When I was elected to Parliament in 1983, Oxfordshire had six Conservative MPs out of the six seats in the county.

At the last General Election, there were no Conservatives elected in Oxfordshire.  For the first time since the Reform Bill, there is not a single Conservative Member of Parliament in Oxfordshire.

With now seven Parliamentary seats – the Liberals have 5 and Labour 2.

To have any hope of winning a General Election, or indeed just winning more Parliamentary seats than the Reform Party, Conservatives need to win a majority of seats in Oxfordshire.

If I were still Member of Parliament for Banbury – and I was MP for 32 years – I would be looking at the following.

Welfare:

The Welfare budget is completely out of control.

The Government is now paying out more on benefits than the complete total receipts from Income Tax.

This is clearly unsustainable and interest on Government borrowing grows exponentially with a large proportion of that borrowing simply going to pay interest on previous borrowings.

For me, one area of particular concern is that there are now approximately 1 million young people aged between 18 and 24 who are not in full time education, employment or training.  (NEETs).

This is a horrifyingly large figure.

If people do not have training or a job in their early twenties, they are unlikely to be employed in their late twenties or later in life and are thus simply likely to spend their lives being dependent on the state.

There is a further dimension to this.  My impression in Banbury is that many of the NEETs come from traditional white working class areas.  In previous decades, they would have left school at 16, and walked into jobs with large employers, such as General Foods, or Alcan, in Banbury.  High energy costs killed off Alcan, and it is cheaper to manufacture coffee in Poland than the UK.

General Foods is closing down its operations here but large numbers of unemployed, unskilled and untrained white working class young men does not bode well for peaceful communities or social cohesion.

We have seen high unemployment before.

Unemployment nationally was far higher when I first entered the House of Commons, but we then had the Manpower Services Commission and programmes such as the Youth Training Scheme (YTS).  

YTS and the Community Programme were not perfect, but they did provide training opportunities to a large number of young people.  They provided an opportunity to experience the world of work and a not insignificant proportion of those who were engaged in either the YTS or Community Programme found employment. 

YTS and CP also made the important point that the receipt of benefit was conditional upon a willingness to seek work or engage in training.  I simply don’t understand why the present Government is reluctant to introduce a programme somewhat similar to YTS.

Local Government:

Local Government is in a serious mess.

Most Local Authorities are teetering on financial viability, notwithstanding most Local Authorities this year introducing an almost 5% increase in Council Tax – a tax increase by another means.

The difficulties in Local Government funding are caused almost entirely by two issues. Adult social care and SEND.

Good news – average life expectancy is increasing. 

Bad news – this means that the proportion of people suffering from strokes, or cognitive degenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer's or Dementia is also increasing.

Because we have not managed to find any sustainable long-term solution to the issue of funding long-term residential adult social care, a significant majority of those now going in to residential care homes are being funded by Local Government.

This is obviously “demand-led” expenditure, difficult to control financially and it is a budget area which is simply going to grown, so a comparatively small percentage of the adult population is taking up a significant proportion of Local Council budgets.

This is not sustainable.

As for SEND, I genuinely do not understand why there has been such an explosion of SEND spending, but I have a suspicion that there is an incentive for schools and parents to collude in having children statemented.

Successive Governments have tended to give teachers reasonably generous pay settlements.

Teachers strikes are unwelcome as children get sent home:  this disrupts the whole economy, parents have to take time off work to look after children who otherwise would be in school, etc.

But successive Governments have “fudged” these settlements.

For example, a Government may award teachers a 5% increase, but they will only fund 3% of it themselves and say the remaining 2% has to be found within existing school budgets.  Over time this has led to larger classes, shorter school days, a reduced curriculum, giving up of items like sport, music, etc. but after a while even these economies cannot balance the books.

Money on SEND is extra income to a school’s budget which comes from the Local Authority, so schools have a financial incentive in the number of children the have who are receipt of SEND  money.

Again, this is “demand-led” – difficult to forecast and is putting Local Authorities in a very difficult position.

The difficulties of Local Government financing have a broader impact on the health of our democracy as a whole. 

Political Parties tend to be held together by Local Councillors or candidates seeking election to Local Councils.

If there is a continuous churn in Councillors being elected, and if indeed candidates think that all they are going to be doing is managing “cuts”, it is going to be difficult to recruit good people to become Councillors and political grass roots are going to become increasingly fragile.  Political Parties will be increasingly dependent upon social media, such as Facebook, etc. and that simply favours those parties which don’t necessarily have many supporters but do have wealthy supporters with deep pockets, such as Reform, who, as a consequence are able to purchase a disproportionate amount of political influence.

This article was written by Rt Hon Sir Tony Baldry DL, who served as a the Chair of the International Development Select Committee. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Prosper UK.