Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Neil Carmichael and John Redwood

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

I want to develop the argument a little more. As has already been pointed out, the forecast contains very worrying figures about the balance of payments deficit. And of course, were we to leave the EU, we would immediately have £10 billion at our disposal that we would no longer have to send abroad to be spent in rich countries on the continent. That is the net amount that goes to the continent. So our balance of payments would immediately improve by £10 billion a year if we did not have to make those contributions.

To cheer up Opposition Members even more, and to get them to change their vote, I can tell them that we and they would have the pleasure of spending £10 billion a year more in our own country—[Laughter.] Why is that funny? Why should not British taxpayers who have to pay £10 billion not have the advantage of spending it on things that they want instead of it being spent on new roads in France or Spain? I think my taxpayers want it to be spent here. That £10 billion a year could more than banish the austerity that Opposition Members claim has done some damage to our country. Looking at the figures, we can see that real public spending has gone up all the time under the coalition and the Conservative Government, but not by as much as it went up under previous Governments. If we had that £10 billion back to spend in the United Kingdom, we would have a better profile on public spending and on tax reductions.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend be sure that any figure he quotes is accurate, given that he has just rubbished the OBR and the Bank of England? Presumably he has a list of other British institutions to which he would give the same treatment.

[John Redwood]

But of course. I have checked the Government’s very own net contribution figures, and it is very likely that they have got those figures right, because even the Government can count how much they have spent and how much they have had to give away to the rest of the European Union. That is the damage that is being done.

On the balance of payments, I would urge my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench to do more work on getting the balance of payments deficit down. Obviously, they will not all agree with me about taking the quick easy hit of getting our £10 billion back to make a big reduction in the deficit, but we need to understand that that deficit is entirely the result of an adverse goods trade with the rest of the European Union. We are in profit with the rest of the world and we are in profit in services, but we have a colossal manufacturing deficit with the rest of the EU. Some of that relates to the way in which France and Germany get round the EU rules to make sure that they can buy French or German products, whereas we in Britain apply the EU rules extremely fairly and end up buying a lot of foreign products from the continent.

It is also the case that the very dear energy that European policies require and enforce is doing a lot of damage to our steel industry, our ceramics industry and other high energy-using industries. It is a great tragedy that, despite higher domestic demand for steel, we are still unable always to use British steel in British public sector contracts. Surely we ought to have a fix to create more demand for our own domestic industries.

We also import massive amounts of timber, despite having a big state sector involvement in the timber industry in this country. Why cannot more be done to cut more of the timber we already have as a state resource to meet our domestic demand, along with replanting and extending the planting, given that many people would like more forests? Why cannot we have more managed timber, with the state having an influence over it? We could also do more with the tax system to encourage more private forestry. We have rather good growing conditions here, compared with some of the colder Nordic climates from which we import timber at the moment.

We also import energy, but we have no need to do so. We are an island of coal, oil and gas set in a sea of coal, oil and gas. We also have lots of natural renewables, particularly lots of potential water power. Why cannot we create an energy policy in which we do not need to rely on importing timber from Canada, electricity from France and energy from Norway?

I am pleased that the Budget is starting to tackle the issue of the oil industry offshore through tax changes. We need to do other work on that, and we also need to get on with gas extraction onshore. We will probably find further oil resources when we are prospecting for shale gas in the shale sands. We need to start bridging the gap on energy before it becomes even more damaging to our balance of payments.

European Union Bill

Debate between Neil Carmichael and John Redwood

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael]

Excellent, a beautiful place. The hon. Lady might well think that the transparency of the Commission is important—indeed, the transparency of the Council of Ministers—and I have certainly thought about this long and hard. I understand why people would wish there to be more transparency in both those organisations. After all, they make decisions that are important to us, but the new clause tackles the issue in the wrong way because it would undermine the Government’s capacity to negotiate. That is what we have to underline.

When the Government enter negotiations with other nation states about the future of Europe, they must do so with the knowledge that they may or may not enter into alliances with various Governments, and that those alliances may change during the negotiations.

[Mr Redwood]

I think my hon. Friend is misreading the new clause. It would mean that, when all the negotiation was done and we knew the final outcome, we would also know whether our Ministers had won or lost. What is wrong with that? How dare he be so undemocratic?

[Neil Carmichael]

Because it is important to bear in mind the next negotiation and not think only about the one we have just had. That is obvious, because alliances can fluctuate and relationships are important. I do not think my right hon. Friend would say the same thing about any negotiation on a treaty outside Europe, and certainly not, for example, about NATO.

Policy for Growth

Debate between Neil Carmichael and John Redwood

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

In the spirit of general agreement with some of the other speakers, I wish to say, first, that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) was right to point out that there are more important things than just thinking about profit and so forth. We do think about the quality of life, and that is really important. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Workington—

[Mr Redwood]

Wokingham. Workington would be quite a win.

[Neil Carmichael]

All right, calm down. I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this excellent debate, because he is right about quantitative easing. Three hours ago he rightly reminded us that that could stimulate inflation. It is a form of inverted monetarism, and we should be mindful of that. He is also right about funding for smaller businesses. Crucially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) said, we have to think about more than just overdrafts; it is a question of putting equity into smaller businesses as well. We need to construct a taxation regime that allows that to happen, and the Departments should be working really hard on that.

I have three or four points to canter through briefly. First, Airbus is a very important business in my region, and has a huge number of supply companies in my constituency. It is also important because it is an international firm, so I want to make it clear right now that we must ensure that international trade is free trade. I am referring to the cloud over the aviation industry in general: what Boeing thinks of Airbus, and what Airbus thinks of Boeing. I think Airbus is right, and we need to promote that.

The other day, somebody was telling me that they thought that France was merciless in its pursuit of commercial advantage. It probably is, and so should we be. It is high time we understood that, stopped complaining about other countries and got on with it ourselves. Let me take a case in point: Poland, a country that has not stopped growing for the past 15 years. Right now it is growing at about 2.5%—although I might be out of date, because I thought of this three hours ago. It is a country that is worth investing in, but where are we when it comes to investing in Poland? Fifth. France, Italy, Germany and America are all above us. We ought to be getting there, and getting going in that field.

My next point concerns the provision of security for investment, in the sense that public policy matters. The green investment bank is a good thing, so too is the green deal, and so is our focus on ensuring that we get high-technology investment in these sectors. The sort of security that we can provide by effective public policy will encourage growth in due course. This country must have that, to solve our problems.

Finally, we all talk about regulation. It is absolutely right to say that there is far too much of it, but I think that it is time we focused on exactly what it is that we should start deregulating. We must set small businesses free, and they need to get the sense that their contribution to this country’s future and their own is something that we want to see. It is a question of growth, and we must supply that growth. That is imperative for our long-term planning and our attitude and strategy for the deficit. Let us pave the way for it with the four recommendations that I have made.