CentreRight

The Consequences of Kenneth Clarke's Crime Policy

Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke's, reversal of Tory election promises is the result of surrendering to Lib-Dem policies. The two manifestos were based on diametrically opposed assumptions and the haggling has been won by the Lib-Dems.

The Liberal-Democrats said they would cancel Labour's prison building programme and replace many prison sentences with what they call 'rigorously enforced community sentences'. Penalties, they said, do not deter criminals. The Conservatives criticised Labour for failing to build enough prison places and promised to stop the early release of criminals and to increase prison capacity as necessary. 

The Lib-Dems are not liberals but Fabian social therapists
The Conservatives have long been the main home of British liberalism and some Tory MPs are looking hopefully to the 'Orange Book', published in 2004 by a group of liberals including Nick Clegg, David Laws and Vince Cable to 'reclaim' liberalism for the Lib-Dems. The Tories will look in vain. The crime chapter says that 'simply incarcerating ever-increasing numbers of prisoners is not working'. It is 'the job of government to remove, then rehabilitate, that element in society that is restricting other people's liberty - the criminals.' What is completely missing from the Orange Book and the Lib-Dem manifesto is any recognition that crime is a personal responsibility. It is not the 'job of the government' to rehabilitate people as if it were a kind of therapist dealing with a helpless patient. Offenders should rehabilitate themselves and make the right choice next time round. Of course, everything should be done to help individuals to make the right choice, including the provision of educational opportunities, but we should never forget that crime is a personal choice.

The Lib-Dems might find it worthwhile to go back to their roots and read one of the greatest interpreters of modern liberalism, Leonard Hobhouse. He identified two ideas with which liberalism should have nothing in common. One he called 'mechanical socialism', by which he meant Marxism. The second he called 'official socialism', which conceived 'mankind as in the mass a helpless and feeble race, which it is its duty to treat kindly'. And true kindness, he told his readers, required 'firmness' such that 'the life of the average man must be organised for his own good'. Writing in 1911, he was thinking of the Fabian elitists of his day, but he could just as well have been describing the thinking behind the 2010 Lib-Demo manifesto.

Should the Conservatives have an industrial policy?

The Tory manifesto declares support for a more balanced economy, but a dispute has opened up between the think tanks about how best to achieve it. In a recent report, Policy Exchange advocates among other measures, the winding up of Labour's Strategic Investment Fund, which has given Rolls-Royce a grant to build a new factory in the UK and Nissan a grant to develop battery technology. This policy is denounced as slipping back into 'intervening in markets' in ways that could 'distort the allocation of capital'.

Civitas has just published Prosperity With Principles, available from Amazon or as a free PDF from Civitas. It argues that our government needs an industrial policy if we are to avoid further economic decline. It lists 22 measures:

1. Set an exchange-rate target consistent with a higher-level of manufactured exports, subject to a monetary policy aimed at achieving sound money.
2. Reduce government debt as rapidly as possible to reduce the cost of borrowing so that investment can be increased.
3. Aim to move towards a main corporation tax rate of 15% within a few years. Preserve and extend R&D tax credits. Move towards 100% capital allowances.
4. Cut personal tax and inheritance tax to increase the funds available for private investment with the intention of encouraging a renewal of private and family-owned enterprises.
5. Apply a moratorium on all new business regulations in the legislative pipeline.
6. Aim to abolish employment tribunals and all related laws, and in the meantime, place a cash limit of £5,000 on all employment-related compensation awards.
7. Abolish business rates on empty property.
8. Restrict all climate-related measures to those that are consistent with keeping the UK within the top three most competitively priced energy markets in the EU and the G20.
9. As an extension of the export credits guarantee service, provide an exchange-rate hedging service for raw and semi-finished materials imported for use in manufacturing, and for exports of finished products.
10. Use public procurement more effectively to incubate innovative companies.
11. Increase taxpayer support for basic research when financial constraints permit.
12. Preserve and extend the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme.
13. Develop an Industry Bank, modelled on the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation.
14. Encourage saving and enterprise banks modelled on German savings banks.
15. Transform regional development agencies into arms of the Industry Bank.
16. Maintain a list of strategic industries, including defence, support them and prevent foreign takeovers.
17. Make vigorous use of WTO reciprocity rules.
18. Encourage the WTO to permit 'adjustment protection' for a time-limited period.
19. Ensure that importers are not placed at an advantage by home taxes and regulations. If necessary equalise the burden.
20. Examine all substantial foreign investments to ensure compatibility with competition law.
21. Place apprenticeships as far as possible under the control of employers, and whenever feasible provide the prospect of a job at the end.
22. Repeal the 2002 Enterprise Act to allow the relevant Secretary of State to intervene to protect the public interest in cases of acquisitions, mergers and other potentially anti-competitive activity.

How reforming the banks could help fix ‘broken Britain’

Earlier this year David Cameron declared his support for ‘social investment banks’ to encourage social  entrepreneurs, who he hopes will play a big part in fixing ‘broken Britain’. He should go much further and establish a new type of high-street bank – a saving and enterprise bank – to compete head on with the big corporations that dominate the industry at present. Banks that combine social and economic objectives have worked well in Germany for many decades.

They would serve three main purposes. First, they would be safe homes for the savings of ordinary people who are trying to work and save their way to independence. Second, because they would be required to invest in local enterprises only, they would help to reinvigorate business and overcome their dependence on international corporations that withdraw loans at short notice and impose excessive charges for borrowing. Third, by investing in productive enterprise they would encourage a renewal of responsible proprietorship, a natural evolution of Mrs Thatcher’s strategy of encouraging a property-owning democracy.

We should have the right to recall MPs

Should we have the right to 'recall' MPs? It can be done in America, why not here? Few of us had heard of recall until 2003 when California Governor Gray Davis lost the recall ballot to the 'governator', Arnold Swarzenegger. The idea is simple, as a Civitas online briefing proposed yesterday. Sometimes voters regret the choice they made at the last general election and do not want to wait until the next time. If a proportion of the electorate (say 20%) can be persuaded to sign a petition to recall the elected office holder, then an immediate by-election must be held.

There is cross-party support. Back in February 2008 a group of 27 Tory MPs wrote to The Daily Telegraph calling for local voters to be allowed to 'recall' their MP and at the weekend Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg came out in favour.

How common is it? In America 18 states allow elected officials to be recalled from their posts by a petition of between 12 and 40 per cent of voters. In 1903 the city of Los Angeles was the first large area to introduce recall, followed in 1908 by Oregon and in 1911 by California. Then Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Washington all adopted recall in 1912. In addition eleven more states, while not permitting recall of state-level officials, do allow the recall of local officials.