Firstly, that a sensible discussion about the size and scope of the state must start from a clear understanding of what it does and how much we spend on it. And secondly, that only when people understand what things cost can they decide whether they are an essential or a nice to have.

It shouldn’t be difficult to find a list of what the government spends our money on. But it REALLY is. The first government site on google when you search for “uk government spending breakdown” is number 6 in the results. The top five are all a private undertaking. And the one from the government is from the ONS which is incredibly unintuitive and you have to know the technical jargon for what you’re looking for.

So here is another little idea. How about a really simple site from the Treasury, using the data which is already supposed to be published, detailing what each department spends, on what. Later, we could perhaps add why they spend it (which would take us into another of our ideas, a regular review of all spending with a view to reducing it by a targeted amount).

I recently heard some fascinating figures on aid spending (and this is very generalised, but makes my point). Apparently, most people think that we spend around 20 per cent of our total government expenditure on aid and development. It is not even projected to reach the 0.7 per cent agreed by the UN decades ago until 2013. Similarly, Peter Kellner of YouGov has written (using the BBC licence fee as an example) a great piece about placing figures in context.

As Stewart Pearson and Louise Mensch are both fond of saying, knowledge is indeed porridge.

That every ten years (say), the government should have a requirement to cut (say) ten per cent from its spending.

I have no idea how practical this might be, or how it might fit in with the convention that governments don’t bind future ones, or how it might actually be done. Nor even if ten per cent would be the figure chosen. But as Jenni Russell [£] wrote this weekend, and as I’ve argued for years, we need to make decisions about what we want the state to provide and what therefore we are prepared to pay for.

As I’ve previously argued, I am fed up of hearing in response to a complaint, “but we’re spending £X million on Y programme”. Because just spending money is not always – or indeed usually – the answer. We can be much more imaginative than that; and a regular review would embed that into our way of thinking.

Of course it would need to be much more than a cosmetic exercise, and it would need to be done with a degree of maturity from politicians, citizens and the media (so no screeching that your own pet project must be sacrosanct – if it’s working, it would stay), but I think the principle of taking a step back from the endless escalation and examining what is working, what is not and – crucially – what is necessary is a good one.

Churchmen have run confused and the usually steady Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I admire) has tried to make common cause with the campers, many of whom go home at night.

Of course huge mistakes have been made by the banks, lessons need to be learned, but as we move forward, there are the uncomfortable facts.

As has been reported this week, City institutions and their employees contribute a whopping 63 billion pounds to the Treasury, more than any other industry in the UK. City firms paid almost 10 billion pounds more tax this year than last and contribute more than 12 per cent of the UK’s entire tax take.

The vast, indeed, overwhelming majority of City employees are not non dom plutocrats but ordinary people who work extremely hard (bankers I know included) for long hours, in demanding environments. They quietly pay their taxes and some will pay 50 per cent of part of their income to the Treasury – all helping to fund the welfare state.

There are grumbles about government waste but from my experience, a wide recognition that in a civilised society there must be in place state support for those that cannot support themselves.

Of course it is much easier for the City’s critics to lazily attack the ‘City’ with generalisation and innuendo, reinforcing the stereotype for good measure. It is perhaps much harder to admit that the City pays its dues and some pay over a far greater contribution percentage wise of their income to the Treasury than their compatriots.

Like many who support this site I want to see a progressive and compassionate capitalism – capitalism with a human face, if you like. I abhor the irresponsibility and greed of some. I want my fellow citizens to have generous welfare safeguards. I value and use our public services. The welfare state does, however cost money and if, out of spite, we drive the financial services industry off shore through vindictive policies and tax rates, we will lose a vital source of income that helps pay for our public services.

I also would be surprised if the leisure of some of the permanent protestors outside St Pauls didn’t also come at a cost to the public purse.

This is why David Cameron is right to make the case for the City. It is not a case for a bloated plutocracy but an approach based on common sense. Much of what we value as a society comes as a price.

