99.3% of the UK Budget is not spent on Overseas Aid. So what is all the fuss about? When looked at in the context of the whole of the Budget, 0.7% is in fact a very small amount. And whilst we are on about fuss, who wrote this? -
“Our generous but carefully controlled aid programme is both an investment in the freedom and prosperity of the poorer countries and in a stable and expanding world economy"
- or when asked about the essential role of Government, argued -
“...you have to do international aid."
It was none other than Margaret Thatcher. The first quote is from the 1983 Manifesto, and the second from The Times in 1988. Whilst she was in office, the UK spent more, in proportion to GDP, on overseas development than the United States.
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow Robert on Twitter.
Dear Andrew,
I read your latest article in the Telegraph with interest. We agree on many
things. For example, that a new homes tax would be misguided. You are right to
highlight the danger of taxing property, not merely because of the cost of
revaluing Council Tax bands, but also because of the precedent that it
sets. First they come for homes worth more than £2 million. Then £1 million.
Then £500,000 ... ?
However, we disagree about restoring
the 10p rate of tax. Like many on the Centre-Right, I believe that the creation
of new progressive bands of income tax would be a noble goal for Conservatives.
For example, a 10p band introduced above the current personal allowance (say
between £9,440 and £12,000) would hand back more than £250 a year to a worker
on minimum wage, and would help them to earn much closer to a Living Wage in
cash-terms. Conservatives could also look to widen out a 10p band over time.
This could help more middle earners as well.
You take a different view. In the
Telegraph, your preference is for tax cuts to be focused on raising the
personal allowance even higher than £10,000 to “take more people out of tax
altogether”. This is where we part company. I believe that having
raised the personal tax-free allowance to £10,000, Conservatives should
argue in a restoration of the 10p rate instead.
There are some important differences
here, and they are worth exploring.
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter.
What is the best way to show that tax-cutting is the best
way to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, to help eliminate the
poverty trap and create incentives to work? What tax measure would really
neutralise Labour's oft-spoken claims that we cut taxes for the rich?
The answer is by showing that there is a moral mission for
lower taxes — and the best, boldest, and most symbolic way would be to restore
the starting ten pence band of income-tax, which Gordon Brown scrapped in 2008.
When Labour brought in the 50p income tax-rate, it cost HMRC
something like £7 billion pounds overnight, as people changed their behaviour
to avoid the new tax. This year, the Coalition will cut that 50p income
tax-rate down to 45p, because this is expected to raise more money from
the rich, not less. The message of the campaign at CutTaxTo10p.com —
or, alternatively GreatGordonBrownRepealBill.com ! — is that we should use
every extra penny raised from this to restore the 10p basic rate of income tax,
to help lower earners. Added to the Universal Credit, this will help
stop disincentives to employment, and to ensure that work always
pays.
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for
Harlow. Follow Rob
on Twitter.
I agree that
there should be a Palestinian State. In fact, not many realise there is already
a Palestinian State called Jordan — originally called TransJordan (because it
was across the River on the East Bank), that was created by the British, for
the Arabs, as part of the original state of Palestine in 1921. The idea of
the 1917 Balfour Declaration was that the Jews would have a smaller part of the
other side of the river. In fact, after the 1948-9 war against the newly
created State of Israel, the Jordanian monarch, Abdullah called himself the
King of Jordan AND Palestine, as his country controlled The West Bank.
The vast majority of Arabs currently in Jordan are in fact Palestinians. The
rulers of Jordan are, however, not Palestinian, as the monarchy are minority
Hashemites. Before the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel defeated the Arab invasion
and took control of the West Bank and Gaza (which had been under the arm of
Egypt), there had never been demands from Palestinians in the disputed
Territories for a second Palestinian State, as they were under Jordanian rule.
Robert Halfon is the
Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter.
On Tuesday, I tabled a Private Members Bill on petrol prices, supported
by many other Conservative backbenchers, as well as MPs from Northern Ireland,
and Scotland. (You can see an extract in the short video above.) The idea
behind it was very simple: that fuel tax should be crystal clear to motorists.
