Ed Vaizey

So I trotted down to the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority in Holborn last week.  To refresh your memory, PADA is the body charged with setting up Personal Accounts - essentially, occupational pensions for 5.5 million people and a million employers who do not normally take out or supply pensions.  People will be automatically enrolled, and you have to actively choose not to have one.

One of the reasons PAs got through was because the set up cost was promised to be £500 million.  This meant that you could argue that it was cheaper to do it this way than use private providers (as the Government has done with the Child Trust Fund for example).

I think the cost will be £2 billion, which is why the affable CEO of PADA, Tim Jones, summoned me to a meeting.  He told me that I was completely wrong, but refused to reveal his own estimate of the set up costs, because he does not want to weaken his negotiating position with contractors.  On running costs, he said they had spent about £14 million since August, but he won’t pblish full accounts until the summer of 2009.  They are still consulting on the charging structure for PAs, so no way of knowing if they will meet the 0.3 per cent the Government promised.  And finally, as I predicted in my last post, he refused to reveal the costs of consultants on the grounds of commercial confidentiality,

I find it amusing to look at the contrast between the press getting worked up into a lather about the cost of MPs expenses, around £10 million a year, yet no one seems to care that an organisation that could cost the taxpayer billions is able to keep its financial arrangements completely confidential.  Mark my words, PADA will cost you more than the Government told you.  Guaranteed. 

I went to Geneva for the day today.  Sadly, it was not to check out my Swiss bank account.  It was actually more exciting than that.  I was visiting the Large Hadron Collidor, or LHC, which, despite being an almost incomprehensible and mind-boggling physics experiment, has actually got quite a lot of press coverage as it nears its opening.  It is based at CERN, the European centre for nuclear research. CERN is where the world wide web was invented, and interestingly there is speculation taht one of the side-effects of the LHC will be to make the current web obsolete - see HERE.

My host for the day was Dr Brian Cox, a name which immediately conjures an image of beards and sandals.  So you can imagine my surprise when he turned out to be the spitting image of Liam Gallagher, if Liam had decided to pursue a career in particle physics rather than rock’n'roll.  It turned out that there was a reason for this.  Dr Cox had indeed been a rock star, playing keyboards for D:ream, of “Things can only get better” fame.  I was delighted to learn that he is now planning to vote Conservative.

Brian and his wife were producing a podcast in the lead up to the opening of LHC.  They have already interviewed John Barrowman and a Dean of the Church of England.  A lot of comedians seem interested in the project as well.  We pondered why this should be.  Is there a tendency in both physicists and comedians towards introspection? Or have both physicists and comedians worked out that we are merely insignificant specks in the universe, so the only way to get through is to have a good laugh?

Anyway, on to the collider, the purpose of the visit and the star of the show.  Yes, this is science fiction stuff.  It is a 27km circle 100 metres underground.  It has four detectors, which is a modest word for hundreds of tons and millions of pounds of sophisticated engineering that looks like a spaceship.  All this to detect the smallest particles in the universe.  The collider will sling particles around the circle at just under the speed of light, and collide them into each other.  The resulting smash up will replicate Big Bang about one billionth of a second after it happened i.e pretty much the very beginning of the universe, hence travelling back in time.  The furthest we have got so far is about 300,000 years after Big Bang.

They hope to find the Higgs Bosun.  This is a particle first identified (at least, the maths was) by Professor Higgs (who is alive and well in Edinburgh) in 1963, and it is the particle that gives matter mass (with me so far?).  The analogy used is that the Higgs bosun is a “sycophant” - it attaches itself to particles in the way sycophants attach themselves to famous people when they walk in the room, slowing them down and giving them mass.  Not all elements interact with the Higgs bosun - light, for example, which therefore has no mass and goes straight through the room, friendless.

Brian describes what is happening at CERN as the biggest step change in physics for a generation.  It is like opening the door to a room that has so far been completely sealed.  The Higgs bosun is the key but no one is sure what is inside.  Someone in Hawaii has even launched a lawsuit to prevent the LHC opening, as they think it will cause the end of the world.

All this excitement comes when science cuts are clouding the particle physics world.  Newsnight had a good report which you can read/see here including a starring role for the leyboard player from D;Ream.

Following the NUT’s vote to ban troops from schools, I wrote to all my secondary schools.  I am delighted to report that all of them said they welcome visits from the armed services (one was just about to welcome the Marines) and would continue to do so.  Quentin Davies - the Tory MP who defected to Labour - has just prepared a report for Brown which has been given as an exclusive to The Observer.  It claims that there should be cadets in every school, and all secondary school children should be taught how to handle firearms.  This is not as barmy as it sounds - teaching children to handle guns properly is far more likely to teach them to respect the deadly nature of the weapon and could (I know it sounds counter-intuitive) reduce the use of guns.  However, the report is presumably uncosted, and apart from a quick headline and a re-announcment in six months’ time, nothing will actually happen.

