CentreRight

Our Supreme Court should have the final say on human rights - not abdicate to Strasbourg

by Dominic Raab MP

They’ve got the robes. They’ve got the spanking new court. So why don’t our judges have a bit more confidence in the British justice they dispense?

Today, the Supreme Court held – by 6 to 3 – that, whilst UK soldiers may claim human rights on a base abroad, they cannot when on duty outside it. Right decision. Wrong reason.

The case concerned the tragic death of a private, who died of heat stroke in Iraq having failed to adjust to the searing heat. He joins a long list of brave soldiers let down by the last government’s failure to prepare properly for conflict. But expanding human rights law is not the answer.

The High Court had delivered a quixotic judgment, extending the right to life (Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, via the Human Rights Act) to elevate a wide range of expansive negligence claims by soldiers to the status of a ‘human right’. The court ignored the negotiating records of the Convention and the absence of precedent, supporting its novel ruling with passing references to the Charge of the Light Brigade. The Supreme Court overruled both the High Court and Court of Appeal, sticking to the previous case-law that distinguished responsibilities of the UK government for its bases from the wider theatre of conflict. 

That decision was right, for four reasons. First, existing procedures of inquest, investigation and where necessary inquiry provide due accountability for broader MoD negligence – as inquests have shown in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, judicial legislation makes the law unpredictable for everyone that has to rely on it. In this case, it leaves commanders looking over their shoulder at potentially ever-expanding legal liabilities, which distracts from the effective conduct of military operations - and may put troops at even greater risk. Third, it is the job of the courts to apply the law, not create it on a whim - judges have no democratic mandate to make new law. Fourth, these kinds of cases place additional financial burdens on the tax-payer – again, delicately-balanced decisions on the allocation of finite public resources should be decided by elected representatives, accountable for their decisions. Do you want the MoD wasting millions defending litigation, or using the money to pay for proper equipment for troops in the field?

The present claim is the latest of human rights ‘inflation’ driven by judicial legislation - both at the European Court of Human Rights Strasbourg, and in the UK courts under the Human Rights Act. We have seen extended rights to sue the police, for failing to protect people from violence, that mean officers spend £20 million per year protecting gangsters from each other. Yet our overstretched police are now incapable of protecting juries. So, for the first time in 400 years, British justice recently dispensed with the right to trial by jury in a common or garden robbery case. The human rights bandwagon is robbing Peter to pay Paul. So too, the UK courts under the Human Rights Act have extended restrictions on deportation, well beyond the scope of any Strasbourg ruling. It is one thing to block deportation of a criminal or terrorist suspect, where he risks torture if returned home, as required by Strasbourg. But many more now claim the ‘right’ to stay to avoid disruption to their family life in Britain, pursuant to novel precedent under the Human Rights Act – a factor that adds to pressure to introduce draconian measures at home, like control orders and prolonged pre-charge detention.

So, today, the judges got it right. But their decision was based on flawed reasoning. The Court, presided over by Lord Phillips, said that the European Court in Strasbourg was the proper place to decide whether this ‘novel’ claim should be upheld. In that case, what a waste of time going through three British courts. It is remarkable that, now established as a fully-fledged Supreme Court, our judges did not have the courage of their own convictions. Equally, they failed to understand that Strasbourg is not a court of appeal. As Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, writes in his human rights text book, Strasbourg "has no role unless the domestic system for protecting human rights breaks down", which it clearly has not in Britain.

Our judges, used to adhering to precedent under the common law system, are far too ready to defer to Strasbourg - when it is neither required by the Convention, nor desirable in practice. The logic of this latest ruling only strengthens the case for a Bill of Rights in place of the Human Rights Act – to help re-focus British judges on the job of dispensing British justice.

Britain loses appeal in European Court - good

In January, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain's s. 44 stop and search powers were unlawful. The last government lodged an appeal and judgment was given today. Britain lost.

Good.

Random stop and search was an abuse of our historic, hard-won liberties. I don't want to live in a society in which a representative of the state can march up to you and demand without just cause or reasonable suspicion and ask, "your papers please" - or demand your name and address, what you're doing there, where you're going. I suspect that you don't want that situation either.

These powers were also unnecessary - no successful prosecutions for terrorism offences resulted from these draconian powers.  They served only to intimidate, and to empower officials to intrude on us and our privacy without just cause.

The old government should never have appealed and once again - as with the defeat of Britain's policy of retaining DNA profiles of innocent people on the database, or the British approval of the conviction of people in criminal cases based on the evidence of absent witnesses - I find myself - a patriot, and a Eurosceptic - in the peculiar situation of being glad that lawyers representing my country have been defeated in the European court.

Why it would be wrong to ban the burqa

A girls' school in my former constituency of Wycombe barred a Muslim pupil for wearing a veil.  Her father attempted to overturn the school's decision by taking it to court - using legal aid in the process.  I supported the school strongly, believing that head teachers and governors should be able to set their own uniforms policy.  If they think, for example, that veils in the classroom hinder teaching or learning, or that veils in the corridors harm safety and security, they should be free to implement a ban.  I'm glad to report that the school won the case.