In essence, this would sweep away the complex regulations about what fuel
garages can and cannot put on their till receipts, and replace them with one
simple rule. That whenever you fill up the family car, the till receipt should
say in black and white how much fuel duty, VAT, and petrol you have paid. It
should also say how much is actually being spent on Britain’s roads.
Simple. This would make the tax system more honest; it would be a big deterrent
against any future tax-rises; and it would add pressure on the oil companies to
be fair.
At present, the amount of tax charged on fuel is invisible, disguising the fact
that fuel duty and VAT together make up more than 60% of pump prices.
FairFuelUK, independent fuel retailers, the Taxpayers Alliance, and PetrolPromise.com
are all campaigning in different ways for cheaper petrol and diesel, and for
fuel tax transparency as well. FairFuelUK have even created an example of what
an honest fuel receipt might look like. You can see it here.
To its credit, this is a Government that believes in transparency. The
Prime Minister has said:
“We want to be the most open and transparent Government in the world.”
What better to show this than printing the level of fuel duty on garage
receipts?
Inevitably, there will be some Treasury Sir Humphries who are sceptical.
“Isn’t this up to the retailers?” They may ask. “Can this really be done?”
“Doesn’t this create a dangerous precedent?”
First of all, the HMRC website has a prescriptive 15-bullet point list
of what a VAT receipt can and cannot show. Transparency needs to be led by
Government. Only a Bill can give genuine clarity to retailers, and make it
standard across the whole country.
Second, the precedent has already been set. The Government is (rightly)
supporting Ben Gummer’s brilliant idea, and giving every taxpayer a statement
of what their personal taxes pay for. My point is: Why not do this for fuel
duty, as well?
A similar Sir Humphrey argument might be used about Labour’s 3p fuel
duty rise, which is planned for January 2013. The question is: Where does the
money come from?
Weighed against should be the increasing evidence that poorer drivers
are being forced off the roads by expensive fuel prices, with less money is
coming into the Treasury as a result. LSE studies show that high petrol costs
could even be adding to Britain’s dole queues. The AA has stated that 3p extra
on a litre of fuel drains £1.8 million off the High Street every single day.
This is because human behaviour is dynamic. People respond to incentives, and
the Treasury should account for this.
That is why over the coming weeks and months, I will be urging Ministers
to give a strong signal that there will be no further fuel duty rises this
Parliament. This would not only benefit jobs and growth, but it would help
significantly with the cost of living. The Prime Minister spoke up
strongly for “White
Van Conservatism” in his party conference speech. Let’s get those
White Van wheels in motion, and stop Labour’s 3p rise in fuel duty.
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter.
If Ed Milliband wanted to claim that Labour is the party of One Nation — or of One Notion, as described by the PM — then the Tories can do some similar stealing
of Labour clothes.
The Conference in Birmingham, redefined by Mr Cameron’s speech, showed that
the Conservatives are the true Workers' Party now. Whilst Labour remain
the party of state welfarism and the dependency culture, Conservatives re-took
the battleground of aspiration — a primary Tory story through the ages.
White Van Conservatism triumphed over metropolitan intellectualism. The Aspiration Nation over Harvard-inspired ‘predistribution’.
White Van
Conservatism is not based on ‘right wing caricature’, as painted by our
opponents. As ConservativeHome has described, it is strong and
compassionate too. For a long time, commentators made the mistake of thinking that
Conservatives could only be modern if they had metropolitan values.
Anything outside that worldview was old fashioned "right-wing". In his
appeal to strivers, the Prime MInister’s speech disproved this thesis.
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter.
I
am one of those who believe that pessimism is a luxury that no Tory can allow
himself. So, whilst we can watch Mr Miliband's speech and congratulate him for
some political ingenuity — regarding his 'One Nation' clarion call — in
practice this gives Conservatives a tremendous opportunity: a chance to
reinvigorate the Big Society.
For
Labour, 'One Nation' still remains another way of saying “the State”. Looking
at his speech closely, Mr Miliband argues for “collective action” through the mechanisms
of the State. This has been the Socialist cry through the ages; alleviate
poverty through redistribution using the levers of Government. He still is
arguing for a social-democratic state that robs from the rich in order to give
to the poor.
