John Redwood: Labour is developing a praiseworthy habit – changing its mind

Sir John Redwood is a former MP for Wokingham and a former Secretary of State for Wales. He will soon join the House of Lords.

The best thing about the government so far has been the u-turns. It is good when they realise they have made a bad mistake, and sensible to reverse at least some of the damage.

But now they have got the habit of u-turns, please can we have some more? And when they decide on one, can they please cancel the whole bad policy, not just part of it?

They reversed some of the higher inheritance tax on farms. Now they need to cancel the rest, and to cancel the higher rate on small businesses generally. It is having a chilling effect on enterprise.

They reversed the changes to Personal Independence Payments. Will they now balance that by being more careful about how many people they grant sick notes for life, as these have soared for no obvious valid reason?

They reversed some of the attack on pensioner fuel benefits. I can accept their wish not to pay it to pensioners who have saved for a better income in old age. I think it wrong to link this removal of benefit with pushing many pensioners into a higher tax bracket to increase their taxes at the same time; that is a nasty attack on the prudent and hard working.

They are saying they will abate the large increases in business rates on pubs. Why not on other leisure and retail premises on the struggling high streets? Why the tax attack on so many of these crucial businesses in the first place?

They made a few changes to their anti jobs Employment Rights Bill. The bulk of it remains as a dagger plunged into an ailing employment market.

There are plenty of other deeply damaging policies where we still await even a partial u-turn, such as the job killing National Insurance rise of the first budget, which helped push the jobs market down and sent unemployment on its rapid rise. Why break a manifesto promise on national insurance for the self-employed? Why, when you say you want more and better-paid jobs, place a tax on creating them?

There is the mindless and damaging give away of the Chagos Islands. Why give a crucial Anglo-American base away to a friend of China? Why leave a well protected marine conservation area open to commercial exploitation by a new owner? Why go contrary to the wishes of the Chagos islanders, now British citizens, who want to keep their islands British? Why, above all, give Mauritius a huge dowry for passing over such valuable assets? Just cancel the deal.

There is the give away of 12 years of our fish to the EU so that continental large boats can come in and take our fish and maybe damage our marine environment. Instead the should issue less overall quota but more to British vessels to help rebuild the national fishing fleet. Don’t we need the fishing jobs, the boat-building jobs, and the fish processing jobs onshore that we could create from this important natural resource?

There is the large sum of money offered to rejoin the Erasmus student scheme, along with the unwillingness to confess they will close down our cheaper and more useful Turing scheme for British students. The Erasmus scheme, unlike Turing, will mean more of our money is spent on continetental students coming here than on British students. It also means our students will be limited to going to continental universities, whereas Turing opens up popular opportunities to study in the US, Australia, Canada and other nations, as well as to European centres.

There is the repeal of the past government’s law to prevent illegal migrants then claiming asylum on arrival. That should be reinstated and implemented, not abandoned. There was too the cancellation of the Rwanda scheme; so where will they deport illegals to to provide a deterrent to coming illegally in small boats?

We would be so much better off if these were all reversed. Above all the last two budgets pushed up spending, taxes and borrowing, inflation and unemployment. The government is discovering that higher taxes can lead to an exodus of talent and wealth in a self destructive doom loop.

The Government inherited inflaiton at two per cent and almost doubled it; unemployment down to four per cent and it is now over five per cent. People voted for change, but not change for the worse. So bring on the u-turns – then we might get going in a positive direction for the changes we actually want want.