Sir Desmond Swayne TD

Sir Desmond Swayne TD

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The Tax Burden

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I am at a loss to understand the surprise that so many people express when told that the tax burden is higher than it has ever previously been. It is also the case that public expenditure is higher than it has ever previously been. The two are not unconnected.
There seems to be an insatiable desire for the state to do more and more for us, inevitable placing a greater burden on taxpayers.

Rarely, do constituents come to me with suggestions for cuts in public services.
Those of us who believe that both society and our economy will benefit from lower taxes, need to come up with a coherent plan to restrain the apparently insatiable demand for more public expenditure

Employing Ex-Offenders

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Over the last couple of years I’ve had my ear bent by so many local enterprises about the difficulty they are having in recruiting staff. It is a national problem: we have a million vacancies. With that in mind, I am now lending my support to  Starting Fresh – a campaign being run by Sodexo, one of our principal recruitment specialists, which aims to encourage businesses to employ more people with criminal convictions. The campaign is designed to help remove the barriers associated with the employment of ex-offenders.

 

Apart from the benefit to businesses in finding employees in a tight labour market, getting ex-offenders into work is an important part of making sure that they successfully reintegrate into their local communities.
Too often misconceptions and prejudice prevent businesses from tapping into this underutilised resource. Concerns about hiring people with criminal convictions can often be attributed to a failure to appreciate the quality of education which now takes place in prison. Many of the 50,000, or so, offenders who leave prison every year do so with formal qualifications they didn’t have before they were sentenced.

 

Businesses can access the Starting Fresh online hub, where they can find advice about how to make use of this underutilised resource and provide support in the workplace.

Sodexo also runs prisons on behalf of the Ministry of Justice and is, in addition,  using this campaign to let employers know they are welcome to visit their prisons if they are interested in offering job opportunities to prisoners when they are released. Organisations with multiple job opportunities can even run employer days in the prisons.

More information on the campaign can be had from https://uk.sodexo.com/startingfresh.hmtl

Buy British Email Campaign

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Our farmers play a crucial role in supporting food security, driving economic growth, and helping us achieve our net zero goals. The Government is proud to celebrate our British farmers and growers who work to produce world-renowned, high-quality produce all year round.

Ministers are working to raise awareness of the UK’s reputation for high-quality food and drink produced to high standards of food safety, animal welfare, and sustainability. The Government’s Food Strategy promotes more locally sourced food and commits to maintaining the current level of food we produce domestically and increasing production in sectors with the biggest opportunities, such as horticulture and seafood.

I am aware of the campaign calling for a “Buy British” section when shopping online, and it is important to buy British produce from our supermarkets. In September, the Government backed calls for industry-led action to signpost customers to buy British food and drink when shopping online and will support campaigns to endorse the taste and quality of home-grown meat and dairy products.

Through working with producers and supermarkets through the Food Data Transparency Partnership, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will improve the data collected on where our food comes from to make British products more easily recognisable to international buyers. In addition, farmers that produce sustainable British food under the environmental land management schemes will be able to use them to help meet public procurement standards, benefiting our British farmers and allowing the public sector to benefit from more excellent British food.

Further, following the UK Farm to Fork Summit, the Government confirmed £2 million of investment to boost the UK’s programme of global trade shows and missions, as well as £1.6 million for the GREAT food and drink campaign. Our food and drink exports bring £24 billion to the British economy, and the UK’s network of agri-food attachés play an important role in removing barriers to trade and opening up new trading markets. The UK will build on its existing overseas network with five additional agri-food and drink attachés who will have a key role in removing restrictive market barriers.

The UK has good reason to be proud of its food and drink industry. Our network of food festivals, as well as our country’s restaurants and pubs, are testament to that. The Government continues to support campaigns to persuade consumers to choose British.

DS

Puppy Smuggling Email Campaign

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Ministers are committed to cracking down on puppy smuggling and will ban the imports of young or heavily pregnant dogs, as well as dogs with mutilations, such as cropped ears or docked tails. Applying strengthened penalties will send a clear message that animal cruelty will not be tolerated and will enable our courts to take a firmer approach to cases where pets are illegally imported. The Government would be supportive of legislation to ban this through a single-issue Bill when parliamentary time allows.

The UK has one of the most rigorous pet travel border checking regimes in the world and every dog travelling into Great Britain on approved routes has its microchip and paperwork checked to make sure they are properly vaccinated and are old enough to travel. In addition, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) consulted on proposed changes to the commercial and non-commercial movements of pets into Great Britain. Defra has been carefully reviewing feedback from this consultation, and a summary will follow in due course.