Other bodies for which the state's responsible, such as airports and hospitals, should also be at liberty to act in the same way, if they think that security warrants a ban - as should private premises, such as shops.  Obviously, the veil or niqab, like the burqa, oppresses women if worn unwillingly.  Both are barriers to integration into British norms.  Nor can it convincingly be argued that either is an Islamic requirement.  Most British Muslim women don't wear burqas or niqabs: to see either on the streets of Wycombe, where the Muslim population is sizeable, is rare.

So there it is: for better or worse, I don't like veils.  But there's a difference between allowing institutions discretion to bar them - which in some cases they already have - and slapping down a fully-fledged legal ban, as Phillip Hollobone's Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill, which had its First Reading in the Commons today, seeks to do.  I like Hollobone, who's a plain-speaking and hard-working MP, and he knows the difference between a niqab and a hijab.  But why he thinks a law should be passed to ban people from wearing what they want in the street beats me.

Hollobone's explained previously in the Commons that he considers the veil "frankly, offensive".  But there are a lot of things that a lot of people think are offensive in modern Britain.  This isn't a good reason to ban them: being offended is part of the price paid for living in a free society.  I'm not a free speech absolutist - for example, hate preachers who incite violence and hatred should be barred from Britain - but there should be a strong presumption in law that people are at liberty to do as they please.  Furthermore, it can't simply be assumed that all women who wear the burqa or niqab have been compelled to do so - or that integration can or should be enforced by bans on bits of clothing (rather than by, say, stopping taxpayer funding for translating documents).

During the last election, UKIP suddenly leapt on Belgium's burqa ban, and proposed taking the same course here.  The move had a nasty whiff of anti-Muslim opportunism about it.  A legal ban may pass muster in Belgium, but it shouldn't do here.  Sorry, Phillip, but it simply wouldn't be British.

Paul Goodman

On engaging with the serious debate

Andrew Lilico is Policy Exchange's Chief Economist.

Over the past year, I have read many articles by opponents of spending cuts containing sentiments such as these, from David Marquand last week: “No reputable economist I can think of has endorsed the Osborne Budget.”  Others have echoed the sentiments of David Blanchflower:  “Mr Osborne, I really don't know which economists are advising you on this brilliant strategy to increase unemployment, but feel free to give me a call.”

Now, I have no interest in battling academic credentials with these illustrious men.  And I don’t wish to claim that the economics profession is uniformly behind my view any more than that it is uniformly behind theirs.  There is a genuine split on what is the best thing to do from here.  The Blanchflower/Marquand view is held by an important minority, whose arguments deserve a hearing.  But they are just that: a minority.  It simply isn’t true that “all reputable economists” agree with them, unless you fancy defining “reputable economist” to mean “anyone agreeing with David Blanchflower”.

For example, the Telegraph recently did a survey of 25 leading economists.  One of the questions was: “is the Government right to cut spending by £6bn this year?”  During the General Election campaign, this sadly modest cuts programme was condemned in blood-curdling terms, as liable to induce a double-dip recession and cast millions onto the dole.  Was that the view of “all reputable economists”?  You can see for yourself – of the 25 economists surveyed, only one (Blanchflower) opposed them, one other (Mellor) had no view, and one (Shaw) said there were advantages to early cuts but they could perhaps have waited until next year.  Every other one of these 25 leading economists declared it a good idea.

And of course Blanchflower himself doesn’t consistently claim to be the spokesman of mainstream academia.  Here are a few quotes from that same New Statesman article: “Academic economists were of little help. Since the events of a year ago, it is interesting how few of them have stood up and told us where the profession went wrong and why, and what we should do to get out of this mess... The collapse of Lehman was a body blow to those economists around the world who had designed worthless mathematical models, based on unrealistic assumptions that they then used to convince themselves that a recession of this kind could never happen again. Some even got Nobel prizes for trotting out this worthless twaddle, such as Robert E Lucas Jr…. Unsubstantiated assertion ruled, which meant that large parts of economics had become closer to theology than to the natural sciences…where did all these useless economic models get us? Actually, in pretty dire straits.”

The BBC's regressive licence fee should not survive these indebted times

Kent Solicitor Martin Sewell argues that it is time for the BBC to live up to its expressed concern for the disadvantaged and to end a regressive tax on the poor.

Since the Budget, no Coalition spokesman can appear on our State Broadcasting networks without being asked about the effects of its decisions upon the poor and whether the necessary financial constraints imposed by our national financial problems are unacceptably “regressive”.

It is a theme that may soon rival another media pre-occupation - that of “hypocrisy” - but so far, none of the Coalition members has thought to invite the questioners to reflect upon the BBC’s own exceedingly privileged position, and what greater contribution it may yet make to the redistribution of wealth, not least by example.

Thanks to its Charter and supporting legislation, the BBC stands in a uniquely privileged position in public life. It imposes its own kind of poll tax, the Licence fee. Unlike elected Mayors or Police Chiefs, its governance is not only free of political control but any form of mandate or effective oversight. Its Trustees are not democratically accountable to anyone, thus freeing it to dispose influence and patronage throughout the population on a present scale unimaginable by any Tudor Monarch.

It has a £3billion budget, larger than the Foreign Office. Its scale of hospitality and patronage is immense. It sets the political agenda, thanks to access as great as any Press Baron, and can make or break anyone’s reputation, having the resources to out-litigate all but the richest. It sets standards in the public mind, not least amongst the young who see wealth showered upon folk whose talents may not be obviously proportionate to the rewards they receive.

