One thing that has characterised my work since campaigning became my main activity has been a willingness to be opportunistic. I never believe in letting an opportunity to change things pass. I have a horrible feeling that 2022 will provide plenty of crises requiring a response. In that case it might be considered reckless to set out a work agenda for the year, but I am going to, nonetheless.
I suspect three themes to dominate my work this year.
The first of these is accounting for environmental change. I actually spent the Christmas period finishing work on a draft Financial Reporting Standard on this subject which takes the argument for sustainable cost accounting a lot further forward. At some 16,500 words it's not a lightweight read. I have been working on this for a while but having to present this to an academic conference this coming Friday really pushed the work forward. I have no doubt that this work needs a fair amount of polishing as yet, and the likely input of co-authors, but I am now confident that this will see the light of day soon (by early February at the latest, I hope) and will then be a major theme for work this year. It builds, in part, on existing work on audit reform, which is ongoing and will require continuing engagement, especially on the issue of hollowed-out firms, where Adam Leaver and I are working hard on reform agendas.
A second theme will be tax transparency. The course of this work is a little unpredictable at present, but builds on work with the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency begun last year. They have big plans for this programme. I hope to be working to support that agenda. I think it incredibly important for the next wave of tax justice which is otherwise largely stalled in a corporate tax haven cul-de-sac.
The third theme is that being managed through Finance for the Future and is on how we pay for the transition to a sustainable economy. This is being funded by the Polden Peckham Charitable Trust. The work is scheduled to last for three years and is intended to answer the question ‘how will you pay for it?' always asked of politicians whenever they propose essential programmes of reform.
Initially work will try to build understanding of how government funding actually works. The idea for a book that I mentioned recently is a part of that. Thereafter the discussion will be on how we can use the world's financial capital to achieve the goal of building sustainable capital. That is not happening as yet. It clearly must. It's that or we have no hope. This is why I think the agenda that Colin Hines and I have been working on for some time, not just on QE but also savings, tax and pension reform, is so important.
There are also one or two other projects - one requiring attention very soon - in the pipeline. These will be announced if they develop.
There is a great deal to do. Despite that the blog will continue to roll. But if you wonder what the 'day job' is, the above provides some indication at present.
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“The third theme is that being managed through Finance for the Future and is on how we pay for the transition to a sustainable economy.”
My three ha’pennies.
Renewables (electricity): when wholesale prices are in the range £40 – £50/MWh (and WACCs are around 6 to 8%) most RES in the UK is self-funding. This does raise the question: where could the UK find £500bn or so needed (gov? private? What?). The problem is that elec wholesale prices bounce around like a demented kangaroo. This causes massive subsidy problems in a CfD environment (this issue has been covered in previous comments).
Thus with respect to “how do we pay” needs to be modulated with “do we have appropriate regulatory structures” (no we don’t and thus: so what is needed/what needs to change?)
In the case of energy efficiency and the elephant in the room: thermal renovation, there is a double dichotomy to be addressed:
1) : owner-occupiers live in houses where the cost of adequate thermal renovation is less than 10% of the value of the house. How to couple one to the other? (or should society subsidise the renovation? – socialism for property owners?
2): the same applies to the rental sector (wrt value and cost): how to square the circle of: landlord renovates and renter “enjoys” the benefits of lower energy bills. (Personally?: I’d force the landlords to renovate & legislate to only allow them to sell the property if it is renovated).
In summary, the issue seems more about the regulatory situation with respect to pricing systems (elec) and who has (financial) responsibility for what in terms of energy efficiency.
Noted…
Why not force the condition on private home owners too?
The way to do it with private households is one-stop-shops (as implemented in France & being copied in other member states as I write). Basically, households can go to one place that organises everything: survey, etsimates for the renno, finance, builders etc etcetc. I’d set deadlines (same as they have set deadlines for going into a city with vehicles – no more Euro4 now, Euro5 banned soon etc) – e.g. you can’t sell the house unless it meets e.g C class thermal perfomance now, then in 5 years B class and in 10 years A class. Make it easy for people to do the thermal renno – but at the same time drive them in that direction. Finance could offer soft-loans.
We need that very badly
Forcing can surely be done if the political will is there. It’s happened in Scotland with fire prevention and seems to have been taken up.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/fire-and-smoke-alarms-in-scottish-homes/
The appalling state of much UK housing stock isn’t solely due to those who own houses, whether owner occupiers, private landlords or LA’s or HA’s. Government controls the standards to which houses are built and for decades allowed builders to build to inadequate standards. Even now they are still inadequate. Therefore government should provide much of the finance for upgrading and should plan and regulate for this to happen.
