Welcome to Coffee House’s PMQs live blog. There’s plenty there for the opposition leaders to get their teeth stuck into today – from this morning’s unemployment figures to Tony McNulty’s sort-of-admission that taxes will have to go up in the medium term to pay for Brown’s debt addiction. Also worth keeping an ear out for any clues as to what might be in the PBR. Things, as always, will kick off at 1200.
1203: Richard Ottaway gets the ball rolling with a punchy questions on whether this Labour government will leave office with unemployment higher than when it came in. Brown repsonds: “we’ve created 3 million new jobs…”
1204: Will planted questions ever get more obvious or more sycophantic? Phil Wilson quotes the economist Phil Krugman praising Brown for what he’s doing during the financial crisis. Brown looks delighted: “I’d like to congratulate Mr Krugman on his Nobel prize…”
1206: Great start by Cameron. “Only this Prime Minister could be quite so smug on the day that 140,000 people lost their jobs.” He’s keying into the “Brown’s enjoying the recession” theme that ConservativeHome’s been pushing. The Tory leader’s first question is on the tragic case of Baby P. Why have there been no resignations, he asks. Was the Haringey investigation adeqaute?
1208: Brown waffles. Cameron accuses him of not answering the question.
1210: Cameron’s getting angry now, and bashes the papers in front of him.
1212: Brown accuses Cameron of creating party politics out of this. Cameron responds that Brown’s being cheap and asks him to withdraw the accusation. Cameron’s doing a good job here of exposing Brown’s disingenuous PMQs technique.
1214: Cameron’s still pushing Brown to withdraw his claim that the Tory leader’s playing “party politics” over the Baby P case. This is one of the angriest PMQs for some time, although Cameron’s ire is understandable.
1215: Brown will not withdraw the claim. Says that the Commons should unite over this issue.
1218: Nick Clegg now. Rightly claims Brown dressed up the 10p tax debacle as a “tax cut” (cf Brown’s press conference yesterday). Clegg says low-income earners need real tax cuts.
1219: Brown, predictably, reduces the debate into one of “investment vs [Lib Dem] cuts”. Even so, Clegg’s attack is effective. There’s much political capital in reminding voters of the 10p tax con.
1222: Backbench questions on small businesses and diabetes.
1223: Brown says that new guidance on Gurkhas’ settlement rights will be issued soon.
1224: Angus Robertson asks for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq and for an inquiry into the war. Brown hints that there’ll be a change in the British mission there shortly.
1227: Questions on dementia, Heathrow and, again, Baby P.
1230: Brown gets a dig in at George Osborne’s fuel duty stabiliser.
1232: Michael Spicer: “What was the economic theory behind ‘no more boom and bust'”
1234: That’s it.
VERDICT: It’s hard to talk in terms of “winning” and “losing” for a PMQs which centred around an angry exchange between Cameron and Brown over the tragic Baby P case. Quite simply, Brown disgraced himself by dodging the Tory leader’s questions and then accusing him of playing “party politics” over the situation. Cameron, to his credit, acted properly over the accusation – and, to that extent, came out on top. Continuing his impressive PMQs performances of the past few weeks, Nick Clegg got in some effective reminders of the 10p tax fiasco.
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