As a libertarian, I believe that the role of the state, at all Governmental levels, should be kept to a minimum. Whenever the state grows, whether in terms of taxation, or expenditure on goods and services, it takes away individuals' and communities' ability to exercise their own judgement and enjoy the fruits of their own efforts.
State patronage leads to a class of well-paid middle-manager types who are dependent on taxation for their existence and who, all too easily, become a self-perpetuating oligarchy resistant to change and reform.
Of course, in some cases, over the very short-term, increases in public sector expenditure may be justifiable in maintaining our longer-term rights and liberties. Government expenditure rises during times of crisis such as wars and, as with the response to COVID19, pandemics.
That is why central government expenditure alone rose by 27% from 2019/20 to 2020/21 from £442bn to an eye-watering £570bn.
As the health threats from COVID19 begin to recede, thanks mainly to the successful vaccine and booster programmes, the task for the present Conservative government must be to rein in and reduce such over-reach.
But I'd also like to see a much smarter use of this hopefully diminishing public expenditure to boost the opportunities for businesses, individuals and communities to prosper unaided by further interference.
In effect, agile state intervention should be for a limited period of time and to pump prime new opportunities: it should never be a continuous presence.
The Government's Levelling Up Bill, due to be presented to Parliament shortly, is a key opportunity to put this approach into operation, although the process of allocating funds which purport to level up previously disadvantaged areas has been going on for a while.
In a rather cart before the horse manner, it is only now that there's been much discussion within the Conservative Party and in the media as to what the term levelling up actually means.
Personally, I rather rate the definition recently offered by Michael Gove in an interview with The Spectator: 'making opportunity more equal'.
But if this is to become a reality, the pump priming must involve Suffolk and indeed the wider eastern region. The initial signs have not been encouraging. Indeed, a cynic might suggest that levelling up is really about pouring money into those previously 'Red Wall' Parliamentary seats in the North and Midlands.
A recent report from the East of England Local Government Association demonstrated just how unequally the region has been treated compared to most others in the country.
It is estimated that we've received only £92 per head in levelling up funds, compared with some places getting nearly four times as much.
And even this figure masks high variations between different parts of the county, with both Ipswich and Lowestoft successfully netting £25m each under the Future Towns Fund, but other areas attracting next to nothing.
There have been too many 'failed' bids for funds from other parts of Suffolk to suggest that this is something other than systemic bias from the usual Whitehall mandarins. We are seen as being too affluent at an aggregate level for our own good, even though there are high levels of deprivation at individual ward levels.
But I'm not complaining about that. What is needed is not a mega whinge about the criteria being used to evaluate projects, but a change in approach by Suffolk as to how it explains the county's cause.
Rather than focussing on the vainglorious justification as to why Suffolk is deserving of levelling up funding in its own right, we need to be sharper in demonstrating how levelling up Suffolk a little bit means making major contributions to the creation of more equal opportunity.
Whether it be to due to happy happenstance (such as having the UK's largest container port within our boundaries) or natural advantages of a breezy coastline (and hence a concentration of much of the country's renewables sector off our shores), Suffolk PLC is pivotal to the UK's future prosperity.
That is why the justification for some of our longstanding infrastructure asks need to be expressed in terms of how they deliver boosts to those self-same 'Red Wall' seats mentioned above.
Upgrades to ensure that the whole of the A14 in Suffolk (and not just the Copdock Junction as at present) is fit for the twenty-first century should be on the basis that this will boost the effectiveness of the trade corridor between Felixstowe and the North and the Midlands. The same goes for the A12.
In terms of rail, the £30m funding needed to upgrade the outdated tangle that is the Haughley Junction would diminish almost to a vanishing point as the national economic benefits of improved east/west freight capacity and reliability were realised. Similarly, the ongoing and protracted process in realising improvements at the Ely Junction.
In short, we need a much more unified campaigning voice to lobby for these and other similar projects that brings together all business organisations, including The Suffolk Chamber of Commerce, our councils (all FIVE of them), and all of our MPs.
On the cusp of an age where once again each item of public expenditure must be clearly justified, our county is well placed to do more than its fair share for the national levelling up campaign.
P.s. Perhaps a cynic might say that our lack of levelling-up funding to date may be due to the imminent green light for Sizewell C, now delayed until June, which would see unprecedented investment in Suffolk and The East of England.
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