It can no longer be a surprise that so many children harbour no greater ambition than celebrity. Being famous for being famous has become a growth industry when many others have declined, and even the least have intuitively understood the economic benefits of having been blessed and enbraced by the institution. It is not what one’s remuneration that matters. Think of the consequent opportunities - the substantial repeat fees, the book deals, the invitations, personal appearances, advertising voice-overs, celebrity endorsements.

Why we don't need the RDAs, and we don't need regions

At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we've done a lot of work on the Regional Development Agencies.

In 2008 we looked at whether progress had been made towards their key objectives like narrowing the north-south divide, it hadn't.  More recently, we released a new report showing the kind of grants they have been making.  We found that 62 per cent of the grants were going to predominantly public sector organisations or projects.  They should be abolished and we hope that the coalition don't backtrack from the clear language on this issue in the Emergency Budget.  The forthcoming White Paper which will put the detail on today's announcement should reject the very idea that the best way to help businesses is to take their money in taxes then give some of it back through big, regional bureaucracies.

But I wanted to respond to a point made today on his Telegraph blog by Ed West.  He argues that we should replace the RDAs with democratic assemblies, like the one rejected in the North East at a referendum.  Here is the core of his argument:

"But are the Tories opposed to regionalisation? I don’t see why. Personally I think a federal United Kingdom is a great idea, but it has to be authentically democratic, not a collection of talking shops comprising local councillors and quangocrats, which is what Labour’s original plans entailed.

There’s no reason why Britain can’t become fully federal with 11 regions (or “states” if the Scots and Welsh prefer it) all with elected first ministers and assemblies, and with full or dominant control of police, education, welfare and tax. It would help to take away power from London, which has far too much economic and cultural power, and rejuvenate regional capitals; it would result in national political leaders with experience of government, not just party politics; it would allow innovations in services to be tried and tested; but best of all, as in the USA, politics would become much more Right-wing."

At the TaxPayers' Alliance, we are very much in favour of fiscal decentralisation.  But we don't need to hand responsibility to the regions.  In reality, there is no reason that the local authorities can't do the job. 

Regions are more remote and less rooted in well understood boundaries that local people can relate to.  Like the European Union, regional assemblies will be democracies without a demos.  The only argument for them is the idea that local authorities are just too small, that we need bigger areas for decentralised services to be viable.  That argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Swiss cantons are responsible for huge areas of policy.  For example, the excellent Swiss healthcare system is almost entirely run by the cantons.  The national government sets a basic level of mandatory health insurance coverage and then each canton sets policy beyond that.  There is more detail in this report.

Switzerland has a population of under 8 million and 26 cantons.  That is less than 300,000 people per canton. 

By contrast, in England there are 33 boroughs in London including the City, 28 counties, 54 unitary authorities and 36 metropolitan districts.  The population is over 51 million.  That means there are over 340,000 people per authority.

So power should be devolved down from central government.  But there is no need to set up regional governments to achieve that admirable objective.

The "Industry Awards" scam

As councils start to search for any and all possible ways to reduce spending, one prime candidate for cuts has reared its head - "Industry Awards".

To give a bit of background, this is a scam that has been operating for some years. Essentially, councils pay a fee to be entered for a given awards process - invariably described as "prestitigious" by the organisers - for one of their service departments.

Those councils who enter, and particularly those who are shortlisted, are then seduced into paying a fortune for tickets to the glitzy awards ceremony where they can all clap each other on the back about how they represent the "gold standard" of their industry, etc etc ad nauseam.

And the eventual benefit for the taxpayer who footed the bill for entry and tickets to the big bash? Nothing, zip, zilch.

Take for example an invitation which has just dropped into my inbox from the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management (which I assume was sent to anyone who's ever been in touch with the organisation):

"The 2010/11 Clean Britain Awards are open for entries until 31 August 2010...We are inviting all UK local authorities to take part in this prestigious programme and the winners will be announced at a gala luncheon on 1st March 2011 at the NEC, Birmingham."

The price for a council to enter themselves into this "prestigious" process? £650 + VAT per council. Happily there are separate categories for Cities, Towns and Districts, conveniently providing an opportunity to have a large number of shortlisted councils, thus increasing the number of local authorities likely to buy tickets to the "gala luncheon".

In 2008/09 63 local authorities entered for the awards - and if the same number were to do so this year that would cost over £48,000. And that's just for one set of awards covering one council function!

There are plenty more of these scams out there - such as the British Parking Awards, which this year had celebrity impressionist John Culshaw as the hostt and has in the past sold tables for their Gala Lunch at £1292.50 (incl VAT) a pop.

There's no need for any regulations or rules to put a stop to this - councils simply need to get a grip and stop squandering our money on such self-indulgent tripe.

Defending coastal areas against erosion and flooding

Secretary for State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Caroline Spelman has just announced that this year spending to protect coastal areas against erosion and flooding will be £664 million. This represents a cut of approximately 17%, which is somewhat less than the average 25% cuts most departments are facing.

