230. Question Time: £91,000… Should MPs be paid more?

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0:50Welcome to therestus Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory, what do you think was the subject which was raised by most of our listeners this week? I had a clue because you've been sending me what's happening. It's freeports, isn't it? Correct. Let me just go through it. We literally had dozens on it. And I don't know whether this was because I don't know why it suddenly sort of taken off, but I think it's important that it has. So let's just go through some of them. David Powell, who's actually something of an expert on this, is please, please talk about soon as 12 freeports and 74 special economic zones.

1:22I've been researching these for five plus years, public spoken at public meetings. This is very serious. The UK has been privatized. It's all because of Brexit. Ross Ferry, I'd like to know more about special economic zones and freeports. Why are these massive changes being done so quietly? Is this what Brexit was about? Pete Cote, what is Labour's policy on freeports and special economic zones? Did the kids start a box himself in by stating so clearly that Labour would not rejoin single market or customs union. And so it goes on. Let me just sort of take straight forwardly the case on freeports.

1:56So as we've said before, the idea of a freeport is to create an area in a country which has different types of incentives for investment, trying to get for direct investment. And so you offer tax breaks, you offer lower regulation, you make trade easier, and in Britain, they're combining this. So combining creating a zone which they hope investors are going to flood into because they'll find a place where they're going to be able to do business more easily, make money more easily. They're trying to combine it with leveling up and regeneration. So they're choosing bits of the country where they really want to get the economy going and they're creating these areas.

2:33And as the question says, they're 12 of these in Britain. The biggest one is on T side and probably the most controversial where I think something like 4 ,500 acres of land have been designated as a freeport. And So all for a pound of the acre? Yeah, and the idea is if you go and if you're a business investing there, you get much better capital allowances, so you get huge tax write -offs on your investment. You get reductions on your stamp duty, reductions on employers' national insurance to make it cheaper for you to employ people. As the freeport implies, if you import a product, you can turn it around manufacturing and export it without complicated customs, procedures or duties.

3:13So basically you bring it in, put it in, ship it out again. And the count tools get 100 % of the growth and business rights. So in the optimistic idea on T side, it was supposed to produce something astonishing like 5 .2 billion pounds worth of economic benefits because of the links to transport links. And the optimistic story is this is how China most dramatically got its economic development going. So it in a place called Shenzhen, which was a kind of sleepy fishing village near Hong Kong, they created one of these zones, investment, port in technology transfer port in Singapore's done it, UAE's done it, India's done it, Bangalore, Vietnam's done it.

3:50And it wasn't in this relation, this question about the European Union. It wasn't possible when you remember the European Union because you had to follow the European Union. But there are freeports in Europe. Of this sort? Well, it is true that these may have greater freedoms. I mean, the tea sport is a very interesting example though because you talk about this sort of vast area of land, which has been sold to a couple of few local businessmen for a pound and acre. They've already made tens of millions. These guys are seen sort of swanning around millsbring their benches and their private jets and all the rest of it.

4:24And yet, so I do think I am not by nature kind of you know leftist paranoid conspiracy theories. But I do think and I wrote about this in my book that the the Jacob Riesmog father's vision of the sovereign individual, I think this is partly what this is about. This is about taking people who are already pretty powerful and pretty wealthy out of government. So these are places where people will be able to bring in their own environmental protections or lack of their own employment laws, their own tax regimes as you say. And we're talking, we're not talking about a country as vast as India, we're talking about the United Kingdom.

5:01And some of these, so for example, the one down in the West country covers the whole of Dartmoor. The whole of Dartmoor is now part of one of these special zones where these special measures will be allowed for those who invest or we are effectively handing over vast ways of territory to private corporations. So to put, when you look at the guy driving this, this guy who I think should be a lot more famous than he is Shankar Singham, who's this very libertarian right wing currently sort of promoting Liz Truss because she's on this current bandwagon. I worry about this and I do think it's, I worry as well that, so for example, byline times did a 44 page special on this, which should actually put it in the, it was it was some time ago, but we were talking about whales in the main podcast.

5:48And you know, Mark Drakeford was welcoming these a couple of free ports into whales, but I think that the way these are going and the lesson of of T -Sport is we're losing any sense of democratic control. So last week, you had Michael Gobe shoving some of the money, council money into this. Well, you know, where is the local democracy in that? So to make the argument on the other side, we're desperate to try to get investment into Britain. And, you know, you and I both agree that one of the problems here is being Brexit has led to a real problem for direct investment, real problem for manufacturing in Britain.

