Tag Archives: opinions

I am aware that there have been a number of misconceptions perpetrated by the media about last week’s vote. As I strongly support higher standards of animal welfare I am pleased that the Government has explained current policy and how it is improving animal welfare standards without EU input and beyond the scope of Article 13.

Please find below the letter the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which sets out the Government’s position.

Dear colleague,

This Government is committed to the very highest standards of animal welfare. As the Prime Minister set out yesterday, we will make the United Kingdom a world leader in the care and protection of animals.

Some voices have suggested that the vote last week on New Clause 30 of the EU Withdrawal Bill somehow signalled a weakening in the protection of animals. That is plain wrong. Voting against the amendment was not a vote against the idea that animals are sentient and feel pain. That is a ridiculous misconception.

Ministers explained on the floor of the house last week that this Government’s policies on animal welfare are driven by our recognition that animals are indeed sentient beings and we are acting energetically to reduce the risk of harm to animals – whether on farms or in the wild. Last week’s vote was simply the rejection of a faulty amendment, which would not have achieved its stated aims of providing appropriate protection for animals.

And at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, the Prime Minister made it crystal clear that we will strengthen our animal welfare rules. This government will ensure that any necessary changes required to UK law are made in a properly rigorous and comprehensive way to ensure animal sentience is recognised after we leave the EU. The Withdrawal Bill is not the right place to address this, however we are considering the right legislative vehicle.

We are already proposing primary legislation to increase maximum sentences for animal cruelty from six months to five years, and the creation of a new statutory, independent body to uphold environmental standards.

The truth is that the current EU instrument – Article 13 – has not delivered the progress we want to see. It does not have direct effect in law – in practice its effect is unclear and it has failed to prevent practices across the EU which are cruel and painful to animals.

In contrast, here in the UK, we are improving animal welfare standards without EU input and beyond the scope of Article 13. We are making CCTV mandatory in all slaughterhouses – a requirement which goes above and beyond any EU rule. We will consult on draft legislation to jail animal abusers for up to five years – more than almost every other European nation. We propose combatting elephant poaching with a ban on the ivory trade which is more comprehensive than anywhere else in Europe. Our ban on microbeads which harm marine animals has been welcomed by Greenpeace as “the strongest in the world”, and is certainly the strongest in Europe.

Once we have left the EU there is even more we could do. EU rules prevent us from restricting or banning the live export of animals for slaughter. EU rules also restrict us from cracking down on puppy smuggling or banning the import of puppies under 6 months. Article 13 has not stopped any of these practices – but leaving the EU gives us the chance to do much better. We hope to say more in these areas next year.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Gove

In the  Budget  the Chancellor announced:

• the removal of the 7 waiting days before a claimant can apply for Universal Credit
• significant improvements to the advance payments system – including increasing the amount available so someone can receive a full month’s claim within five days.
• Any new Universal Credit claimant in receipt of Housing Benefit  will continue to receive it for two weeks.

These are welcome improvements to the system. I had made representations to Ministers along with others on how to make it easier for people first applying for Universal Credit, and am glad the government has listened and responded well.

As we had read in the newspapers, the Office of Budget Responsibility decided to downgrade their forecasts for productivity, which led to a reduction in the growth forecasts. These growth forecasts have been up, down, up and now down a bit over the last two years as various assumptions have been changed. The latest version shows growth at 1.4% in 2018 and at 1.3% in 2019, down from 1.6% and 1.7% in the Spring forecast.  These forecasts relate mainly to the pre Brexit period, with growth rising again in 2021 and 2022 after exit.

Despite this revision the government is still on track to start to cut debt as a proportion of GDP from next year onwards. Public sector borrowing is now estimated at £49.9bn this year compared with the £58.3bn in the Spring forecast, and to fall in  cash terms for every year over the next five years. Revenues have been more buoyant than the forecasters expected.

The OBR may be right to reduce its productivity figure, as all major economies have experienced slower productivity growth than before the banking  crash of 2009. The UK has been particularly successful at creating many more jobs.  This will tend to reduce the average rate of productivity growth.  Productivity is measured by comparing the value of the output sold with the numbers of employees creating it. As an economy increases the share of certain services it will tend to slow the growth of productivity. Faster productivity growth with higher productivity numbers is generated by large investments in oil extraction, chemical plants, automated engineering works and the like where the amount of output per employee is very high reflecting the large amounts of capital equipment put in.

It does seem that the global number crunchers are having difficulty capturing the value and the efficiency of the new digital revolution. The big digital service providers are cutting prices of traditional activities and supplying substantial service free to the individual user. Is this fully captured in the way they calculate the figures?

Meanwhile the official forecasters have struggled by taking too pessimistic a view of Brexit. Their idea that investment and confidence would be hit badly affected their short term forecasts after the vote. Some of this has now been adjusted in the latest forecasts which assume business investment will resume growth from this year onwards after a pause in 2016. They now expect employment to rise each year a little as the economy continues to create extra jobs. They expect good growth in UK exports this year and next, with very little  growth in trade in 2020 and 2021.

Overall the forecasts look more sensible than the pessimistic ones in the summer of 2016. There could be more surprises on the upside, as there were today on the deficit this year and the tax revenues.

The Chancellor announced in his budget that most first time buyers will be exempt from Stamp Duty. Anyone buying a home under £300,000 will pay nothing. Anyone buying a home up to £500,000 will pay no duty on the first £300,000.

This is welcome news in the Wokingham constituency, where house prices are high and it is difficult for first time buyers to get together both the money for the deposit and the Stamp Duty on purchase.

I have long argued we should be able to produce a new UK fishing policy which is kinder to both our fish and our fishermen.

Fishing for Leave has come up with some interesting proposals designed to allow us to catch more fish for our own consumption whilst conserving more fish at the same time.

As they point out, it is not difficult to design a better policy than the long lasting Common Fisheries Policy. This was based on a quota system for each type of regulated fish. A fishing vessel had to throw back all dead fish that did not conform to the required limits on landings. It meant the UK fishery caught a lot of fish that had to be dumped dead.

After years of this damaging approach they decided to try to ban dumping. This is difficult to enforce without cameras on every boat in the right places. It also means when enforced  vessels are  banned from fishing as soon as they  hit quota problems on any given species.

Fishing for leave recommends a different approach. All fish caught should be landed and used. If we can eat all the fish caught we can  catch far fewer fish than needed with a discard policy in place, whilst landing more than under the old policy. The fishery would be protected by limiting days at sea for the fleet, to limit overall catches. In order to stop vessels pursuing too many fish of a particular kind because it is valuable or popular the system would include reducing days at sea for any vessel that did pursue too many fish of a species that was at risk.

This proposal looks like a good basis for forming a new policy. The aim must be to protect our fishery so it is there for the future. There has to be some way to prevent excessive exploitation leading to a bad decline in fish stocks. It should also aim to deliver a fishing industry that does supply us with the fish we want to eat. We always used to have a surplus of fish when we ran our own policy, and can do so again.