Similarly with the price of household fuels. Surely a decent society would provide fuel to every home as part of a “social dividend” so that nobody was living in fuel poverty and forced to make choices between food on the table and heating the home. Only government can has the power to do that.
Unfortunately the idea that government is responsible for the welfare of all its citizens and not just those who are successful and well off is dead and buried.
Well yes, I agree but then look what happened to fire regulations, a matter – literally! – of life and death that was so slack that known hazardous materials were attached (and still is) to high-rise flats.
As for subsidies for fuel, the Rt wing folk will bleat about people being prolific with their energy if they don’t pay the full cost so why should they subsidise that waste?
The problem here is not fixable by tinkering around the edge of regs as anyone can see how big biz will find a way around it.
We have arrived at this dystopia over a long period of time due to the way we have let vested interests control the dialogue/media. Personally, I feel we must tackle that aspect first, anything else will just be countered with propaganda on a massive scale.
Question for Mike Parr, have you got a link to details of the French system?
But yes, anything which either requires houses to be brought up to a particular standard before they can be sold, OR requires purchasers of a ‘sub standard’ property to bring it up to standard within a fixed period of time after the sale would be a good thing.
I have a presentation from 2018 covering the “Picardie Pass” which was a quasi-one-stop-shop implemented in the super-region Hauts de France. I have recontacted the people I know in the region asking for an up-date. Links below to related (and apparently on-going) projects:
https://www.construction21.org/articles/h/the-h2020-project-turnkey-retrofit-launched-its-one-stop-shop-for-energy-retrofitting-of-buildings-in-france-ireland-and-spain.html
https://europaonestop.eu/about/
https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/one-stop-shop-launched-retrofit-homes-france-spain/
The lesson to be learned is to make it simple and easy for people to “buy into” a total thermal renno. In my view, this has to happen at a local level and somehow the local council needs to be involved. This is difficult in the Uk due to the de-resourcing of local gov (an occurance the Uk shares with, oddly, France where the communes have been stripped of most of their powers, financial or otherwise).
I have a presentation (in English) covering the Hauts de France project – happy to share if Richard sends me your e-mail address.
John – please email me if you want your address shared
GDPR requires that
Thanks, and thanks Mike
Question for Mike Parr, any chance of a link giving details of the French domestic energy efficency scheme?
Many thanks
I totally agree that housing standards need to be brought up to date.
Despite a plethora of home improvement programmes on the tele, it seems that safety issues are some of the last considerations. My LA also has an acquisition programme and you’d be surprised (or maybe not?) of just how many purchases we reject based on poor internal layout and build quality.
Developers are running rings around Building Control and whatever regulations there are at the moment. Even when we check over privately built newbuild properties for purchase, we find issues with standards on gas and electrical fitting are not being kept to. It makes me wonder just what is being bought by private buyers and how safe it all is.
New Labour introduced something didn’t they for house buyers to address these short comings but there was a backlash from the ‘industry’.
In England we love and adhere to ‘caveat emptor’ too much – a system with bias to the vendor. It’s wrong.
Looking not only at Grenfell but many other incidents it seems to me that one of the biggest problems we have with implementing a Green Agenda is The Building Industry which is not fit for purpose.
I suggest that at a basic level builders need to be licensed an hap[ens in Australia & the USA and to be brought in line with other industries so that they the builder are responsible for the quality & safety of their work.
That’s quite a schedule, of course, but I really hope everyone reading this truly understands its pivotal content. While there are sufficient liberal , pro- democratic forces to oppose the current neoliberal hegemony, they are dispersed, with neither coherent leadership nor programme. The inability to deal with the ‘how are going to pay for it’ question causes genuine confusion and forces people of good intentions to espouse neoliberal truisms simply because they see no other solution. A simple example is the restoration of the £20 uplift in universal benefit. This should be a no brainer for the Labour Party, but it isn’t . Probably, even people like Starmer and Reeves would like to do it, but they are impossibly tangled in a fiscal responsibility agenda and so they have not made that even a demand, let alone campaigned on it. They remain entrenched in the idea that you must cost it and then show where the money is coming from, which basically means demonstrating how we achieve sufficient balances in the mythical tax account . Tax, then spend. I am certain in my own mind that there is literally no one of influence who is equipped to argue with this, except possibly on purely humanitarian grounds. It is precisely this area of economic illiteracy that represents the greatest practical stumbling block to progressive forces, not just here, but across the democratic world.
Richard’s work targets this (and beyond, of course), but my focus is the lack of knowledge necessary to mount counter arguments to the neo liberal economics that utterly determine the policies otherwise progressive elements would adopt. The other aspect of this is that there is widespread public acceptance of the housewife’s purse analogy, simply because that does indeed accord with daily life and there is nothing obvious about the fundamentals of the operation of fiat currencies.