Richard Spring MP
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

We now know that real disposable weekly earnings are being squeezed, most particularly for the lowest income earners, that child poverty has risen, and that 5.3 million have been hit by the recent tax changes. On top of that the savings ratio has fallen to the lowest level since the early 1960s, as people feel the spending pressures. Our trade balance is the worst on record.

On the surface, rising house prices do induce a feelgood factor, and has spurred on consumer spending, but underneath it all, our productivity and competitiveness are not matching the global economic and business challenge of the 21^st century. The overall tax burden level is at the highest level ever.

The Budget cheered up Labour backbenchers for 24 hours, but the reality now looks much different. The huge volume of increased taxation has not been matched by improvements in the public sector. The Budget did not enhance the reputation of the Chancellor, and the mutterings in the Commons about a stalking horse candidate against him have certainly increased. All you see is anxious small groups of Labour parliamentarians huddled together in intense conversation.

It almost hardly needs repeating that after a decade in power, this Government still has the urban-obsessed views borne of its inception in the trendier parts of Islington. Most Ministers have very little understanding of rural areas and this permeates their thinking in every Department.

Their lack of understanding has had devastating consequences for those who not only live in the countryside, but who depend on it for the livelihood. Even with the recent rise in land prices in Britain, many farmers are still struggling to make a living in the agricultural sector. Only last month, dairy farmers warned of a ‘meltdown’ in their sector, with three farmers leaving the industry every day.

Yesterday, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published their report examining the catastrophic handling of the Single Payment System which was supposed to distribute £1.5 billion of EU subsidies to farmers. The whole process was a disaster with 96% of farmers still not receiving their payments last June - seven months after it was set up.

The final cost to the taxpayer of this “serious and embarrassing failure” is in the region of £500 million with many farmers having their lives ruined, in some cases tragically, due to the mishandling. The warnings were clear that the system was “complex and very high risk”. They were ignored. The bitter irony is that the Cabinet Minister responsible for overseeing the process, Margaret Beckett, rewarded by being given one of the top offices of state as Foreign Secretary. What a bitter taste it must leave in the mouths of agricultural workers of the contempt and arrogance this Government has for them.

It would be absurd to say that Conservative MPs were anything other than cheerful at the moment; the Budget has not exactly electrified the electorate.

Last night Alan Duncan, the perfectly formed Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, had an enormous 50^th birthday party. Margaret Thatcher came, William Hague was his usual and funny speaking self, and Rory Bremner came to imitate Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and other politicians who were not present.

Afterwards we all went to a dinner at which Michael Heseltine spoke. I well remember how brilliantly he lifted spirits in the House of Commons when we were in Government, and in a similar state in which Labour now find themselves. He amusingly gave us some sound advice on being in opposition.

The will to win is back. Nobody is being remotely triumphalist – there is still a long way to go. However I can think of no time in my fifteen years as a Member of Parliament when Conservative MPs have been in better spirits.

There are many players who have contributed to the extraordinary sight of Dr Paisley and Gerry Adams coming to an agreement yesterday. There is no doubt that Tony Blair deserves approbation for his role, as does the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern. None of this would have been achieved without the support of successive Irish governments.

Ireland in the last twenty years has changed so dramatically, and is now so prosperous, that the situation in Northern Ireland ceased to become a romantic quest for unification, but a terrible embarrassment. Equally Americans, after 9/11, began to look more critically at the terrorist links of Sinn Fein/IRA.

Tony Blair will want to include this achievement in his legacy, which he is entitled to do. However we should just remember that all of this was started by John Major, at a time of bombings and real personal danger. It took political courage to press on, when the actions of the IRA continued to fortify the sceptics.

For Tony Blair, and the Labour Party, as John Major discovered, this magnificent breakthrough will not be recognised in the votes of the British electorate.   

On Saturday, all over the country the Conservative Party had an NHS Action Day, with leaflets and petitions.

90% of people who passed our stall signed the petition. It was extraordinary – their enthusiasm to do so. The night before on the local TV news, we heard that one of the region’s hospitals is so short of secretarial help, because of cuts, that the surgeons were sending handwritten letters to their patients. Community nurses on Saturday told me that they were barred from ordering even basic equipment like disposable gloves ahead of the financial year end, of people discharged prematurely from hospital, of incredible pressures put on them to prevent people from going to hospital at all, and of the total collapse of morale. In Suffolk, we have a financial crisis of gargantuan proportions, with NHS trusts finding it impossible to pay off accumulated debts. This is from a government which said “24 hours to save the NHS”.

Much of the rejection of Labour arises out of what has happened to our health service. People are no longer angry or even disgusted, they just want to get rid of them. It is difficult to believe that they will be changing their minds over the next two years.

Well this has been a week rightly dominated by the Budget, but soon we shall be in local elections territory.

Yesterday evening Suffolk County Councillors voted to reverse a three tier schools system introduced in 1974, in favour of a two-tier structure. Many people are very upset about this. The vote was based on a recommendation of a cross party Liberal-Labour-Conservative group of councillors. However, last night, Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors voted against it. Two days ago a letter appeared in the East Anglian Daily Times from the Labour Group leader in the Council, criticising the silence of the county’s Conservative MPs. What I can unhesitatingly say is that the MPs have worked extremely hard on this issue both in public and in private – the assertion truly is rubbish.