As we approach Christmas, I wonder (untrendily) whether it is not time for us to be a little more temperate in our language as a society to those in the ‘City’ who contribute so much to the public coffers. Time, perhaps, for us to cherish one of the UK’s finest institutions rather than bash.

This comment was inspired by a report recently published by the University of York revealing that a majority of conservationists believed that it was time to let some of the 17,000 ‘under threat’ species go extinct. What was once a heretical notion in their community is now becoming a logical proposition. The cause? Lack of resource. Efficiency requirements. Return on investment.

This is a huge development. Groups that have devoted decades of campaign activism and research funding to one ideology are now acknowledging that they can’t save every endangered species. The sheer scale of the problem has defeated their emotional intentions.

How does the principle of balance apply to government logic? Some policy areas are better for some sectors of society than others. If we have them, where do our priorities lie?

On the one hand we have the requirement inscribed within democracy to hold regular elections. Here we all know that populism must rule for the system to function.

But what if what is best for the nation isn’t what is the most popular view? Politicians cannot govern without the support of the people, but they cannot enact unpopular but logistically necessary policies for fear of getting the chop.

Once in power can policy ever truly be considered based on the requirement of ‘the greater good’? This statement is forged on a balancing of the percentages – by finding out where the majority of beneficiaries will lie. But what about the rest? Should the minority that won’t benefit be ignored for the ‘greater good’? Is it a waste of resource to even consider them?

The weak in society should always be defended. But it can be conflicting for an elected representative to choose the extent to which this influences their judgments: were they elected to represent or to do what is in the best interests of their constituents? These are not necessarily the same thing.

In the age of the all-powerful media, where the sound bite is king, can we ever accept a species of politician who is able to do what is right on balance without fear of getting booted out by the X-Factor generation of voters?

Will the electorate ever be able to accept that sometimes Parliament might not be in the best interests of us individually, but that they are working in the best interests of the nation?

“Should it be how unique a species is genetically, how useful it is economically, or whether lots of species can be saved at once?” says Dr Murray Rudd who created the original survey.

Unless we, the public, can define and educate the nation about what we believe politician should be for then we will forever be putting them in an impossible situation – do what’s right for me and I’ll vote for you. Do it for everyone other than me and I won’t.

It’s time for us all to stop passing the buck and take some responsibility for our part in the political system.

It’s a very welcome announcement indeed.

The case for gay marriage is clear and it is great news that the Government seems to be ready to accept the case. Same sex marriage is already legal in Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Portugal and a number of American states (including, most recently, New York). Despite the dire warnings of anti gay marriage activists, the sky hasn’t fallen in in any of those countries and the family unit seems as strong as ever. Now is the right time for the UK to join that list.

The argument for gay marriage on pure equality lines is pretty clear cut. It is unjustifiable in modern Britain that a reasonable section of the population are denied the right to marry their partner. That is an inequality that needs to be put right.

But there’s also a little noted argument for gay marriage on family values grounds. Although anti same-sex marriage campaigners have attempted to don the cloak of family values, it’s about time that those of us who support gay marriage started to make the family values case for gay marriage. People are right to emphasise the importance of the institution of marriage. They are right to emphasise the importance of the family as a bedrock of society and a source of stability and guidance.

The issue that many same sex marriage opponents on the right (and some on the left) can’t address is – if marriage and the family are so beneficial and are of such strong cultural importance, why are they determined to deny the benefits of them to LGBT people?

An argument that some use against same sex marriage is that civil partnerships represent marriage in all but name. It is true that civil partnerships represent a genuine social advance and Tony Blair should be highly praised for introducing the reforms. There is also a high level of support for civil partnerships. However, they aren’t the same as marriage. Civil partnerships are important but they don’t represent equality and, in terms of perception and some pension and other financial issues, they aren’t equal to marriage.