Another
thought: “One Nation” as expounded by Disraeli was intrinsically “Tory” — it
spoke for tradition, not for its own sake, but because it provided an anchor of
stability between the generations. For Labour, the '500 year old Oak Tree' is
anathema because their view of “One Nation” means Year Zero.
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter.
Today in Parliament, I will lead a debate in Parliament, urging the Office of Fair Trading and the Financial Services Authority to investigate the oil market. This is for three reasons:
Oil companies - we have proof - are stopping cheaper oil prices from getting to market. This hurts people on low incomes, who are filling up the family car.
A professional oil trader has now given an explosive statement to my PetrolPromise.com website, explaining in detail how the oil-price is being rigged by speculators and banks.
Some bad news today for people filling up the family car. The Sun says oil prices are set to hit “a new high”,causing misery for millions. The Daily Mail reports that Britain is still the 10th most expensive place in the world to buy petrol and diesel. Now, I accept that this Government has stepped up to the plate when it comes to cutting fuel duty. Petrol is now 10p per litre cheaper than Labour planned, thanks to George Osborne. The tax on fuel has been either frozen or reduced steadily for two years. In fact, the Chancellor has now done more to keep petrol prices down in this Parliament than Labour did in 13 years.
But why are prices at the pumps still so expensive? The answer — uncomfortable though it may be for some Conservatives — is that the oil market is neither transparent nor competitive. That is why I have founded the e-petition website PetrolPromise.com — powered by software from Right Angle — to call for an investigation into the UK oil market, after allegations of price-fixing at the pumps.
Regular readers will know that I have been banging on about petrol and diesel prices for some years now - and actually ConservativeHome was instrumental, in making the case through 2011 for lower fuel duty. The Government listened to us, and deserve credit for it. George Osborne has done more to cut fuel taxes in two years, than Labour did in a decade.
Today MPs will debate fuel prices again. Forget the recent price-drops - however good they may be - motorists are being ripped off for pounds, not pennies. A few pennies are welcome but they are not enough. Fuel duty is still too high, and even at this late stage I am urging the Government to think again on the 3p rise in August 2012.
But there is a bigger and more dangerous Leviathan, which is crushing our economic recovery. The oil market, along with bank speculation in oil, is keeping the international price of crude oil dangerously high - oil is now so ludicrously expensive in fact that even if the Chancellor DID cut fuel duty, families would barely feel it in their pockets.
Robert Halfon is the Conservative MP for Harlow and a Vice-Chair of the APPG on the Kurdistan Region. Follow Rob on Twitter.
The British Government should formally recognise historic atrocities against the Iraqi Kurds as genocide according to a report from a cross-party group of MPs, launched today in the Commons in co-operation with the Henry Jackson Society.
The report of the all-party parliamentary group says that "recognising the genocide in Kurdistan is a vital part of respecting those who died and helps ensure that the ideology that groomed such barbarism is constantly challenged and never again allowed to re-emerge."
UK and international acknowledgement "helps the Iraqi Kurds make a transition from a people who were abandoned to one that is a full part of the world community with the UK being a valued political, cultural and commercial partner."
Robert Halfon is Conservative MP for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter.
What are four words that best sum the Tory-led Government? Labour would have the public believe it is 'grannies', charities, 'pasties' and 'millionaires'. But, Conservatives don't need to let the left's narrative become the story. There is a very powerful message to communicate, centred around Aspiration, Opportunity, Community and Fairness.
Take Aspiration: Want to own your council home? Then you will get a £75,000 discount. Want to start up a micro business in your rented social housing? Now you can do it. Want to work and get out of the poverty trap - rather than stay on benefits? Receive the universal credit combined with the raising of income tax thresholds.
Take Opportunity: Want better local schools and hospitals? Academies and Free Schools with tougher curriculum will raise standards. Choose the GPs and Hospitals you prefer, unconstrained by the bureaucracies of the PCTs and Strategic Health Authorities. Want more skills? Go for one of the 400,000 apprenticeship places on offer, the Youth Contract, or even the Work Programme.
