Policies

Please click here for Jan 2006 policies in pdf format

Click these links to go the location of each topic on this page.

Domestic Policies

1.Budgets 2.Industry 3.Crime 4.Education 5.Health 6.Private Finance Initiative (PFI) 7.Transport 8.Debt 9.Pensions 10.Defence 11.Asylum 12.Leadership 13.Farming 14.Europe 15.Ethics 16.Housing 17.Ecology 18.Mayors 19.Judges 20.Parties

Foreign Policy

A Development B Trade C Islamism D Nuclear Non-Proliferation E United Nations F Trafficking G Countries according to region

20 Domestic policy issues

1. Budgets

We have a huge national debt of about £500 billion hanging over us. We should pay it off if we are to have credibility in the world. To get this huge sum into perspective let me say that our two new aircraft carriers cost about £2 billion each so our national debt would pay for 250 new super aircraft carriers! Or you can picture it as costing £10,000 for every man, woman and child in the UK. In addition, we have a personal debt (including mortgages) of around £1,300 billion. We are living beyond our means. Australia is on course to pay off its national debt in 2006. Why shouldn't we?

2. Industry

We need to earn our way in the world by industry selling goods and services that the world really needs to make it a better place. We should not just sell things to satisfy markets generated by advertising or by arming people who ought to settle their differences in cheaper wiser ways. We need to develop good products generated by Research and Development. But R and D spending is declining. Our children avoid maths, physics, chemistry and languages which are so necessary for industry to thrive. We even lack industry recruits who can read and write properly. We need everybody to see the value of their job in the big picture or to change to a job that they can see the point of.

3. Crime

Our prisons are nearly full. We have more people in prison per head of population than almost anywhere else in western Europe. There is much too much criminality. There may be a modest improvement lately but nobody doubts that the level of criminality is hugely more that it was, say, 50 years ago. Crime is expensive, demoralising and a symptom of our national aimlessness. Most people in prison have unhappy lives with family problems and little educational acheivement. A vast amount of crime stems from our national drug habit which arises largely because people have empty sad lives. The vision which I describe is a big part of the answer.

4. Education

Education will succeed when young people want to learn and are happy at home. If they see something great going on in the adult world around them, they will be quick to catch the vision and eager to get a good education to enable them to be happy and useful in life. When they grow up, satisfying jobs will make them stable people with a better chance of making a happy, stable home for their own children and of being an inspiration to them.

5. Health

I want to return the NHS to its original simplicity and innocence. - You can rest assured that, if you fall ill, we'll all club together to pay the cost of getting you well again, if it's humanly possible, or to look after you if it's not.- This precious founding principle of the National Health Service binds us together as a nation. It's a common good. You are one of us. We are in it together. The way to run a health service is to work out the health needs of the nation and pay for the service out of public funds. Simple! Keep it simple; no internal market, no management consultants' fees. Just a few administrators, experienced at operating this simple system. Furthermore, a purposeful nation will be happier and healthier. We will want to honour our own bodies and keep as healthy as we can. We won't feel the need for so many tranquillisers or so much comfort food or alcohol, tobacco, drugs or illicit sex. We'll want to keep healthy to be happy and useful and so as not to use up more NHS funds than we need to.

6. Private Finance Initiative (PFI)

PFI means that the government contracts with a private consortium to design and build a facility such as a school or hospital and to run it for, often, 35 years. The private capital used has to be paid for at the more expensive commercial rates and it is all commercially secret. The government says it delivers public works on time and on budget, as opposed to conventional procurement which is frustrated by time and cost over-runs. But I think there must be ways to tighten up on such inefficiencies without incurring the large extra expense of PFI. People who don't like PFI see it as a way to get vote-winning popular public services, cost-free for the moment, but with future generations being loaded down with debt in the long run. If we can't afford such buildings we should get by until we can and work hard so we earn enough as a country to be able to pay for such projects up front.

7. Transport

I want British Rail back. We need an imaginatively planned transport system that lets the nation do its business. A nation that is earning its way in the world and getting an important job done needs an efficient, economical transport system for people and freight. Travelling from Manchester to London on standard class rail now costs a prohibitive £202 return if you buy a ticket on the day of travel. So people go by car. But now the government plans to deter car use by punitively pricing journeys at up to £1.34 per mile by means of a satellite responder chip in your car. Many of us do actually need to be able to get around to get our business done. Some people need to travel for very good reasons. We need plans for positive transport alternatives not punitive pricing which forces us to drive home late and miss our children's bed-time. These just make business and social life more expensive and more stressful. We need a fast, safe, cheap network designed and operated by skilled engineers of which we currently have too few. We need young people to catch the vision and to get stuck into studying the maths and physics so that they can become the engineers we need. Public ownership of rail and buses and re-regulation would allow us to invest what it takes to get things moving. We can't really invest what the system needs if the profit goes to private companies which are often based overseas.

