CentreRight

Bill Gates on climate change policy

Bill Gates has a new blog called The Gates Notes.  One of the early posts is about climate change policy.  It doesn't deal with the question of whether climate exists and is driven by human activity and doesn't deal with balancing reducing emissions against other objectives.  But, it does highlight some of the key issues which those who are really convinced of the case for radical cuts need to think about.

He makes the really important point that if you focus on the 2020 or 2025 targets or the 2050 targets, then they might recommend very different responses.  His post isn't long and is worth reading in its entirety but, for the sake of brevity, I'll reorder it a little here:

"Should society spend a lot of time trying to insulate houses and telling people to turn off lights or should it spend time on accelerating innovation?

[...]

If addressing climate change only requires us to get to the 2025 goal, then efficiency would be the key thing. [...] Because 2025 is too soon for innovation to be completed and widely deployed, behavior change still matters.

[...]

To make the 80% goal by 2050 we are going to have to reduce emissions from transportation and electrical production in participating countries down to zero. [...] If the goal is to get the transportation and electrical sectors down to zero emissions you clearly need innovation that leads to entirely new approaches to generating power. [...] [You] can never insulate your way to anything close to zero no matter what advocates of resource efficiency say. You can never reduce consumerism to anything close to zero. [...] Innovation in transportation and electricity will be the key factor.

I believe the key one to achieve is 80% by 2050."

Unfortunately, European climate change policy - with Britain an extreme example - is almost entirely focussed on the 2020 targets and trying to push existing technologies like wind power into use immediately, rather than thinking about what it really means if there is an imperative to cut emissions 80 per cent by 2050.  Wind power and increased efficiency aren't going to get us to the kind of cut that has been enshrined in the 2050 target.  That will mean either democratically untenable cuts in consumption or missing the targets as action focussed on the 2020 targets locks in high costs.

Current EU climate change policies are exceptionally expensive and will mean rapid rises in electricity prices in the years to come without really forming a credible strategy to achieve the objective of major cuts in emissions by 2050.  Other countries outside the EU won't follow that lead.  That means it shouldn't just be sceptics outraged at the expensive and inefficient combination of cap and trade and renewable energy subsidies that has been imposed on British consumers, those who take the possibility of catastrophic climate change most seriously should be as well.  As we set out in the TaxPayers' Alliance report Ending the Green Rip-Off, we should reform policy to cut the cost to consumers and focus on putting Britain's scientists and engineers to work on innovations which might offer a more credible alternative to fossil fuel energy than the ones currently on offer.

Front line jobs should not be immune from spending cuts

By Dr Patrick Nolan, Chief Economist, Reform

Cutting government spending is the main game in town. When developing their plans for spending cuts, David Cameron and Gordon Brown have both said that they will protect frontline jobs. This is the wrong approach - as Reform and Steve Bundred, Chief Executive of the Audit Office, have noted.

Frontline jobs make up the bulk of the cost of public services, with most of the costs of public services being workforce costs and most of the workforce costs being front line workers. Of the 1.4 million people working in the NHS only just over 200,000 provide administrative support. Plans to address the deficit that fail to reduce the cost of front-line jobs are simply not credible.

Two arguments against cutting font line jobs or wages are commonly made. The first is that ‘these cuts would take money out of these workers’ pockets and hold back economic recovery (weaken private consumption)’. The second is that ‘these cuts would reduce the quality of services available’. These arguments are also wrong.

The first argument is based on the view that government spending is needed to stimulate the economy during a recession. This draws on so called Keynesian multipliers, which suggest that, for example, hiring more people in the public sector (even if there is nothing productive for them to do) not only increases employment in this sector but gives these workers wages to spend, which in turn creates downstream economic benefits (for example, shopkeepers taking on extra staff).

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions

Yesterday in an article here on CentreRight Zac Goldsmith made the case for judicial leniency in cases of assisted suicide and, in this particular case, an involuntary form of this action.

Now it is possible to have sympathy for the victim and, in our relative comfort, feel that such a life is not worth living. Impossible as it is to truly understand, we end up mentally transposing ourselves into their situation, finding that which we do not know to be an unbearable shock, and coming to this conclusion. It is also possible to have sympathy for the family, burdened by their loved one, and again mentally transposing ourselves into their situation, finding that which we do not know to be an unbearable shock, having some sympathy perhaps for why they did it.

It would be all too easy for us to romanticise the tragedy of the dire reality, with sadness deem that the actions were in love, and decide to turn a misty eye by granting clemency for ‘mercy killings’. We may then feel merciful, compassionate and civilised, but life is seldom so simple and the road to Hell so often paved with good intentions.

