If there was another EU referendum Part 2

MaizieD
As i have posted before and i would suggest you check it out.
Our NHS problems started as a result of EU polcy which arose from the Maastricht Treaty. The Treaty set limits on central government borrowing. As a result of this Central government had to find other neans to fund Crown projects and they were compelled to turn to the disaterous Private Funded Investment (PFI) which is crippling our NHS and instead of any profit made being reinvested as was the case, this is now going to offshore investors.
Additionally the EU has opened up NHS purchasing and Tendering to EU and international bidders through their Purchasing and Tendering Directive.
Check this out and understand the impact the EU has had on dismantling the NHS as we know it, assisted by both Labour and Conservative in its compliance to EU Directives.

Do you seriously think that Brexit will improve that joelsnan?
Brexit, far from giving extra an £350 million to the NHS, will see a severe shortage of medical and care staff.
If we ever make a trade agreement with USA they will demand the right to bid for our NHS contracts. Privatisation of the NHS by the back door leading to the death of the NHS.

It sounds as if you are blaming the EU for a U.K. budget decision taken in the 1990s joelsnan. The EU didn’t force Britain to use PFI to fund the NHS. That was a political decision taken by the Conservatives, there are other ways of funding things.

Simple question should we have a legal binding Peoples vote based on May’s Brexit ?

Alternatively, accept we we’re sold a puppy for believing the leaves were 100% trueful, yet, we still need to accept the result of the refrendum.?

mostlyharmless
No, of course not, however what I wanted to highlight is the fact that both as a result of the EU we are handcufffed to PFIs which are bankrupting our hospitals, and our services are being outsourced to cheaper, poorer alternatives.
Jeremy Hunt's Health and Social Care Act has embedded the EU Purchasing and Tendering Directive facilitating backdoor privatisation. This is why there is a large campaign to reverse this with the NHS Reinstatement Bill.

The EU, rather than aspiring to greatness appears to reducing all but the most powerful to the lowest common denominator.

The EU didn’t force Britain to use PFI to fund the NHS. That was a political decision taken by the Conservatives, there are other ways of funding things.
And Blair and Brown took it up with enthusiasm and ran with it - hence one of the reasons for lack of funding in the NHS.

2014:
The even uglier reality for Miliband is that the New Labour era was a golden age for the PFI. The modern PFI is the child of John Major’s Conservative government, but it was adopted and thrived under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Between 1997 and 2008, 90 per cent of all hospital construction funding was under PFI agreements, which paid for 75 per cent of all hospitals built.

mostlyharmless
The EU didn’t force Britain to use PFI to fund the NHS. That was a political decision taken by the Conservatives, there are other ways of funding things.

No, the EU didnt't force UK to use PFI, what it did was to prvent the government from borrowing to fund capital investment projects, a method that had previously always been used. The previous funding route meantt that the government owned the investment at the outset and, which, at some stage may have become profitable these profits went into Crown coffers to fund further projects. Now the profits go offshore.

You state there were alternatives to PFI, can you please advise what these alternatives could have been.

In fact NHS PFI repayments don't peak until 2029-30, when they hit £2.71bn a year.

Souce: The Guardian

That is besides all the other PFI projects.

The Government could increase taxes to raise revenue instead of selling the country’s assets to private companies and often to foreign countries.
Why does China have to fund Hinckley Point? What about the security risk?
G4S running security at the Olympics? What a shambles. The East Coast mainline. Another mess and is run more efficiently and cheaply by the government ministry.
Selling off our assets and then paying exorbitant profits to those companies doesn’t make economic sense to me.

Income tax, VAT, inheritance tax, national insurance, stamp duty, corporation tax, capital gains tax, insurance taxes, and many others. Lots of choice for fiscal policy to raise revenue.

The national debt is traditionally financed through the sale of government bonds, bills and gilts. These Government bonds tend to be bought by financial institutions such as investment trusts and pension funds. They are bought because they provide a secure investment with reasonable rates of interest.

Plenty of obvious alternatives to PFI joelsnan but many Tories have financial interests in PFI companies and are making a good profit out of it so they don’t want to change policy now. Conservative Governments started using PFI in the early 90s, Labour continued that trend.

mostlyharmless
Which party would successfully propose tax rises to fund the levels of capital investment required to support our social infrastructure, hospitals, schools etc. When local government have almost been eviscerated resulting in Council Tax rises. A vast number of employees earn little more than the tax threshold and/or receive tax credits.
Higher earners could be taxed more but they are already paying between 40 & 45%.
Corporation tax could be increased but with the ability to manfacture cheaply in Eastern Europe this is risky.

I still don't see obvious alternatives.

That’s a decision the Government has to make joelsnan. A quick look back at taxation levels in the last few decades will show that. Governments have always increased and/or reduced taxes.
This government has increased the tax threshold so fewer people pay income tax.
But inheritance tax has been slashed, corporation tax has been reduced quite a lot. Different decisions could have been made.
IFS 2017 said: Cuts to corporation tax rates announced between 2010 and 2016 are estimated to reduce revenues by at least £16.5 billion a year in the short to medium run.
We now have the lowest corporation tax amongst the G20 countries. Corporation tax will have dropped from 28% to 18% between 2010 and 2020. This is obviously a political decision to benefit businesses.

The problem is that if brexit is permitted to go ahead, many British businesses will be struggling to survive, and so the obvious move of raising corporation tax may not even be a possibility. Even the referendum vote on leaving the EU has already cost the UK economy billions and if, as we are being told, we actually leave the EU next March, the cost to our economy is likely to be catastrophic. So where is the extra taxation ever going to come from to fund our essential services?