Nontheless, Caroline Spelman has a thankless task in having to administer spending cuts. However, as I have argued before, now would be a very good time to deregulate some aspects of sea defence, in particular creating a presumption in favour of local landowners and communities being allowed to defend their local coastline themselves.

Sea defence has always been seriously underfunded with the previous budget, which represented less than 0.1% of public spending, quite literally only being adequate to fund a few miles of new sea wall. In the medium term there is an extremely important need for much greater spending on sea defence due to a combination of a) many of the sea defences built by the Eden and Macmillan governments following the 1953 floods either reaching the end of their useful life or being in need of urgent repair; and b) sea level rise which has been averaging around 1.5mm a year since we began recording it around 150 years ago.   It should also be noted that in the South and East Anglia rises in relative sea level are actually much higher around 3-4mm or more a year due to the additional effects of isostatic readjustment (in non technical terms – during the last ice the North of England was pressed down by the weight of massive ice sheets, but now as land in the North of England slowly springs back, the South of England is experiencing a corresponding downwards tilt resulting in a much greater relative sea level rise there).

The implications of these sea level rises are firstly, coastal erosion will increase as more areas become exposed to wave attack; and secondly, some major flood defences will need significant upgrading, particularly as tidal surges are likely to increase in frequency and intensity. It should be remembered that the 1953 North Sea tidal surge killed 307 people and inundated large parts of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk up to 30 miles inland, causing massive damage to property, infrastructure and the economy. The flood defences that will need upgrading include both sea walls in coastal towns and very substantial flood defence structures such as those that protect the fens from flooding.

Whilst painful cuts in the short term are clearly necessary if the economy is not to be crippled with debt, it is really important that we plan now for the medium and long term. We cannot simply put off the issue of sea defence in the way that the previous Labour government did, any more than we can put off building new power stations if we are to keep the lights on. There are likely to be major economic consequences to not significantly increasing spending on sea defence, as was illustrated by a recent Lloyds report calling for a substantial increase in UK spending on flood defence by 2035 to avoid 'disaster'.

I am therefore suggesting that we set an aspirational target of the percentage of public spending on sea defence that is needed in the medium term. To set that figure we need to undertake a sea defence review, similar to the military defence review, which would set out what we actually need to do in terms of reasonable protection against coastal flooding and erosion and how much it will cost.

Unfortunately, the previous Labour government did not do this. They appear to have set the budget, then looked at what needed doing. There was no overall strategy, just an ad hoc approach to repairing some sea defences and abandoning others on grounds of cost. What is now needed is a sea defence review conducted every 5-10 years or so (the Netherlands review every five years), that sets out what we reasonably need to do to protect coastal communities and inland areas threatened by coastal flooding. Some of that data is already there. For example two years ago the Environment Agency concluded that £150 million was needed to defend a few miles of the North Suffolk/East Norfolk coast against flooding. However, it didn’t happen because there was no overall strategy, simply an ad hoc approach to spending a budget.

My best guess is that the aspirational target we need to set is going to be at least 0.5% of public spending – and may well be more. This is similar to the 0.7% target that we are committed to spending on overseas aid in the medium term. However, if we do not plan now to spend significantly more on sea defence in the near future, by which I mean by the end of this parliament, then we will be heaping up major problems for the longer term and leaving ourselves politically vulnerable in the event of a major coastal flooding event such as the 1953 North Sea tidal surge, which we came extraordinarily close to having a repeat of in November 2007.

The Bully State is alive and well

Despite the change in Government, it seems the Bully State is alive and well - in Romford, at least.

Given the commitments by both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats that they wanted to move Britain away from its recent obsession with pernickety regulations, intrusive policies and oppressive officials, one might have hoped that we had seen the last of police officers pushing photographers around for the heinous crime of taking photos in the street.

Sadly, it seems it will take time to rid elements of the police of these bullyboy habits - or failing that to rid the police of such bullyboy elements.

A disgraceful incident occurred in Romford on Saturday, at the Armed Forces Day Parade. A young photographer by the name of Jules Mattson (who, entirely coincidentally, snapped the TPA's Debt Clock in Westminster on Emergency Budget Day) was taking pictures of the troops on parade, including a contingent of military cadets.

Suddenly, Mattson was ordered by a police officer to stop taking photos. When he questioned their legal right to boss him about, the officer in question then proceeded to babble a barely comprehensible series of claims about child protection, public order and even anti-terror legislation, which didn't hold up in the face of someone who actually knew that he was perfectly within the law. Fortunately, the photographer had the good sense to make an audio recording of the incident which you can listen to below, illustrated with photos of what went on:

This occurrence is shocking because it shows the Bully State in all its glory - not wielding real, legal powers but simply throwing its weight around on the assumption that it should be obeyed regardless of the actual law.

Threatening, manhandling and, apparently, injuring Mattson does absolutely nothing for public protection and zero for law and order - instead, it further harms the public standing of the police, and undermines yet again the public's trust that the police are chasing real criminals, rather than harassing the innocent and law-abiding.

Review these Quangos

There is confusion over just how Government spends on Quangos. The official total is £38.36 billion. But the definition applied is not consistent across Government Departments. Some bodies that look like a Quango and sound like a Quango escape listing by being technically independent.  This provisional list proposes potential savings of £27.68 billion on Quango spending. Some of the Quangos that could be abolished may be merely a waste of money, others are could be actually harmful. Some that offer benefits may not represent value for money or may extend beyond the remit of what the state should be doing.

