Views

Something in the air at Westminster - for the Strathspey & Badenoch Herald

An air of unreality has been descending over Westminster for half an hour every Wednesday at Prime Ministers questions. The new Speaker has his work cut out to keep many MPs in order.

But of late the problem has been a different one. The exchanges between David Cameron and Gordon Brown on public spending, repeated over the past three weeks, fail completely to address the economic reality.

This week, new figures from the European Commission showed that Britain has the largest structural deficit in our economy over any of the 27 countries in the EU.

We have built up a huge amount of debt. Part of that is necessary: it is right to try to spend more now to try to beat the recession. But part of it is there because the government was not sufficiently prudent in the good economic times.

But whatever the reasons, over the next 10 or 15 years we face a huge challenge to find the money to pay off the debt we have built up and restore discipline to the nation's finances.

That will be one of the most important jobs for whoever forms the next government, or the one after that.

Sadly, the exchange in the Parliament avoid this central point.

Mr Brown simply denies this reality – dressing up the reductions his government is already planning as 'investment'. Mr Cameron tells us that spending reductions are needed but refuses point blank to say where he would have the axe fall.

In the past, the people who have least have suffered most when governments try to control spending. People on low incomes were seen as a soft target by the Tories in the 1980s and 1990s recessions. And if public services are cut across the board – so called 'efficiencies' – it is those people who need services the most who suffer most.

The Scottish Government seems to have taken the view that restricting funds to the Highlands is the right way forward.

By cutting Highlands and Islands Enterprise budget; changing the health funding formula to the detriment of the Highlands; and kicking much needed transport investment into the long grass, the Scottish Government have ensured that the region will be hit harder by public spending cuts than the rest of Scotland. In an area where services already cost a lot more to deliver, that is totally wrong.

There is another way to deal with these problems. Rather than making cuts across the board, we should look for things that government does that are a low priority or unnecessary or wasteful.

Do we really need a child trust fund or to pay tax credits to higher income families? Changing these might be unpopular but if they allow funds to be retained for essential services then it is the right thing to do.

And we need to look to the long term too. Big questions have to be asked about our military spending.

I do not think Britain needs or can afford to replace Trident nuclear weapons with something similar in the future. We do not need a Cold War deterrent when the threats today come from terrorists and rogue states. Up to £100 billion would be saved, which would help take the pressure of cuts off other more important public services.

We need an honest debate, which faces up to these big long term questions, not the charade we have seen at Prime Minister's Questions.

Let's get everyone covered

BROADBAND infrastructure is fast becoming as important to the economy of the Highlands as our transport infrastructure. A fast high quality service enables people in the strath to do types of business that have never been done before. Sadly, for too many people that aspiration is not delivered, as so our economy is held back.

The government's planned universal service commitment to a 2MB connection is a good start. It remains to be seen how it will be delivered – and the 2012 deadline is far too far away.

But current broadband is not good enough – we need the next generation superfast broadband to be rolled out quickly. In Finland, they will be delivered a 50MB connection while we are languishing at 2MB.

So I welcome the idea of a very small levy on fixed phone lines – 50p a month – to help meet the costs of fast broadband in areas, like the strath, where the commercial sector will not do it by itself.

We now need to get the Highlands to front of the queue for spending that money. If we can be first to high speed broadband, the benefits will be huge.

Posted on: 01/07/2009