Tea with Sir John Redwood

Sir John Redwood has had a distinguished political career, spanning six decades. He served as Secretary of State for Wales under John Major, and twice ran for the Party leadership.

We sat down for tea, and asked him about the hike in National Insurance, the energy crisis, and his thoughts on a conservative vision post-Brexit. 

Editor: How concerned are you with the recent hike in National Insurance, given the current squeeze in living costs?

John Redwood: I’m very concerned, for a variety of reasons. I think it’s bad economics, I think it’s worse politics. We promised, all us Conservative candidates in the election, that we would not put up National Insurance or income tax, or VAT rates, and this is a clear break of a manifesto promise.

It’s a tax on work and effort, whereas I thought we were all about promoting more jobs, and more prosperity by creating more jobs; this is a tax on employers as well as employees, and is therefore damaging to job creation and job retention.

The tax will come in, in exactly the month of maximum squeeze when people are facing very large increases in their energy bills, even after the abatements announced recently to try and ease the problem. And they come in at the same time as the Bank of England is putting up interest rates, with the intention of making mortgage rates dearer, implying a further squeeze on those who are in a job, and are financing a house with borrowing.

And we will see the economy slow further by the withdrawal of Bank of England liquidity, by the overall magnitude of the tax hike, and by the impact of inflation. So it’s bad economics; the economy is going to be slowed more than enough in April, without the tax rise.

Editor: Moving on to energy, how optimistic are you about the UK’s energy supply going forward?

John Redwood: Not as optimistic as I’d like to be, but my optimism has moved up a little in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been pushing the case for a long time to the government, that we need to take capacity more seriously. I think we need to put in more electrical generating capacity, I think we need to extract more oil and gas from our own North Sea area, and the government is beginning to respond.

They did licence this week a very small new field, which is progress, but they need to look at some of the bigger reservoirs that are out there, where they could give the go-ahead. I’m hoping they will soon give the go-ahead to the Jackdaw gas field, which is a significant reserve, and to the Cambo oil field. And it’s good that there are still discoveries to be made in the North Sea. They too can generate well paid jobs. They generate substantial tax revenues for the UK tax authorities, and they fill some of that gap which is emerging between what we burn and what we produce.

I’ve urged very strongly that they should regard gas as a transition fuel, and that they should understand that over the immediate decade, we are not going to be able to rely on non-fossil fuels to power everything we want to do. We are going to still be burning a lot of gas this decade – most of us have homes that are heated by gas; any industrial processes require substantial gas, and for quite a lot of the time, particularly when the wind doesn’t blow, we are very dependent on gas to generate our electricity.

So I say, it’s better to exploit home-produced gas where you collect the revenues and create the jobs, than to import it. It is also the greener option, as I have now extracted figures from the government that admit that if you import LNG, you create twice as much carbon dioxide per unit burned, as if you burn your own domestic gas down a pipe from a North Sea field. So, on green grounds, on security supply grounds, and on tax revenue grounds, on jobs grounds, it makes a lot more sense to burn your own gas.

The government has started to move on electricity generation requirements, and I welcome their new enthusiasm for nuclear, but they have to understand that their plans for new nuclear will not deliver additional nuclear capacity this decade; indeed, they have a worse problem, because this decade the government is planning to close all but one of our existing nuclear power stations, and only bring on one large new power station over that time period, leaving us with less nuclear electricity at the end of the decade than we began the decade with.

So, we still have a gap and I’m urging them to look very carefully at how they’re going to fill that electricity gap before they get to their nuclear future.

Editor: On the topic of green energy, do you believe that the government’s green revolution is somewhat ill-timed, with the squeeze in the cost of living, and the other priorities that we might have right now?

John Redwood: Well I’d say to the government that a green revolution is only going to work, if people are the revolutionaries. It can’t all be top down. And I think it will take off, when the electrical ways of heating your house are better and cheaper than the gas boiler. It will take off when the electric car has the range, and is affordable, and is thought to be a better proposition than the old diesel in the garage. And you cannot go at a pace faster than the public will go at.