However, political advantage is sensed, ahead of those elections. Whatever the merits of the three versus two tier system, the entirely predictable manoeuvrings of Labour and Liberal councillors in Suffolk tell us just how nervous they are about 3^rd May.

Anger over middle schools or not, I do not think they will be enjoying the day.

That is the name of the great waterfall on the Zambezi River before it was called the Victoria Falls.  It was a good description of the Chancellor’s performance yesterday with its concluding coup de théâtre.

Beyond the headlines, there were two really bizarre announcements.  Taxes on small businesses have risen yet again, thus acting as a disincentive to start up businesses.  The Chancellor’s reliefs on capital investment in small companies will not apply to the creative and knowledge based acorn businesses.  Also, at a time when energy security is an increasing problem, yet another consultation has been launched on offshore oil and gas taxation, rather than an actual tax cut which applies to other businesses.  The warnings from the industry have been ignored.

Once again, micro-management, despite the major income tax realignment, characterised this Budget.   A future Chancellor will have to disentangle the accumulated webs of complication which have been such a beanfeast for lawyers, accountants and tax advisers.  

Spring is in the air for the Conservative Party and it shows in all sorts of different ways. Conservative Future is attracting vastly increased interest on university campuses – many younger people now want to be involved in politics, and eventually to become Members of Parliament.

Last night, under the auspices of the Conservative City Circle ,a party was held at the solicitors S J Berwin in their beautiful building overlooking the Thames. It was for young City professionals, including many lawyers. It was sponsored by Jonathan Djanogly, the Shadow Solicitor General, who is associated with S J Berwin. It was addressed by Dominic Grieve, Shadow Attorney General, twice in a row Channel 4 Opposition Politician of the Year. Everybody thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Interestingly enough, much of the conversation was less about today’s Budget, but about the rise in the Conservative Party’s fortunes, and how the process could be enhanced. It was simply another sign of those tectonic plates moving politically, and it bodes well for a Tory future.

In Gordon Brown’s long reign at the Treasury, he has often spoken of his prudence. Prudence for a purpose was the one well remembered catchphrase which he loved repeating.

Oh dear, young fresh Prudence is now into advanced middle age and no amount of cosmetic surgery, botox (micro-management) or face cream (covering the cracks) can disguise one simple terrible truth for Labour. Their great cry was that ‘investment’ in our public services would transform them beyond recognition.

Well, huge sums have indeed been hurled at the NHS with no commensurate improvement. Ever since the NHS was founded, there have been important strides in improving healthcare. However, we now have massive deficits, junior doctors unable to get jobs, and indeed emigrating, and nurses being laid off. Similarly, educational standards have simply not risen to acceptable levels. To pay for this largesse, we now have the highest burden of tax in our history. People might be more willing to pay, I suspect, if they saw the visible fruits of their tax bills. However, they are now sorely disappointed. The link, which has been at the heart of the Labour attack on Conservatives, is clearly not there, and Labour scare stories no longer resonate.

So Gordon may huff and puff but he has been rumbled. He has dispersed huge sums of money to public services without overseeing how this has been  effectively spent. Commentator after commentator has observed this. Now, Lord Turnbull, Permanent Secretary at the Treasury for four years, has savagely damned the Chancellor with faint praise, ironically inviting us to “admire” the “sheer Stalinist ruthlessness” deployed by Brown in dealing with colleagues and allocating resources.

However, it should be the Chancellor’s colleagues who hold him in contempt, not the reverse, as he has dispensed public money to them without any proper consultation or prioritisation, which is why it has been so appallingly misspent.

It is in this very changed atmosphere that he presents his Budget tomorrow.

One of the defining characteristics of Liberal Democrats is their sheer ruthless opportunism when it comes to election campaigns. The stories are legion and are often the basis for amused/horrified conversations amongst Members of Parliament.

Last year, a cross party Liberal-Labour-Conservative panel began to consider the future of education in Suffolk and unanimously concluded that the county’s three-tier system should move to a two tier structure, in common with almost all of the rest of the country. Nevertheless, when the panel reported, one of the first matters raised by local Conservative MPs was how the county’s Liberals would react. After all, there are district council elections in May! We knew instinctively that they would characteristically sniff where the wind is blowing, and respond accordingly.

The trouble is that barring most middle school parents, teachers and governors, the rest of the educational establishment is content with the proposed change.

On Friday, we were told that the local Liberal Democrats have called for referendums, truly a ridiculous idea; we all fell about laughing. We knew that they would cook up something. It is the nature of the beast.

As was in evidence in the Trident vote in the House of Commons, habitual fence sitting is not in accord with the real time political battle between Conservatives and Labour, for the next Government.  As once again shown by Suffolk’s Liberal Democrats, this highlights their unwillingness to take decisive positions, which happens when your political roots are embedded in a blancmange. All of which is a pity because so many actual LibDem voters are decent people with very genuine motives. Their natural home is with David Cameron’s Conservative Party who are fighting for civil rights, social responsibility and green issues with an increasingly real hope that these policies  will actually be put into place in government after the next general election.