Lord Leach of Fairford: A Queen's Speech fit for today's economic emergency

A few weeks ago ConservativeHome published an Alternative Queen's Speech, written by a variety of Tory MPs. Rodney Leach, Baron Leach of Fairford is Chairman of Open Europe and a successful businessman. He offers another Alternative speech - this time focused on the economic emergency.

"Great emergencies demand an emergency response. We can't save the Eurozone from itself, but we can do a lot more to protect ourselves from its worst effects.

Without debt reduction there is no way back to economic health, but that’s not enough. For the duration of the crisis the government will single-mindedly subordinate other objectives to policies whose purpose is the promotion of economic activity. If this entails U-turns or “betrayal” of a Coalition agreement made in very different times, so be it.

We will start by cancelling the High Speed Rail project and switching transport spending to a third London runway and the elimination of road bottlenecks. Britain must retain - or regain - its status as an airline hub, so commitment to a new airport in the Thames Estuary will be announced within three months.

Water shortages are largely unnecessary. We will revive disused connecting canals and start construction immediately on the five southern reservoirs previously approved but later cancelled.

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Mark Field MP: Christians are being ethnically-cleansed from the Middle East's hollow new democracies

Mark Field is the Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster. Follow Mark on Twitter.

The global media circus has moved on from Cairo, Alexandria and the Egyptian seaboard. Soon the current rapt attention to the terrible bloodshed in Damascus, Houla, Aleppo and Homs will similarly pass.

Yet for the nine million Egyptian Coptic Christians and the two million Syrian followers of Christ, whose lineage goes back to St Paul’s proselytising in the first century AD, these are desperate times. Religious minorities often find their most assured protection under dictatorships. Forget all the talk about liberators fighting against the existing regime in Syria, or of democrats and progressives triumphantly taking the reins in Egypt. The unspeakable truth is that the sizeable Christian communities in these trouble-torn states are at greater threat of ethnic cleansing from their ancestral homes than has been the case for generations – often at the hands of the self-styled freedom fighters so feted by the Western press.

Events in Iraq provide us with a timely example. During this year’s Easter celebrations, St Joseph's Chaldean Church in central Baghdad was surrounded by concrete barriers and army checkpoints. Amidst savage bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the story of Iraq’s Christian population is one that is rarely told. But since the invasion it is estimated that half their number has desperately been driven to exile outside the country. Some 330,000 Iraqi Christians have fled in the past decade to Syria alone (where Christians have been largely protected by the Assad regime). Others have found safe haven in Jordan and naturally some have come to these shores. Under Saddam Hussein, some Christians had risen to the top of politics, most notably Tariq Aziz, Hussein’s Deputy Prime Minister. Yet since the dictator’s fall, violence against the Christian minority, who were often associated with the ‘crusading invaders’, has included kidnappings, the beheading of a priest, the bombing of ancient churches and forced conversion to Islam. 

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Alex Deane: Neglecting our friends

For the Jubilee, the flags of all the Commonwealth countries will be flown in Parliament Square. But I have it on good authority that the flags of the British Overseas Territories will not be flown. Not because some fool in our bureaucracy opposed their flying; oh no - someone made the sensible observation that they ought to be flown (which really ought to be automatic, but there we are) and there was agreement with that suggestion. The simple problem, it has emerged, is that the British Government doesn't have them.

That is to say that we don't even have the flags of these places - despite the fact that they are under our jurisdiction and share our Head of State. EU flags? Oh yes - got them aplenty. But places with which we have enduring and important cultural and formal British ties? Not even one each.

A bit shameful, isn't it?

This is now being rectified post-haste, but until it's belatedly fixed, for a sense of how flags should be celebrated and honoured, you can always try this.

John Glen MP: Will Ofcom throw away 30 years of free markets?

John Glen is the Member of Parliament for Salisbury. Follow John on Twitter.

There is a good chance that you are reading this on your smartphone or tablet. After all, devices connected to high speed networks are in the pockets and bags of millions of us. There are more connected devices in the UK than there are people*.

The story of the mobile phone, however, is also the story of competitive markets. Choice and competition have driven efficiency and innovation by the mobile phone operators, who have constantly sought to bring the latest products and services to their customers and get ahead of their rivals.  This competition ensures mass take-up by consumers and a healthy self-sustaining system.