Further, Ministers have taken action to tackle the practice of puppy farming. Following the introduction of Lucy’s Law in 2020, everyone must now buy directly from breeders or consider adopting from rescue centres, which is a major step in stopping the illegal pet trade. If an individual sells puppies or kittens without a licence, they could receive an unlimited fine or be sent to prison for up to six months.

DS

Rwanda – facing down the judges

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Some of my parliamentary colleagues, particularly those who are lawyers, get frightfully upset when I criticise judicial decisions. They believe that the separation of powers -political from judicial- is so sacrosanct that no politician should intrude by criticising the judgements of the courts.
I disagree. As an elected politician it is quite proper for me to give voice to the frustration that so many constituents express to me about judicial decisions, whether it is the leniency of sentences or ‘high politics’, where courts have frustrated the will of Government -which should properly be a matter for Parliament.

There is enormous anger about leniency in sentencing. More than half our most prolific offenders -with at least 45 previous convictions- are never sent to prison. This is the reason that Parliament has increasingly been intervening with new laws to set mandatory minimum sentences to bind the judges, as we will again on 28th November with the second reading of the Criminal Justice Bill.

Greater still is the frustration with Judicial intervention in the most contentious political issues of the day. I expressed my robust rejection of the authority of the Supreme Court in this column in my blog about the prorogation of Parliament back in September 2019:
 Yes, it is a coup (desmondswaynemp.com)
Now we have  had the judgement that the Government’s scheme to deport asylum claimants to Rwanda is unlawful, with which I profoundly disagree.

Nevertheless, I’d be the first to acknowledge that throughout history Judges have played a key role in preserving our liberty. And that an independent judiciary is an essential part of a functioning liberal democracy. In any event, we already have a solution where we believe judicial activism has gone too far.
In their decisions judges make law. If we don’t like the laws that they make, then we have the remedy in Parliament, just as we have with lenient sentencing: Statute law made in Parliament trumps law made by judges in the courts.
The problem is that it will take time, and time is running out. A bill to make the Rwanda scheme lawful would pass at speed in the Commons but would be held up by the delaying power of the Lords, where the Government has no majority. We could prorogue, and re-present the bill in the new parliamentary session, forcing it through under the Parliament Act. it would be controversial and messy, it might not be quick but it would work.

That leaves us only having to deal with the international judges whose power derives from the treaty obligations to which we voluntarily acceded. They will not be overawed by Parliament. If they intervened, we’d have to withdraw from those obligations. The PM has indicated that, if necessary, he will do so.

The Rwanda deal, as a deterrent to illegal migrants, is an essential element to successfully stopping the boats, but it is only one element. Of greater importance are bi-lateral agreements to return the migrants to their countries of origin. Our agreement with Albania, from which the greatest number were coming, has cut those numbers by 90%.
The argument is made that, were we to withdraw from the international conventions, then it would be so much more difficult to sustain and extend bi-lateral return arrangements, that we’d be a pariah and that nobody would deal with us.
I think this is nonsense. Other European countries are experiencing very much greater numbers of illegal migrants and are already following where we have led. There is a common view now that the historic conventions on refugees are completely unfit for the current reality. I’m confident that  where we continue to lead, other developed nations will continue to follow.

Make Care Fairer for People with Dementia Email Campaign

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An estimated one million people will be living with dementia by 2025, so research is crucial to understanding the condition and improving outcomes for those affected. The Government’s 2019 manifesto committed to doubling dementia research funding and finding a cure for dementia.

In memory of the late Dame Barbara Windsor, the Government launched a new mission in 2022 to put this into practice. Research funding for dementia will rise to a total of £160 million a year by 2024, with an additional £95 million being provided to increase clinical trials and research projects.

A new taskforce – made up of industry, the NHS, academia and families affected by dementia – will lead this work to allocate funding.  You can register your interest to take part through the Join Dementia Research website here: https://www.joindementiaresearch.nihr.ac.uk/

Finally, the Government has announced its intention to develop and publish a Major Conditions Strategy. The strategy will set out a strong and coherent policy agenda that sets out a shift to integrated, whole-person care. Interventions set out in the strategy will aim to alleviate pressure on the health system, as well as support the Government’s objective to increase healthy life expectancy and reduce ill-health related labour market inactivity. Dementia is one of the six major conditions included in the strategy.

On 17 May, the Government launched its call for evidence for the Major Conditions Strategy which ran until 27 June. The Government is analysing responses and will respond shortly.

DS

Water Pollution Email Campaign

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The Government fully appreciates the importance of our rivers. The volume of sewage and other pollution being discharged into our waters is completely unacceptable. The Government’s Plan for Water, published earlier this year, sets out more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement to tackle every source of pollution.

