Sir Julian Brazier is a former Defence Minister, and was MP for Canterbury from 1987-2017.
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are right in their view that continuing with the status quo means managed decline at best. They can still win through in their bold strategy to cut taxes and regulation and go for growth, on one condition: Britain must get public spending back under control, after a generation of profligacy, further exacerbated by Covid. The forthcoming ‘fiscal event’ must impress the markets and provide some much-needed space for flexibility in decision making over the next two years.
Yet, after austerity and Coronavirus, fiscal plans must not just degenerate into counter-productive measures, such as deferring maintenance until it becomes much more expensive, or over-squeezing salaries of those critical employees who are already in short supply.
What is needed instead is a list of medium-term policies for restraining the growth in spending. These may take time to bear fruit, but must reassure the markets now that the growth path in spending will be measurably lower. Such measures must involve doing less, as well as doing things differently.
Top of any such list must be getting many of the five million people currently drawing out of work benefits back into employment. Both sides of the argument on benefits uprating can surely unify around the Government’s proposal to raise the numbers of hours worked required to avoid checks on availability for work. Today it is only nine hours per week. Rises to 12 and then 15 hours are sensibly proposed. Here are three further, broader suggestions.
First, there is a strong case for addressing the bloated higher education sector, going well beyond fiscal policy. Less than two thirds of working age graduates are in highly skilled jobs. Apologists for the universities hide behind statistics on the economic value of degrees, based on averages which blend those struggling at the margin with higher performers.
Britain’s university sector is an international outlier in two important respects. Very few other countries send four-fifths of students away from home. This involves heavy costs, both to the student and, through unpaid debt, to the taxpayer. And few other countries have such a low proportion of less able students studying for non-vocational subjects. Germany and Switzerland, like us, deliver the bulk of their vocational education outside universities, making their statistics more directly comparable to ours than say France, Italy, Spain or indeed America. Both have much lower higher education participation and enjoy high productivity.
Governments should never intervene in individual admissions cases, but they can and should insist that a much smaller proportion of each cohort are funded for non-vocational courses, by introducing rigorous national academic standards for the award of student maintenance loans.
Second, we must tackle the principal driver of NHS spending. This is not old age – fit, healthy elderly people are not big users of hospitals. Rather, it is obesity, where we have the worst rate in Europe apart from Malta. Doctors who served at the sharp end during the Covid crisis will confirm privately that the NHS faced a real danger of being overwhelmed – not by sick representatives of the general population but by sick, overweight people, often forming the majority in overloaded intensive care units
Of course, doctors and nurses were right to care for every patient, but had many of those patients been fitter, they could have escaped risking a horrible death – as Boris Johnson acknowledged. Crucially, the system would also have been much less stressed and the NHS backlog today would be smaller.
Scandinavian countries adopted a wide range of contrasting approaches to Covid but, with their much fitter populations, all suffered far lower Covid death rates – and lower hospital pressures too. Futhermore, a range of illnesses from cardiovascular conditions to arthritis to diabetes are made both more likely and more dangerous by obesity – and drive up the NHS budget.
If Britain is going to become a country where government does less, citizens must do more – and losing weight is something we can all work on. Our current Secretary of State is, with good reason, one of the most popular and respected members of Parliament. For that reason, I believe (hope anyway) that she will forgive me for saying she is well qualified to lead a campaign on this, bringing her charm and obvious kindness to bear alongside her considerable willpower.
What is needed is a fitter public to reduce waiting lists for those who desperately need appointments and to reduce the burden on a creaking system, in which doctors, dentists and nurses wish to continue to serve. The alternative is to continue ever-rising NHS expenditure.
My third suggestion is that we tackle the causes of social care. At present, the two main models for later life are either for elderly people to remain in their own homes or for them to enter residential homes. The former ties up large numbers of family homes, stretches community care provision and often contributes to loneliness. Crucially, if such people become injured or sick, it is hard for hospitals to safely release them, so NHS beds are blocked. Yet the inheritance tax system encourages elderly people to stay in their own homes.
Residential care is very expensive, whoever picks up the bill, and many elderly people hate seeing their scope for independence disappear. The veteran who made a dash from a Folkestone care home to for D day celebrations fired the nation’s imagination. His escapade should also have told us something about the desire for freedom burning on.
There are two alternative models, both much more common in many other countries. One is the use of sheltered housing, where residents retain their own front doors and much of their independence. This is much less costly than care homes and reduces the risk of bed blocking. The other is intergenerational living, which has almost disappeared in the UK for older people outside certain ethnic majorities.
Rather than agreeing to the state taking on funding more social care, modest sums invested in supporting these models – accompanied by some regulatory changes in the former case – would prevent another soaring budget.
Truss and Kwarteng have fired the light for a battle which is going to determine our direction for a generation. If we lose the argument and the next general election, we risk a Labour government taking power, with its plans starting from a baseline of restoring the highest tax level since the 1950s. We must win – but, to do so, we must offer the prospect of balancing the books in the next few years.
So we must cut public spending. We have to change the way we operate as a country – and incentivise those doing the right thing. Individual freedom can only deliver if individuals are encouraged not to drive up Government bills.