Perhaps you know more about this than me joelsnan But as far as I understand this restriction on borrowing doesn’t really apply to the UK as we are not in the eurozone. No fines have ever been levied on countries (even those in the eurozone) who exceed this so-called borrowing “limit” anyway.
It seems a strange thing to be concerned about as it has never applied to the UK.

No, the EU didnt't force UK to use PFI, what it did was to prvent the government from borrowing to fund capital investment projects

I'm not quite sure what you are referring to here, Joelsnan but it is not true that the EU prevents state funding of utilities or the NHS.

This was before the EU referendum when TTIP was being negotiated. Of course, Trump knocked it on the head when he became president.

fullfact.org/europe/does-ttip-mean-privatisation-nhs/

This is a document referred to in the Full Fact article which explains the exemptions the EU was negotiating:

trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2015/july/tradoc_153614.pdf

As you can see from the URL it came from the EU.

The EU has, and never did have, no control over how the UK raises its money.
In fact, the UK could 'print' money via the Bank of England to fund the NHS; just like it 'printed' money for quantitative Easing (some £450billion to date). No need for extra taxation or borrowing.

It is worth taking a look at Mumsnet, where it seems a large majority voted Remain, but unlike the blinkered leavers on GN, some on Mumsnet are now quite openly expressing their regrets, like Sar501, who posts-

"I was a leaver as was my DH. Both of us now regret our votes and would vote remain if there were to be a second referendum. I suspect my SIL feels the same way as well. I’m sure we are not alone and I suspect that there will be more people who regret voting leave than the other way around. I absolutely dread next March and although my vote was only one vote I contributed towards the outcome of the vote and I will have to live with the consequences of that. I admit it took me a long time to decide which way to vote and I wasn’t sure even on the day. I wish I had more time to decide."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3331932-Majority-now-support-remain?pg=2

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/maastricht-treaty-25-years-european-dream-trade-echr-neoliberal-a7388796.html

johnredwoodsdiary.com/2016/12/04/that-treaty-deficit-maastricht-and-austerity/

Is that the same John Redwood who has been criticised over advice to pull money out of UK?

www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/13/labour-accuses-john-redwood-of-talking-britain-down

www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/bulletins/eugovernmentdeficitanddebtreturn/2013-10-02

MaizieD
It was not about printing miney, it was controlling debt

Check out the ONS link which shows UK still has to report levels if borrowing etc. emanating from Maastricht treaty.

By using PFIs subsequent governments have been able to keep the actual debt of the PFIs (now running into multi billions) off the deficit sheet.

According to your own link above joelsnan, most EU countries just ignore this rule. No country has ever been penalised for exceeding this deficit rule.
Why is it so important to you?
This thread is about how we would vote if there was another referendum.
I doubt many people are interested in this obscure rule which is universally ignored.
They’re more concerned about job security, employment rights, whether the NHS will survive, the Irish Border, the ability to travel, study and work in other European countries, queues at Dover, continuity of security arrangements, environmental protection, maintaining food standards, potential food shortages, food price inflation, whether the Government will continue the subsidies to deprived parts of the country etc etc.

Varian quoting somebody from Mumsnet cuts no ice.
It’s a lot like Corbyn’s ‘Andy from Andover’ stories.
We had the referendum, the vote was to get out, and get out we will.

mostlyharmless
The only reason I mentioned this was because others feel that the only saviour of the NHS is the EU when it was the initial cause of the problem that is now bankrupting the same and its purchasing directive opened the NHS up to privatisation.

I find it quite dismaying when the following is quoted as reasons to remain They’re more concerned about job security, employment rights, whether the NHS will survive, the Irish Border, the ability to travel, study and work in other European countries, queues at Dover, continuity of security arrangements, environmental protection, maintaining food standards, potential food shortages, food price inflation, whether the Government will continue the subsidies to deprived parts of the country etc etc.
Because with regards to job security and employment rights. The U.K. currently enjoy better job security and employment rights than those mandated by the EU.
I have previously mentioned the NHS
The Irish Border is an issue, but was held to be a bit of a ‘red herring’ by the EU by NI politicians.
There should be no reason why Brits should not travel, study or work in the EU. It was done for centuries before the EU, only sour grapes would prevent it in future.
At least if the Government didn’t subsidise poorer areas we could vote them out. As it is the U.K. is now getting less and less from the EU as subsidies are being diverted to Eastern European countries and we cannot change that.
Environmental and food protection again in majority of instances is higher than mandated by EU.

What dismays me most is the fact that those who make these statements do not acknowledge that many of the EU directives are derived initially from U.K. law, particularly in terms of employment law which our unions fought for. That our food standards are mandated by U.K. law and that some people think that the rest of the population are so fickle as to accept lower standards of anything.

It was not about printing miney, it was controlling debt

Well, it was really. Governments with a sovereign currency don't have to go into debt, they can issue their own money and owe nothing to anyone.

I read your links and had a google around and, like harmless, as far as I can see very few EU countries have achieved the Maastricht 'targets' over the years, with no comeback from the EU. Also, the purpose of them was to consolidate confidence in the euro and make it a 'sound' currency. Which we don't have, so the EU wouldn't be particularly bothered about us...

I think that that 'Maastricht limits' were a convenient excuse for PFI rather than a compelling reason.