On Friday I had the pleasure of giving out the Strive certificates to all those who have completed the business start up course organised by Wokingham Borough Council and their partners.

People wanting to establish a business of their own gave presentations on what they wish to achieve. 4 experts on a panel gave advice on what might help them to success, and 3 of the business plans attracted prize money to help them on their way.

This is a good annual initiative which reminds people that setting up a business can be a rewarding challenge, and assists them with the many issues you need to sort out when doing so. I wish them all well.

Under Labour junior Ministers spent most of their time it seemed on local and regional media and trade press. They tended to define the Ministers role as communication. If you went to a meeting with one of them about a constituency issue or problem they usually left the substance to officials, whilst thumbing through files of press clippings to highlight items they disliked. To me it looked as if they were only doing part of the job . Before you can communicate as a Minister you need to have satisfied yourself about the policies, and played your part in ensuring good delivery of service. You have a media problem if the department is letting people down through poor policy or poor execution of policy. The fix for that is not to get better at media handling, but to engage with sorting out the underlying problem.

The ONS study of public sector productivity shows it fell most during the middle Labour years when they threw plenty of public money at their departments and programmes. Ministers did not supervise the way the money was spent properly, and did not supervise it to achieve better results. The new Conservative government needs to learn from this disappointing history, and put Ministers of State in charge of supervising budgets, achieving higher quality results, ensuring extra spending is matched by extra output. Taking an interest in what staff can achieve with the money, encouraging them and assisting in putting it in the right places should be an essential task of Ministerial leadership. Cabinet Ministers need to be strategic and to contribute to the wider government policy debate, so this is an ideal task to delegate to experienced Ministers of State.

I held two important Minister of State commands. One was in the business department in the days when that department was the financial and general business regulator for all firms apart from the banks. I needed to take an active part in ensuring quality and in targeting resources on the handful of cases where we needed to take action. The second was as Minister for local government, where I had a huge budget to allocate and supervise. In both departments various quangos reported to the Secretary of State. I took on the detailed tasks of setting and reviewing budgets, setting and reviewing performance targets, mentoring or replacing Directors and CEOs. It was interesting and worthwhile work. There was plenty of what business calls low hanging fruit or easy wins when it came to finding ways to do things cheaper, better, faster.

The new government needs to hone its skills and use its Ministers to raise the game of the bodies they supervise. The Chancellor is right to make higher productivity his main crusade. What better place to start than the public sector which he helps control. We already have the people in place to do the job. The Ministers need directing and energising to perform this role.

I have been asked to write about the so called cliff edge if we leave the EU without a deal. That is easy to do.

There is no cliff edge.

It’s another of those silly metaphors that have characterised much EU debate for years, like the instruction that we must get on the train, or be part of the convoy. The EU was never either a train or a convoy. It is a set of ever increasingly complex laws and rules, a single currency, common borders, the four freedoms and the rest as they progress to political union.

If we leave without a deal the planes will still fly from Paris to London on 30 March 2019, the Danish pig farmers, and French dairy industry and the German car industry will still send us their products.

I don’t understand why there is any lack of clarity on this simple subject. The UK owes our regular contributions up to the date of departure. The UK owes no contributions thereafter or special payments to leave.

If they want us to stay in the EIB we can come to an agreement about our capital in that Bank. If we want to stay in Erasmus and they want us in there will be a continuing payment related to our share of Erasmus spending as a non EU member of it. Our paid up capital in the ECB is small and not a major issue. If they want us to keep our small shareholding we could.

I had the pleasure of attending the National Grid graduation day for their interns. Under their theme of “Employability” they give young people a better chance of a future job by good intern programmes. One of this year’s intake has been offered a job with National Grid, who are helping the others find jobs or College or work placements elsewhere. Contracting companies of National Grid are encouraged to participate in their Employability programme. The current special school partner is Addington.

I welcome this good scheme to give students a better chance of employment, by concentrating on their many abilities.