Coalition

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 1 December 2010

VERDICT: A freewheeling, swashbuckling sort of performance from Cameron today, that was encapsulated by a single line: “I’d rather be a Child of Thatcher than a Son of Brown”. Sure, that may not go down too well with lefty Lib Dems nor, indeed, many Scottish voters. But, in the context of PMQs, it was a rapier response to Ed Miliband’s sclerotic lines of questioning. Why the Labour leader chose to completely ignore today’s Mervyn King quotes, and sift unpersuasively through the footnotes of the OBR report, I’m not sure. In any case, the plan didn’t work at all. This was yet another PMQs which generated more heat than light, but

Daniel Korski

Poverty NGO or Labour stooge?

While I worked at DfiD, officials were very keen to disabuse me of my suspicion that some NGOs are in fact not focused on a politically-neutral campaign to end worldwide poverty but are instead extensions of the Labour movement. They may be staffed by Labour supporters, run by ex-Labour advisers or just be used to working with a Labour government; but they were not corporately aligned in any way. Or so I was told. And I was happy to believe it. But what is this? War on Want and the Jubilee Debt Campaign – two supposedly internationally-focused NGOs – are said to have joined forces with the protest organisation UK

Tuesday

James Forsyth

The Lib Dems need to get their act together on tuition fees

There have been a huge amount of police out in Westminster today. After being caught off-guard by the student demo a few weeks back, the cops are now leaving nothing to chance.   But if the police have now got their act together, the same cannot be said of the Liberal Democrats. They are currently considering whipping their MPs to abstain on tuition fees despite the fact that the government’s policy is one that has been crafted by a Lib Dem Secretary of State, Vince Cable, and a Tory Minister of State, David Willetts.   If the Lib Dems were to abstain, it would play to the worst stereotypes of

David Blackburn

Lansley gives us a nudge

Andrew Lansley’s rhetoric is strident: ‘It’s time for politicians to stop telling people to make healthy choices. Rather than lecturing people about their habits we will give them the support they need… we will support leadership from within communities.’ One could be forgiven for thinking that the Health White Paper will inaugurate a completely new dawn. It doesn’t. Many of Lansley’s initiatives are resuscitated Labour policies: taxes on alcohol and tobacco and incentivising healthy living through choice are tried and tested formulas that have had limited past success in every field bar raising revenue. Lansley’s White Paper is not a testament of radicalism, but it is quietly revolutionary nonetheless. Of

Joanna Hughes

What were the CPS and the courts thinking? 

A mother jailed for retracting allegations of rape by her husband, (allegations she now says were truthful) has been freed. A few days ago, appeal judges overturned the eight-month sentence of which she had served seventeen days, ordering her immediate release.  A triumph for common sense and compassion, but why was she jailed in the first place? Yes, the CPS thought she’d lied under oath and invented a rape claim – and that’s serious – but, as it turns out, her husband intimidated her into retracting the claim. In any event, an eight-month sentence is excessive. It is precisely the sort of sentence that the government should be reviewing in

David Blackburn

Clegg fights back in tuition fees row

Nick Clegg has written a gloriously condescending letter to Aaron Porter, who hopes to recall Liberal Democrat MPs who vote in favour of tuition fees rises. Clegg emphasises that he was unable to deliver the tuition fee pledge in coalition, and therefore struck out to make university funding as fair as possible. After a wide consultation, it was found that the graduate contribution scheme is the fairest and most progressive outcome. He urges Porter to temper his language and not misrepresent the government’s position for political aims. ‘Grow up’ seems to be the unspoken request. ‘However,  I also believe that all of us involved in this debate have a greater

Monday

James Forsyth

Osborne airs the Tories’ election message

George Osborne’s autumn statement previewed what I suspect will be the coalition, or at least the Conservatives, re-election message. ‘This government has taken Britain out of the financial danger zone and set our economy on the path to recovery.’   Today’s OBR forecast was a boon for the Chancellor. It suggests that there won’t be a double-dip recession, as his critics suggested there would be. The improved economic numbers allowed him to come to the House and declare that the deficit reduction ‘plan is working’, and that already the coalition has saved the country £19 billion in debt interest. Alan Johnson was his usual self in response. He attacked the

