Is there sedition in the UK Treasury?

December 17, 2011 No Comments

By Ironies Too

Sedition as used in this post’s title, I here presume is defined as follows: “ an offence that tends to undermine the authority of the state”.
My reference is a document prepared by Mark Hoban MP Financial Secretary to the Treasury on 25th May 2011, when he wrote to the Rt Hon Lord Roper on the subject of , “The future of economic governance in the European Union” on a report from the Lords Economic Committee.
This document was yesterday linked from the web site, linked here, “Talk Carswell” of Douglas Carswell MP on 16th December 2011, at 14:29 after moderation, and is also available from here. The following are a few of the points all related to plans for the Euro Group of 17 countries to join together in a block, the end result of which would certainly and in my view undeniably be, to operate against the interests of the UK, while still bound by the EU Treaties and while seeking to trade on equal terms within the EU Single Market.
“Although markets can penalise member states with poor fiscal policies with higher interest rates, which increase their cost of borrowing, the Government believes that the EU is right to improve its own sanctions regime for euro area Member States.”
“We share the Committee’s assessment that the efficacy of this regime will depend greatly on the degree of political will in the Council. However, the move towards reverse majority voting, requiring a majority of Council Member States to overturn a sanction proposed by the Commission, should help to reduce the chance of Member States at ECOFIN making political trade-offs in order to escape sanctions under the Stability and Growth pact.”
NB Here the Treasury use the crucial term “reduce”! They thereby accept that the new arrangements continue to pose that risk; therefore, they should thereafter have opposed the Euro Group moving towards enhanced economic governance, not promoted it as then became the situation!
“It was also evident that most elements of the draft Directive would not be problematic for the UK, as our existing framework already meets or exceeds many of the specified standards”
NB note again the terms “most” and “many” clearly prove that Britain will be affected by the Directive!
In the section on what is referred to in the document as the Euro Plus Pact, which has since become the framework agreement suggested be applied to the 26 Member States other than Britain as per the 8/9th December Council meeting, Mr. Hoban states the following in his conclusion:
“The single market is widely regarded as the EU’s greatest success, and the Government will be following developments closely to ensure that the UK cannot (be?) excluded from any benefits that result from measures in the Pact, such as greater liberalisation of certain measures.”
Subsequent statements from the Treasury, particularly by the Chancellor, George Osborne himself, indicate that keeping these objectives in mind as the summer, autumn and winter of 2011 progressed, did not then continue!
David Cameron has recently also addressed concerns over enhanced economic governance among the Euro Group countries, adversely affecting the UK. Since Gordon Brown first arranged the sale of Inland Revenue Offices in the UK to tax avoiding entities in the Caribbean, through to the rescue of RBS, it has been clear the UK Treasury and its full-time employees have been working contrary to the interests of UK taxpayers! Is it not time something was done about it?

(I first posted the above on the Orphans of Liberty blog last evening)