As part of the plan, over £2.2 billion of investment has been accelerated. This will be directed into vital infrastructure to improve water quality and secure future supplies, with £1.7 billion of this to tackle storm overflows. Ministers have set stringent targets for water companies to reduce storm overflows, driving the largest infrastructure programme in water company history of £60 billion over 25 years. This is a credible plan which includes front-loading action in particularly important and sensitive sites, including bathing waters.

Regarding regulation, Ministers are driving up monitoring and transparency. Monitoring of storm overflows has increased substantially, from only 7 per cent in 2010 to 91 per cent now, and companies are on track to reach 100 per cent by the end of the year. It is precisely because of this monitoring that action can be taken to fix storm overflows and hold water companies to account. The Government is clear that water companies must not profit from environmental damage and Ofwat has been given increased powers under the Environment Act 2021 to hold them to account for poor performance. In March, Ofwat announced new powers that will enable it to take enforcement actions against water companies that do not link dividend payments to performance for both customers and the environment.

In July, Ministers introduced laws to remove the £250,000 cap on penalties that can be handed out by environmental regulators, as well as significantly broaden their scope to target a much wider range of offences. This will ensure that regulators have the right tools to drive compliance across a range of sectors, including water companies. Fines from water companies are being reinvested into the new Water Restoration Fund, which will deliver on-the-ground improvements to water quality and support local groups and community-led schemes which help to protect our waterways.

Further, the Environment Agency has launched the largest criminal investigation into unpermitted water company sewage discharges ever at over 2,200 treatment works. Environment Agency funding is closely monitored to ensure that it can carry out its duties and functions effectively. Its funding for inspections comes directly from the permits issued to companies; enforcement is funded by government, and in the current Spending Review period, the Environment Agency’s environment RDEL (Resource) grant for 2022/23 increased to £96 million from £56 million in 2020/21.

These measures and others are making progress and Ministers will continue to make further improvements where necessary. Our bathing waters continue to improve, with 93 per cent classified as good or excellent in 2022 compared to 76 per cent in 2010. There is now 80 per cent less phosphorus and 85 per cent less ammonia in our rivers compared to 1990 when water was privatised.

DS

Capitalism & Climate

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I debated against motion  “The Climate Crisis Cannot Be Effectively Tackled Without Transforming Capitalism” at Durham University last night: 

 

The Proof of any pudding is in the eating:

The boffins at Yale, mapping their Environmental Index on to the international indices that measure the ‘capitalism of economies’ -the World Bank’s Ease of Doing business index and the International Chamber of Commerce’s Open Market Index  -reveal that the freer the economy the better environmental record.
Furthermore that there is a critical point in the economic development of free economies when additional economic growth leads greater environmental benefit
This is the reverse of what groups like Extinction Rebellion tell us

Why?
Well., there are several reasons, but I’ll fix on just one
Capitalist driven economic growth affords citizens the opportunity to care more about the environment. We aren’t consumed with worry about disease, slums, and malnutrition, so instead have resources to care about the environment and to demand political action from our democratic systems to address it.

For Example:  Notwithstanding that our coasts and rivers are cleaner than they have been for years, every time a storm overflow discharges into the river Avon I get scores of emails demanding action, and that sort of political pressure drives the eye-watering £60 Billion investment now planned.
Equally London was often ground to a halt by smog and fog  so thick they were called ‘pea soupers’ it led to political action and the Clean Air Act.
Where is the campaign for clean air in Beijing?


 People who are worried about where their next meal is coming from, or about dying from malaria, are not in a position to be concerned about the extinction of endangered species or potentially rising water levels driven by climate change. And even if they were, they don’t enjoy the political freedoms and property rights that capitalism promotes, in order to demand a remedy

Some comparisons: In the 198ies Total Green House Gas emissions in the USSR, with an economy a fraction of the USA generated, at the most conservative estimate, at least one and a half times as much pollution as the USA per unit of GNP.
East Germany provides an example as a socialist-capitalist contrast with West Germany. Before it folded, CO2 emissions in the German Democratic Republic were almost twice the West German level, in per capita terms – astonishing when compared to how much richer the German Federal Republic was.
When the Soviet system collapsed, the enormity of environmental degradation became apparent including the  disappearance of the Aral Sea, perhaps one of the worst environmental disasters, and directly attributable to socialist planning.

I do not contend that Capitalism is an environmentalist’s paradise. Of course there are plenty of examples of capitalist excess that we need to address through regulation, as Adam Smith sets out in Book 5 of The wealth of Nations. This is why property rights, contract, rule of law, a free press, and democratic oversight are essential components of Capitalism.