It’s time that Conservatives stopped bashing trade unions and start remembering our roots. That is the central argument of my DEMOS pamphlet that was released yesterday: Stop the Union Bashing. The battles with Arthur Scargill in the 1980s cloud many people’s perception of our relationship to them. But we have a long history of caring for trade unionists. I suspect you don’t believe me. Let me ask you this: who first set out to legalise the trade union movement? A Conservative, indeed a prime minister: the Earl of Derby. And who said that the law should not only permit, but “assist” the trades unions? It was Margaret Thatcher herself.
In fact, Mrs Thatcher was a committed trade unionist. The first political office she held was in the Conservative Trade Unionists. She understood very well something that many Conservatives now forget: there is a huge difference between the militants and the grassroots members. That is why, as Leader of the Opposition, she fought hard to recruit members from the Conservative Trade Unionists. It is hard to imagine now but in 1979 trade union members flew banners reading: “Trade Unions for a Conservative Victory” in Wembley Stadium.
Since then, relations between us have not been as strong, but that does not mean they do not exist. David Cameron recruited Richard Balfe, an ex-Labour MEP, as his envoy to the trade union in 2007. A wise move as Balfe boldly pointed out to his former comrades that “it may be worth noting that some 30 per cent of trade union members vote Tory.”
Robert Halfon is the Member of Parliament for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter.
“There is another Iraq, buried under Iraq”. So said the head of the Kurdistan Mass Graves Commission as she explained to me her work during my recent visit to Kurdistan with the All-Party Parliamentary Kurdistan Group. Travelling around Iraq, her job is to try and identify the mass graves of the victims of Saddam Hussein’s genocide against the Kurds. Sometimes using DNA techniques, sometimes through simple ID (like a chain, a wallet or ID Card), the Kurds painstakingly are going through every mass grave they can find, in order to try and bring respite to grieving families and some kind of closure to what happened under the Baathist regime.
So far around 300 mass graves have been discovered, some with hundreds of bodies, some with fifty to sixty. There are also pits with just bones. We saw this for ourselves when we went to the far north area of Garmian. Row after row of baby sized coffins, filled with bones. Incomplete, unable to be identified, but at least given dignity. Whilst there, we were not only greeted by the Mayor and other dignitaries, but also Shazad Hussein, a grandmother whose family was killed in the genocide and who literally played the grandmother in the award winning Iraqi film, Son of Babylon - a moving and tragic account of Iraq’s missing million people.
It is strange that whilst the world knows much about modern genocide: the Bosnians by the Serbs, the tragedy of Rwanda, little is known about the Kurdish story. In fact, their genocide which is known to most as ‘Anfal’, is not even recognised as an international genocide by the United Nations - something that I, chairing a committee of academics, lawyers, and Parliamentarians, am trying to change. The facts are these: if you define genocide as scientifically planned mass murder with various stages of development - notably, marginalisation, demonisation, and eradication, - then the Kurds suffered genocide.
Robert Halfon is Conservative MP for Harlow. Follow Rob on Twitter.
For the past few years now, we on the right have been busy congratulating ourselves on the success of our presence on the Internet. In some ways it is understandable. Right of centre websites like ConservativeHome, Guido, John Redwood’s blog and much more besides have created a forum for Tory activists, undermined the left and provided intellectual ballast. But, whilst we have been slapping ourselves on the back, in some ways, the left have leapfrogged over us. Instead of Web 2.0, they have gone straight to 4.0, creating interactive campaigning websites, American-style, that have changed the nature of how pressure groups operate.
38 degrees is the left’s most successful campaigning force to date. It has far more achievements to its name than Ed Milliband, or his Shadow Cabinet. Unlike some, I don’t see 38 degrees as an irritant, or dismiss it because it is run by Labour activists. The organisation has created a powerful campaigning force with hundreds of thousands of email addresses. Forests, the NHS, energy prices are examples of serious activity.
What we need to remember is that whilst 38 degrees is controlled by leftists, its members are not necessarily of the same political persuasion. There have been numerous times when I, as MP, I have pro-actively interacted with ‘38 degreers’ and have received positive emails from individuals in return. I fact, I would argue that 38 degrees has created, for the most part, a mass database of centrist/floating voters, albeit with a sizeable minority from the centre left.
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