Earlier this month, the Health and Social Care Secretary announced £240 million for the social care system over winter, giving councils a significant boost to prevent people from going into hospital unnecessarily and getting them home as soon as they are ready.

This funding will ease pressure on the health system, and follows the announcement of £145 million to improve emergency care within the NHS this winter.

The money will pay for home care packages to help patients get out of hospital quicker, reablement packages to help patients carry out everyday tasks and regain mobility and confidence, and home adaptations.

I have lobbied extensively for more money for social care for our local Councils and am glad we will receive some of this latest increase.

Wokingham will gain £401,589 and West Berkshire £500,898.

As the EU does not want to do a deal on our future relationship anytime soon the UK must leave in March 2019 without signing the one sided and damaging Withdrawal Agreement they propose. We can then proceed to negotiate a free trade agreement with them if they want to. Many Conservative MPs are making it clear to the government that we will not support legislation seeking to prolong transition, nor will we support 21 months transition and large payments for no good reason. So far there is no sign of any deal better than just leaving. Extending our period under their control would take us into another 7 year spending period where the EU would not doubt want even more money from us.

I am still getting complaints about late and cancelled trains. I was sorry to see how many people were left stranded by a failure of the overhead power system on Great Western yesterday. Network Rail has decided to spend a lot of money on changing over to overhead electrical current to power the trains, but this leaves the system more vulnerable to accidents and to adverse weather doing damage to the power supply, with knock on effects to many trains.

My own recent experiences reinforces the view that there are problems.

I went to Yorkshire to speak two weeks ago, and to Cornwall last week. All four trains were around half an hour late. Most of the delays seemed to come from Network Rail issues, the fully nationalised part of the railway.

The train to Yorkshire was delayed by half an hour at Kings Cross owing to an unexplained incident to the north of London which delayed all Kings Cross departures. The train from Reading to Cornwall was delayed by a tree on the line. The train back to London from Yorkshire was delayed by slow trains ahead, with Network Rail unable to provide track capacity for a faster train. The train from Cornwall to Reading also fell foul of slower trains as well as service delays owing to quite high winds.

Why can’t Network put in more passing places? Why can’t they accelerate digital signalling to provide more train paths and instant re routing where possible and necessary?

It  is true some of the train companies also have problems. GWR have recently  acquired expensive new Hitachi trains to adapt to an expensive and partial electrification by Network Rail. My recent journey had no reservations on seats. I was told by two staff members that the GWR and Hitachi seat systems don’t work together. The new trains have to have several heavy diesel engines to generate power to run on the lines that are not electrified. This entails a double energy loss, once on power generation and once from the electric motors. This loss is presumably bigger than the double loss on using power station power from electric overheads where available, as the on board generators are likely to be less efficient than a large power station. The need for two forms of energy to turn the electric motors is an added burden on the train operating companies from the actions of Network Rail. As much of the power station power comes from fossil fuels and all the diesel generator power comes from fossil fuel it is difficult to see the environmental win from this development.

GWR also often runs two five car train sets joined together which makes an odd train with no ability to walk from the front five to the back five whilst staying on the train. Passengers complain that the seats are less comfortable than the 125 diesels they are replacing.

Universal Credit is a modern benefit based on the sound principles that work should always pay and those who need support receive it.
The old system failed to reward work
It replaces an out of date, old system that disincentivised work and trapped people on benefits. The system we are replacing was a complicated mix of six different benefits from 3 separate government agencies (HMRC, DWP and Local Authorities).
It failed to make work pay because it created ‘cliff edges’ – where people suddenly lost lots of money if they worked more than 16, 24 or 30 hours. This meant some people paid an effective tax rate of over 90 per cent – denying them the opportunity of more work.
Under this old system, 1.4 million people spent most of a decade trapped on benefits instead of being helped into work. Taxpayer-funded welfare spending went up by over 60 per cent (£84 billion in today’s prices) under Labour, and the number of households where no one had ever worked almost doubled.
As well as trapping people on benefits, 700,000 households are missing out on benefits they are entitled to, losing on average £285 a month. Universal Credit puts all that right.

Why Universal Credit is a better system
Universal Credit replaces these benefits with one, simple, single payment, and is working for the vast majority of claimants – adding to our employment success which has seen on average over 1,000 more people moving into work each and every day since 2010, and youth unemployment more than halve.
Under Universal Credit claimants have a dedicated one-to-one work coach, who stays with them throughout their claim, helping them into work. It is a more flexible benefit, covering 85% of child care costs for working parents, compared to just 70% under the legacy system, and is designed to ensure that people are better off for every additional hour worked.
When rolled out, Universal Credit will help an extra 200,000 people into work, and empower people to work an extra 113 million hours because they are better off for every additional hour worked. It will also ensure that around 1 million disabled households receive an average of £110 more per month. Analysis shows that people claiming Universal Credit are more likely to find a job compared to Jobseekers allowance, are supported to work more hours and those in work and on Universal Credit increase their earnings on average by £600 per year.

