This is an odd answer. It turns out 3% was an EU calculation, not a UK government one. There is still no back up or workings shown to tell us how this percentage was calculated.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (180625):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, on what basis his Department calculated that only three per cent of EU law would apply to Northern Ireland under the Windsor Agreement. (180625)

Tabled on: 14 April 2023

Answer:
Leo Docherty:

The EU’s calculation is that less than 3% of EU law is applicable in Northern Ireland.

The answer was submitted on 24 Apr 2023 at 17:09.

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (180629):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether his Department plans to fund carbon capture and storage projects from (a) tax revenue, (b) levies, (c) charges on energy customers and (d) other sources. (180629)

Tabled on: 14 April 2023

Answer:
Graham Stuart:

The £20bn announced in the 15 March Budget will come from levy and Exchequer sources. The precise mix will be confirmed once negotiations are complete. The Government expects it to encourage billions of pounds of additional private capital as private partners also commit to the programme, creating jobs and bringing investment to the UK’s industrial heartlands.

The answer was submitted on 24 Apr 2023 at 16:27.

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (180628):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, with reference to the Written Statement of 30 March 2023, HCWS690 on Powering up Britain, how the carbon capture and storage outlined in that Statement will be funded. (180628)

Tabled on: 14 April 2023

Answer:
Graham Stuart:

The £20bn announced will come from levy and exchequer sources. The Government expects it to encourage billions of pounds of additional private capital as private partners also commit to the programme, creating jobs and bringing investment to the UK’s industrial heartlands.

The answer was submitted on 24 Apr 2023 at 16:27.

When I was first appointed a Minister I had to resign that day from Chairman of a substantial quoted industrial group of companies. The contrast between managing the one and other was extreme.

As company chairman I was conscious that I had the power to hire and fire, to reward and to promote anyone in the organisation. I was  careful in anything I said to distinguish between statements of policy and company values on the one hand, and the many comments, questions and suggestions I needed to make to explore options,  mentor senior managers and encourage others to take decisions. There was plenty of power to get change, with a team  willing to implement when I did make decisions. The danger was someone would take an offhand or provisional  remark and see it as law for the company.

As a new Minister who had the good fortune to take on a role I understood and had experience in I discovered my decisions and statements of policy and values were often in the early days  taken as some kind of invitation to a debate or seminar. I always tried to be courteous to my officials. I  recognised that I had  no power to sack or promote  most of them and anyway as in business I thought please and thank you are undervalued ways of getting things done. I saw that now I was in office I also needed to be in power. I needed to get the machine to see I wanted change in how we did things and change would produce better results.

Some  thought they could get away with simply ignoring an instruction. I needed to follow up and require data to see implementation. Other times they would tell me what I wanted to do was not government policy. I would explain that I was making it government policy. As a junior Minister I had of course always checked through informal discussions with the Secretary of State that he was happy for me to do that or that I had the delegated power. Sometimes officials would then seek to force me to take a policy I thought was clearly within my power to consultation with other departments, probably hoping that in the write round I might be prevented.

The first thing I always did as a new Minister in a department was to exercise the one Ministerial freedom to choose my own Private Secretary from those available from civil service sources. In each case I found an excellent person who worked well with me and  helped me get my proposals through the machinery of government. When I was concerned about the quality of an area of the work and the vulnerability of the first department I was in I took the matter privately to the Permanent Secretary. I explained the defects as I saw them, showed how if I was right and the  faults  caused problems there would be serious implications for him in his role as Accounting Officer for the Department as well as for me as Minister. He then made his own decision to change and strengthen personnel in the area concerned.

As a Minister I never felt short of staff or money to do what needed doing. It was always difficult to get government to close down old initiatives, discontinue out of date policies and free the resources for something else. There was a wish for new additional  money and staff for everything. There was a reluctance to conduct running audits of effectiveness and value for money. There was an unwillingness to make named senior officials responsible for specified programmes or policy implementation in the way I was used to doing  in business. Officials were changed far too often, undermining their ability to advise based on experience and the development of a wide range of contacts in their area of work.

England is so often the country not allowed to speak its name. It was the country the EU did not want on its maps. It is the country the European  establishment and Opposition parties here at home wish to break up into regions.

It is also the country that did so much to pioneer democratic government, that opened up free trade, that has gone in the past to rescue Europe from autocrats invading countries to fashion  a European empire in their own image. Three times in the last 500 years we had to resist invasion of ourselves and others, from Spain, France then Germany. Three times we allied with the forces of national self determination and greater freedom, sacrificing lives and treasure for victory. Twice we fought as a United Kingdom.

England has offered the world the language of Shakespeare and the Industrial Revolution, great services  and many innovations. We should celebrate today in the knowledge that world is freer and more prosperous for the exertions  of our ancestors.