The mobile industry generates annual revenues in excess of £15bn and employs approximately 35,000 people in the UK. It is also a powerful economic stimulus – in the UK an estimated £1 spent on internet connectivity (both fixed line and, increasingly, mobile) generates £5 in the wider internet economy. That is just the tip of the iceberg: businesses increasingly rely upon mobile technology to keep in touch with customers and employees so they can react quickly in a competitive economic environment.

Mobile data traffic is growing at a rate in excess of 80% year-on-year, mainly driven by the mass take-up of smartphones, which are already in the hands of over a quarter of British adults and half of the nation’s teenagers*. The mobile network operators now need to deal with the rapid growth in demand that these devices have created.

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Chris Heaton-Harris MP: The choice is between economic growth and onshore wind. We should choose the former.

Chris Heaton-Harris is Member of Parliament for Daventry.  Follow Chris on Twitter.

The time was always going to come when the amazingly active "green" movement came up against hard economic fact - and that time has arrived. As much as it is spun, energy produced by onshore wind turbines is much more expensive than existing energy sources. It puts up electricity bills for business and families, thus slowing down economic growth and increasing the number of people who are falling onto fuel poverty.

Energy powers growth, it drives your broadband, manufacturing equipment relies upon it, it heats your home and it keeps food fresh. Make energy more expensive and you make life more expensive – and that is what both domestic and international policies have been doing for years now.

Spain is just one of the countries that has realised these simple economic facts and the green industry, that has happily gorged on taxpayers subsidies and higher prices to the consumers is not happy, as this article in Business Week shows.

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John Howell MP: Labour always fails when it comes to economic responsibility, as the IMF's 1976 report shows

John Howell OBE is the Member of Parliament for Henley.

The recent IMF scorecard on the British economy, produced two years into this Coalition, prompted me to take a look at the comments the IMF made in 1976, two years into a Labour government. At that time, the then-Chancellor, Denis Healey, had to go cap in hand to the IMF for a stand-by loan of nearly $4 billion. That is the equivalent of £12 billion today. To give a feel for scale, that is about the size of the Home Office and DEFRA budgets combined.

The IMF was substantially underwhelmed with Labour’s economic performance. Its blunt assessment of the causes of the crisis in which the then Labour government found itself was summed up in this phrase: “First among these [causes] has been the failure to establish effective control over financial policies”. This is now a phrase which echoes down the years of successive Labour governments.

Contrast that with the latest IMF report which paid tribute to the "substantial progress" towards a sustainable budget delivered by the Coalition's austerity programme. It went on to describe the deficit reduction as "essential" in the medium term. In a now much-quoted comment, the IMF’s Christine Lagarde said;

"When I think back to May 2010, when the UK deficit was at 11%, and I try to imagine what the situation would be like today if no such fiscal consolidation programme had been decided, I shiver,"

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Richard Ashworth MEP: In the EU, "austerity" means reality, and growth can only be achieved through competitiveness

Richard Ashworth is the leader of Britain's Conservative MEPs.

The debate surrounding Europe's economic crisis has reminded me of Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty. In Through the Looking Glass he scornfully tells Alice: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

And so it is in the Eurozone debate, especially over the two words on everyone's lips - "austerity" and "growth". It seems to me that every speaker means something different by each word, while each listener understands something else. For some, austerity means economically-dominant northern Europe - forcing southern Eurozone partners into political submission under the weight of monetary and fiscal union.

For some of us, however, it seems an unfortunate and misplaced word to use altogether, precisely because it is capable of so many different meanings. Never forget, the Greeks didn't get where they are by accident, nor because of any agenda in Germany, ECB or EU to do them down. They got there through years of poor decisions and bad governance. Most notably, they thought that once they were in the Eurozone, Greek labour costs could have parity with the Germans. Without German productivity, they priced themselves out of the market and the government effectively handed control of monetary policy to the trade unions.

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Alistair Thompson: Cowardly Clegg - and his attempt to distract attention from his own links to the Murdochs

Alistair Thompson was Conservative candidate for West Bromwich East at the general election. He also runs Media Intelligence Partners with business partner Nick Wood, the former press secretary to Conservative leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith.

Today sees Nick Clegg step up his attacks on his Coalition partners, the Conservative Party.

The Deputy Prime Minister, who this week alone has dismissed calls for a free vote on gay marriage, at least for his own party and ruled out emergency border controls when the Euro collapses, will go on the offensive over the links between the ‘other’ two parties and the Murdoch media empire.

