£10billion Brexit windfall can help boost all our plans
Veteran Tory MP John Redwood on the benefits of a speedy withdrawal from EU
PROSPERITY, not austerity, is what we want now.
Theresa May’s agenda to promote better lives for the many is exciting.
We need more and better-paid jobs in many parts of the UK.
We need more roads and railway lines and more fast broadband to link our cities and rural areas in to global opportunity.
We need cheaper energy to power industrial revival and take people out of fuel poverty.
We need more affordable homes for people to buy as we rekindle an ownership revolution.
“Everyone an owner” is a crucial part of creating a more united and prosperous UK.
We wish to move away from a world of “have yachts and have nots” to a world where owning a car and a home of your own are achievable for the many.
It is important that Brexit does not hang over us allowing critics to dwell on uncertainty and risks.
All the time we delay, it reminds us of the divisions the referendum debate caused, setting the well-off and privileged, along with Scotland, against the rest of England and Wales.
Theresa May is right not to want Brexit to dominate or define her Premiership.
Sending a clear, early signal on Brexit reduces the risks from business uncertainty and speeds the benefits gained from exit.
Far from being an irrelevance or diversion from her central tasks, Brexit is part of creating the right conditions for success.
Theresa May’s ambitious plans for the UK need more money to be spent.
We have to move on from austerity now the deficit is under better control.
Stopping our large financial contributions to the EU is the easiest way of affording a domestic boost to the economy.
With the money we save we can hire more nurses and doctors to relieve our NHS.
We can promote more affordable housing, cut domestic fuel bills by removing VAT and pay enough to ensure a smooth transition to the new Universal Credit benefits.
Conservatives do not want to cut disability benefits or short-change those seeking work in need of financial help.
With our £10billion a year back, we don’t have to make these unpopular cuts.
Much of what needs doing requires good competent government, not more legislation.
Benefit reform remains a massive task but the crucial legislation is passed.
Building more roads and railways requires harnessing public and private sectors for large projects and making decisions, not more laws.
The Government will be judged by some on how it solves the need for more London airport capacity and how it progresses HS2 and Trident.
Decisions will soon be forthcoming, though the results will not be seen this decade.
More important for our prospects for the next five years will be a whole host of smaller and quicker projects to remove road and rail congestion.
We must improve current networks and services and find extra capacity to reduce the overcrowding we are now experiencing.
We need to build a new generation of gas-fired power stations for more reliable and affordable electricity.
The Government is right to review whether to build a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point.
But we need either that or the equivalent reliable electricity capacity to keep the lights on.
There may be a better answer with cheaper power.
The single most important thing the Government could do to reunite our country and progress its agenda of better opportunity and life chances for all is to hit its immigration targets.
That means early Brexit to take back control of our borders.
It needs a fair immigration system for the whole world, no longer giving unlimited access only to Europeans.
For business and education we need to ensure access for students and people with the skills we need.
To ease shortages of homes, downward pressure on wages and to relieve pressures on hospitals and school places we do need to control numbers better.
Some say Theresa May’s agenda is too ambitious given a small Conservative majority and the complexities they see in Brexit.
I am all for some ambition, especially when that ambition is geared to improving the lives and incomes of the many.
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Success will come from realising Brexit is central to success and easier to bring about than many so-called experts want you to believe.
There are too many highly paid lawyers and consultants who want to make a meal of it.
It is, in the end, very simple.
We take back control of our borders, our money and our laws by a very short Act of Parliament.
We talk to the rest of the EU under their Article 50 about what barriers and tariffs they want to impose, if any, on their very lucrative trade with us.
If they want to self-harm, we trade under global rules with them just like the US and China do.
I suspect they will actually want to keep their more favourable access to our market.
Let’s get on with an agenda that brings the country together, spending the EU contributions to help us do so.
Let us create prosperity for the many, with the UK open for business with the world.