I appreciate that what I am about to write is easier to do so when in Opposition. However, there are times in a Parliamentary career when you have to ask: how in the name of Heaven did the Whips decide it to be a good idea to vote against an amendment to a Bill. Last week we MPs voted on amendments from the House of Lords to the National Insurance Contributions Bill. These amendments, would have exempted our precious Hospices, GP surgeries and small businesses from increased employer NICs. Many Labour MPs see this as a good idea. The Government does not and, so, they were whipped to vote against and indeed the amendments were defeated. What was depressing and disappointing in single measure was that not a single Labour MP rebelled or even abstained. Where is/was their backbone?
I spoke at a well attended pan-Dorset business event this week in Blandford. There is a real growing sense of unease that the Government’s lack of any business or private sector experience is now beginning to be felt on the shop floor. It is not just an ignorance of what it is to do business in today’s Britain is all about but an overriding unwillingness to try to fill their ignorance vacuum. Increased costs, taxes and regulatory burdens are job destroying. We have seen in recent months record numbers of businesses de-registering at Companies House. The appetite to set up a business venture is being extinguished. At a time when growth and productivity are uppermost in the vocabulary of the Government their words point in the opposite direction. UK plc will be all the worse for this and our public services will suffer.
Many of us in the countryside are asking what on earth has UK agriculture done to so upset the Government. We are witnessing an anti-farming vendetta from DEFRA and the Government. Hot on the heels of the hated Family Farm Tax came the communistic proposal that councils could buy at current use value land they want for housing. Still further, support for our developing fruit and salad vegetable sector was announced to be stopping at the end of the year with nothing to replace it. So we will see further job losses, a downgrade in investment and an increase in carbon generating freight miles from overseas as retailers fill their shelves from afar. Shortsighted is not the word! And finally, as the coup de grace, the sudden ending of the Sustainable Farming Initiative (a few hours notice given in lieu of the promised six weeks). Many North Dorset farmers were mid-application or on the cusp of submission when this further rug was pulled from under them. Why would farmers trust the Government again? And this is such a negative move meaning as it does that incentives to explore and deliver on-farm environmental and biodiversity improvements are snuffed out. DEFRA Ministers seem unwilling or unable to stand up to a desperate Treasury which seeks only to cut to backfill the holes their doom-laden, business-hostile narrative and policies have created.
I do however welcome the Government’s tearing down of NHS England. A Frankenstein’s Monster of a QUANGO which my Party created but could not control. It was always bonkers to have unaccountable people responsible for the most public facing public service. I hope this is not the only QUANGO/Arms Length Body in the Government’s firing line.