8. Debt

The UK has two thirds of all credit card debt in Europe. To put it another way, we have twice as big a credit card debt as the whole of the rest of Europe put together. Personal debt has risen to dangerous levels. Bankruptcies are at an all time high. Young people are encouraged to start adult life with a long-term debt hanging over their heads. The government is promoting drinking, gambling and the lottery. It is a dangerous situation that we must rein in on.

9. Pensions and social protection

We need a level of standard old age pension which lets older people feel honoured and not cast aside. It may be necessary for people to work longer for it but that doesn't matter so much if the jobs people do are pleasant and keep them happily in circulation among friendly colleagues. Some 2.7 million are on some £12 billion worth of incapacity benefit. Some 5 million of us are on out of work benefits. Sweden has a generous social welfare system but it is made possible because people generally draw on it only if they really need it. Feeling committed together to working for a shared national vision will help us get all this into perspective. People on benefits will recognise a public responsibility to get off benefits as soon as they can because they will know they are needed and they won't want to cost the public purse more than absolutely necessary. They will leave more in the kitty to support others in need. It is a matter of rekindling public spirit so people feel an obligation to each other.

10. Defence

I want us to promote wholesome values and healthy relationships in the world. This will win us many friends but it will also incur the fury of those who see their illicit power base being threatened by this Pax Britannica. That is why we need armed forces. Mostly our vision should be spread abroad by friendly personal relationships and fair trade; sometimes by diplomats. But sometimes our military capability will be needed. So we need our forces to have enough personnel and the right kit to do the job without being over-stretched. And recruits need to be well educated and physically and psychologically fit for the work, damaged by broken relationships and unhealthy lifestyles back at home. And they should enjoy the admiring support of the community they represent especially when they come home injured.

11. Asylum

We must treat fairly the people who flee to our shores for protection from tyranny. We need a fair, intelligent means of deciding each case. The Home Office used to have teams to decide applicants' cases who built up an expert specialist knowledge of each of the situations from which most of the asylum seekers had fled. This system has broken down. Cases are now dealt with by officials who know little about the world from which a specific asylum seeker has fled. This ignorance and the pressure to expel a given quota of these people creates a culture hostile to the applicant and fosters many injustices in the country to which these poor people have fled seeking justice and protection. Probably they should be allowed to work and earn money to live on while they wait for their case to be judged. Internationally protected safe havens should be established in each region of the world to which people can flee and where they can spend time in safety being trained up in professions and skills to be ready to return home to build up their country as soon as conditions ease there.

12. Leadership

The style of public leadership is of vital importance to setting the right tone in our national life. If elected I would draw a salary equal to the national average wage, which is now about £25,000. I would not draw an MPs entitlement of £59,000 since I believe representatives should be representative of the people they represent. Leaders should be inspired by a public service ethos and should live at roughly the same level economically as the people they serve and lead. They should not be an elite class. Paying leaders of quangos and government agencies hugely inflated salaries means that they cannot ask members of the public to make sacrifices for the common good. Leadership should not be by overbearing monitoring and goal setting to drive up standards. Standards will rise when people feel appreciated and can aspire to the ideals they see their leaders living by.They will want to follow their example of diligent public service. Too much monitoring and compulsion is counterproductive and leads to stress and bitterness. If we have a vision that all agree to then we will be a free people working happily together to achieve that aim. That sort of nation is easy and cheap to govern because everybody wants it to succeed and expensive arguments are kept to a minimum.

13. Farms

I am taking steps to understand the tensions in farming, fishing and supermarkets that appear to threaten livelihoods and the security of our food suppliers. I suspect that the supermarkets and their suppliers, efficient as they are in many ways, sometimes drive a hard bargain bordering on ruthlessness. I have more to learn and welcome comment.

14. Europe

I want Europe to succeed in making a fair and prosperous community for its citizens and in being a good neighbour in the world. Many nations want to join the EU. The goal of membership has helped heal the sufferings of eastern and south-eastern Europe. We need to ensure that material wealth is not our only goal or the Union will disintegrate in times of hardship and challenge. Decision-making is bound to be cumbersome in such a large body and lost of a veto may sometimes be a problem. It is however up to us to convince our neighbours of the rightness of our approach and win them to it.It is going to be messy but its better than having a European war or the Cold War again.