Sir Julian Brazier is a former Defence Minister, and was MP for Canterbury from 1987-2017.
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are right in their view that continuing with the status quo means managed decline at best. They can still win through in their bold strategy to cut taxes and regulation and go for growth, on one condition: Britain must get public spending back under control, after a generation of profligacy, further exacerbated by Covid. The forthcoming ‘fiscal event’ must impress the markets and provide some much-needed space for flexibility in decision making over the next two years.
Yet, after austerity and Coronavirus, fiscal plans must not just degenerate into counter-productive measures, such as deferring maintenance until it becomes much more expensive, or over-squeezing salaries of those critical employees who are already in short supply.
What is needed instead is a list of medium-term policies for restraining the growth in spending. These may take time to bear fruit, but must reassure the markets now that the growth path in spending will be measurably lower. Such measures must involve doing less, as well as doing things differently.
Top of any such list must be getting many of the five million people currently drawing out of work benefits back into employment. Both sides of the argument on benefits uprating can surely unify around the Government’s proposal to raise the numbers of hours worked required to avoid checks on availability for work. Today it is only nine hours per week. Rises to 12 and then 15 hours are sensibly proposed. Here are three further, broader suggestions.
First, there is a strong case for addressing the bloated higher education sector, going well beyond fiscal policy. Less than two thirds of working age graduates are in highly skilled jobs. Apologists for the universities hide behind statistics on the economic value of degrees, based on averages which blend those struggling at the margin with higher performers.
Britain’s university sector is an international outlier in two important respects. Very few other countries send four-fifths of students away from home. This involves heavy costs, both to the student and, through unpaid debt, to the taxpayer. And few other countries have such a low proportion of less able students studying for non-vocational subjects. Germany and Switzerland, like us, deliver the bulk of their vocational education outside universities, making their statistics more directly comparable to ours than say France, Italy, Spain or indeed America. Both have much lower higher education participation and enjoy high productivity.
Governments should never intervene in individual admissions cases, but they can and should insist that a much smaller proportion of each cohort are funded for non-vocational courses, by introducing rigorous national academic standards for the award of student maintenance loans.
Second, we must tackle the principal driver of NHS spending. This is not old age – fit, healthy elderly people are not big users of hospitals. Rather, it is obesity, where we have the worst rate in Europe apart from Malta. Doctors who served at the sharp end during the Covid crisis will confirm privately that the NHS faced a real danger of being overwhelmed – not by sick representatives of the general population but by sick, overweight people, often forming the majority in overloaded intensive care units
Of course, doctors and nurses were right to care for every patient, but had many of those patients been fitter, they could have escaped risking a horrible death – as Boris Johnson acknowledged. Crucially, the system would also have been much less stressed and the NHS backlog today would be smaller.
Scandinavian countries adopted a wide range of contrasting approaches to Covid but, with their much fitter populations, all suffered far lower Covid death rates – and lower hospital pressures too. Futhermore, a range of illnesses from cardiovascular conditions to arthritis to diabetes are made both more likely and more dangerous by obesity – and drive up the NHS budget.
If Britain is going to become a country where government does less, citizens must do more – and losing weight is something we can all work on. Our current Secretary of State is, with good reason, one of the most popular and respected members of Parliament. For that reason, I believe (hope anyway) that she will forgive me for saying she is well qualified to lead a campaign on this, bringing her charm and obvious kindness to bear alongside her considerable willpower.
What is needed is a fitter public to reduce waiting lists for those who desperately need appointments and to reduce the burden on a creaking system, in which doctors, dentists and nurses wish to continue to serve. The alternative is to continue ever-rising NHS expenditure.
My third suggestion is that we tackle the causes of social care. At present, the two main models for later life are either for elderly people to remain in their own homes or for them to enter residential homes. The former ties up large numbers of family homes, stretches community care provision and often contributes to loneliness. Crucially, if such people become injured or sick, it is hard for hospitals to safely release them, so NHS beds are blocked. Yet the inheritance tax system encourages elderly people to stay in their own homes.
Residential care is very expensive, whoever picks up the bill, and many elderly people hate seeing their scope for independence disappear. The veteran who made a dash from a Folkestone care home to for D day celebrations fired the nation’s imagination. His escapade should also have told us something about the desire for freedom burning on.
There are two alternative models, both much more common in many other countries. One is the use of sheltered housing, where residents retain their own front doors and much of their independence. This is much less costly than care homes and reduces the risk of bed blocking. The other is intergenerational living, which has almost disappeared in the UK for older people outside certain ethnic majorities.
Rather than agreeing to the state taking on funding more social care, modest sums invested in supporting these models – accompanied by some regulatory changes in the former case – would prevent another soaring budget.
Truss and Kwarteng have fired the light for a battle which is going to determine our direction for a generation. If we lose the argument and the next general election, we risk a Labour government taking power, with its plans starting from a baseline of restoring the highest tax level since the 1950s. We must win – but, to do so, we must offer the prospect of balancing the books in the next few years.
So we must cut public spending. We have to change the way we operate as a country – and incentivise those doing the right thing. Individual freedom can only deliver if individuals are encouraged not to drive up Government bills.