The Rt Hon Malcolm Bruce MP

January Column

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Nick's New Year confidence

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As the House of Commons returned after the Christmas break the new Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, had his first chance to question the Prime Minister. He chose to concentrate on winter fuel bills after record fuel price increases.

His delivery was confident and the general view of the House was that he had done well. It was also an appropriate issue which the Government has yet to address. Winter fuel payments have not kept pace with price increases which means more people will worry about the cost of heating their homes.

Fellow Liberal Democrat MP, Steve Webb, reinforced the message by asking why the Government was cutting back on the Warm Front scheme, which offers grants to people towards insulating their homes. Here in the North East we have a lot of houses built in the Seventies for which effective ways of insulation do not exist and the Government should be doing more to help meet this challenge.

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PM backtracks on ID cards

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Also at Question Time the Prime Minister appeared to start backtracking on the Government's commitment to compulsory ID cards. When challenged he said that the Government was moving ahead with it but it would depend on an assessment of the voluntary scheme and a vote in Parliament.

This appeared to be recognition that there has been a loss of public confidence in the security of data following the disappearance of millions of records.

ID cards are very expensive and contrary to the Government's claims will not help defeat terrorism or serious crime.

It now appears that a majority of MPs has turned against something that threatens individual liberties at vast expense and could lead to the abuse of data.

Government should only collect the data it needs and only use it for the specific purpose for which it was collected. It cannot be trusted with more.

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Nuclear cuckoo in the nest

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The Government also committed itself to more nuclear power stations for England and Wales while claiming all the risks should be borne by the private sector. Time will tell whether this will make a difference and close monitoring will be needed of energy pricing mechanisms that could be manipulated to favour nuclear power.

My concern is that just as alternative technologies such as wind, wave, tidal, solar, combined heat and power, biofuels and energy efficiency are beginning to offer competitive results and new technologies such as carbon capture offer real potential billions of pounds could be diverted to nuclear power.

It could act like the cuckoo in the nest of our energy policy, squeezing out other fledgling technologies.

There are other concerns too. The cost of dealing with the radioactive waste so far collected is estimated by Government at £70 billion and that is not even for a permanent safe solution.

Apart from that if we argue that we must have nuclear power to meet our emissions targets it is difficult to state that other countries such as China, India or Iran should not invest heavily in this technology. It cannot be wholly separated from nuclear weapons proliferation.

Nuclear power does not guarantee the lights won't go out but it does present a wide range of problems.

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Aberdeenshire needs capital projects now

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Financing new public sector capital projects always presents a challenge. The cheapest and in many ways the best way is to raise the money through public borrowing. This, however, needs to be tightly managed to keep public sector debt under control.

Trying to escape these constraints Governments have sought different ways to privatise public debt. That is how PFI or PPP came about. They give private companies management fees, a potential share of capital growth and a higher rate of return than public borrowing. For the taxpayer it is a live now pay later solution.

So opposed have the SNP been to these mechanisms that they refused to support them. They even demonstrated against the opening of Meldrum, Academy and would presumably also have stopped new schools at Kintore and Oldmeldrum and the upgrading of others.

Now the SNP administration in Edinburgh has stopped all new projects while they consult about alternatives at a time when Aberdeenshire, the fastest growing area of Scotland, desperately needs continued investment.

The Treasury have indicated that they are unwilling to sanction the administration's preferred option of public bonds. While the idea has merits it does not justify long delay or a sustained spat with Whitehall.

Growing communities like Ellon, Inverurie, Kintore and elsewhere desperately need plans to move forward that have been put into limbo by Edinburgh.

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EU Treaty not ours to re-write

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Over the next few weeks Parliament will be bogged down by long debates about the Lisbon Treaty signed by Gordon Brown in bizarre circumstances.

No doubt there will be debates and votes around the vexed subject of whether or nor the UK should have referendum.

The context is likely to be surreal. Those calling for a debate are mostly opposed to Britain's continued membership of the EU. Ironically, for the first time the Treaty provides an explicit right to leave the Union. Some pro EU groups want a referendum simply to challenge that point and there may be a case for that.

However, a referendum on whether or not the UK should ratify the treaty ignores a harsh reality. This is the best the 25 member states could agree. The UK cannot write its own Treaty as some Euro-sceptics seem to assert.

If we dissent, it is likely, after this much pain, that other member states will move on without us leaving us semi-detached and with limited influence.

The EU does need to engage more directly with citizens. It should not interfere where it is not justified and it should explain much more clearly what is happening and why and show willingness to modify positions more in the light of experience and representations.

Nevertheless, there is also virtue in EU members working together and seeking common positions where they can, rather than leaving the field to large single nations such as the USA, China, Japan, India and Russia. The UK can and should contribute a lot to that which is why I will support the Treaty.