We live in such an individualistic world today that we sometimes forget that which is universal and for all of us. Law is not and cannot be about individual cases; it’s about all of us, for any of us could end up in such a situation and need its protection. The laws on killing are there to protect all of us, not just those of us society today deems have lives worth defending, and that defence is as much about being a deterrent as being a punishment.

If it becomes law that killings deemed mercy killings are accepted, a great many others will become victims of such killings and killings claimed to be such but which are not. Whatever sympathy we have for the despair some people are in, we must deny ourselves the comforting ease of legal mercy, if not as punishment on behalf of the victim then as deterrence for the sake of those others.

Is this the worst campaign video ever?

Rollo Miles is the Green Party candidate for Hammersmith, up against Shaun Bailey for the Conservatives. Here is his initial offering to the electorate.

Particular highlights include the balloon suddenly floating across the screen at around 0:50 and at 6:52 the statement that "if you want the same, vote Greens" before taking some considerable time to realise that he meant the opposite!

Update: The video was taken down by Mr Miles, but someone else has helpfully uploaded it to YouTube...

Is Britain civilised?

By Zac Goldsmith.

Four years ago, Craig Sweeney, a convicted paedophile who was out of prison on early release, kidnapped a three-year old girl and subjected her to a horrific ordeal.  He was given a life sentence – but with eligibility for parole after only five years.

Yesterday, Frances Inglis was sentenced to a life sentence with eligibility for parole after nine years. Her crime was to end the life of her much loved son, who suffered from irreversible brain damage, needed 24-hour care and was experiencing a ‘living hell’.

The boy’s brother said that the entire family backed her, and that she had acted out of love and compassion. Frances Inglis broke the law, but in human terms, she is clearly no criminal.  No one doubts that her son was in a very bad state. No one doubts her love for him or her motives in taking the steps she took.

Taken together, these two cases suggest that our criminal justice system has become divorced from both public opinion and anything resembling morality. 

From Waziristan to Westminster

The turbulent extremist underbelly of Waziristan, Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan, may be a long way from Westminster, but it seems set to bring the UK's fiscal crisis into sharp relief.

According to Lady Kinnock, the Foreign Office has a shortfall of around £110m this year - a problem exacerbated by the weakness of the Pound (and the failure of the FCO to effectively hedge against the possibilities of devaluation). As a result, the anti-terror effort in Pakistan has simply been left without the money it expected.

This is crunch time. The situation in Pakistan is far too serious to simply scrap our work there, given that the country's militants are explicitly linked with attacks directly targeted against Britain. There isn't any more money in the pot, nor can taxes be raised without doing huge harm to the prospect of economic recovery.  Therefore, if we want to maintain these crucial efforts then we need to cut somewhere else. This is the new politics, and the sooner our politicians get used to it, the better.

So, where to cut? Interestingly, the Lib Dems' Lord Wallace (no relation) made the case on the Today Programme this morning for the International Development budget to be cut. He made the very good point that economic and social development are rather difficult to do if your country is overrun with trigger-happy extremists. Of course, at the moment this option has been forbidden to Conservative Shadow Ministers by the current policy of ringfencing DfID's spending.

Alternatively, the British Council spent an impressive £209m last year. With such a pressing public finance crisis, their work looks more and more like a luxury that we can ill afford. Whilst well-intentioned, their programmes are often extremely costly and are really an indulgence. Foreign Office Ministers need to ask themselves: which is best for Britain and for Pakistan - defeating violent, organised terror plots targeted at Pakistani and British civilians, or organising sports exchanges between Rugby and Kabbadi teams?

Thus far, the spending cuts promised by the main parties have been either very small or very general. We all know that the need to get into the nitty gritty is inevitable, but the inhabitants of Westminster are still clearly nervous of being up front about that with the public. This is a mistake - and as the developing controversy over these anti-terror cuts shows, either they can choose to come clean soon, and on their own terms, or they will be forced to face up to it by circumstances beyond their control.

RE: Two defence questions

General Dannatt is reported in today's Telegraph as doubtful about the merits of fast jets and of Trident II.  Remind you of anyone?

Of course, his scepticism about fast jets is unsurprising, given that, as I explained to you previously (to some incredulity, I recall), manned air-to-air fighters are already in their final generation of development, and even the weapons already developed are unlikely to see full delivery of original planned procurements.  Many Cold War era hangover weapons are being reconsidered around the world - an example being the Obama administration's opposition to completion of the original F-22 Raptor delivery plans.  Even regarding fast air-to-ground weapons, there is a strong view within Congress that the JSF is the final generation weapon - a position taken by Robert Hale, for example.

