and much more dreadful prospect has arisen: that AI will develop into a ‘general intelligence’ and threaten our very existence. I ‘ve just stated reading The New York Times instant bestseller If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsk. The blurb states that “the scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction-but it’s not too late to change course, as two of the field’s earliest researchers explain in this clarion call for humanity, may prove to be the most important book of our time.”
I’m only one chapter into it, but my understanding is that the basic thesis is that we don’t understand how AI works and therefore will not be able to control it.

In our last evidence session in the Human Rights Committee, I asked one of the world’s leading experts how scared, on a scale of one to ten, should we of the technology. His answer was eleven.
I’ll read the rest of the book, and reflect.

Yesterday, the Commons started progress on the Finance Bill, the bill that puts last month’s budget into law. That budget has brought about the highest tax burden ever in our history,
 What will the Government do with all the Tax that it is raising?
 They will not pay down the national debt—it is going up. They will not employ more teachers; their numbers are falling. They will not employ more police officers either; their numbers are falling too.
 Instead, they will turn hard-working taxpayers’ money into handouts: the money is for Benefits Street.

To-day the Chancellor has hailed the Bank of England’s decision to cut interest rates as a measure of her own successful stewardship. On the contrary, the Bank has made it abundantly clear that, despite inflation above target, it cut the interest rate because it is increasingly concerned about the risk “from weaker demand” due to rising unemployment and low growth: Not an auspicious background to begin the committee stage of the Finance Bill.