David Blackburn

The coalition will not be able to reduce net migration <br />

The FT’s Alex Barker has made an important discovery in the OBR’s report. The coalition’s immigration cap will make no impact on net migration. ‘The interim OBR’s June Budget estimates of trend growth estimates were based on an average net inward migration assumption of 140,000 per annum…. Since June, the Government has announced a limit of 21,700 for non-EU migrants coming into the UK under the skilled and highly skilled routes from April 2011, a reduction of 6,300 on 2009. At this stage, we judge that there is insufficient reason to change our average net migration assumption of 140,000 per year from 2010, which remains well below the net inflows

David Blackburn

Setting the scene for Osborne’s speech

George Osborne will make a brief statement to the house this afternoon, responding to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s revised growth forecasts. Reuters reports: ‘As expected, the Office for Budget Responsibility raised its 2010 growth forecast to 1.8 percent from its 1.2 percent June forecast to factor in a surprisingly strong performance in the middle of the year.’ The upgrade fuels Osborne’s positive narrative: the coalition pulled Britain from the abyss and international confidence in Britain’s economy is growing. These forecasts vindicate the government’s ‘cut with care’ strategy. Concrete savings are now being made and they enable the Chancellor to announce that public sector net borrowing will fall. Reuters again:

Sunday

Daniel Korski

Are they the children of the revolution?

The student protests are an important short-term development, which will undoubtedly worry the coalition. But are they also, as the Met Commissioner noted, a harbinger of something else: namely, a return to a late 1960s, Continental-style protest, which will encourage other groups – from Tube drivers to Tamils – to use sit-ins, strikes and ultimately street-based violence as a political tool. The NUS rejects that their tactics are associated with violence, knowing it will turn the majority of English people against them. Blame is heaped on small groups of agitators. Anthony Barnett argues that unlike in the 1960s, “the relationship to violence is also much better, as shown by the

David Blackburn

Lansley’s NHS revolution

Round n in the transparency revolution: Andrew Lansley has welcomed the publication of the latest Dr Foster hospital list, detailing post-operative failures in NHS care. The Observer reports: 1) Almost 10,000 patients suffered an accidental puncture or laceration. 2) More than 2,000 had post-operative intestinal bleeding. 3) More than 13,000 mothers suffered an obstetric tear while giving birth. 4) Some 30,500 patients developed a blood clot. 5) 1,300 patients contracted blood poisoning after surgery. Despite record investment and targets for standards, the NHS still suffers setbacks in the mundane that have severe consequences – according to the report, several hospitals have ‘dangerously high death rates’. A defender of the NHS’

Daniel Korski

A degree of truth

Tuition fees work. By the standards that any progressive is supposed to hold dear – higher overall participation rates in universities and higher participation rates among low income groups – experience from other countries shows that fees work. As the think tank Centreforum showed four years ago in an in-depth study, fees have long been the norm in Australia, New Zealand and the United States and these countries have seen “their universities’ reputations grow and their higher education participation rates rise across the social spectrum.” Meanwhile, the UK has been sliding backwards. In 2000, the UK had the third-highest graduation rate among OECD countries, with 37 percent of young people

David Blackburn

Some early statistical vindication for IDS

The Observer has news that will warm the government’s hearts. Ernst and Young have conducted a report that suggests 100,000 public sector jobs will be saved thanks to the savings made by welfare reform. The report’s other finding, a crucial one, is that the Treasury will be raking in £11bn by 2014-15. So then, a statistical vindication for IDS’ reforms, the economic side of them at least. It also gives the government some defensive hardware ahead of tomorrow’s Chancellor’s autumn statement. Not that it really needs it. On the back of Britain’s strong economic performance in the third quarter, the Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to raise its 2010