I would not share the view the Telegraph attributes to General Dannatt that the UK's nuclear deterrent is "for the next few years….but maybe not forever".  My scepticism is about Trident II, not about nuclear weapons per se.  There are those that argue that a submarine-based system is cheap, gives high probability of target delivery, and offers the flexibility of both city-killing and lower yield weapons.  I'm not convinced, yet, on these points, but if they were right then we should indeed stick with that.  What we don't want is an absurdly expensive, obsolete vanity weapon that we cannot use and that does not deter anyone we might plausibly be threatened by - which is what I fear Trident II really is.

Time to save the voice of the British people

“… I think the time has come for us to have a massive national debate about the future of who governs Britain because this affects people in their everyday, daily lives on a massive scale and we need, as I have just done, a new Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill, the object of which is very simple – to return to the British people the powers to govern themselves.” (Bill Cash MP) See his EU Tube.

Note to the EU: Haitian Crisis is not about You

Only the EU could survey the devastation suffered by the Haitian people and make it all about them. With as many as 200,000 people estimated to have died and a second powerful earthquake hitting the country this morning, the EU has thrown itself into a spat with the United States, with the French Cooperation Minister accusing the U.S. of “occupying Haiti,” during an EU meeting in Brussels. No mention of the fact that while U.S. soldiers are clearing the airport for aid deliveries, flying orphans to the U.S., and have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton coordinating the American response as the government’s highest priority, EU officials are safely ensconced in their cozy Brussels’ offices drinking lattes and bemoaning American quickness.

MEP’s have been even more vitriolic, telling EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton that her lack of visibility in Haiti is a devastating blow for the credibility of the EU – despite the fact that she herself acknowledged that she would be more of a hindrance than a help in Haiti right now (perhaps the only moment of lucidity displayed by Mrs. Ashton to date). Liberal French MEP Marielle de Sarnez told Mrs. Ashton: “politics is above all about symbols, and that is why I don’t think you should be here, but in Haiti.” The rest of the world however, thinks it’s about saving lives.

To be fair to the MEP’s holding Mrs. Ashton to account for her £270,000 annual salary, they were right that she should have at least stayed in Brussels to coordinate EU action instead of taking off for London this weekend to tuck into her Sunday roast as normal.

Whether it be MEP’s, the European Commission or French ministers, the EU has done the unthinkable and managed to frame this humanitarian crisis in its pointless and relentless obsession with bashing America. However, it is the desperate hand-written signs of Haitians themselves saying, “welcome America” that tell the real story: if you find yourself in the poorest and most vulnerable situation on earth, it is the stars and stripes that you want to see coming over the horizon; not the EU’s crown of thorns.

A Parliamentary Absurdity

Softball questions from the back benches at Prime Ministers Questions are one of those grim facts of life - like chewing gum on the pavement. They're a slightly sad waste of time, and don't even perform a useful PR function, as they simply annoy viewers.

Today, however, one Government backbencher managed to excel herself in producing a remarkably ridiculous example. I didn't catch the MP's name, and wanted to blog this without having to wait for Hansard to come out with the precise wording, but it went something like this:

"Does the Honorable Gentleman agree with me that the Child Trust Fund has been a great success?"

Gordon Brown, of course, did, and took the opportunity to wax lyrical about how much the Government cares about children - quel surprise. But how on earth can anyone know whether the Funds have been a success or not?

The Funds, which are given to every child when they are born, contain £250 of taxpayers' money. Parents are allowed to top them up with their own money as they wish. However, the scheme applies to every child born after 1st September 2002, and the money cannot be accessed until their 18th birthday.

So no-one knows how the Funds will turn out yet - and nor will we know until the early 2020s when the first tranche of Funds mature with the 2002 generation of children. It might be prove successful, or it might turn out purely to be a way of tying up vast amounts of taxpayers' money for decades.

Prime Ministers' Questions is there to allow the representatives of the people to scrutinise the Government and hold the PM to account. As the Speaker mentioned again today, there is never enough time to fit in all the MPs who want to ask questions. Isn't it time for the Speaker to insist that MPs place probing questions rather than adulatory puff pieces?

If you (a) drive and (b) live in the North East, then you're being watched

Over at Journal Live, a story that should be read as a warning sign of the state of things to come - ad hoc secret surveillance of drivers in the North East, to enable fines for motor law infractions.

As I said yesterday whilst representing Big Brother Watch on BBC Radio Newcastle, this is a terrible development.  I don't drive myself, but I am acutely aware of the war on motorists being waged by the bureaucracy in this country, squeezing and squeezing drivers for all they're worth, with ever-more taxes and fines, of which this is merely the latest example.