Opponents who claim to speak for a “silent majority” of the public would also be well advised to look at public opinion polls on the matter. A recent survey showed that 77% of people support either gay marriage or civil partnerships (43% supported gay marriage, 34% civic unions). Another poll for Populus showed that 61% supported the statement that “gay couples should have an equal right to get married, not just civil partnerships.”

The likes of Melanie Phillips and Roger Helmer will continue to make a lot of noise. But, thankfully, they are on the wrong side of history. We are rapidly moving towards a landscape of genuine equality – where any couple who love each other and want to make a lifestyle commitment to each other are allowed to marry. And our country will be a better place because of it.

I’m not qualified to refute Helmer’s libertarian opposition to gay marriage because I am not a libertarian – it’s a condition I believe to be as worthy of medical certification as the most debilitating of mental illnesses.  I can, and do, however take issue with his nod to communitarian thinking in his attack.  It is because I, like Roger, believe that ‘marriage is a relationship between three parties: a woman, a man and society.  Society down the ages has recognised marriage, and offered married couples recognition, respect and often financial benefits in terms of taxation and inheritance, because society recognises the importance of the institution’ that I support extending the terms of that contract to men who marry men and women who marry women.  I too am a communitarian and, as a result of that communitarianism, I feel I must overcome my inherent conservatism about institutions and support reform to marriage.

If we believe that marriage is important, it cannot simply be – as Roger Helmer appears to believe – because it might lead to children.  All sorts of relationships aside from marriage might lead to the pitter-patter of tiny feet.  All sorts of marriages may never result in procreation. Yes, the raising of children is an important facet of what marriage provides society, but it is not the only benefit.  Rather, there are a myriad of other positives that come from committed relationships – it makes society more stable, it offers mutual and long-term support and companionship to individuals and it embodies the responsibility to one-another that we must feel in order to live in communities that are trustworthy, respectful and mature.  Marriage is a social good for all of those reasons and more.  And in a society where we do not force gay men and women to pretend to be straight – where we are welcomed into the open and respected for our life-choices – it is foolhardy to deny this section of our community the option of joining one of its most important institutions.

I want our society to promote marriage because it is better for individuals but also because it is better for all of us – that means that the same expectation, that adults settle down into monogamous lives of mutual love and respect, should be applied to gay people if we expect to benefit from greater freedom to live our lives as we otherwise choose.  Gay men and women should not be tolerated and yet never expected to conform to society’s expectations, we should be judged against the same tests as everyone else.

As on so many issues, Christopher Hitchens puts this much better than I (albeit with a very different take on the conclusions to be drawn) ‘it demonstrates the spread of conservatism, not radicalism, among gays’.  He’s right.  And thank goodness.  Gay marriage means placing the same expectations and responsibilities on people like me as on anyone else.  It’s about equality of responsibility.  And it’s both inherently communitarian and naturally conservative.

The key thing that I had never really thought about before was that I – as a female growing up in the emancipated late 20^th and early 21^st centuries – absolutely took it for granted that abortion would be amongst the options from which I would be able to make a choice at some point if necessary. Not everyone wants to be a mother; not everyone is suitable to be a mother; and, let’s face it – it IS still, of course, women who carry the vast majority of the responsibility for raising children.

Control over your fertility is one of the key advances in feminism, and as I’ve argued before, control (in general) over your life and your situation is one of the major ways in which people feel happy, optimistic and fulfilled.

Nadine Dorries’ proposed changes to the way abortions are offered in the UK have two main dangers. The first is that – as with her abstinence nonsense – she suggests something that sounds relatively reasonable until you question why she is suggesting it, and what it really means. Her claim that there would be 60,000 fewer abortions each year in the UK is dangerous and disingenuous – what sort of situation would those children be born into?

The second is actually far more dangerous to feminism, women and indeed people in general. It is that she is suggesting that we cannot make decisions for ourselves, and that we cannot be trusted to decide for ourselves what sort of information we want.