The real savings would be higher. Lots of civil servants time is spent monitoring and liaising with Quangos. Many Quangos have the hidden taxation of an industry levy as well as direct funding from Government. For reasons of space I have missed off many Quangos with small budgets. I have also missed off others - for instance museums with huge budgets and overmanning - where some budget cut would probably be reasonable.

Of course abolition has already been announced for several on this list. There could well be valid reasons why some should survive the cull. Some could be defunded but not technically abolished without legislation.

Each should have to go through a genuine challenge to justify its existence. The Government should start from the presumption that each should go unless it can prove otherwise. They should be told that the Government is minded to abolish them completely and the onus is on them to explain why it is necessary for it to continue in some scaled back form. Last week the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander suspended £8.5 billion of spending programmes. That is the approach that is needed.

The Quango State should be put not notice.
 
Cabinet Office

1. Office of the Third Sector. (Growth for the voluntary sector is vital but isn't the means to this is for Government to get out of the way, not fund multimillion pound Quangos?) £30.1 million.
2. Commission for the Compact.  £2 million.

Total Saving £32 million.

Essential market analysis of the crisis

My Cobden Centre colleagues have been steadfastly producing further market analysis of the crash over the last couple of days:

• Sean Corrigan comments on the alarming US monetary contraction of the last few months and explains that we should see the economic effects by the end of the third quarter. Andy Duncan follows up with commentary from those who predicted the first crisis and who are now predicting a second, based on sound theory.

• Toby Baxendale reviews Alchemists of Loss - How Modern Finance and Government Intervention Crashed the Finance System by Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchinson:

  This book is a page turner. It is a must for anybody who has an interest in what has gone wrong with our financial system and thus the economy, and what can be done to fix the problems created.
  ...
  The alchemists in the title are 7 Nobel Prize winners, investment bankers, the political class, other economists, and regulators. They exploit the frailty of the human condition — our impulse to believe that “this time, things are different.”
  

• Andy Duncan reports on a Civitas lecture, asking, "Our Dysfunctional Financial Services Sector: Is there a solution?"

  Dr Woolley’s main contention was that the financial services system is clearly broken, particularly by the principal-agent problem where the agents (traders, fund managers, financial advisers) are milking the investment gains of the principals (that’s you, me, and everyone else with a retail pension), mainly through technological financial innovation, moral hazard, leverage, and the general opacity of the financial system.

  Andy considers the substance of the lecture before proposing a solution which differs from Dr Woolley's: correct the flaws in the monetary regime.

At The Cobden Centre, we are determined to widen the scope of the present economic debate. We are for honest money and social progress because we believe that productive human social cooperation requires as its foundation a better system of money and bank credit. As James M. Buchanan (Nobel Laureate, economics, 1986) has said,

The market will not work effectively with monetary anarchy. Politicization is not an effective alternative. We must commence meaningful dialogue with acceptance of these elementary verities. Far too much has been said and written in elaboration of the first statement, which too often is taken to be equivalent to the assertion that “capitalism” or “the market” has failed.

The market has not failed; money has failed.

Has the European Commission been given further powers to control the UK Budget?

After David Cameron’s attendance at his first EU summit, in a statement to the House on the European Council, the Prime Minister said on Monday, “So on budget surveillance let me be clear – the UK Budget will be shown to this House first – and not to the Commission. … Of course we will share projections and forecasts just as we do with the IMF and other international bodies. … Co-ordination and consultation – yes. Clearance – no. Never.”

David Cameron flew into the G20 Summit with Virgin Atlantic, not BA

Reuters reports this afternoon that British Airways and the Unite union are "willing to hold talks as early as today to avert the threat of further strike action by cabin crew in a dispute over pay and conditions."

But it would appear that Downing Street have not been taking any chances on Unite disrupting the Prime Minister's movements.

As the picture shows, David Cameron flew into Toronto for the G20 on a Virgin Atlantic jet...

You can watch his arrival in all its glory in the below video clip courtesy of the G20 summit Youtube Channel.

The Financial Reform Package

Iain Anderson is Director at Cicero Consulting.

There have been acres of ink expounded on the proposals to scrap the Financial Services Authority since George Osborne published his plans in opposition in July 2009.

Those plans did give HM Treasury officials almost a year to get ready for the likely changes and to develop an implementation strategy. And the Chancellor’s impressive Mansion House speech last week did lay out a clear roadmap towards those reforms. So officials have clearly and quickly got with the programme!

However I think some more clarity is needed around who will lead the reforms and how oversight will take place on a day to day basis.

The Chancellor has rightly pointed to the deficiencies of the Tri-Partite arrangements between the Bank of England, FSA and HM Treasury under the previous administration. Politically I think it is important right now to show that HM Treasury will not just lead the reforms – as it must – but that it will also ensure there is a clear, ongoing oversight process in place at Treasury after 2012 when the new regulatory bodies are in place.

That may mean there is a need to beef up the ‘oversight’ function in terms of staff at HM Treasury – but that is a small price to pay to ensure both accountability and we have people in place to ask the right questions of the Bank of England and the other new authorities.