Saturday

James Forsyth

ANTI politics

Tim Montgomerie has a thoughtful essay in the Daily Mail about the ANTIs, those who feel so let down by the political status quo that they have given up voting for any of the mainstream parties. These five million people, according to a recent set of research, feel angry at the political class, neglected financially, that their traditional values are being trampled on and worried about large-scale immigration. Obviously, politics can’t just be about these voters. But there’s clearly something substantially wrong when such a large chunk of the country feel so alienated from mainstream politics. One thing that worries me is that I don’t see many political figures who

Friday

Gavin Kelly

The Big Squeeze

The media pack is often blind to an impending political car-crash.  For instance, very few in Westminster, or the media, noticed the scrapping of the 10p tax band until the screech of twisting steel turned heads. The same is happening now in relation to living standards. The media and political establishment are yet to wake up to the fact that working families in Britain are about to become poorer (though hat-tip to Allister Heath for being quick off the mark on this front). The gathering wisdom is that, with the recession now behind us, household budgets will start to recover.  We have just published a new report – Squeezed Britain 

David Martin

Abolish National Insurance Contributions

Government plans for a universal state pension of £140 per week were reported in the media in late October. We should be getting more information in a Green Paper soon. While this announcement was most welcome, it raises two important questions which go to the heart of our tax and benefit system: what should happen to National Insurance Contributions (NICs)? And should we now recognise that the contributory principle behind benefit payments is effectively redundant? NICs are an important source of government revenue. The total paid in 2009/10 was £97bn, significantly more than VAT (£84bn), and over 20 percent of government receipts for that year. Yet how the NIC system

David Blackburn

Tory and Labour grandees unite against AV

The NOtoAV campaign has unveiled its patrons. It’s an impressive list. Margaret Beckett is the President, supported by Blunkett, Falconer, Prescott, Reid and Emily Thornberry on one side and Ken Clarke, Micheal Gove, William Hague, Steve Norris and Baroness Warsi on the other. The squeeze is on. The YEStoAV campaign has Labour supporters, but they aren’t quite so august. Iain Martin reckons that the YES team are faced with a cross-party opposition that can get these diverse big beasts working together. Iain calls it a pincer movement on the Lib Dems. The strategy is to characterise electoral reform as aan exclusively sectional interest: Clegg’s fixation. With his singular brand of native wit, John

Thursday

Dale Bassett

Time for a history lesson

“Now, with the best teaching force and the best school leadership ever, we are poised to become world class if we have the courage and vision to reform and invest further and put the parent and pupil at the centre of the system. Our reforms must build on the freedoms that schools have increasingly received, but extend them radically. We must put parents in the driving seat for change in all-ability schools that retain the comprehensive principle of non-selection, but operate very differently from the traditional comprehensive. And to underpin this change, the local authority must move from being a provider of education to being its local commissioner and the

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

The problem for Gove is that structures beget standards

As you’d expect, Michael Gove’s White Paper is a feast of good sense. His speech in the Commons was powerful analysis, and his rebuttal of Labour MPs fun to watch. He’s all for making kids learn properly in primary school, retaining order in the classroom, making detention easier and better modern language teaching. Amen, amen, amen. But, I fear that the White Paper will not be transformative, for a simple reason: the schools system is broken. It doesn’t respond to instructions. The Education Secretary does not run education – power rests with local authorities and the teaching unions. They’re not too keen on Gove, and have allies in parliament ready

Daniel Korski

Balkan promises still to keep

One of the many areas that the Conservative Party took a very different line from Labour was on the Western Balkans. William Hague travelled to the region, frequently asked questions in Parliament and had the war-torn region written into the Coalition Agreement as a government priority. Seven months into the government’s mandate, how has Britain’s Balkan policy changed? How has Britain been able to affect things for the better? The answer is a tad disappointing. There are no more British soldiers or diplomats in the region than there were before the election. Reconstruction funds are slated to decrease. At the Sarajevo Summit earlier this year,  the Foreign Secretary had the