Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. It is now almost three years into the current Parliament and Labour still doesn’t have an economic policy. This is despite having a Shadow Chancellor who was Gordon Brown’s Chief Economic Advisor and a leader who was Gordon Brown’s […]
Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. Last weekend, George Osborne and I represented the United Kingdom at the European Finance Ministers summit in Dublin. Before the summit began, the finance ministers of the Eurozone countries met to approve formally their agreement to give financial […]
Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. Homes: we all need them, there aren’t enough of them and building more of them would provide a welcome boost to the economy. Unfortunately, the last Labour government left us with the lowest peacetime level of house-building since the […]
Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. Yesterday, the Government responded to Michael Heseltines’s report – No Stone Unturned – accepting 81 of the 89 recommendations made. The former Deputy Prime Minister described the Chancellor’s adoption of so much of the report as “one of the […]
Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. George Osborne has called it the British Dilemma: how can Britain be one of the world’s leading financial centres without exposing ordinary working people in this country to the terrible costs of banks failing? Let me illustrate both […]
Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. “The truth,” says Peter Oborne in a typically compelling article for the Daily Telegraph last week, “is that Mr Balls isn’t any good as shadow chancellor.” Oborne adds that “this is an open secret in the Labour Party.” There aren’t […]
Follow Greg on Twitter. Unemployment continues to fall. The latest figures, published last week, showed that the number of people looking for work and claiming unemployment benefits fell by 12,500 in the last month to stand at 1.54 million. Nevertheless, the headline figures must seem remote to the anxieties of anyone who does lose their […]
Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. Most Tuesdays he will be writing this 'Letter from a Treasury Minister' for ConservativeHome readers. Previous versions of this Letter appeared here. Today twenty cities – from Plymouth to Sunderland, from Preston to Brighton – have been invited to negotiate City […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Yesterday the Localism Bill gained royal assent and the Department of Communities and Local Government issued a press release to remind us of what it represents. Conmmenting Eric Pickles said: “Today marks the beginning of an historic shift of power from Whitehall to every community to take back control of […]
This is an edited extract from the inaugural Bruce-Lockhart Lecture by Greg Clark MP, published this week by Localis. Greg Clark is Minister for Decentralisation and also the Coalition's new Minister for Cities. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregclarkmp. Winning the peace Last year saw the formation of the first new coalition government […]
By Greg Clark MP, Minister of State for Communities and Local Government. Seven years ago, I wrote a book called Total Politics, which set out the case against the growing dominance of central government over the public sphere. Today, the Government, in which I serve as Minister for Decentralisation, is publishing what could be seen […]
Tim Montgomerie Eric Pickles' feisty approach to local government will take another step this week when he unveils his localism bill. The draft legislation will require councils to publish limits on management pay. He cannot impose a direct cap but he can impose transparency. Pickles is concerned that 129 town hall executives earn more than […]