But it comes with a new set of privacy concerns, and it is peculiarly ill-thought-out.

Lessons from Greece

By Lucy Parsons, Senior Economics Researcher, Reform

Last week the Greek Finance Minister, George Papaconstantinou, broadcast a live cabinet presentation on Greek television of the government’s plans for reducing Greece’s budget deficit. The following day the Greek government submitted its stability and growth plan to the European Commission setting out these proposals.  The UK should be taking notes.

The downgrading of Greece’s credit rating has resulted in a hike in interest rates. This does not only increase borrowing costs for the government and individuals, but also holds back economic recovery as firms cannot afford the capital to expand their businesses and hire more staff.

With a budget deficit running at 12.7 per cent of GDP and national debt totalling over 120 per cent of GDP, the Greeks certainly have a public finance tragedy on their hands. But the UK is not a million miles apart.  Government borrowing for 2009-10 is expected to be 12.6 per cent of GDP and 12.0 per cent of GDP in 2010-11.  Net debt is forecast to reach nearly 80 per cent of GDP by 2014-15 – even if we believe the overly optimistic projections of growth made by the Treasury.  The Pre-Budget Report put the cost of servicing the UK’s national debt at £30 billion this year, with the same level of borrowing expected in 2010-11.

A time limit for 50p tax?

City lawyers tell me of the new stream of work for London law firms, working with their Swiss counterparts and the major Swiss banks, to provide relocation advice to high net worth clients currently resident in the UK but planning their move to Switzerland. Packages have been designed not just for individual clients but for hedge funds moving their top teams. Nice work – in the short term – for the lawyers  and good news for the Swiss economy – not such good news for Darling’s plans to use increased tax revenue to cut the deficit.

Now that Lord Mandelson has admitted that the 50p tax rate could have adverse consequences and should be abolished as soon as the economy permits, how about a pledge to reverse the increase after, say, 12 months? By presenting the tax hike as a one-off windfall measure, the Government could save face, skim off some revenue and reassure the City that it does – after all - understand that high tax deters enterprise and lowers revenue over the long term. Just as the Centre for Policy Studies pointed out last summer in What's wrong with 50p?.

Our Broken Society

Last night I met a woman whose face will continue to haunt me for a long time.

At 10pm in Victoria Street, after saying goodbye to a friend after dinner, I was on my way to pick up some milk from Sainsbury's before taking the train home. As I was about to cross the road to the supermarket, a clearly deeply distraught young woman on the other side of the road called out to me: "Can you please help me? Please help me?"

I paused, and waited as she ran towards me. Pointing to a horrific, huge black-eye, and shaking, she told me her boyfriend had beaten her up, she had gone to the police station but no one would help, and that I was the first person to even listen to her story. She said she needed to get a bus home to Middlesex. "I have to get away. I just have to get away," she said, deeply agitated and not very coherent. I assured her I would help, tried to calm her down, and tried to work out precisely what kind of help she needed. It became apparent she wanted money for a bus fare.

Preparing to give her a couple of pounds, I then asked if she knew what number her bus was. I was going to walk her to the bus stop. She then told me she needed to get a bus and a coach. I gave her £10, but she looked at me pleadingly and asked if I could help her with the full fare. She offered to give me her address, her name, her number, so she could repay me, but I said that wasn't necessary. "How much is the coach fare?" I asked. "£24.90," she told me. "To Middlesex?" I enquired, puzzled. "No, I live in Middlesex, but I need to get to Middlesborough," she said. I gave her £30. "Are you sure you don't want my contact details?," she asked. I assured her I didn't. "God bless you," she said. "You're the only person who has even bothered to listen to me."

As I walked back to Victoria station and travelled home, my stomach churned with anger. First, it crossed my mind that this could have been a set-up, an elaborate act to deceive. Middlesex, Middlesborough, the police not helping - none of it made sense. It's possible to create a black-eye with make-up and act distraught, agitated, traumatised. Had I given £30 to someone who would go out and buy heroin or crack cocaine? I kicked myself. But then I felt anger that I should be so cynical, have so much distrust. Her story could have been true, and I believed it at the time. Thirdly, I felt anger at our broken society, for either way, something is wrong. If her story was true, then it is an illustration of social breakdown. It disgusts me that we could live in a society where a woman could be beaten so badly, and be so clearly terrified and traumatised. It disgusts me to think that the police didn't help her and that I was the first person who even listened to her story. Yet if it was a scam, then it disgusts me that someone - and perhaps a group of people - could be so deceptive and devious as to play on the compassion of others. If untrue, it is disturbing to think that I might have helped a drug addict fuel her habit, and that trust has been broken in the process.

