Mr Gove on Question Time - my worries

I watched Michael Gove on question time last night and it really bothered me. I could not sleep for hours afterwards, as I tossed and turned.

What worries me most is that he seems to be an anti-EU zealot  and is prepared to do or say anything to make his point, whether he seems to really believe it or not.

The whole presentation was largely based on rhetoric and dogma rather than fact and he seemed to believe that repeating the same phrase of "Take back control", over and over again made it true.

It reminds me of the worst aspects of the Thatcher era, where large parts of British industry, public services, education and communities were sacrificed on the altar of monetarism, free markets, anti-labour and a post-industrialist view of Britain. Just think of  the car, steel and mining industries, the sale of the rail network and the destruction of vocational training in our secondary schools.

Many of those industries and more importantly the communities that depended on them never recovered or have only just recently recovered (in the case of the car industry).

It struck me during the presentation that while I thought the main advantage of leaving the EU would be control of immigration numbers, that actually they are unlikely to change in any meaningful or positive way, i.e. reducing the pressures on infrastructure, housing and wages.

It was also apparent to me, that we are too dependent on immigration and that our dependence can largely  be attributed to the lack of investment in training British technicians and trades people. That is why we seem to depend so heavily on say the Polish plumbers and other Eastern European builders, electricians and machinists etc.

Combine that with the current policy of auctioning off places at our best universities all over the world to the highest bidder, means that we are also not training and more importantly retaining the best people in science, design, and engineering.

Mr. Gove mentioned that James Dyson was a big supporter of Brexit. I have listened to James Dyson over the years as he is one of the few really home grown successes who fought hard to get the necessary funding and investment and was not generally supported by government or the banks while he was starting up.

While he has been quite vocal about the recent change in standards with regard to the maximum power for vacuum cleaners, he has been more vocal, both stronger and longer, about the fact that he cannot hire sufficiently qualified technical staff in this country. He wants to have restrictions lifted on visas so that he can hire qualified people from places like China and India.  He bemoans the fact that we do not retain qualified engineering and science graduates as they tend to either return to the region of origin or go to the States to work in startups. Who can blame them? If you are paying £100,000 plus for a degree why would you go to work at Dyson for say a salary of £35-40,000. The return on investment is just not sufficient.  He has often publicly contemplated moving aspects of his business overseas to address these human resource issues.

It also appears to me that there are similar issues around staffing of doctors, nurses and medical technicians in the NHS. Rather than patting ourselves on the back about how noble we are to offering opportunities to immigrants and foreign trained medical staff, we should be ashamed that we are not training sufficient staff in a sustainable way in Britain, and that we are effectively shifting the burden of training to countries that often can least afford it, and then poaching valuable resources like doctors and nurses, often from where they are needed most. Don't get me wrong, I am not against foreign doctors and nurses working here, the truth of the matter its a necessity and the NHS would fail if not for them.

However if we are truly, as Mr Gove reiterated repeatedly, are the 5th richest economy in the world why can't we invest in our own people as well.   Successive governments seem to treat skilled and highly trained staff as  commodity, that because of global trade and free movement, can be bought in the open market rather than invested in and developed locally.  Estimates are that successive governments have saved over £100 Billion since 2005 by importing skilled workers rather than developing local workers. For example, the government recently cut training bursaries and places for local trained nurses and therefore must intend to import them to meet demand.

The rise of the Internet of Things and disruptive technologies such as 3D printing means that we are on the threshold of a new industrial age. Given our current curriculum and lack of support for vocational and technical training, I believe means that we will be poorly placed to participate in it in a meaningful way.

No wonder wages are low and social mobility is at is lowest ebb in a generation.

Combine that with unlimited non skilled immigration, tax credits and minimum wage then again it is no surprise that wage growth is depressed. Market distortions such as tax credits and minimum wages should be temporary and in times of economic hardship; rather than creating a floor under workers to lift them out of poverty they have tended to cap wages at the minimum wage plus tax credits.

This arrangement has often worked to directly subsidise the profits of large companies such as coffee chains and sportswear retailers.  Companies that rely heavily on zero hours contracts at minimum wage and tax credits to employ workers and generate outsized returns should be surcharged to discourage the practise and pay a living wage. One ubiquitous coffee chain regularly returns over 35% on equity to the parent business but relies heavily on artificially low wages to do so.

If Mr Gove really believes in the British people as he says, he should put our money where his mouth is and invest in training and developing highly skilled and qualified workers. Only by providing credible alternatives can the country really control how many people they want in this country and without it, while the economy is performing,  we will need the same and possibly more people to come to this country, and will continue to condemn the local workforce to dead-end jobs and zero hour contracts.

The other real area of concern is the almost flippant approach to trading with the single market post Brexit. Mr Gove seems to believe that because of German car exports and French agriculture trading surpluses,  our fellow unionists will be tripping over themselves to give us a good deal. As far as I know there is no prescribed compensation either way in Article 50 and the it is all up for negotiation. What if the EU demanded a transition payment from the UK of say 3 years contribution, i.e. similar to a clean break divorce settlement? It could use that money to compensate EU firms that are impacted by Brexit, and more worryingly offer UK domiciled companies, that originally chose to locate here for access to the single market, bribes, in the form of grants and loans, to relocate within the single market, resulting in a  real loss of jobs.

Additionally, does Mr. Gove really expect me to trust him and the government on free trade when they have appeared to sacrifice the British steel industry again to free trade dogma and as an apparent  lure to try and entice Chinese investment into the UK? Where does he stand on TTIP? That was not clear but if toeing the government line, he would apparently be advocating the transfer of sovereignty from an open court at the ECJ to multi-national corporates in secret ISDS courts.

The irony is that if British manufacturing and industry is once again sacrificed by zealots on the altar of free markets and dogma, that many of our economic migrants will leave, but at what cost? Britain would risk a return to 1980s style mass unemployment, low direct inward investment; with any potential Brexit dividends quickly swallowed up in benefits and increased government borrowing costs.

So while I was open to Brexit because of the potential of border controls without the investment in our workforce then it would seem the numbers are unlikely to change materially at all. The concessions obtained by Mr Cameron may mitigate the excesses of the triple threat of migration, tax credits and minimum wage to wage growth, but without local investment in training and education are only alternative is to continue to import the skilled and qualified workers we need or relocate businesses to the areas where they are in abundance.