But the present danger is this:
A New puritanism is out to rob you of your liberty. To coerce you into giving up meat, to confine you to 15 minute cities, to take away the convenience and liberation of your own car, restrict you to public transport, stop you enjoying international travel.
But let’s be clear. We account for about 1% of Co2 emissions. Were we to stop at once, it would make no difference to climate change. The future of emissions will be determined in Latin America, India and China. Currently they have other priorities,
Remember Alok Sharma in tears closing COP 26 when he thought he had unanimous agreement to abandon coal – but they pulled the plug on him at the last moment
 Why?
 Because their people are, per capita, much poorer, so they attach a much greater priority to increasing consumption. If you were poor your priorities would be exactly the same.

As Bill Gates points out in How to avoid a Climate Disaster, the solution lies in the technologies that enable us to enjoy increasing prosperity whilst repairing the damage to the planet’s climate.
Where socialist planning has sought to catch-up by investing in industrial espionage and the theft of intellectual property. It is the initiative and enterprise of capitalist economies that are the essential engines of innovation and technological advance,
This is Capitalism’s greatest strength, and frankly, without it we have no chance!

On the contrary, Capitalism -far from being the problem – it is the solution.

 

 

[In the student debate Capitalism won – by a very comfortable margin]

Climate and Ecology Bill Email Campaign

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This Bill has lapsed as it was introduced in a previous parliamentary session which has now ended. However, tackling climate change is a top priority for the Government and Ministers are committed to leaving the environment in a better state than they found it.

The UK already has a world-leading emissions reduction framework in place. The Climate Change Act 2008 made the UK the first country to introduce a legally binding, long-term emissions reduction target.

In October 2021, the Government published the Net Zero Strategy, building on the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. To oversee progress on achieving net zero, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) provides expert advice to the Government on climate change mitigation and adaptation. The UK’s 2050 net-zero target was considered, in line with advice from the CCC, to be the earliest feasible date for achieving net-zero carbon emissions.

Further, through the Environment Act 2021, the Government has set four legally binding targets for biodiversity in England, including halting the decline in species abundance by 2030, as well as reversing species decline, reducing the risk of species extinction, and restoring or creating more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats by 2042. The Government set out its plan to deliver on these ambitious targets through the Environmental Improvement Plan, which includes short-term interim targets in addition to those long-term targets. This overall suite of targets will ensure that the policies, actions and commitments in the plan are collectively driving progress towards the goal of leaving the environment in a better place than we found it.

Finally, the UK played a leading role at the UN biodiversity summit, COP15, in December 2022. The agreement made includes a global commitment to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and also protect 30 per cent of land and oceans by 2030. This builds on the actions agreed during the UK’s own COP and G7 presidencies, including securing the Leaders Pledge for Nature last year which commits world leaders to taking action to drive sustainable food production, end the illegal wildlife trade and tackle climate change. 

DS

Animal Welfare Email Campaign

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The UK has long led the way on animal welfare and the Government has delivered an ambitious legislative programme since the publication of the Action Plan for Animal Welfare. Ministers are committed to building on our strong track record on animal welfare.  

In the King’s Speech, the Government announced the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill, which will ban the export of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses for slaughter and fattening from Great Britain, stopping unnecessary stress, exhaustion and injury caused by exporting live animals. This Bill will ensure that animals are slaughtered domestically in high welfare slaughterhouses in the UK, reinforcing the UK’s position as a world leader on animal welfare.

Regarding puppy smuggling, the UK has one of the most rigorous pet travel border checking regimes in the world and every dog travelling into Great Britain on approved routes has its microchip and paperwork checked to make sure they are all properly vaccinated and are old enough to travel. The Government has said that it will ban the imports of young, heavily pregnant or mutilated dogs and it would be supportive of legislating to ban this through a single-issue Bill when parliamentary time allows.

Further, mindful of the challenges the sectors are facing, Ministers do not consider the time is right to consult on cage reforms. However, the market is already driving the move away from using cages for laying hen production. In addition, the Government’s animal welfare priorities for its Animal Health and Welfare Pathway include supporting producers to transition away from confinement systems.

On food labelling for animal welfare, Ministers want to make it easier for consumers to purchase food that aligns with their values, by improving transparency and providing the industry with a level playing field to promote such products. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) intends to work with the industry to explore how to harness the market to improve food information for consumers and raise animal welfare standards.

In 2021, Defra carried out a call for evidence on the fur trade in Great Britain. Defra continues to build an evidence base on the fur sector, which will be used to inform any future action on the fur trade. This includes commissioning the Animal Welfare Committee to explore current responsible sourcing practices in the fur industry.

Finally, in May, the Prime Minister set out the Government’s six principles to ensure that British farming is at the heart of British trade. One of these principles included seeking to advance international co-operation on animal welfare and to promote high welfare standards. The UK will safeguard its ability to maintain high animal welfare, environmental and food standards in new trade agreements.

DS