All around me the signs of our broken society are obvious. In 2005, when I was Parliamentary Candidate in the City of Durham, I went out on the streets with the police and saw the ugly reality of binge-drinking up-close. I put out a campaign newspaper headlined "Fight North Road binge drinking says Ben Rogers". A few days later, I received an envelope in the post, with a piece of paper. On it were the words of my newspaper cut out and moved around. It read: "Fight Ben Rogers says North Road binge drinker." I framed it as an amusing memento of the campaign, but the underlying message is disturbing. Five years on, things have got worse.

A few months ago I went to visit Karen refugees from Burma who have been resettled in Sheffield. They have fled the brutality of the Burma Army. Many of them have been used for forced labour, tortured, raped and seen their villages burned down. They fled their country, to the restrictions and harship of a refugee camp on the Thailand-Burma border, before then being uprooted again and finding themselves in cold, wet Sheffield. I met one woman in her flat in a run-down council estate. On the stairway as I walked to her flat, I passed surly young English kinds, in hoodies, smoking. It was intimidating. As I sat in her sitting room, she told me how she had been shot by the Burma Army. But she also told me how just a few weeks before, her flat in this estate in Sheffield had been broken into. Again, a sickening feeling developed in my stomach. After all she had been through, now she faces the terror of inner-city gangs. Couldn't Britain offer her better? With remarkable grace, she smiled. "At least I am free," she said. Even that supreme value, freedom, however is being compromised and threatened by a combination of ultra-political correctness and radical Islamism.

These are small snapshots of our broken society. Others would have many more stories to tell - of knife crime, teenage pregnancies, debt, family breakdown, gang murders. Anyone who denies that we have a broken society is divorced from reality. Some would grumble that it is too negative to say society is broken. But it depends on what you mean. By "broken", don't hear the word "irreparable". The situation can be redeemed, our society can be rebuilt, life can be restored. But it will take courage, conviction and hard work. It will take a new approach, combining government, the voluntary sector, families, schools, the police, business and religious organisations. It will require government to listen to groups such as the Centre for Social Justice, whose excellent work is shaping the heart of a future Conservative government. As David Cameron says, we are all in this together. If we rediscover that value, of being in it together, perhaps trust can be rebuilt and it will become clearer to identify who is genuinely in need and who is simply part of a scam.

Child poverty targets are diverting policymakers from the causes to the symptoms of poverty

By Neil O'Brien, Director of Policy Exchange.

In the FT this morning Nick Timmins suggests that the Conservatives are considering widening the child poverty target into a wider set of indicators in order to get a more in-depth measure of poverty.

The current child poverty targets certainly need to be reassessed, because they are distorting and undermining anti-poverty policy.

As Professor Peter Saunders pointed out in a recent Policy Exchange paper, the current targets are not really child poverty targets at all. They are in fact income inequality targets – aimed at reducing the number of children living in households below 60% of median income. 

Among many other perverse aspects of using this as a target, it means that recessions “appear” to reduce child poverty, because the median income falls while the incomes of those on benefits do not. This suggests there’s something seriously wrong with the target.

The most serious problem with the current targets - which the government’s Child Poverty Bill reproduces in slightly modified form - is that they push policy makers relentlessly towards tackling the symptoms of poverty (by increasing benefits) rather than tackling the causes of poverty.  According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Government needs to spend £4 billion extra on benefits to hit the 2010 target or and £19 billion to hit the 2020 target. 

Changing the climate change debate

Robert McIlveen is a Research Fellow in Policy Exchange’s Energy and Environment Unit.

ConservativeHome’s survey of PPCs’ views on a range of policies has brought up some surprising results. Bearing in mind the questions asked, which focused on the next 4 years only, it is little surprise that “reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” came bottom of the pile. Even as an environment policy wonk, I would put plenty of things on the list higher for the next four years. In some sense, it is more striking that new schools, the West Lothian Question and Victory in Afghanistan came towards the bottom than climate change came last.

Climate change is a complicated, long-term issue with more uncertainty than many of those arguing for radical decarbonisation would admit. The fact that the UK will experience few effects which require serious adjustment in the coming years does make doing nothing tempting. Indirect medium term effects, however, are likely to be sufficiently severe to raise it up the agenda. For example, immigration to the UK will become more attractive, both from Europe but especially form other parts of the world, if a fraction of the predictions made come to pass.

Of course, these predictions are at the heart of the debate. Climate modelling has taken a battering recently, especially in the wake of the CRU emails which have undermined confidence in the science entirely. While we should not lose track of the basic science – CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we have pumped a lot of it into the atmosphere – what that means for our climate and society is less clear. How much to avoid emissions and prepare for adaptation entirely depends on what you expect to happen.