6:26Personally, I'd like to see us rejoin the customs in the United, but I don't think it's the right thing to do. And I also think that from a theoretically economic point of view, it'd be much better to do this stuff across the country. Be serious about trying to produce growth everywhere, not in little areas. But we've also talked a lot on this show about the fact that we can't get anything built in Britain. You know, to cost twice as much as built in road here as it does in France, you know, the fact that the third runway was being talked about when you were in a 97, seemingly on Piccadilly lines still not being fixed.

6:56So we are a country where our planning regulations and lots of things which are good, right? Local democracy, civil society, activist groups, fundamentally mean that we're completely stuck. We're not making infrastructure investment. We just had to abandon HS2 basically because every group along the way through so many objections and the way that the thing increased from 25 billion to over 120 billion in its estimates. So the only way I think realistically that the government's going to be able to make really strong quick infrastructure investments and get investment in is by defining parts of the country which are not controlled by this regulations because even though, you know, from a theoretical point of view, if you think we've got too many regulations, too much bureaucracy, too much red tape and one getting a researcher done, and therefore you need to change across the whole country, that's not going to happen.

7:47No government is going to be able to take on the battle about infrastructure right the way across the country. But if your argument is that the country is not going to wear that being done across the country, why is the country seeming to wear this being done in these pockets around the country? Well, I suppose the answer is that the government has tried to find areas which have been excluded, whether it's been a lot of inequality, whether it's been a lot of poverty, and they're trying to bring economic growth into areas that they're not focusing on London, right? They're focusing on areas like T side.

8:25And so what they are trying to say is if we're serious about growth, and this is why Labour's position on this is quite complicated, and I think Labour's, you know, Drakeford did welcome this stuff. If you're looking for ways to generate growth, you've got to get investment in, you've got to get infrastructure built, you've got to get businesses going, and bioboy is it difficult to do it across the country as a whole? Hmm. Well, the thing in T side has an absolute whiff to me. You're vlogging off land at a pound an acre to local business people, the product there of which thus far appears to be close to zero.

9:00So this is the same problem that you have always when the government negotiates with businesses, which is government tends to get ripped off? Well, in this case, it seems willingly. So I think what happens usually, and this is true when you know, I don't know, when Toyota or some big car maker says we're only going to build a factory in Britain if you write as a check for 400 million, I mean, these are big inward investment grants and stuff, where you get tax breaks. The business always says this doesn't make financial sense for us. The government says, okay, what have we got to offer you to come in?

9:30And the business says, well, for us to make money, we've got to, you know, get a really ridiculous deal. It's a particular extreme of course in place such sub -Saharan Africa where mining companies come in and sign a deal with the local government and agree that it's going to get 30 years tax -free income and they claim they need that to have the confidence of any investment. So my guess is the government's been ripped off in T -side again, but I don't think that's the flagship free pool. That's the big project, but I guess where I'm not sure that I buy into your conspiracy. I don't think it's corruption.

10:02I think it's government in a tearing hurry desperate to get this thing off the ground. Being out negotiated by businesses as you were, unfortunately with PFI is a lot. I mean, I think government's really bad at negotiating with businesses and this is one of the problems about getting the private sector in that the, but this is really private sector always pretends that it needs this stuff and often it doesn't need half as much as the government gives it. But I think this policy has been hiding in plain sight. I do think if you go back to this libertarian right vision of the world, this is fundamental to it.

10:35Oh yes, because I mean, remember when people doing great, so they were talking about Singapore on terms. Absolutely. And what they're trying to do is trying to do these Singapore monitors of Singapore. Yeah, they'll patch the Singapore on the country. Yeah. Well, you look at the map, I mean, I just got the bill on the map here of the one in Darmour. So look at that. That's Plymouth, Tavistort, Dartmouth, and the whole Darmour. Yeah, I don't quite get that one. That's kind of in charge of it. I think we need to understand a little bit more about that. That's a bit weird. Because Darmour is largely a protected landscape.

11:02I don't really get how it works. The other thing I think that when you look at the OECD analysis of these things, Darmour, as far as I know, it's kind of shaggy ponies, isn't it? And prisons. And prison. Exactly. And it ate. That's where Fiona and I caught it. Very good. Darmour prison. Darmour. It's actually quite good prisoner. She was run by a pretty bleak place, but Brydie Richson, who ran it, ran a really good person there. Well, I stopped getting me off prison. I'm staying on freeports despite Darmour trying to move me off. So with the OECD, very, very clear about the link between the sort of free market, less a fair ultra -near liberal freeports and organised crime.

