Daily Archives: 12 Jun 2023

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12 Jun 2023

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Planning applications validated by EDDC for week beginning 29 May

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12 Jun 2023

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Martin Shaw: Politics Matters

Martin Shaw, whose regular opinion column in the local press has been cancelled, has agreed to write a column for East Devon Watch. 

Martin will not stick to a rigid timetable but respond to issues as they arise. 

Here is the first.

A historic opportunity for East Devon

Just 12 months ago, East Devon voters helped topple Boris Johnson in a by-election after the tractor-porn MP, Neil Parish, resigned. Now Johnson himself has resigned as an MP (because he knew he’d lose a by-election in his London constituency), it feels as though what we started last year is coming to fruition.

Richard Foord, our new Lib Dem MP, has certainly hit the ground running. Having stood for election myself to save the community hospitals threatened with closure in 2017, I was especially pleased to see his new campaign to bring the beds back into Axminster, Honiton, Ottery and Seaton hospitals. The need for these wards was amply demonstrated during the pandemic, when Devon NHS was reduced to commandeering hotels to cope with the extra patients.

I’m sure Richard would agree that this will be just one part of restoring the NHS to a state where we can all be sure of the right care. It will require massive investment in nurses and doctors, which realistically is only likely to come from a Labour government under Keir Starmer. Although he is playing down the issue, it’s obvious that Labour will have to put in huge extra funds as Tony Blair did after Margaret Thatcher and John Major ran down the NHS in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

How can we in East Devon help the big national change which is needed? Our first priority must be to keep Richard as our MP in the election which is due in 2024. The constituency boundaries have changed and reading between the lines it looks likely that he will stand in the new Honiton & Sidmouth constituency. Here he will be up against the Tories’ Simon Jupp, who has done a chicken run from the new Exmouth & East Exeter constituency (where 78 per cent of the people he currently represents live).

Jupp’s shift testifies to the fact that on paper, Honiton & Sidmouth is the safer Tory seat. By the same token, all of us who want to keep the Tories out must rally behind Richard, assuming he is the Lib Dem candidate. It was great in the local elections to be able to vote Independent, Lib Dem, Green or Labour, and see a good mixture of candidates elected. In the general election, it will be a different kettle of fish. Many Tories who stayed at home in the by-election will come out and put their cross against Jupp. If anything, Richard will be the underdog, and he will need absolutely every vote.

Keeping our first non-Tory MP will be an enormous achievement for the area and a boost for the Lib Dem-Independent-Green alliance which runs EDDC. It will also help to ensure that when Starmer takes over from Sunak, we have an independent voice to put our concerns to the new Labour government. Keeping our Lib Dem MP will be a win-win.

It’s time too to start thinking seriously about the General Election options in Exmouth & East Exeter. Jupp is fleeing this seat precisely because it’s a better option for a strong anti-Tory candidate – Independent candidate Claire Wright made it a marginal and was just 5,000 votes behind last time. With Claire out of the picture, it’s important that a single strong challenger emerges to replace her.

I don’t know who that will be, but the worst possible outcome would be a close contest between the Lib Dem and Labour candidates which lets the Tory squeak through the middle. Historically the Lib Dems have been stronger in this seat and they need to choose a credible candidate who can continue where Claire left off. In 2024, both East Devon constituencies could elect progressive MPs. It’s a historic opportunity and we must not let it slip.

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Freeports are costing a fortune. Why aren’t they being monitored?

“The Plymouth and South Devon Freeport will supercharge the South West economy by building on our region’s unique national capabilities in marine, defence and space to form globally impactful clusters and a UK Innovation Superpower.” – Owl

Darren Jones MP, the Labour chair of the business and trade committee, has secured for himself a place on the shortlist for what I’m going to call the “Wait, What?” award for June.

James Moore www.independent.co.uk 

I shall bestow this on those who say things in otherwise anodyne-looking press releases that immediately pull you up.

Here’s his quote on the subject of freeports, one of Rishi Sunak’s flagship economic policies, something we have repeatedly been told will be a major benefit of Brexit. If that’s not an oxymoron. (PS: it is.)

“The government hopes that freeports and investment zones will transform regional economies, but we don’t yet have an agreement on how success should be measured.”