To that end the sensible strategy is related to cost. There are some things, for example energy efficiency, which provide savings immediately and are worth doing in any case. However, the rationale behind putting most of the UK’s climate eggs in the wind basket is not clear – it is one of the more expensive technologies and has some significant downsides. This is an issue we are looking at in our Rational Environmentalism project.

Climate change is one of the worst debates in contemporary politics. That the terms “denialist” and “eco-fascist” are regularly used reflects the unhinged tone of the debate. A sensible approach to a long-term problem riven with uncertainty would be very welcome.

I'm supposed to be a Thatcherite but I feel a Bennite when it comes to Cadbury's

I know I am supposed to be a Thatcherite but I feel somewhat of a Bennite this morning after hearing that Cadbury's have succumbed to the Kraft takeover.

Cadbury's was not just a company but a truly unique British Institution.  At its hey day, Cadbury's was at the forefront of great philanthropy and social responsibility - providing a much better version than its modern PC corporate responsibility variety as practiced by the Body Shop et al (who can forget the sale of Body Shop to corporate L'Oreal?).

Cadbury's Bourneville Village was a genuine triumph of social responsibility. Its aim was to provide a clean environment and decent homes for workers - many of whom never had anything to do with Cadbury's. Even today the village has homes for 25,000 residents.

What Cadbury's did for industrial workers in the nineteenth and twentieth Century for industrial workers was revolutionary in its own way and a model of genuine philanthropy.  It is not hard to see why this family and community focused company won the affections of the British people, even if it did make mistakes along the way.

Now, as it is about to be swallowed up by giant corporate Kraft, and, as we lose yet another historic British business, we see a powerful example of the casualties of the free market.

Liam Fox is the best hope for our Armed Forces

Clark Vasey is a defence policy analyst based in the City.

A recent post on CentreRight by Ridley Grove, suggests that Liam Fox has failed our Armed Forces by not getting a better deal on defence spending from a future Cameron Government.  The post references an article from Fraser Nelson, which suggests that the MoD will have to find 20% savings from its current budget after the next General Election.  This was the assessment of a report from the Royal United Services Institute published last week.  We cannot predict with absolute certainty the size of the defence budget under a Cameron Government, but no one should doubt the scale of the challenge which awaits an in-coming team at the MoD.  To suggest that the Liam Fox has failed our Armed Forces before he has even been given the chance to grapple with the problems of the MoD does him and our Armed Forces a disservice.

Over past decade the resources made available to our Armed Forces have not kept pace with the fact that we have called upon them to risk their lives in two major operations since the Strategic Defence Review was conducted in the relatively benign strategic environment of 1998.  The biggest failure of the past decade has been the management of the defence budget.  The challenge for Liam Fox and his team will be to reign in the spiralling costs and reform the MoD so that it better supports the needs of our Armed Forces.

Perhaps the best estimate of what a potential Conservative Government will inherit when they take up the reigns of the MoD is provided by Bernard Gray, the former Special Adviser to Lord Robertson when he was at the MoD. Mr Gray was given unique access to the department by the former Defence Secretary John Hutton.  He found that the defence budget was ‘out of balance’, arguing that the estimated budgets go well beyond the funds being made available by the Treasury.  With regard to the major equipment programme Mr Gray found that it was some £35 billion over budget and some five years behind the initial estimates.  Perhaps more worryingly, as it points to the extent of the systemic problems within the department, is that the MoD is still ‘wasting’ around £2.5 billion a year through inefficiencies.  Mr Gray was also critical, as the National Audit Office has been, of the MoD tactic of delaying projects and pushing back funding within a programme’s life cycle in order to delay spending shortfalls.   The tactic does little to improve the delivery of a project and increases the overall project cost over its life cycle.

Am I really "wacky" to suggest that inheritance tax is a tax on aspiration?

On Saturday I took part in a panel discussion at the Fabian Society's annual conference, discussing David Cameron and the Conservative Party - and a very well attended session it was too: perhaps a sign that Labour have given up hope of winning the election and are shifting their attention to how they might oppose an incoming Conservative government...

The panel consisted of me, Nadine Dorries MP (pictured alongside me here), Douglas Carswell MP, Polly Toynbee and Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society.

It was a good session with much of the banter you'd have expected with three Tories throwing themselves into the lion's den.

But the point that sticks with me is one which a Labour blogger, Paul Sagar, has blogged about here - namely a discussion about inheritance tax.

I set out my opinion (beyond the party line, of course) that inheritance tax is immoral, principally because it is a tax on money which has already been taxed as income, saving, capital gains etc.

