John Hemming's Web Log

Another of Labour's misleading comments about tax relates to the government and tax cuts for the rich. It is true that the government cut the top rate of tax to 45% from 50%. It is worth noting, however, that it was only at 50% for one month of the Labour Government from 1997-2010. However, if you want to look at how fair policies are then you need to take into account more than just income tax. Unusually this government has done "distributional analyses" for policies.  There is a distributional analysis that relates to the 2015 budget.  That can be found: here This chart from it looks at the effects from June 2010 through to March 2015 by expenditure decile. I prefer the expenditure analysis to look at the spending power of households which in many ways is a better indication of economic power than the formal income. You should note from this that the top 10% (the richer households) are paying a lot more in terms of tax than those lower down the expenditur...

Labour seem to be concentrating on issues relating to parliamentary expenses from 2005-2010. I am not really surprised that they are trying to mislead constituents about what happened. At the moment Jess Phillips is avoiding questions as to what she is alleging. It remains that an inquiry was done into those expenses for all MPs. I copy the response letter from the enquiry below: The whole list for all MPs is here

I have been working with Mike Thornton on the issue of ensuring that the government's commitment to firefighters in terms of their pension (in the case of natural unfitness) is adhered to. He has put a statement on his website (see above for link) which confirms that we continue to press for a letter of comfort for firefighters.

Labour have just started delivering a dishonest newspaper in the Yardley Constituency. There are a number of false and misleading items in that newspaper, but one is so spectacularly false that it warrants an immediate response. The claim is that "while people here are forced to foodbanks". I made an expenses claim for subsistance or food.  They then say "Why were you paying for his dinner." The facts are easy to find.  Firstly there are two foodbanks that serve people living in Yardley.  The only one actually in Yardley is in Stechford and opened on Friday February 28th 2014.   The other one is in Sparkhill and was I believe created some time in 2011. It is slightly more complicated finding out what I have claimed for dinner.   The new rules came in at the start of the 2010 financial year (just before the new parliament). There is a link from which the aggregated expenditure can be identified here: http://www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk/Annualised...

So many people take photographs of the parade these days that I don't take a lot of my own and concentrate on playing the guitar instead. Here is the Tipperary County Association's end of parade rendition of "a long way to tipperary".

Today's e-conference is about Parents Want a Say.  That is about the issues of policy on term time absence at the request of parents and the new rules. If someone wants to watch the e-conference it will be on Youtube.   When the conference starts (or re-starts) the link will appear on my twitter feed.  Others may copy it elsewhere.  If you wish to watch then simply click on that link. http://www.twitter.com/johnhemmingmp I am likely to stop and re-start the conference one or more times (depending in part on how hot the central processor on my laptop gets). If you wish to ask questions then you need to have skype working on your computer. Someone will act as chair's aide.   This person will handle requests to ask questions.   I will update this blog post with the skype account name of the person dealing with this.  If you want to ask a question you will need to send a skype text message to the chair's aide.  At the right time the chair's...

This is an interesting article that looks at the question as to what extent Greece was inherently a financial disaster waiting to happen. It summarises as: " Greece never had the productive structure to be as rich as it was: its income was inflated by borrowings that weren’t used to upgrade its productive capacity." There is a difficulty with macroeconomic theories that ignore the nature of the economy and the extent to which it is shored up by unsustainable public spending. Once you take out that which is unsustainable you then see that which left is far less substantial.  Another useful extract is: " Until 2014, the country did not pay, in net terms, a single euro in interest: it borrowed enough from official sources at subsidized rates to pay 100% of its interest bill and then some.  " It is, however, only a question as to how big the problem has become by the time that the nature of the new clothes of the emperor has been finally determined  What...