Taking a ‘Test and Learn’ approach
However, we are also listening and responding to concerns about how Universal Credit supports people and constantly looking to improve the benefit.
Significant changes have been made to the system already. We have removed the 7 waiting days, made 100% advances available, and provide an additional 2 weeks of housing benefit for claimants moving onto UC. The opposition cynically voted against these measures earlier this year – risking vital support for claimants.
The government has reviewed legal cases reversing past positions and not appealed court decisions allowing the Department to reinstate housing benefit for 18-21 year olds, exempted kinship carers from changes to the Child Tax Credit element of Universal Credit, and announced measures to protect 500,000 severely disabled people when they move to Universal Credit.
This has been the ‘test and learn’ approach to UC, and importantly where further improvements need to be made we will do that too.

What we are doing next
By December, Universal Credit will have rolled out to every Job Centre in the country. This means that people who are making new claims to our benefits system now receive Universal Credit rather than the being put on the old system.
Soon we will start the wider process of moving people from the old benefits system onto Universal Credit, following the passage of regulations in Parliament.
These regulations allows us to move claimants onto UC, and provide transitional protection. These are important regulations to pass, in order to ensure that targeted support reaches those it is designed to help.
Throughout managed migration, we will continue to take a slow and measured approach. This will not begin in January 2019, but later in the year, after a period of preparation. For a further year we will then begin migration working with a maximum of 10,000 people, continuing with our ‘test and learn’ approach. This is to ensure the system is working well for claimants and to make any necessary adaptions as we go, until full roll out ends in 2023.
Whilst we are helping millions more into work, Labour don’t have a plan. They want to scrap – or pause UC – returning to either a costly legacy system which was confusing for claimants, trapped people out of work, and unaffordable for taxpayers, or a Universal Basic Income for all regardless of their circumstances – the Billionaire’s benefit. In stark contrast, Universal Credit ensures that we have a welfare system which is a safety net that rewards work, is fair to taxpayers, and sustainable for the future.

Freedom day is the day we leave the EU. It is one of those curious cul de sacs of history that the UK, a fiercely independent and democratic nation, spent 47 years with increasing shackles over our decisions in the EU. Like Gulliver, the UK found herself bound by more and more rules and regulations from Brussels, tied down by something UK voters were told was just a trading bloc. This so called common or single market was of course nothing less than a political Union in the making. The project of full economic, monetary, social and political integration was fully understood on the continent, but constantly denied by dishonest UK politicians. They were aware that UK voters were unlikely to sign up to the full scheme, so they pretended it was not happening.

Reality kept threatening to break through. Early skirmishes about whether Brussels should settle our labour laws or not were on party lines, with the left once in charge giving these issues away to the EU. The UK had a proud record of leading improvements in employment standards before we joined. Both major parties in the UK grasped that UK voters would not accept the abolition of the pound and the substitution of the Euro, so the UK negotiated an opt out from the biggest push so far for full union. There was an attempt to side step a common migration policy, but the EU found ways to require the UK to join them in a large part of their common borders regulations. Many UK voters disliked intensely the idea that they could no longer decide their money, their borders and their laws through UK elections and by lobbying their Members of Parliament. When they were given the chance to decide, they decided to leave the EU to take back control of their government.

Once we have left the UK can start to exercise her democratic rights again. The country that did so much to spread democracy around the world, provided the Mother of Parliaments, and had some of the earliest struggles to control the executive and create a proper democratic franchise, will need to learn again how to do things for herself through her own democratic institutions. It is true the UK did not distinguish herself by resisting the democratic forces of the Founding fathers of the USA. It is one of those ironies that those early Americans who championed the rights of the settlers did so from English precedents and from English political and philosophical writings. Today, as with the American revolution, the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster has to be taught a lesson in applying her own beliefs. Too many MPs and members of the House of Lords regret the decision of the people, and have sought to deny democracy her rights. They will have to accept that the UK is leaving the EU and will be better off from doing so.

So what we will we do with our freedoms? We will become a keen advocate of free trade globally, signing deals with those who share our vision of the power of free trade to spread and increase prosperity. We will liberate our fishing grounds from the Common Fisheries Policy, which has been unkind to our fish and to our local fishermen and women. We will put in place a migration policy that is fair to all corners of the world, eliminating the European preferences in the current system. We will be able to spend the large annual sum we currently send as tribute to Brussels on our own priorities at home. We will regain control of our tax system, permitting us to amend and change the system the EU has imposed on taxing transactions through a Value Added Tax.

I find the delays in getting out unacceptable and the fears expressed usually ludicrous. What part of “Leave” did the politicians not understand when they asked the people to decide? Why do they not see that spending our own money and making our own laws must be better, and should lead to greater prosperity for the country. The good news in all this is once again the people have proved to be more sensible than the political and administrative establishment who advise them and seek to control them.

Long live freedom. There is nothing to fear, and everything to welcome. I want my country to be self governing once again. Then if the politicians get it wrong, the people can kick them out and try with a new team. All the time we live under Brussels we have to accept the inflexibility and injustice of their laws.