Even more pertinent was the view I pushed that it is a tax on aspiration, given that Gordon Brown had just an hour previously delivered a speech about wanting to encourage social mobility and for people to aspire to own bigger houses.

I contested that the abolition of inheritance tax would encourage saving, self-reliance and indeed aspiration to own those bigger houses, safe in the knowledge that you could pass them on to children when you die, without the state demanding a slice. As far as I was concerned, logic dictates that the state confiscating part of the value of that bigger house is effectively a tax on aspiration.

Yet our friend Paul Sagar has branded me as "whacky" (sic) for offering this viewpoint. He also repeats the patently untrue Labour spin that current Tory policy on IHT is a "tax break for millionaires". The whole point, surely, is that under current Conservative policy it is millionaires who will still pay IHT?

Climate change policy can undo fiscal policy

The survey that Conservative Home released yesterday is very important.  The top priority for the 141 candidates who answered the survey was cutting the deficit, the lowest priority was reducing Britain's carbon footprint.  That doesn't necessarily mean that new candidates are ardent sceptics of climate change science or policy, it could be that they are all in favour of the current direction of policy but just don't think it is as important as the other eighteen objectives on the survey.

My guess is that they are somewhat more sceptical than the leadership but that their thinking on the way forward politically is probably quite similar.  Don't propose any major changes to the current set of climate change policies (massive subsidies to renewable energy, maintaining the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, get people out of planes and cars and onto trains), make minor changes around the edges (changing the way energy efficiency improvements are financed, for example) and focus on higher priority issues.  They may not be convinced that the status quo is working (academics looking at the issue have described European climate change policy as an abject failure) but who needs to add a battle with Greenpeace to the list of political challenges facing an incoming government, who needs that distraction from the important business of bringing down the deficit?

That is an understandable point of view.  But the rising cost of existing climate change policies is likely to frustrate any attempts to ignore them.  A report for investors from Citigroup argues that energy bills are likely to have to rise 57 to 100 per cent in order to finance the massive investment that is being required by climate change targets.  They think that will cause an "affordability crisis" as even families on average incomes find their energy bills becoming an intolerable burden.  The poor and elderly will be even harder hit and increasing the cost of coping strategies like electric heaters will increase the number of deaths in the winter cold; last year excess winter mortality was over 36,000.

Balls' dogma on marriage is expensive and depressing

Having read Ed Balls' latest "attack" on David Cameron's tax policy for marriage I have to disagree. As the Prime Minister's most longstanding cheerleader in Cabinet and someone who favours stressing "dividing lines" between the Labour Party and Conservative Party he certainly brings home the point in his latest offering.

The socialist dogma underlying his words is misjudged. His basic premise is that Government should not support marriage because it makes widows, divorcees, single parents and their children feel inadequate. His logic seems to be that Government should not use the tax system to support what is best because fundamentally we all need to feel equal. I wonder, if you polled a thousand 16 year olds - as they stand on the threshold of adult life, and asked them what they aspire to I doubt many would say - to get divorced, or to have a series of failed relationships or to be widowed or bring up children on their own. Our natural aspiration is to aim for happiness in our personal lives, to find stability and contentment in a lasting relationship.  It seems to me that the State should acknowledge these aspirations and do all it can to support the institution of marriage, both as the best place to bring up children but an excellent place to live a contented life.

A note on diversity and the duties of an MP

Far be it from me to speak on this matter for all concerned but, in the absence of any other voice articulating this argument I will write just this once upon a subject area I steer clear of wherever possible, namely “diversity” – in its politically correct pigeon hole sense – and in particular but not exclusively a group known as “disabled people” of which I am considered a member.

My route to this article begun with the announcement that the Conservatives have promised £1m to fund a four year programme that would help more disabled people become MPs, councillors and civil servants. The money would come from efficiency savings in existing budgets and would be administered by the disability charities who devised the best ways of increasing access.

As a “disabled person” I've got mixed views on this. Whilst I understand the desire to get a broader range of experience into politics I do not think pigeon holing people then throwing money at them is a good idea and could unintentionally sound rather patronising. At worst these charities often have their own agendas, and channelling money through them for the explicit purpose of politics could lead to terrible and far reaching consequences.

So what to do if, like me, you think Parliament lacks diversity but rule out all forms of “positive discrimination”, “affirmative action” or whatever euphemism is currently in vogue for treating people not as individuals but based on a single two-dimensional physical attribute? Labour have tried all women shortlists, the enforced option that ended so acrimoniously in Blaenau Gwent, and the Conservative A-List was similarly unpopular. Labour talk of all “non-white” shortlists are likely to prove even more unpopular, not least because – like the many women who objected to all women shortlists – people would rather not be judged by the colour of their skin, or gender, or physical ability, but by the content of their character.