Speaking to current FSA and Bank of England officials since the speech, I think they would welcome this lead.

Attending this week’s FSA Annual Meeting, it was already clear that the locus of power is ebbing away – the question and answer session was the most lacklustre affair I have seen for years ending half an hour before its allotted time.

I hope we will see the publication of the full legislative proposals soon and that the Government looks to have a priority track for the legislation in the coming session to ensure that we can get on with the process of UK regulatory change and also keep our eyes on the wider global financial debate to ensure the UK is able to maintain competitive advantage.

28 day detention continues under the Coalition

We had our first bad news under the Coalition a little while ago. Now, we've had some more.

The rules which allow the police to detain suspects for 28 days without charge are to remain in force for at least another six months. Both parties in the Coalition have indicated that they think that the limit, which is the longest in the developed world, is too high. But still it's going to continue.

Extending detention without charge went against the grain of our country’s traditions of fairness under the law. I am afraid that continuing the policy suggests that the government’s promise to safeguard rights and liberties is hollow.

The record of prosecutions shows that this power has done nothing to advance the fight against terrorism. All it does is damage the very values of democratic freedom that terrorists hate.

Number 10 should be backing new ministers not briefing against them

It's pretty depressing to see No 10 officials briefing against three Cabinet Ministers already. That this comes barely 48 hours after the Budget, when all hands should be focussed on making the coalition's case on the economy to the nation and sticking it ruthlessly to Labour, makes it all the more reprehensible.

Shaking up an unreformed defence establishment and re-shaping welfare are two of the toughest ministerial briefs. Ministers must be extraordinarily focused. If they do their jobs well, they will inevitably make enemies and come under attack. Some of that will be very personal, playing the man not the ball. They shouldn't have to be checking over their shoulders to make sure Downing Street is still with them and not joining in to catch them in a cross-fire.

No surprise, either, that all three Ministers are on the right of the Party. Astonishingly it appears that many Number 10 insiders genuinely believe that the election campaign was a success and that they couldn't have done any better. They see the coalition as the best of all possible worlds, preferring to work with Lib Dems rather than conservatives on the right. A touch of humility, reflection and acknowledgement of poor strategy and tactics where necessary wouldn't go amiss. Reaching for the Alistair Campbell handbook of briefings and counter-briefings against our own side is destructive and self-defeating.It needs to end now.

What is the Centre-Right vision for Scotland and how should that translate into policy?

By Derek Brownlee MSP

The future of the Conservatives in Scotland has been a popular topic on ConHome (and much of the Scottish media) since the General Election. Since the disappointing election result in Scotland, the party has announced the Sanderson Review into how the party operates in Scotland, and Annabel Goldie has reshuffled the team in Holyrood, asking me to lead a separate review into policy.

We’ve issued an open invitation to every party member in Scotland to engage in this policy debate. Last week, I chaired a policy conference where over 350 members came together to discuss our political approach, and we have begun a wider programme of meetings with civic Scotland.

Perhaps inevitably, much of the focus in the media since the election has been on the way the party is structured in Scotland, and on the personalities involved. That's fair enough, but fundamentally most of us get involved in politics because we are interested in the battle of ideas.

I don't for one moment seek to underplay the importance of some of the issues around structural reform -  they must be addressed - but for me the key question we should all ask before we consider issues around organisation, structure or personnel is a simple one: what do we stand for? What is the centre-right vision in today's Scotland, and how does that translate into our policies and political approach?

It is sensible to reconsider these questions in the light of the election result, and in the new political environment in which we find ourselves. We all have our own answers to these questions, but in this engagement phase of the review I want to hear as many different contributions to this debate as possible.
The problems we face are not unique – many will be familiar to anyone who remembers the 2005 UK leadership election, although some are specific to Scotland.

Much of the critique of the position of the Scottish Party so far has been about how we are perceived, whether fair or not. So some have suggested we are seen as lacking interest in the poorer in society; that we are still seen as “anti-Scottish”; or that voters think we would like to dismantle public services.

What is striking about these is that the observations have tended to be about what we are seen to be against, rather than what we stand for. That’s why underpinning our manifesto next year needs to be a clear, simple and consistent theme which sets out a positive vision and which provides the platform for the 2011 election campaign.

Perfectly crafted policies don’t, on their own, win elections – but they do send out a strong signal of the kind of party we are, and the kind of country we are trying to shape.

Submissions to the Policy Review can be made to [email protected]

Does the government have a control orders policy?

Lord Carlile delivered a sensible speech last night which again made the case for control orders, as well as an enhanced ability to deport foreign terror suspects. The Conservatives and Lib Dems have already been forced to issue control orders against al-Qaeda operatives Abid Nasser and Faraz Khan, despite being highly critical of them when out of government.

Lord Carlile is spot on. As long as the European Court of Human Rights prevents us from deporting terror suspects, and we remain unwilling to ignore the Court's direction (as Italy has done on numerous occasions on this issue), we are reliant on control orders to safeguard national security. This is something I outline in a forthcoming Centre for Social Cohesion report, and have discussed in this week's Weekly Standard.