In a speech to a group of political reformers, Mr Clegg will seek to curry favour by saying the links between senior politicians and News International is an example of the country’s ‘broken establishment’ and  that he is convinced that this played a part in the financial crisis.
 
The speech would be acceptable, even understandable, were it not so ludicrously hypocritical of Mr Clegg to attack both Labour and the Conservatives for a disease that affects virtually the whole political establishment, regardless of party, class, beliefs or any other variant you care to mention.

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Dr Eamonn Butler: It's Tax Freedom Day today. Yes, for almost five months you've been working just to pay taxes.

Dr Eamonn Butler is Director of the Adam Smith Institute. Follow Eamonn on Twitter.

Congratulations! Today is Tax Freedom Day. It’s that point in the year when you finally stop working for the Treasury and start working for yourself. Yes, it’s amazing but true – you work nearly five months of the year solely to pay taxes. You are left with only seven months of the year to provide for yourself.

For 149 days, from New Years’ Day, through the Iran oil embargo, the Arab Spring, the second Greek bailout, the announcement that Encyclopaedia Britannica is scrapping its print edition, the picture of North Korea’s exploding rocket, the $120m sale of The Scream, your whole working energies have been absorbed by the black hole of HM Revenue & Customs – even that extra day of February 29, this being a leap year. You have paid income tax and national insurance on what you earn, VAT (at its new, higher rate) on what you spend, corporation tax on your business, fuel and vehicle duties on your motoring, council tax on your house, stamp duties on your transactions, excise duties on your cigarettes, beer and gambling, inheritance tax on you late mother’s estate, air passenger duty on your holiday flights, climate change levy on your gas and electricity bills, and a lot more besides.

And that 149 days of thraldom to the Treasury, believe it or not, is only the burden suffered by the average taxpayer. If you earn above the average, you pay even more on what you earn; if you have a bigger house, you pay more council tax and stamp duty; if you take longer-haul flights, you pay more on those; and since you probably buy more stuff, you pay more tax on all that, too.

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Ben Howlett: Today's start-up loans scheme backs young people

Ben Howlett is the National Chairman of Conservative Future.

Today’s announcement that young people will be able to access StartUp loans through Start-Up Britain will not only help a generation of young people who aspire to own and build businesses, it is also fundamental to helping build economic growth.
 
The Government are creating an £82million loan guarantee scheme through the Startup Loans Company that they believe will help ensure young people aged 18-24 are given rock solid support that they desperately need to start up their own businesses.  The first few quarters of a start-up company are the most fragile.  Young people find it hard to gain loans from banks when they cannot have a track record of successful repayment from loans.   These new loans are going to become available so that young people can get the support they deserve.  The Government also believes these loans will, in the words of the Prime Minister. support “that spark of an idea into the next global brand”.
 

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Laura Sandys MP: We must be on customers' side - and be seen to be on their side

Laura Sandys is the Member of Parliament for Thanet South.

I was quite amazed at the coverage of the Queens Speech. The fourth estate had already decided long before it was delivered what the follow-up headlines were going to be – House of Lords reform and Tory infighting. And we were led to believe that unless the Speech delivered a bill to  solve the euro crisis, deliver growth and reduce unemployment singlehandedly, it would be a failure.  So I suppose I should not have been surprised that the commentary didn’t seem to mention the consumer-focused legislation at all!

I didn’t read anything about the introduction of social tariffs for those on the lowest incomes in the draft Water Bill. Has anyone assessed the positive impact that the Grocery Code Adjudicator could have on building a more resilient food supply chain – i.e.: better value for the consumer? And what were the commentators saying about Electricity Market Reform? There was not a murmur about how these proposals might address some of the biggest financial headaches facing households. These are all very important bills for the people that we serve – our constituents.

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Mark Reckless MP: Police and Crime Commissioners are one of the great reforms of this Conservative-led government

Mark Reckless is the Member of Parliament for Rochester and Strood and serves on the Home Affairs Select Committee. Follow Mark on Twitter.

It is ten years since I joined the Conservative Party Policy Unit and helped develop our policy for direct election of those who oversee our police. It was therefore a particular pleasure for me to spend Saturday at the Conservative Selection Council to decide our final shortlist for Kent's first Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC).