I am all for sensible discussion of medical facts. But I absolutely defend my right to decide for myself whether I want children and when I want them.  And I think the fact that a woman is able to have children with no interference from anyone if she so chooses means as well that there is absolutely no case for anyone else to decide what sort of information or persuasion I must be given if I exercise my right to choose one way or another.

The words quoted above are those of Herbert Spencer, a prominent Victorian sociologist. If I had read them last week I would have thought them moralising and hyperbolic. This week they seem a terrifyingly prophetic explanation of how the state welfare and social services take half the economy without delivering social peace.

Let us go back 150 years. The Victorian working man, and I do mean males, aspired to be respectable. He would avoid being drunk, fighting and beating his wife. His children would be clean, his home well-maintained, he would be thrifty and not in debt. His clothes would be neat. He might even buy a piano or write his autobiography. He would plan ahead for hard times through a mutual, friendly society, his fellow members of which would also discourage swearing and gambling and drinking. Through the Friendlies and through chapel and moral and political causes he was a member of the Victorian big society.

I describe an ideal, often achieved only by a few, but these were the values of much of the working class. The community self-policed against anti-social behaviour. All this of course was incredibly hard work and restrictive by modern standards. The alternative was worse of course, debt, social ostracism and, if things really went wrong the Poor Law: the Victorians provided for the needy, but they imposed harsh conditions on them.

This changed in 1911, when a Liberal government started to provide modern welfare for the first time: benefits without strings attached. It is forgotten now but the early socialists did not like this: welfare was a stop-gap maintaining the system. It would be unnecessary under socialism which would have full employment all the time. Also the idea that benefits should be conditional – and not given for “loafing” – was accepted in Labour circles. Ramsay Macdonald, Labour leader warned of the risk that, “the whole thing degenerate in to a national charity of the most vicious kind.”

That word again, vicious, and used by a socialist about welfare.

Welfare was reformed after the Second World War. Labour‘s vision in 1945 was of welfare built around a working man and his family, respectability was to be made easier by the state.

Labour changed by the late 50s and early 60s, a new left interested in minority and women’s rights emerged, within the context of an increasingly liberal society. The family was patriarchy, and the demands of respectability looked increasingly out of date in the individualist world. Since then, Britain has, under all governments, built an increasingly liberal social democracy. The state deliberately facilitates freedom in lifestyle choice.

At first this wasn’t a problem because there was full employment. Until the mid 70s almost everyone had a job. Now it is as if the tide has gone out, and we are left with a stranded under-class: neither having to moderate their behaviour for an employer in the market or for the state benefit system. In such circumstances there will always be a few who will not moderate their behaviour at all. Hence the rise of what we call anti-social behaviour. A lenient criminal justice system compounds the problem.

I should make clear at this point: non-conditional welfare will never make anyone vicious. It just gives the vicious freedom to be so until physically sent to prison. The impressionable – which may mean the fatherless – follow in their anti-social wake.

The result is that the circle is complete: the respectable are at the mercy of dissolute neighbours. Victorian respectability was oppressive, but this surely must be worse. Blame will be thrown around in the next few weeks, but ultimately the left will be asking tough philosophical questions about whether Britain’s liberal social democracy is viable.

One of the (many) things we did was a Q&A with Andrew Mitchell, the Secretary of State for International Development who as I’ve said before is one of my favourite ministers. Part of what he was talking about was the new DfID Global Poverty Action Fund, which aims to fulfil the UN’s Millennium Development Goals in specific countries, through work on supporting service delivery, empowerment and accountability, and conflict, security and justice.

One of the areas our partners were concerned about was a reduction in direct funding to NGOs, as 65 per cent of DfID funding is now delivered to the Rwandan Government in Budget Support. This means that the government spends the money (with agreed accountability to DfID) to deliver services rather than individual and independent organisations.