Wait, What? Think about what Jones said for a moment. These are government-certified big deals that the then little-known Sunak extolled the virtues of in a report for the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-wing think tank, way back in 2016.

Boris Johnson would happily bang on about them to anyone who cared to listen. And yet, here is Jones, announcing the terms of an inquiry into them, telling us there’s no agreement on how the policy should be assessed.

This matters. These specialised zones offer a series of generous concessions to the businesses operating within them.

There are eight in England, with two more given the go-ahead in Wales. Scotland has its own take on the wheeze, having announced two “green” freeports, which had to include plans for lowering emissions in the bidding process although they don’t face hard requirements to actually deliver on saving the planet.

The lot of them sit outside the UK’s main tax and tariff rules and enjoy lower regulation. But they have many critics. The TUC has, for example, expressed fears that they will serve as a “Trojan horse” which will usher in lower standards to the detriment of people working within them.

They aren’t cheap. The Office for Budget Responsibility thinks they will cost £50m a year from the current financial year, with the largest costs arising from employer national insurance contribution relief and business rate incentives they grant.

The OBR, however, admits that its estimate is a shaky one for a variety of reasons. The extent to which the various tax reliefs will be taken up is not known. Another outstanding question is how much freeport activity will be genuinely new investment and how much will simply be displaced from other parts of the UK by businesses seeking to take advantage of the tax breaks.

Critics of them see this displacement as another major problem.

It’s not as if they’re really new. A number of them were set up in the 1980s but the Conservative-led coalition government led by David Cameron phased them out in 2012 because their success was strictly limited.

Ah, but this time it’s different, say their proponents, such as Sunak. Now we’re outside the EU we can do all sorts of exciting things with them.

Well, we’ll see, shall we? The government does indeed have more flexibility than it had. The EU has been taking an increasingly dim view of the 80 within its member states because of some of the failings they are accused of. Here’s some more: critics say they facilitate money laundering and tax avoidance.

If the UK ones get too exciting in terms of incentives (and subsidies), the EU may very well take umbrage and levy retaliatory tariffs. There’s no such thing as a (tax) free lunch. We ought to have realised that by now.

With all those concerns, you would think a framework for measuring the success of this important and expensive economic policy would have been constructed, agreed and signed off years ago, but apparently not.

A cynic might suggest that this is because it isn’t just a big chunk of taxpayers’ money that is being invested in these things. An even more substantial amount of political capital has been pumped into them.

It would therefore be quite inconvenient if our putative framework were to adjudge them a white elephant at best, and a venue for the realisation of critics’ fears at worst.

Over to Jones’s committee, which will seek to measure the impact that freeports are having on business and trade and to consider where the cash lavished on them has been spent and whether it has been well spent.

Thank goodness someone is looking into this.

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Sidmouth: Lethal metal poles stick out of sand at beauty spot

Beachgoers at a Devon beauty spots have been warned of what lurks beneath after what looks like scaffolding metal poles have been spotted sticking out of the sand. The scaffolding poles were pictured by Devon Arborists who took the picture above as a warning to dog walkers and swimmers enjoying Jacob’s Ladder in Sidmouth.

Olivier Vergnault www.devonlive.com

Jacob’s Ladder is one of the town’s two large beaches. An expanse of sand and shingle, the beach gets its name from the series of wooden steps that lead down from Connaught Gardens.

Over the past few weeks parts of the promenade have been fenced off as work is underway to repair it. People who have commented on the Devon Arborists’ post on Facebook have branded the metal poles sticking out of the sand a “horrific accident waiting to happen”.

Commenting on the post which was reposted by the Sidmouth Community for the people group, Leitch David said it was vital people going to the beach checked out where they swim before diving in as “you never know what lurks beneath”.

Samantha Day added: “Goodness, that’s a horrible accident waiting to happen, especially when the tide is in and you can’t see them.”

Richard Davey agreed, adding: “Absolutely lethal and horrible to think someone may have had a serious head or facial injury. Well done for bringing it to our attention.” Roger Hamilton-Kendall couldn’t agree more, adding: “Need to remove that sort of thing. Dread to imagine someone diving into the sea.”

Deborah Milward said: “Can it be removed ASAP as children or dogs could really have nasty accidents on those dread to think?”