However, the system is not ideal, and two facts have emerged recently which should make the new government pause for thought. First of all, of the 12 individuals still under control order, 10 are now British citizens. It is worth remembering that control orders were introduced primarily for foreign terror suspects that could not be deported (specifically those detained without trial at Belmarsh prison). The government should be clear that the home grown threat is such that control orders are required for British citizens as well.

Secondly, in Lord Carlile's speech, he says that “Getting rid of control orders would be too dangerous in four or five cases. In those cases there is robust intelligence of serious terrorist intent and it would be dangerous to have them uncontrolled and on the streets.”

But if getting rid of control orders is only too dangerous in "four or five cases", does that mean they can be got rid of in the other seven or eight that are still in force? I presume that this is not what Lord Carlile means - and having seen a lot of the control order documentation used in court, I think he understates the problem. The vast majority of those under control order are clearly extremely dangerous.

No amount of political posturing or internal reviews by the new government is going to change this, so if it is going to make good on its pledge to scrap control orders, it needs to have an extremely effective alternative lined up. Allowing intercept evidence is not the answer - government reviews have shown time and time again that it would not make a bit of difference to current control order cases - and we have already shown that we are going to remain in thrall to the European Court of Human Rights. So what is the answer? I'm sure I'm not the only one doubtful the government actually has one.

Cameron agrees there should be a new EU Treaty

There seems to have been some confusion over my last post, presumably because lots of you didn't bother to click on the hyperlinks I provided.  (Tricky, isn't it, this internet thingy?)  So I'll spell it out.  On Monday, a good day to bury news, Cameron announced that Britain would be prepared to support a new Treaty, strengthening the powers of the EU to oversee and control the Eurozone, provided that the measures would not apply to Britain.

This was the new Treaty that I've been banging on about for some time, saying we should support it and use it as an opportunity to renegotiate - after all, renegotiating would mean a new Treaty, so that's precisely what we've wanted.  OK.  So Cameron has moved on from saying he'd veto such a Treaty (rather silly posturing, but he'd only just started his new job and we all do a few embarrassing things early on) to saying he's in favour of having one.  Well, since there absolutely had to be one for the euro to have any chance of surviving, we'll grant that as progress.

The budget debate: why economists disagree, why they are so often wrong and where economic thinking goes next

Even setting aside Labour's gratuitous pantomime politics, I have found these days of budget debate frustrating. Arguments are being rehearsed and economists quoted without any regard to the nature of the social science that is economics or where various economists fit into the range of schools of economic thought.

I'll try to explain.

Why economists disagree

Economics is not like the natural sciences because individual people think, choose and act in a system of changing cooperative relationships. We are not inanimate objects buffetted by events, but people. It should be obvious that any study of economics - ie social cooperation - will be informed by a wide range of thinking about the nature of people and society.

Consequently, there are three prevailing theoretical frameworks in economics associated with three cities: Cambridge (Keynes), Chicago (Monetarist) and Vienna (Austrian). There are a few Marxists around too, with their cynical ideas polluting debate.

As I have put on record (1,2), there are real differences between these theoretical frameworks and these differences matter when it comes to public policy.  Once you understand the basics of each framework, the political commentary falls into place.

I will spare you a detailed comparative analysis here. If you want it, please see this paper by my Cobden Centre colleagues, Dr Anthony J Evans and Toby Baxendale.

Instead, you may enjoy this brilliant video:

The simple fact is this: Labour politicians are promoting Keynesian ideas with an unwarranted confidence.

Why economists are so often wrong

Does earning £42,375 a year mean you are rich?

As there has been nothing else going on this afternoon I have spent some more time going through the Red Book. The good news is that the spending increases quoted in my earlier post do take into account the predicted level of inflation. So I'm pleased that I was wrong and my critics in the earlier post Mark M and Denis Cooper were right. The document says that spending "will fall in real terms by four per cent over the period." I think the period they are talking about is seven years however - from 2008/09 to 2015/16. So the Government are looking to find savings of around half of one per cent a year. A tiny, tiny cut. Gievn the margin of error should be classified as a freeze. But better than I had thought.

However there is also bad news. Last year under the Labour Government any earnings over £43,875 were taxed at 40%. This year the amount is the same. Next year the situation will be worse. While the basic allowance is going up from £6,475 to £7,475 (which is excellent) the basic rate limit is being cut by £2,500 - from £37,400 to £34,900. So anyway it means from next year anyway earning more than £42,375 will hit the 40% tax bracket. They will be stung. Squeezed till the pips squeak. Punished for being fat cats.

When Nigel Lawson introduced the 40% tax rate in 1988 it applied to those earning over £21,905. If the allowances had been increased in line with the earnings it would today apply to those on around £60,000.

If the Government want to get the economy growing they should be raising the allowance - not slashing it.

Last year I asked:

Could a family where the only breadwinner earns £43,875 a year really be regarded as rich?

Doesn't the same point apply rather more where the earnings are £42,375?

David Alexander: Will the Lib Dems be hit by their support for the increase in VAT? It killed their sister party in Australia...

By David Alexander, a former senior adviser in the John Howard Government in Australia and former economics editor of the Canberra Times, now resident in the United Kingdom.

The VAT bomb that the Liberal Democrats warned about has arrived, but are they prepared for the collateral damage coming their way?