The answer, in a rather philosophical manner, lies in another question. What do we actually want MP to be? What is the job description? And, importantly in terms of diversity, could this job description be a major factor in encouraging self-selection? We know already that far fewer women and disabled people apply to join the Party’s Candidate List. My opinion – that what we expect MP to do actually puts off many people – was reinforced by this article by Iain Dale urging the whips to make candidates realise that that, if elected, it's going to be noses to the grindstone.

Now I am by no means advocating lazy MP, or indeed significant change, but if the job description requires needlessly unsociable hours and “hanging around” in the bubble of Westminster simply to walk through whichever door the Whips tell you to, you’re ruling out most people before you even start. As odd as it may sound, some people like to see their families, have outside interests, health issues, or don’t fancy loitering around what feels like a co-ed gentleman’s club.

For too long there has been a strange resistance to simple reforms. For example electronic division voting (as I understand is available to MSPs) would mean all MPs could vote on all motions, whether in Parliament at the time or not, freeing up time for proper legislative scrutiny and making the job an option for more people, particularly those who put their family first. It would also end the lunacy of unwell Members being taken to divisions in hospital beds! More normal hours (i.e. 9am-5pm) would also be particularly attractive to potential applicants with families, and have the added benefit of reducing the numbers needing second homes!

Surely then we should be looking not at throwing money at those in certain pigeon holes but instead at increasing applications, from all walks of life, by eliminating the unnecessary factors that lead to severe self-selection?

Liam Fox has failed the armed forces

According to Fraser Nelson the armed forces budget will be cut by 20 per cent by a Conservative government.

How did this happen?

We are at war.

The armed forces are stretched to breaking point.

Conservative Home surveys find the party grassroots putting defence spending at the top of its priority list.

What did Andrew Lansley and Andrew Mitchell say to Cameron that Fox did not?

You can blame Cameron and I do.

But you also have to blame Dr Liam Fox.

He should have got a better deal for the military.

Why are there so many journalists in Haiti?

By Alistair Burt MP.

The plight of Haiti is graphically portrayed in our papers and on TV. It is right that we know what is going on and the scale of the disaster so both governments and people respond generously and appropriately.

But do all the journalists from so many national and international outlets need to be there? The strain on resources can be imagined. Would it not be better if in the immediate aftermath there was a pooled agency arrangement so that the world got the messages and images needed with as little intrusion as possible on the desperate relief work?

What do people think?

The Gathering Storm of Radical Islamism

Efforts by groups such as The Centre for Social Cohesion, Policy Exchange and the Quilliam Foundation, and by individuals such as Michael Gove and Baroness Cox, to draw our attention to the threat of rising radical Islamism reminds me of Winston Churchill's warnings about Nazi Germany, as documented in The Gathering Storm. Churchill was largely ignored, dismissed, at best regarded as talking about a very marginal issue, and often derided as a war-monger. Yet his warnings were proven right, and in the end we had to confront Hitler.

Anjem Choudary's appearance on Newsnight earlier this week (watch 17.45 minutes in to the link) is just the latest Churchillian warning of the sheer fascism of radical Islamism, yet still we are at best only half-awake. The decision to ban Islam4Uk, an offshoot of al-Muhajiroun, is a sign that the Home Secretary is starting to take these groups seriously - but very belatedly.

The latest example of Britain's sleepiness on this issue is the news that a senior figure in Hizb-ut-Tahrir is a lecturer at the London School of Economics (LSE) who reportedly groomed a suicide bomber. According to The Times today, in addition to preaching regularly at the LSE's Islamic Society, Reza Pankhurst holds secret meetings with a group known as "Brothers' Circle". How is it that Britain's universities are giving not only religious preaching slots but also academic teaching slots to known radicals?

On Newsnight, the clash between Anjem Choudary and Quilliam's Maajid Nawaz was extraordinary - and worth watching. Choudary accused Nawaz of being an apostate, and his refusal to answer the question as to whether, in his proposed 'Caliphate', Nawaz would be executed was chilling. Furthermore, despite his eagerness to utilise the benefits of freedom and democracy to spread his message of hate, he said that "democracy and freedom is no good for the British". Well thanks, Anjem, but I'd rather have our broken democracy, as full of faults as it is, than a society in which adulterers are flogged, gays are executed, women are stoned for not being veiled, churches are burned, so-called apostates are killed and non-Muslims are forced to convert or be treated as 'dhimmis' or second-class citizens. I'd rather a society in which we can speak freely and practice our faith freely, within the rule of law and as long as it doesn't threaten others. So too would many Muslims.