tiintax

I know, it’s been a while, sorry. Basically I took a break from bloggery during the pandemic, and then WordPress “improved” their site so much that I couldn’t fathom how to do any of the basics of posting. Bear with me. I have things to say: hopefully I can start again to say them.

Impact assessment – no, don’t fall asleep yet – is a boring technical discipline. I know: I used to be the impact assessment specialist for HMRC and for all Treasury tax measures. The point is to regulate how governments regulate – the IA process is actually designed to be a brake or anchor on introducing new legislation. Supposedly you think through the impacts as you design the policy, so that by the time you get to the stage of introducing legislation you’ve already worked out the costs and benefits, got your stakeholders on side, and checked that you aren’t proposing anything that damages small businesses or has equality implications or offends against any other government priority. Actually in civil service terms it’s a fun job if you don’t mind a bit of unpopularity – you get to tell MUCH more senior people that they can’t ride their hobby horse till they fill in this form, and you get to play “my boss is senior to your boss” sometimes all the way up to the Minister’s private office, at which point they tell you to go away and come back when you’ve worked it all out.

The government has published a “Government response to the report of the Joint Committee on the Draft Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill”

What’s this about? Well, essentially the Palace of Westminster – the building that houses the House of Lords, the House of Commons and various offices, chapels and halls – is falling down. It’s a fire risk, bits of it keep falling off and narrowly missing people, and it’s a warren of unsuitable spaces with rubbish access and facilities.

It’s also, apparently, a World Heritage Site (which seems bizarre to me as it was only built in the nineteenth century albeit on top of some medieval buildings and incorporating some remnants) but which means it can’t just be left to rot.

Have we really got between £3-6 BILLION to spend on a building, though, however historic?

Usually the government’s answer to anything expensive is to offload it. Why aren’t we preserving the building by flogging it off to someone else, in the way that the County Hall buildings opposite were preserved? Give it to a hotel group for a peppercorn and let them spend the money?

If you look at more modern parliament buildings like the Scottish Parliament or the EU Parliament they are arranged differently, usually in a semi circle to facilitate civilised discussion rather than the yah-boo-suckery of the two-sides-two-swords-lengths-apart Commons. They have microphones that work and electronic voting systems that don’t rely on parliamentarians being wheeled through the lobbies “sick bucket on lap and high on morphine”

So here’s a thought. There’s a perfectly adequate set of offices and chambers across the square, at the 100 Parliament Street building that houses the Treasury and other assorted Departments.

Move Parliamentarians into that.

There’s also a tragically underused circular car park at the heart of the building. Use that to build a twenty-first century debating chamber. Don’t faff about commissioning a new design. There’s an 800 seat theatre in the round sitting in the middle of the Royal Exchange building in Manchester, built in 1976 for a million quid. It’s a proven design using proven technology. A million quid in 1976 is about, what, seven hundred million now. Appoint an architect to oversee the project and give them a fixed seven hundred million budget and a firm closing date, and let them get on with it.

The Treasury? Move it into the Foreign Office building next door. Move the Foreign Office into the next building down Whitehall and so on, till the unlucky (lucky?) losers get to move into the Lord Moon of the Mall pub at the end of the road.

Brexit has sucked the life out of the last  three years of government and here we are, nothing done, no energy for doing.

Here’s a thought. If a jury can’t reach a conclusion there’s no dishonour in a re-trial. This Parliament will never agree on the May deal, a no deal, a people’s vote or any other possible outcome.

So let’s stop. Don’t ask the EU for a postponement, which would need the unanimous agreement of the other EU members and which they have already said would come with conditions. No: let’s withdraw Article 50 and then do it right.

Set up a Royal Commission to look at what Brexit means: we want from it, how we will act during any transition period and after, the risks and rewards. What May should have done after the election, essentially, so there’s cross party agreement. The Royal Commission should also take advice from a Citizens’ Jury, as was done in Ireland on the abortion debate, an issue at least as toxic as Brexit.

The police investigation into any wrongdoings during the referendum should continue alongside the Commission and any prosecutions should go ahead independent of the Commission’s deliberations.

There would be another election in the usual course of events but campaigning would be on the issues – tax, spending, welfare, education, NHS, defence… and not on the slow grind of Brexit.

A new Parliament would look at the Royal Commission’s plan of action and then vote on whether to trigger Article 50 again, this time with a clear road map of agreed actions, or whether the new proposals should be put back to a new referendum.

One tiny snag, as I’m sure you have noticed… in order to withdraw Article 50, Parliament – this Parliament – would have to vote to do so…