This movie has been played before, recently in Australia, where the sister party to the Liberal Democrats went from being the third party in Australian politics ten years ago to having zero Parliamentary representation today, courtesy of supporting a VAT.

Ten years ago the Australian Democrats were a highly influential centre-left party, passionate about civil liberties, foreign aid and the ABC, and exercising their considerable influence through holding the balance of power in the Senate.

But in 2000 when the leadership of the Democrats gave their critical support to the centre-right government of John Howard to introduce a VAT, the recriminations were like a slow-release poison that ultimately killed the party.

The fact that the Democrat leadership had reasonable and detailed arguments for supporting the controversial new VAT was brushed aside by the rank and file members of the party who simply could not stomach doing a deal with the arch enemy to bring in a regressive tax.

Poles of opposition emerged, furious arguments broke out amongst party members, and the party had difficulty articulating a clear message about what it stood for.

The political toll mounted quickly: by 2007 there were no Democrats left in the Australian Parliament, and by 2009 there was not a single Democrat in any state or territory parliament in Australia.

This extraordinary political death can only be understood when one realises the centrality to Democrat supporters of feeling morally superior. Once that sense was gone, or at least called into question by the VAT support, the Democrats were no longer worth supporting. The Labor Party and Greens were relentless in needling their fellow left-wingers on this feeling of moral compromise, just as Labour here will follow.

Of course there are important differences between the two situations: the Liberal Democrats are a much stronger party than their southern sister, and the Liberal Democrats are in government here, rather than just hitched to a specific piece of legislation.

But a significant number of Lib Dem voters are going to drift away as a result of this decision, more than will go its way, and the hit to its vote will cause second round recriminations.

Will this northern sequel have the same ending? Who knows, we’ve only just started the movie.

So I was wrong on court closures

I was wrong yesterday. It's not the closure of 150 Magistrates' Courts being announced today.

It's 103 Magistrates' Courts and 54 County Courts.

Public spending is not being cut

There has been lots of talk about spending cuts. Yet, for all the talk of axes being swung little noticed are some figures on page 45 of the Red Book which shows that Government spending will rise. This year it will be £696.8 billion. Next year it will be £699.8 billion. In 2012-13 it will be £711 billion. While in 2013-14 it will be £737.5 billion. This is at current prices - not something that can be excused by inflation.

Sure there will be winners and losers. Spending cuts in some areas, increases elsewhere. But overall the Government is planning to spend an extra £40 billion a year, in real terms, on top of the spending level from the Labour Government. John Redwood has noticed this. So have the IEA. But generally the media have not given much prominence to these figures - as they confuse the broader narrative.

We also have the rich being taxed at 50% compared to 40% under the previous Government and we have Capital Gains Tax increased from 18% under Labour to 28% under a Conservative-led Government - this regarded by Paul Goodman as a victory.

IGC? What IGC?

If the diary plan is to be believed, today’s the day the Intergovernmental Conference is scheduled to amend the Lisbon Treaty. Blink and you’d miss it; the event has been delegated to the civil servants posted permanently to Brussels as part of the normal COREPER workload.

The reasoning is painfully self-evident. Leave the ministers out of it, restrict the discussions to amending a protocol or two, keep the talks short enough to prevent overspill into coffee and pastries, and you reduce the risk of the media talking it up. It stays what’s been touted as a “technical” IGC, a trifle, a small thing.

Of course, no such thing exists as a “technical IGC”. A change to the treaties is a change to the treaties.

A minimalist argument may wash for some countries like Spain, which have already had their referendum and voted Yes first time round. It is less palatable for those whose plebiscites were overruled. It is noxious to those who were promised a referendum and then denied it.

By 2005, Labour had been forced to concede a popular vote on the EU Constitution. Labour’s manifesto openly declared that “we will put it to the British people in a referendum”. It was a democratic pledge matched across the political spectrum. Then came what was for Mr Blair the happy coincidence of a Dutch and French No vote. His candidates up and down the country proclaimed that the issue was dead and voters no longer needed to judge them at the ballot box on their party’s policy on the matter.

Of course, the EU Constitution was not defunct, and we are lumbered with it today – despite the broken promise of being asked our opinion first.

Some will say, ‘Well that’s all water under the bridge’ (or passerelle). Well actually, no.

In the first instance, a promise is a promise; and this is a chance for once to restore some trust in politics.  Heaven knows politicians need it in the current climate.

But it’s also (as Melanchthon has been tirelessly pointing out in his blogs) an opportunity. There is plenty wrong with the terms of our relationship with the EU. There is also a mass of things wrong with the EU just by itself, as a highly insightful piece by Bruno Waterfield today explores. The TPA and Democracy Movement last week teamed up to highlight the shocking cost of Britain’s EU membership, and aside from Health and International Development, these billions of pounds of “First World Aid” provide the third spending area that’s been ring fenced by Ministers. In an age of sharp cuts, that’s wrong.

So the treaty change may be narrow, but it is a providential opportunity for vastly-needed reform.

“Technical IGC” or no, the changes will have to be approved by Parliament. Even if the debate is being ducked in Brussels, we can expect some feisty exchanges in Westminster. And yes, with luck, we may yet see an honourable vote on that long-promised referendum.