There was a debate in Parliament yesterday which was interesting because Labour admitted that the Labour government was planning to bring in a flat rate housing benefit payment in the Social Housing Sector.  In Labour's current Phraseology "Labour planned a Bedroom Tax for Social Housing". The full debate is here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm150303/debtext/150303-0003.htm More importantly, however, I asked a question of the Shadow Minister: John Hemming:  I am aware of the proposal to transfer housing benefit money to local authorities with a view to building more properties. Let me ask this: what pays the rent of the people who are already in tenanted accommodation while the new properties are being built with that money? Helen Goodman:  That, of course, is the great conundrum.  [... where she does not answer this question ...] The Shadow minister did not answer this.   If Labour bring in such a policy it will only wo...

John Hemming  (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD):  I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It contains an entry for JHC, which stands for John Hemming & Co., a company I founded in 1983. It currently employs about 260 staff and has a turnover of £20 million. I have declared in the register an income of around £180,000 from that company. I attend a meeting once a month and chair the board meeting. I am a full-time Member of Parliament. I spend five full days during the week and two half days at the weekend on political business. Oddly enough, the motion is so badly drafted that it would not affect me, because the £180,000 I receive is from a partnership, and the motion does not refer to partnerships. Obviously, there is a lot of confusion about equity interest and payment per hour. I spend under four hours a month on the work set out in my declaration of interests. What do I do? Well, today I met the Latvian Justice Minister, who is concern...

Firstly on Labour's proposals for another NHS reorganisation. Secondly on whether there is a role for buying in services.

It appears that the Greeks have decided that they are unwilling to compromise and the rest of the Eurogroup have decided that they won't throw good money after bad. There then comes the technical question of how to establish an economy based upon the "new drachma".  When changes are planned to financial software such as benefits and taxation quite a long period of planning is needed before the systems are in place to cope with this.  It is really not practical to establish the software and systems for a completely new currency overnight.  That would imply the greek government trying to cope with making payments in a situation where those banks holding a lot of greek debt are unable to operate. I am not quite sure how this actually works. It does seem, however, that after today the ball is in the Greek government court.  They can come back to the EuroGroup suggesting that they agree to something akin to the deal. However, the timescale to avoid chaos is this wee...

Some of you may be aware that Central England Co-op have sadly resigned as agents of the branch which is situated at The Poolway. The last day of service will be in January 2016. The Post Office maintain that they are committed to continue a Post Office service in the vicinity and are currently advertising the business opportunity on their website. They have already been approached by existing retailers in the Poolway Shopping Precinct, who may be suitable new operators. Your Liberal Democrat team will work to ensure that you do not lose your Post Office service as we have successfully done so recently with the Post Office at the Wheatsheaf in Sheldon. We will keep you updated with regards to any further developments with regards to this matter.  

Having not had hustings in 2010, the candidates (or at least the Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative) candidates have arranged a hustings event between 2 and 4 pm at South Yardley Library on 21st March 2015. The Respect and UKIP candidates have been told of the event, but neither have confirmed attendance.

It is not that easy to predict what will happen with Greece. The arguments of the Greek government are absurd. They cannot revisit the Second World War when the country agreed a settlement many years ago. The argument about profits on Greek bonds is a nonsense given the amount that has already been written off. Now we have, "if we go it falls apart". If they renege on their contractual commitments "if falls apart".  Which is why the other EU countries won't just let them off their treaty obligations. My personal view is that the elected representatives for Syriza are not going to compromise enough and will push it to the limits.  That is likely to lead to Greece being in default and short of cash.  In the end this is actually enough to drive them out of the EU.  They are unlikely to agree to enforce any ECJ judgments in respect of paying debt.  Hence I think they are on the way out of the EU itself - not just the Eurozone. The fact that they have star...

I was surprised given the Green Party's opposition to Fracking that Caroline Lucas did not vote against the Infrastructure Bill on Monday evening. The point about the infrastructure bill is that although there was no specific vote as to whether or not to change the laws on trespass for Geothermal Energy and Fracking, there was an opportunity to oppose the bill as a whole. The Bill did include good things like a cycling and walking strategy, but there were also things that one would have expected the Green's to oppose in addition to Fracking. The final 3rd reading question can be seen being put here (7 hours 23 minutes and 56 seconds from the start of the video) . No one was there who shouted no.