Tim Montgomerie described the withdrawal of Colonel Tim Collins in Kent as a 'blow', but it is one we barely noticed given the strength of the rest of our field. The three who made it through were:

• Finance whizz and ex-UKIP Leader Craig Mackinlay, who came over to the Conservatives in 2005, gave perhaps the most powerful speech, showing a no-nonsense approach to budgeting, cutting crime and policing our borders;
• Foreign Office man, Francois Gordon, who comes from a long civil service career and worked as an EU desk officer before taking on ambassadorial roles, and is now "European Strategy Adviser" to Kent Police; and
• Jan Berry, an ex-police officer who for several years ran the Police Federation, the police equivalent of a trade union, and was persuaded by the wording of the PCC oath to stand as Conservative and not Independent.

Councillors Brian Sweetland, Jo Gideon and Mike O'Brien performed well, but with Craig Mackinlay, an ex-ambassador, and an ex-head of the Police Federation winning through against them, in what was a very tight contest, the Kent PCC contest should remain one of the highest profile.

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Philip Booth: The UK's tax system punishes work, training, family formation and saving

Professor Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

If one were to set out to design a malfunctional tax and benefits system from scratch you would probably end up with what we have in the UK. As such, the Taxpayers’ Alliance new publication “The Single Income Tax” is extremely useful.

It is worthwhile examining just how bad the tax and benefits system is today by taking the simplest possible case – note, the simplest possible case – of a couple with three children not claiming Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit or assistance with child-care costs (or a host of other ad hoc benefits that are available).

The couple will receive total benefits of £13,275 assuming that they undertake 30 hours work a week between them. These benefits are then withdrawn at a rate of 41 pence of benefit for every pound earned over £6,420 until the household income level reaches £38,798. It is assumed that this is a single-earner household (the tax and benefit position in reality depends on the way in which earnings are split between the two persons in the couple). The first point to note is that this couple receive the basic means-tested benefit until their income is almost £39,000.

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Bill Cash MP: The EU isn't work economically or politically. The case for radical renegotiation in our relationship with the EU is unanswerable.

Bill Cash is Member of Parliament for Stone.

This week, the Prime Minister attended a strategic informal dinner which included President Hollande. There is a stream of assertions by the political elite that the crisis in Greece and throughout Europe is essentially a Eurozone matter. It is not. It is a European Union matter of which the Eurozone crisis is a consequence of the failure of the EU as a whole, with extremely damaging consequences to the United Kingdom.
 
Given the Euro-integrationists’ perverse commentaries in the past week that the solution lies with full political union among certain Member States, I would strongly urge the Prime Minister to make clear that:

(i) under no circumstances whatsoever would the UK ever become absorbed into a German-dominated European Union;
 
(ii) there should be a public Convention of European leaders of the Member States and representatives of national parliaments, after the Greek election, so that voters can observe what kind of Europe each member state actually proposes;
 
(iii) there must be a fundamental rewriting of the existing European Treaties based on the principles arising from (ii);
 
(iv) with the clear failure of the Lisbon Treaty and with pressure for full political union between certain Member States, there would be fundamental change in the relationship of the UK to the EU, requiring a Referendum for which the Conservative Party originally voted.

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John Baron MP: A military strike against Iran would be disastrous

John Baron is the Member of Parliament for Basildon and Billericay. A former soldier and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he resigned from the shadow frontbench to vote against the Iraq War, opposed our intervention in Afghanistan, and was the only Tory MP to vote against the Libyan intervention.

We can all agree that the Baghdad talks on Iran’s nuclear programme are very important. The signs of tension are evident: naval forces continue to muster in the Persian Gulf; Israel is still open to a military strike; while possible military options are being discussed in the UK’s National Security Council. Some or all of this is about setting the mood music prior to the talks. But the outcome of these negotiations will largely define how this crisis unfolds, and to a large extent whether military strikes are conducted. There can be little doubt that a further diplomatic push is warranted.

We should remember that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s November report contained no ‘smoking gun’. When a number of Parliamentary colleagues and I visited the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna last month, we were told that there was no evidence that Iran had contravened the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They have not contravened Article II, which bans manufacture, whilst Article X makes allowances for research.

There is no hard evidence of construction of nuclear weapons, nor of a decision to do so – a fact confirmed recently by US intelligence sources. Neither is there evidence of diversion of nuclear materials. Yes, there is circumstantial evidence, but we know where this led us when it came to Iraq: we must base our foreign policy decisions on solid ground.

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