15. Ethics

We should resist euthanasia and promote palliative care. We should curb abortion and divorce and encourage people to wait until they are married before having sex. Marriage should be encouraged and nurtured as the norm whilst recognising the honour of remaining single. Personally I cannot see that same-sex civil partnerships fit with the Bible. This is a difficult issue for some but the foundation of our civilisation is the Christian gospel and it should remain so. We need to dwell on the issue of how we make decisions as a nation. We should recognise the Bible as a moral authority for our national life. Opinion polls are not the only authority. Even democracy is not sacrosanct in that it is possible to make a mistake even when all is done democratically.

16. Housing

This is a crucial area because having a safe and sound home is so vital to human wellbeing and because paying for accommodation dominates so many people's lives and adds to stress and exhaustion. High housing costs force many young mothers to go out to work when their children would benefit from having their mother around. The home should be a place for the family to thrive in not a cause of debilitating debt.

17. Ecology

Ecology matters. We need to care about our environment and not pollute it or exhaust our resources leaving nothing to our children. At the same time being a good influence in the world demands that we live an efficient life and travel when we need to and export to earn our living in the world. So environmental concerns need always to be weighed up alongside the necessary costs of a sufficient economy and working out our global responsibilities. Foreign leisure travel is a great privilege and can broaden our awareness of the world but it comes at a price to the eco-system and depletes our energy reserves we should be restrained about long haul holidays. We also need to be careful about food and energy security and not leave ourselves at the mercy of suppliers who violate human rights. We must not sacrifice our principles for an easy life.

18. Mayors

In other words Local Government. There has long been resentment and distrust between central and local government. If we had a unifying sense of national purpose that all feel part of, then this tension could be overcome. Each local community could be allow more leeway in shouldering its responsibilities. Despite the government's recent polls on regional assemblies being rejected, we probably do need English regions larger than the present counties in order to plan for development. But quangoes of un-elected and highly paid officials are not transparent enough. France, Germany, Sweden, the US, Canada and Australia all have administrative units larger than those in England. A greater sense of mutual trust is needed to allow the centre, regions and counties to work together efficiently and that can come by embracing a common vision. The Code of Ethics in Public life introduced by the Deputy Prime Minister sounds good but it is being used to stifle local government democracy. Any councillor who has taken a position on any issue is being barred from eventual decision-making on that issue. I cannot see the point of being elected if you cannot then do anything about the issues you care about.It seems sinister to me.

19. Judges

The government plans to remove a great deal of the independence of the judiciary. A country with disenchanted suspicious citizens can only be governed by a powerful central government. A nation of citizens sharing a common aim can afford to allow power to be shared amongst various seats of authority such as the Ministers, the Parliament and the courts. It is dangerous to centralise power in the hands of the government executive. A nation with a unifying purpose can be governed by consensus rather than by such heavy-handed centralising of power. The appointment of judges and many aspects of their work and of sentencing are being taken over by servants of the executive. ID cards and an identity database can be tools of oppression if there is no other authority to hold the executive in check. We need the checks and balances, which our constitution has so far enshrined and which are being threatened. A free society wins the allegiance of its subjects by the rightness of its vision and removes the sea of support for those who would overthrow it. In Mao's terms, the fish would have less water to swim in. Stella Rimmington ex head of MI5 didn't think ID cards would be much help in combating terrorism. Vague laws on religious hatred and other expressions of opinion risk bringing the law into disrepute and criminalising valuable citizens. the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act SOCPA prohibits prompt demonstrations near Parliament. Normally 6 days notice has to be given and Police authorisation sought. Exceptionally 1 day's notice can be allowed but the decision to authorise any such demonstration seems to me to be too fine a political choice for a police officer to have to make.

20. Parties

I don't hear any other party coming out clearly with the vision and policies which I have laid out above. They can't be neatly categorised as left wing or right wing. Individual items coincide with some of the claims of other parties. But I present a bigger challenge than I hear coming from the other parties. Of course, people may well feel they prefer to opt for an easier life. If we do, then the world will go sour on us, especially because we now have a strident Iran and burgeoning, undemcratic China to face up to. Any decision to abandon our principles in favour of an easy life will disappoint us. There are challenges ahead. Only a nation united behind a bold and honest vision will preserve peace on earth. No current major party offers an electoral alternative to excessive privatisation. The main parties favour taking on more public debt by investing what we don't have in public services and PFI contracts. We are incurring extra tax liabilities that our children will have to pay their way out of. Single issue parties say important things but don't offer a comprehensive national vision. Two Christian parties (Christian Peoples Alliance and Operation Christian Vote) have important things to say about poverty relief, life ethics and family issues. I agree with them on these points but I think I am saying something different and broader. They have been good to me but my vision speaks more profoundly on the direction and inspiration of our national life.