The FT have a useful information page which gives the 10 year interest rate on government debt . The rates are particularly low in the Eurozone apart from Greece at the moment.  The UK is also particularly low. I will extract the current figures for future reference: Ten year government bond spreads Country Latest yield Spread vs bund Spread vs T-bonds Australia 2.43% +2.08 +0.70 Austria 0.46% +0.10 -1.28 Belgium 0.66% +0.30 -1.08 Canada 1.36% +1.01 -0.37 Denmark 0.47% +0.12 -1.26 Finland 0.41% +0.05 -1.33 France 0.58% +0.23 -1.15 Germany 0.36% -- -1.38 Greece 10.48% +10.12 +8.74 Ireland 1.15% +0.79 -0.58 Italy 1.64% +1.29 -0.09 Japan 0.28% -0.08 -1.45 Netherlands 0.43% +0.07 -1.31 New Zealand 3.20% +2.84 +1.46 Portugal 2.38% +2.02 +0.65 Spain 1.44% +1.09 -0.29 Sweden 0.71% +0.35 -1.03 Switzerland -0.02% -0.38 -1.75 UK 1.43% +1.07 -0.31 US 1.73% +1.38 -- T...

There has been a growth recently in the number of reports of exploding Manhole Covers.   One in Tyseley exploded yesterday on the Warwick Road close to Tyseley station yesterday.  There are quite a few press reports about this including a video of a little girl who was almost hit by the cover. The detail is in various press reports including this one. I have been down to look into it.   When it exploded the lights went off with a power surge in at least one local shop.  That would imply that the explosion was linked to power supplies in some way.  However, the cover that flew off was actually from the telecoms manhole.  There were three manholes close together.    National Grid (gas) were down to look at the gas supplies and that was not an issue. There has been a growth in such explosions from under 10 a year a few years ago to over 60 last year.  The normal cause is from decaying insulation caused by water on power cables. I have wr...

Well ... that's not what they are presenting it as.   Instead they are talking about banning encryption.   See here . When I say I am a cryptographer I mean that I implemented the second version of the SSL (now TLS) encryption system in the world after Netscape back in 1995.  I have written the software for RSA encryption. What would it mean to ban encryption? Well the most obvious use of encryption is for web interfaces with the https:// type of URL.   http:// is hyper text transfer protocol (without encryption) and https is with encryption. Properly implemented it is secure.  It is used for Hotmail (now outlook.com), facebook, twitters and all electronic communications including online banking. If you want to find out whether you are using encryption or not just look at the url. Hence if they are aiming to ban encryption then they want to stop all e-commerce as well because it all uses encryption.

Questions have been raised as to the modifications In Division 130 as to the basis upon which a decision by a public authority can be quashed by judicial review. The change introduced by the Crime and Court Bill means that apart from a few exceptions if the court is asked to quash a decision because of procedural flaws it is not to do so if the decision if when remade is highly likely to result in a not substantially different outcome.    The few exceptions relate to the "exceptional public interest". The difficulty is that for decisions that are subject to judicial review (which does not apply to primary legislation of course) the simple fact that judicial review has been applied for can introduce a long period of delay.  That delay in itself can harm the public interest.  Hence to apply a filter at the permission stage which means that applications for judicial review that are unlikely to result in a final change to the decision are rejected at that stage then...

There is a lot of confusion about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the NHS. The NHS Confederation has produced a dedicated web page Here relating to TTIP. My own view is that the NHS should be kept out of TTIP. I don't personally believe that it is in TTIP at the moment. On the NHS Confederation Web Page there is a lot more information. I will extract one part of this below, but really people should read the web page (referred to above) if they are interested in more information. Specifically on the web page it says: "Jean-Luc Demarty, Director General for Trade at the European Commission, wrote to Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair of the House of Commons Health Committee, on 11 December 2014, giving further, more explicit assurances that the EU intends publicly-funded health services to be excluded from the TTIP agreement. Publicly-funded services delivered by private, or third sector organisations will also be protected. EU practice is that ...