As you must be aware, I am very much a localist, Big Societal kind of Tory. In the UK, the government does all sorts of things that it should not. But – of course – Rwanda is not the UK and until fairly recently the government did not do all sorts of things that it should have done. Building the capacity of a government to deliver effective, impartial and improving services is hugely important in helping poorer nations to grow and develop. In Rwanda, about five per cent of the UK’s aid total will be spent on increasing accountability of the government to its citizens.

I had various discussions about the rights and wrongs of the principle of this over the last two weeks. I remain of the view that it is a vital component of why we have an aid budget in the first place – to build the capacity of states to operate on their own eventually. Having accountable, responsive and responsible governments is absolutely key in ensuring that nations can fulfill their potential. All over Kigali, there are big indicators of government presence – signs on schools, on government buildings, public education adverts (including those warning against the infamous Sugar Daddies/Mummies), new roads, traffic police… And this is a good thing, particularly in an area which has historically seen chaos and instability, and which has suffered particularly from a lack of effective and cohesive governance.

So those local charities and NGOs which we’ve been working with (along with all the others) have to ensure that they work with their government’s intentions – Vision 2020 is the Rwandan government’s strategic plan, and every organisation was aware of it. They need to ensure that they deliver effectively – there’s no point in just handing over cash to make the same mistakes or fail to change anything. And they need to ensure that governance, accountability, development and growth are part of how they operate every day.

As this very interesting article (via @IanBirrell) points out, in many failed/ing states, the government has effectively withdrawn from most of the things it should do. I don’t wholly buy into the author’s support for the Crisis Caravan, but the idea that incoherent, uncoordinated, ad hoc interventions are less effective than good, responsive governance certainly makes sense.

A Demos poll – published today – shows that the stories so-called ‘Muslim leaders’ tell about their communities are often utterly untrue.  We found that not only are only a quarter of British Muslims concerned about ‘alternative lifestyles’ or angry about issues like gay marriage and adoption but that almost half are actively proud of Britain’s tolerance in these areas.  What’s more, 80% are ‘proud to be a British citizen’, two-thirds are ‘proud of British culture’ and only 20% are not ‘proud of Britain’s role in the world’.  All of which amounts to the not-so-stunning conclusion that British Muslims are, on the whole, just like the rest of us.  The difference?  Well the difference is that British Muslims have to suffer the ‘representation’ of community leaders who claim to speak for them.

These men (they’re always men) use their legitimacy to whisper into Government’s ear about ‘what Muslims think’.  They paint a picture of a community uncomfortable in modern Britain, intolerant of difference and resentful of our cultural and social diversity.  They are lying.  British Muslims are no more incapable of liberal, tolerant decency than anybody else.  But continuing to pretend that extremism is Islam and Islam is extreme brings benefits to these elder statesmen of community leadership.  For a start it allows them to present themselves as the voice of moderation – they, afterall, ‘oppose violence’ – when in fact they are often the most dogmatic and inflexible members of their community.  Second, it keeps Government coming back.  If the barriers to integration are as big and as bas as these men say they are then Government has a major problem – one that the community leaders are happy to help out with, for a price of course.  Third, it keeps the community itself in check.  They perpetuate and accentuate the differences, terrify their own community with myths about modern Britain and parlay the legitimacy, funding and credibility that comes from contact with Government into old-fashioned patronage.

Our polling shows how right David Cameron was to call for ‘active, muscular liberalism’ to underpin and guide modern multicultural and multiethnic Britain.  There is nothing uniquely intolerant, bigoted or illiberal about being a Muslim and British Muslims are far more comfortable with the mores of modernity than we sometimes give them credit for.  It’s high-time that British Muslims get the leadership they deserve and representation that reflects them rather than the elaborate Ponzi scheme through which Government has encouraged extremists and reactionaries to pose as mediators.  Muscular liberalism isn’t about harassing or attacking British Muslims, it’s about getting them the leadership they need; our polling proves just how much the Muslim community will welcome liberation from their so-called ‘representation’ they currently enjoy.