International Affairs: multilateral issues ie issues that affect many countries not just one.

A. Development

We are already committed to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015 to: Halve the number of people in absolute poverty. Halve the number of people without clean water. Reduce the death of under 5s by two thirds. Reduce maternal mortality by three quarters. Universal primary education. And so on. These will not come easily. We can only make headway on these probelms if we are prepared to address the underlying economic and political obstacles and to play our part in securing peace and eradicating corruption. Charities can't do that. it has to be governments.

B. Trade

We should promote terms of trade that enable poorer countries to earn their way out of poverty without having to relinqish to foreign investors the best assets of their country. We need to ensure that they have the possibility of earning enough to fund necessary services. We should not oblige them by our terms of trade to remove protections from their economy until they are in a position to compete openly on world markets. Earning an honest living in the world will be good for our own economy as well because there will soon be more countries that are becoming rich enough to buy our goods and services at a fair market price.

C. Islamism

A western culture that has lost its moral bearings has really no defence against determined attempts by people willing to sacrifice their own lives to see another worldview prevail. Our essential culture of Christendom is stable, durable and worth dying to defend. We are however, in a compromised position in our contemporary western culture. Christendom has become corrupted by vices which dishonour us and weaken our ability to defend ourselves. Much of our decadent behaviour offends Muslims. I refer to pornography, alcohol, drugs, illicit sex and usury. Let us make sure that we are not abusing our economic and political power to be greedy at others' expense. It is worth dying for the rule of law and religious liberty and freedom of speech. It isn't worth dying just for the privilege of going out to get drunk on a Saturday night. We need to be clear about the fundamental values undergirding our civilisation and be prepared to defend them against assault. .

D Nuclear non-proliferation

We are rightly concerned that nuclear weapons should not get into irresponsible hands or be used against our people, civilisation and values. Fortunately the UN's International Atomic Energy Authority works hard at this. We must be diligent to prevent malicious forces using nuclear weapons against our civilisation and values. International consensus for non-proliferation can only hold if everybody sees that the values that the nuclear nations promote and defend are fair (even if a few don't admit it at the moment). Military force may be needed in the final analysis but world peace will only be achieved by winning hearts and minds and this applies to WMD as much as it does to lower scale conflict.

E. UN

We need to remain active members of the UN and its allied organisations such as the World Health Organisation. Particularly we need a UN that really works and is efficient and honest. This will always be difficult and messy because it means keeping all five Permanent veto holding Members of the Security Council on side. That is a crucial problem which we must keep trying to resolve and which has rendered the UN of limited value over the years. There should be less delay and more focus in the work of the UN Committee on Human Rights and tryannical regimes should be excluded from chairing the meetings.

F. TraG Slavery and Trafficking fficking in people, drugs, and contraband

These crimes thrive in poverty and chaos. Because of family poverty young women seek jobs that purport to be in waitressing only to find they have been tricked into prostitution or to take farm jobs to find themselves in some such situation as the Cockle Pickers of Morecombe Bay with the tide coming in. Eradicating such trade and crime requires efficient policing but the social reason for it can only be addressed by ending the poverty from which people flee. Again this is the kind of far sighted agenda we should embrace as a nation.

G. Countries of the world

Here are 19 regions into which I have divided the world (!). In the manifesto booklet downloadable on the home page I make suggestions about things we should be doing in each region. I have kept an archive of newspaper cuttings on each region and hope to encourage particular actions concerning each region.

1 LA Latin America

2 US United States and Canada

3 E15 EU the first 15 member states

4 E27 EU the more recent members

5 EE Eastern Europe ie Belarus, Ukraine, Balkans

6 RU Russia

7 CC Caucasus and Central Asian Replublics

8 NA Nothern half of Africa, inc Nigeria to Horn + Pan-African affairs

9 SA Southern half of Africa

10 IS Israel, Palestine, Lebanon

11 ME Rest of the Middle East (Turkey, Saudi, Syria, Jordan, Gulf States)

12 IQ Iraq

13 IR Iran

14 AF Afghanistan and Pakistan

15 IN Indian, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangla Desh, Maldives

16 SE South East Asia

17 CH China

18 JA Japan, Koreas, Taiwan

19 AU Australasia and the Pacific

The Common Good