11:41We hear nothing. There's just so little debate about this. So fair play. And I'm going to give a shout out to Carol Vorderman, who's been presenting on LBC. She's been banging on about this. And I think that might be the reason we've had so many questions. Well, let's talk about it more because I think it's worth having the debate. I mean, I think there will be a loss of particularly right -wing economists and businesses out there who will be saying this has been done for. This is just what we need. That this country, the taxes are too high. The regulations are too thin. We can generate massive economic growth in private country, but not under the current regulation.

12:14I would say that Shankar Singer is singing all the way to the bank. We are. You see, okay, I don't know if I'd ask Shankar Singer in his bank. Anyway, thank you for raising that. Okay. Now here's one. On the back of our leading interview this week, Mint Condish, the Alban QWERTY interview, that's the prime minister of Kosovo, was interesting. Thank you. Especially agreeing on where to compromise and where not to. In an increasingly polarised political world, what are both your approaches on compromising with parties and actors that don't align with your politics and values? Well, one quick thing before we...

12:45So if people haven't listened to Alban QWERTY, do because we are very, very close by fear to the risk of a conflict again in Kosovo and possibly also spilling over into Bosnia. And it's heartbreaking because Bosnia and Kosovo were the successes of the 90s and we're in a world in which we've had terrible failures in Libya and Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan and Ukraine in Israel, Gaza and Kosovo and Bosnia were clinging onto one of the sort of few success stories and it's at real risk and you can hear it. I mean, one of the the tricks, I think my friend Geralt Klaus, who I love from yes, I says, is the trick is listening to politicians speaking in their own local language and their local media and you can see Vukhitschen in Serbia very, very explicitly building up to annexing northern Kosovo and another thing we should talk about a little bit more, which is the other war, which may be about a breakout, which is as a by chance going after more bits of Armenia.

13:49Anyway, back to you on... What do you think on Koti and then we'll get under compromise? Well, I listened back to yesterday and I thought it was in relation to the question, this thing about compromise is really interesting because he was very, very uncompromising, perfectly prepared to upset the Americans, to upset the Europeans, to upset the Serbs, to upset the Russians and it's a very, very small country. It's like, as you said, I think the size of between Kumbria and Yorkshire and one of the people I talked to in advance of into you, I think I said on the interview, had said that he's a little bit like sort of a cross between Jeremy Corbyn and John Luke Melanchon.

14:25If you see him as that sort of absolutely, he knows what he believes, he's not being budged off it. And yet, he seems to think that is the best way for him to approach his job. So it was interesting. Well, I guess we sort of said, talk about this in three parts, because it's certainly true in negotiation that some people do very well by just sticking to their guns and not shifting... In life, right? You do come across people where I'm always somebody who has a sight tendency, it's a split in the middle. And often you can do quite well by just digging your heels in and saying, I'm not shifting an inch.

14:57With the politicians who you thought in new labour who you thought were quite good, it just dig their heels in and saying, we're not going to find a shift on this. Do you mean the politicians that we were dealing with? I'd say that Sinn Fein were very, very good ningo sherdas I'd say on that basis. I always felt with the with the unionist side that even when they were digging the heels in, you kind of you sensed. They might move. Were you sensed where they might move too? Yeah. Sinn Fein less so. I think Robin Cook was a very good ningo sherd. I think Robin was somebody who was prepared to dig heels in.

15:34In terms of the other sort of European leaders, I remember Shredder always struck me as somebody who was, you know, never far away from sort of chigging you in the mouth if you've bridged him too far. Of course, Benjamin Nishanyahu in Israel has a reputation for being quite widely uncompromising domestically, but has been very uncompromising internationally. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's an interesting thing. Anyway, I agree with you. I think the Balkans are a fascinating region and I think it is quite worrying what's going on there, which you'd also just say, by the way, we talked to the main podcast about, I think we could question this about the Americans in Niger, because that's yet another country where the Americans are being pushed out.

16:12It's and this is this is, you know, without returning bitterly to my argument with our friend, Jamie Rubin, when I was suggesting American power was waning and he was mocking me and saying, oh, you get the impression it's waning, you get the impression, you're all in it for you. How did you know what the world is thinking? One of the reasons I think I can sense what world is thinking is that we can see how America is being pushed out of place to say, how and how so many bits of US, Western policy have collapsed pretty recently. So that whole belt of Africa, we talked about the Middle East just now, the complete inability to do anything about what's happening between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

16:55You know, we talked about the last podcast about UAE and India congratulating Putin on his reelection. I mean, there's one public service announcement, we don't even need to discuss that, really, just let's read Brian Keating. Please remind everyone, ASAP that they, family friends, especially younger friends and family are properly registered to vote, what kinds of ID can be used that they can apply for ID, around 4 % of all non -voters, so they didn't vote because of the voter ID requirement. So this is the new thing, I think it starts on May the second with local mayor elections, you have to have voter ID, passport, driving license, all the usual ones, but if you're in London and you're young, you cannot use your oyster card.

