The biggest risk to our national security?

According to an article in this morning's Telegraph about the future of Trident funding, John Woodcock, the Labour MP for Barrow and Furness, has warned the Government about the potential impact of cuts to the MOD's budget on the military and shipbuilding industry. He commented:

It is alarming that George Osborne is intent on ditching the commitment to proper funding for renewing our deterrent made by the last Labour government. The new Chancellor seems intoxicated by his new power to threaten colleagues with unrealistic and unwise spending contractions.

He had better grow out of this soon or he will do lasting damage to our national security and the drivers of future economic growth.

It is in Barrow, of course, that the latest addition to the Navy's Submarine Fleet, the Astute Class, is being manufactured, while the Vanguard Class, the UK's ballistic missile submarine (which launches Trident), was also built here. Nevertheless, while Mr Woodcock is right to raise this issue, I think his ire is misplaced. While his party did indeed renew our deterrent, it was not so long ago that members of his own Shadow Cabinet were card carrying members of the CND. Had their views not been decisively rejected, lasting damage would have already been done to our national security.

It is the Conservative Party that has consistently supported and defended the UK's independent nuclear deterrent. And it is this Coalition Government which will ensure that the submarine-based deterrent will remain at the heart of our nation's defence. By contrast, it was the former Labour government that continually deferred a Strategic Defence Review (the last was in 1998) that might have laid this issue to rest. While cuts are needed and the dialogue between Liam Fox and George Osborne will doubtless continue, in general Mr Woodcock can rest easy for the foreseeable future under the Coalition - though of course he may want to check the views of some of his colleagues who may still be carrying their old membership cards! They represent the biggest risk to Trident and Britain's security.

UPDATE: Had to post to add this gem of a quote from Menzies Campbell via the Guardian (my italics):

Maybe it's the shape of the missiles but every time Trident is mentioned there is an outbreak of priapism on the Tory backbenchers. There is a real risk that the whole strategic defence review will be skewed because of the obsession with Trident. It makes no sense whatsoever to exclude Trident, the strategic deterrent, from a proper strategic review.

Ooh err...

A Licence to Waste Money

The news that Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned the BBC to expect a decrease in the TV licencing fee should be greeted warmly. Currently standing at £145.50 for colour coverage (it actually went up in April), this is a licence for the BBC to waste money. While the public sector as a whole faces cuts, the BBC has hitherto been left alone. No more.

Only yesterday, the Telegraph reported the huge sums wasted on flights for senior BBC Executives to and from South Africa for the World Cup, not to mention the overall costs of covering the world cup itself (did it really need so many presenters to go out to South Africa?). This is added to the huge sums paid to mediocre presenters such as Jonathan Ross - who thankfully bid farewell to the Broadcaster last night - and the amounts wasted on digital channels such as BBC Three and 6Music, and even 5Live Sports Extra, which many licence fee payers cannot access by conventional means - such as the car radio.

The only shame is that we have to wait until the licence fee review next year; with actual cuts, if they are introduced, only as early as 2012.

Graduate Tax?

Vince Cable's suggested yesterday that the forthcoming Browne review of University fees and funding should examine "the feasibility of variable graduate contributions". The announcement has been welcomed in some sectors, in particular by the National Union of Students, but it is hard to see how such a tax could be in students' best interests, and difficult to see how Conservative MPs could support any such motion should it come down to a vote.

University funding is in a poor state at the moment. Working in Higher Education myself, it is not difficult to see how the current situation has been reached. The country warmed to Blair's vision of Higher Education for everyone, with his ambitious target of 50% of school leavers going in to HE. The funding of such a picture, however, failed to materialise quickly enough and the funding to Universities has been stretched beyond capacity. Either the current cap on student fee income is lifted - which will see fees at redbrick universities rocket at least doubling in many instances - or the government must propose an alternative funding mechanism.

Politically, the LibDems campaigned to abolish student tuition fees altogether which makes the option to raise the cap a bit of a non-starter for our coalition partners: hence the graduate tax on earnings once a student enters full-time employment. Cable's argument is that a graduate will earn on average an additional £100,000 in income over their lifetime, making an initial investment in education appealing. But students already repay their existing tuition fee in a similar way.

At present a student will take out a student loan from the government to cover the £3225 annual fee and will only start to repay that fee once their earnings hit £15,000. Unlike the graduate tax, however, this is a loan. Once the loan is repaid (and of course the top earners will repay such a figure within a few years of graduating) that's it. The graduate tax, meanwhile, will continue to take a set percentage of income irrespective of how much that individual has already contributed. A high flyer will, no doubt, repay their student fee many times over under this proposal.

Cable argues that this is fair. Commenting to the BBC, under the current system, he argued, "if you're a school teacher or a youth worker you pay the same amount as if you were a surgeon or a highly-paid commercial lawyer... I think most people would think that's unfair." In other words, lawyers should pay more for their education because they earn more. Hang on, though, isn't that another income tax? Doesn't that highly-paid commercial lawyer already pay more to the government through current taxation? So why should he pay even more through a graduate tax, which he may be tied in to for anything up to twenty years?

There is another problem. Assuming that any graduate tax will be accompanied by an abolition of the tuition fee/student loan, this leaves Universities without any income up front, except from the Government. As the Government is already under financial pressure and unable to provide additional funding, how does a graduate tax provide further income? Further, as this is now a tax, rather than a loan, what guarantees are there that HE will see the return directly? Not to mention, of course, that as the tax will be payable on graduation, it will be years before Universities see any benefits. A graduate tax, variable or otherwise, does nothing to address the current funding problem for Universities.

The problem is real. But while the government is forced to cut spending, there seems no possibility of additional direct funding for Universities. Universities must instead continue to tighten their belts and concentrate on additional revenue through third stream funding. Meanwhile, the Coalition - Conservative MPs in particular - must rethink the proposed graduate tax, which does little to address the current failings, and represents a stealth tax on income for the middle classes.