So I’d say, by all means bring on your electric or green revolution, but it’s got to be popular, it’s got to be affordable, it’s got to fly off the shelves. You know, we don’t have any problems with driving through a digital revolution, indeed governments find it quite difficult to keep up with the pace of the digital revolution – they don’t have to subsidise and bamboozle, legislate and regulate and acquire. The ipads and the smartphones and the laptops fly off the shelves, because people want the products and want the services. That’s how you’ll get a green revolution, when electric is best.

Editor: What do you see as the Conservative vision for a post-Brexit, and hopefully post-Covid Britain?

John Redwood: Well first of all, I’d want to complete Brexit please. The government got Great Britain out of the European Union and the Single Market, but it’s left Northern Ireland badly entangled in the Single Market and some of the legal background to that. So, I’m one of those urging the government to sort that out. My reading of the protocol, which is an ambiguous and in some cases contradictory document, is that nonetheless it is quite obvious that the European Union is deliberately breaking it.

The European Union is not allowing Northern Ireland full and free access to trade with GB as part of our internal market, which was a core part of the proposition. It is diverting a lot of trade from GB to the European Union to Northern Ireland, against again the express words of the protocol. And above all, it is not creating the community harmony which the protocol talks about, because the Unionist part of the community in Northern Ireland is extremely unhappy about the situation, and they feel they are no longer properly connected as citizens of the United Kingdom should be.

So, I think the government now has to take the protocol into its own hands, and enforce our side of it, because the protocol defended us on those three points, and I would do so immediately. I want the government to put in place mutual enforcement so that we promise, the people who legislate promise not to send anything on to the European Union that doesn’t conform with their market, but by the same mechanism we would legislate to say that we decide what circulates between GB and Northern Ireland, and it’s nothing to do with the European Union.

Editor: Hear, hear! Sir John, just on the issue of Brexit very quickly, I’d like to express my thanks to you for the impact you had via Leave Means Leave. I think you were one of the key pawns to finally ridding us of the shackles of the EU, so many thanks from a concerned citizen!

John Redwood: Well that’s kind, but going on to the second part of your question if I may? How do we take advantage of the Brexit freedoms and opportunities? And I am impatient and frustrated where over a year on, after the transition period (so-called) out of the Single Market, and we still have VAT on fuel; I’d get rid of that. We still have VAT on green products, now the time when you want people to insulate their houses and cut their fuel bills, surely you take VAT off all those green products that would help them.

I want free ports that have genuine freedoms from unnecessary regulation and lower taxes, with decent government support. And I think there should be a free port probably for the whole of Northern Ireland, as well as free ports in Wales and Scotland, we’re still awaiting though free ports for England have been announced now.

I want to take proper control of our fishing industry, which we still haven’t achieved. I want to see government policies that promote the build-up of a decent English fishing fleet again, so that we can fish appropriately, at reasonable volumes in our own waters. And one new regulation I would like, is I would like to ban the very long super trawlers which come in from foreign places and pillage a lot of our fish, and maybe damage our fishing grounds as well; I think we should ban those, because I don’t think they’re doing anybody any good.

Editor: Finally, do you have any thoughts on the current organisation of government?

John Redwood: Well indeed I do, and I’m pleased that the Prime Minister is responding to the Gray Report by saying he is going to restructure how Downing Street works. I think that clearly needs doing, I don’t think Downing Street has been working as well as it should for him, as we’ve seen in recent troubles. But more important even than not obeying the rules they set for the rest of us, which they clearly should have done, I don’t think the current structure of Downing Street is always taking the Prime Minister’s vision and turning it into positive action across government, which is what they need to do.

So, I think there needs to be better working with the official Civil Service, I think we need a more streamlined Downing Street and there are too many people there. I think you need a limited number of senior people who meet the Prime Minister regularly, understand the Prime Minster’s views on things, and are trusted by him to go off and work with the official Civil Service around Whitehall, to make sure we get delivery department by department.

Editor: Thank you so much. Finally, is there anything you’d like to tell our readers, or is there any way they can read more of your views?

John Redwood: Well, I’d love to inform your readers if they think there are things I know about that they’re interested in. I set up a daily story on Johnredwood.com, my own free for all website, and very happy to share that through your pages as well. And very happy to invite more people on to read that regularly.

Sir John Redwood’s blog is well worth a read (he does indeed post daily), and can be found here: https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/