17:34Right, right, right. Okay, Anasya, let's take a quick break.

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18:52After building towns, Toby Lloyd seems we've lost the art of building and growing towns as opposed to land, hungry, drive to cul -de -sacs. So, Crete Street has produced a new, Crete Street's very interesting organization, which I think is actually now working quite closely with Labour, which is for encouraging. Anyway, a new report on growing new towns, stepping off the roads and it shows how we can build on less than half the land by using more terraces, amidst rising. What's stopping us from doing this at scale across the UK? What's your advice on making large structural changes like this happen in the government?

19:23So, one of the points here is that Britain tends to do one of two things. It either in the past used to build skyscrapers and quite a lot of those going up in London or it has this low rise sprawl, so sort of single house dwellings. In fact, the most dense bits of London are weirdly things like Sloan Avenue, kind of Chelsea, Southcam, where you have these seven -story mantra blocks, which is how Paris is kind of operated. And the real way that we can conserve things like the Greenbell, build more housing without getting into huge fights with people is to go up to gentle density of five seven stories.

20:01And the problem at the moment is that the government is just not allowing the planning to make it easy for people to go upwards. So, you're easier if you're in a sort of, you know, canary wharf type place, you can go up to 80 pundit stories, but if you're in most of London getting up to five six seven. It's very difficult. And the problem with a hundred stories stuff is that you then, because the regulations have to have a huge bit of green space around the base of it, so you actually end up putting fewer people per acre than you would if you went to six seven stories. So, I think it's a really good challenge.

20:33And, you know, if you looked at a map of London, the real potential is to put more gentle density into these huge areas of suburbs that sprawl out towards the M25. But you'd been knocking down a lot of houses to rebuild, presumably. You would have to knock down and rebuild a lot, but potentially, if you were sitting on a house and the government gave you permission to turn it into a dwelling place for three people, yeah, it might make sense. So, we need to think more about homes and less about houses. More about homes, less about houses. And more about, you know, not apartments, I mean, of course, Germans, I guess, live more in apartments.

21:08Yeah, unless. Unless, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, Grenfell, Joey McCarthy, Anna -Strener -Roy, your conversation about Theresa May's legacy was really interesting. However, it feels remiss, not to mention her mishandling of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. She failed to meet with survivors immediately after, failed to properly house residents quickly and properly after, and failed to at decisive beyond cladding regulations to prevent another tragedy to happen again. How can this not play a role in her legacy? We got a lot of good feedback at a scenario discussion on Theresa May, which I thought was quite balanced and rounded.

21:42But, did we not meant, did we talk about Grenfell? Maybe we didn't. We didn't. And it was, it was a huge scar on her legacy because Grenfell, as people remember, was just such an iconic symbol. I mean, it went out like a kind of Roman candle. I went to Grenfell soon afterwards, and it was just astonishing to see something like that in Britain. I mean, the deaths, but also the sense that it was a very poor area of the country that people living in those blocks were often from very low -income immigrant backgrounds. You saw churches and mosques doing an incredible matter around the base, but my goodness, it was a horrible symbol of a bit of London that had gone really, really badly wrong.

22:31And there's a, if people are really interested in the details of this, Andrew O 'Hagan wrote a very brave and quite controversial long article in the Lung Review of Books, which was yes critical of Theresa Maynard, but very, very critical of lots of other people, including Labour, including councillors, including the property developers, including the regulators. And Andrew O 'Hagan was really attacked for the article because people were trying to make it into a real black and white reality tale. What he tells is basically a story of an entire establishment problem of 20 different organisations of all different party political complexions failing to deal with a problem that should have been easy to predict.

23:13Well, I think we've talked before about how little, given how many people are living in what we would define as abject poverty at the moment, how little they actually feature in the political debate or the media debate. Now, Roy, here's a polling question, Harry from Ipsos. What do you think of fact that under a third of British people can name the leader of the Liberal Democrats? So, Ipsos have done a polpherist and it's really interesting and so we'll put the results in the newsletter. So, 7 in 10 can name Rishi Suner, can Kierstama, but only I think 12 or 13 % can name Richard Tyson and about 30 % can name Eddabby.