The Art Newspaper has an interesting and disturbing report on its front page in its April edition.  It concerns a well known contemporary artist, Gregor Schneider, who is a real person.  And a woman called Roswitha Franziska Vandieken, who runs a clinic in Dusselfdorf, who may or may not exist.  Apparently Gregor Schneider wants to create a piece of art which consists of a person dying - described by the newspaper  as “the ultimate performance piece”.  Not a video either, but a live person dying as an exhibit in a museum. And he has apparently approached Dr Vandieken for a suitable subject.

Plausible?  Yes.  So out there that it could be a hoax?  Quite possibly, and as it hasn’t been in the Daily Mail yet, it may well be.  In bad taste?  Most definitely…

I bumped into a Minister on the tube yesterday, which is always interesting (well, for me anyway).  I asked him where his chauffeur was, and he revealed he had refused to have one.  He’s not one of these unpaid jobby’s either, but a proper Minister of State.  He had a battle to turn down the use of car, but he won.  The first day without a car he got stuck on the tube for 25 minutes and missed a meeting, but since then it has been plain sailing.  He now saves the taxpayer £50,000 a year, he uses an Oyster card and has a taxi account.  He leaves the red box in the Minstry, as he says it is anti social to take work home.

May be the Tories should pledge now that, when we win the election, there will be a presumption that no Minister outside the Cabinet will be automatically entitled to a car, and that they should justify the need for one before they get one. 

So.  Six hundred MPs, peers and journalists trooped into the Royal Gallery in the Palace of Westminster on Wednesday to get a good look at Carla Bruni.  Apparently she is exceptionally beautiful, but I could not tell, as I was sitting behind the Labour MP Jimmy Hood, so I couldn’t see anything.  Once we had finished looking at Carla, we listened to her husband, who is apparently the President of France, deliver a speech.

The President got a very warm reception from the assembled gathering, including prolonged applause when he came in and a standing ovation at the end.  It surprised me, not because he necessarily didn;t deserve it, but because I hadn’t really known what the British thought of him.  Anyway, judging by Wednesday, we like him (and her).  His speech ticked all the right boxes - fulsome praise for Britain, including thanks for our role in saving France in the war (which will have annoyed the French); a passionate defence of the European Union (which annoyed the Tories); and a call to work together on nuclear power (which will have annoyed Labour).

The President’s visit also showed the importance of glamour in politics.  It is often said that politics is show business for ugly people, and his speech had the feel of a political “gig”, as various MPs put their mobile phones in the air to take photos.  If the speech had been in the evening I think some might have waved cigarette lighters in the air.  But I think that one of the reasons he is popular here (and why MPs liek programmes like the West Wing), is that they like the glamour that comes with strong executive office, as well, of course, as a glamorous consort.  MArrying Carla may have damaged the President’s popularity in the short term, but given their reception over here, I think it will be to his long-term gain.

The NUT lived up to ints acronym, in passing a resolution to ban troops visiting schools.  How utterly, utterly depressing.  Of course, the leadership of the NUT is really a political party, and it is fighting the decision to go to war in Iraq by proxy, using our troops as a political football.  Apparently the army targets young people from deprived areas of the country.  It may well recruit in some of our poorer areas, outrageously offering the young people there a life of aspiration and discipline, with the chance to learn skills and see the world.  But they also recruit in affluent areas - the cadets are extremely well represented in my constituency.  It is so sad to see this union give the teaching profession such a bad name, they do not represent the knd of teachers I know.  My uncle was on the execuitve of the NUT in the 1960s - a very different union then.

Spent part of Bank Holiday MOnday at the Lockinge point-to-point, the annual meeting which raises thousands of pounds for the local Old Berks Hunt.  It snowed, and it was freezing, but there was still a very good turn out (including three MPs spotted).  It last snowed there in 1985, when people tobogganed merrily down the lanes of the car park.

My attack on the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority’s spiralling costs earned me a stinging rebuke from the chief executive, Tim Jones.  He sent me a letter denying that costs were out of control or 300 per cent over budget, and asking me for a meeting.  To be fair, the article I quoted does not suggest running costs are out of control.  What it does suggest, and is a rumour doing the rounds in pensions circles, is that the cost of building the systems has risen from £500 million to £2 billion.  The analogy would be if your house cost four times more to build, but your costs to run the house remained the same…

I replied to Tim’s rebuke and demand for a meeting with four questions for PADA to answer:

My last blog was ten days ago, so Vaizey is guilty again of letting you down.  I have a good excuse this time, though.  Our daughter Martha, a sister for 18 month old Joseph, arrived on 12th March at 2.44pm.  She is, as you would imagine, very beautiful and delightful.  Her brother has astonished us by being as equally delighted with her as we are.  Martha may well have a political career ahead of her.  She was born on the same day as Viriginia Bottomley, Baroness Peta Buscombe and David Mellor.  She also shares a birthday with the sculptor Anish Kapoor and the singer Liza Minelli.

Martha delayed her arrival from 29th February, so that I could vote for a referendum on the European Constitution, and started to arrive just as Alistair Darlimg got to his feet, thus ensuring I missed the most boring Budget in history.  So she has acute political antennae.

Martha was born on the NHS, and the care we received was first-class during the delivery.  (I’ll pass over the three hour waits every time we had an ante-natal appointment.)  Thank you to every one involved in delivering her safely into the world, your care and diligence was wonderful.