‘We must debate big-picture items that still dominate our lives,’ writes John Redwood
‘We must debate big-picture items that still dominate our lives,’ writes John Redwood
PA
The last Parliament let us down badly. The Labour/Lib Dem/SNP opposition parties refused to oppose bad establishment mistakes over lockdown and economic policy, urging the Government to make things worse.
A terrifying conformity descended when we needed big debates. It was left to ad hoc groups of Conservative backbenchers to provide opposition where we had limited voice because the opposition parties would vote with the Government.
The mistakes began with the decision to lock down most people and close down large parts of the economy. Government gave too much power to official scientists. The opposition revelled in the extreme loss of liberty imposed on most of us and turned themselves into a thought police wanting to prevent criticism or alternative approaches.
A group of Conservative MPs loosely organised by Mark Harper questioned the data, the outcomes and the single approach. We proposed different ways of tackling the disease. We agreed with the others about the aim of defeating the virus. We pointed out that tackling air flows in busy buildings like hospitals, giving maximum protection to the vulnerable who were mainly the elderly and exploring a wider range of therapeutic responses should all be considered. We favoured keeping more hospitals Covid-free for other important work. The establishment bellowed back more lockdowns of more people for longer.
Covid claimed the lives of tens of thousands of BritonsGETTYThis led directly to the decision of the independent Bank of England to create or allow a big inflation.
I found myself alone in wanting to discuss the Bank’s likely mistakes when I first raised them with Ministers and later in Parliamentary debate. It always seemed likely to me that printing an extra £150billion to buy bonds at very high prices to drive interest rates to near zero as we started to recover from lockdown would be inflationary. I had supported the first £300billion as a necessary offset to extreme lockdown.
Parliament mouthed that the Bank was independent. It ignored the fact that money creation and bond buying needed the permission of Government and therefore Parliament under the rules of this policy which survived from the Labour Government that first tried it in response to the 2008 banking crash.
Restrictions were brought in to curb CovidGETTYOnce again the Opposition thought police worked with the official establishment to ensure no proper debate of this massive change to economic policy.
Parliament would spend hours debating a few billions of spending or tax and ignore £450billion of money creation and bond buying which were the key determinants of economic policy.
So in this election, we do need to debate the big-picture items that still dominate our lives.
We need a debate about the huge losses the Bank is making on bonds which stop us cutting taxes or spending more on public services.
We need a debate on how health policy came to so concentrate on Covid that many other conditions were put on waiting lists. Why was the private hospital capacity taxpayers paid for over Covidd not more and better used by the NHS? Why were the expensive Nightingale hospitals never used properly? All the parties in Parliament agreed these big decisions.
As an election drew near then the Opposition blamed the Government for the bad outcomes on inflation and health waiting lists, forgetting why they happened.