Coalition

Thursday

Alex Morton

Some perspective on housing benefit

Depending on who you read, the planned £400 a week cap on housing benefit is either comparable to Nazi concentration camps, death squads in Brazil, or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans Critics have ranged from the Mayor of London to the ultra Left. So it is worth taking a moment to get some perspective. Firstly, the general caps on housing benefit don’t even impact on social tenants because they pay lower, subsidised rents, (though the £26,000 cap on the total amount of benefits per household might hit them). But for housing benefit claimants in the private sector outside London, less than 1% are affected by the cap. And even in

Peter Hoskin

Question: how much do we contribute towards the EU budget?

Answer: it depends on how you look at it. I’ve put together the chart below (click for a larger version), which sets how much money we’ve given the the EU since 1973. There are three lines for each year: i) our gross contribution, ii) our total contribution (which is the gross contribution minus the money we get back from the rebate), and iii) the net contribution (gross contribution minus both the rebate and the money that the Treasury gets to pay for various EU projects across the UK). In terms of how much the EU costs the taxpayer, then, I’d say the second line is the best one to follow:

David Blackburn

Labour’s hypocrisy on the EU budget

Labour’s Shadow Europe Minister, Wayne David, has been busy castigating David Cameron for his apparent failure to secure an EU Budget freeze. He says, ‘It is imperative that we do have a freeze on the EU budget’. Quite so, why then did Labour MEPs vote against an amendement to freeze it?    

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris v Dave, this time it’s serious

Make no mistake about it, Boris Johnson’s rhetorical assault on the coalition’s housing benefit plan is a direct challenge to David Cameron’s authority. The two best-known Conservatives in the country are now involved in a battle that only one of them can win.   Boris told BBC London this morning: “What we will not see and we will not accept any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London. “On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots.” What is infuriating the Tory machine is not only Boris’s criticisms, but the language that he

Peter Hoskin

Another fine mess | 28 October 2010

You know that child benefit cut for higher-rate taxpayers? Yeah, well, it may not be quite as straightforward as the government have hitherto indicated. In an important post on his Wall Street Journal blog, Iain Martin sets out a problem that is exercising nerves and minds in the Treasury: simply put, there’s no existing method for establishing whether mothers (who receive child benefit) are living in a household which pays tax at the higher rate. In effect, this means that the policy is “unenforceable” – although there are some possible solutions, as Iain points out: “I hear that ministers are considering (and tell me which part of the rest of

David Blackburn

The Big Society in action

The Big Society, in so far as it can be defined at all, envisages an empowered people taking responsibility for their local communities. The little platoons’ efforts could determine the atmosphere of a place, by helping to deliver public services, founding employment schemes, running activities that unite the rich and the dispossessed, and exercising more influence over planning authorities. It is, in effect, an assault on adamantine local government, overbearing central government and predominant corporatism. This morning’s Independent has a cockle-warming tale of how the fledgling culture of localism and voluntarism is taking flight: ‘More than 230 separate local campaign groups against wind farms are operating across the UK, from

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The new fairness battleground

The f word, fairness, got another outing today at PMQs as David Cameron attempted to defend the coalition’s proposed housing benefit changes from attack by Ed Miliband. Cameron’s argument was that it isn’t fair for people to be subsiding people on housing benefit to live in houses that they couldn’t afford to live in themselves. On this, I strongly suspect that most people in the country agree with him. If Labour wants to turn housing benefit into a big issue, the wedge will work to the Conservatives’ advantage. However, what should be worrying the coalition is that the changes to housing benefit will have to be implemented by local authorities,

Peter Hoskin

The pros and cons of tweaking the housing benefit cuts

It says a lot about the Lib Dems that a meeting between their party leader and deputy leader can throw up so many policy differences. When Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes chatted behind closed doors yesterday, the latter sought concessions over the coalition’s housing benefit cuts – the cuts that Clegg then had to defend in the House. This morning, it was reported that he might just get some of them, even though Downing St are denying the story. Regardless of the outcome, the situation is reminiscent of the child benefit cut for higher-rate taxpayers. A policy was announced, only for the coalition to start pulling back from it in

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 27 October 2010

VERDICT: The housing benefit cuts inspired Ed Miliband’s chosen attack – and he deployed it quite effectively, with none of the unclarity that we saw last week. For the most part, though, Cameron stood firm – leaning on his favourite rhetorical stick, What Would Labour Do? – and his final flurry against Ed Miliband was enough, I think, to win him this encounter on points. But don’t expect this housing benefit issue to dissipate quickly. Bob Russell’s question was evidence enough of how tricky this could be for the coalition. 1232: And that’s it. My quick verdict shortly. 1231: Bob Russell, a Lib Dem, says that housing benefit cuts are

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s stage directions

Labour have sprung a leak, and it’s furnishing the Times with some high-grade copy. Yesterday, the paper got their hands on an internal party memo about economic policy. Today, it’s one on how Ed Miliband should deal with PMQs (£). With this week’s bout only an hour-and-a-half away, here are some of the key snippets: 1. The Big Prize. “The big prize is usually to provoke the PM into appearing evasive by repeatedly failing to answer a simple question, often one that requires a simple Yes or No.” 2. Cheer lines. “It’s important to have a cheer line that goes down well in the chamber and can be clipped easily

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Free schools: good for all schools

Free schools are all well and good – but what about the schools that remain? Some CoffeeHousers raise this question in response to my earlier blog, and it’s important enough to deserve a post in itself. Because introducing new schools to compete with council schools is the best way of raising standards for all – and studies around the world prove this. The ‘free schools’ agenda is not some Govian brainwave, but a simple reform that is being enacted from Chile to Obama’s charter schools. The fullest example of this has been in Sweden, which the Gove system is modelled on, where about 13 percent of upper secondary kids are

Peter Hoskin

Clegg holds no punches

Third time’s the charm? Not when it comes it Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions it’s not. Nick Clegg put in an effective performance this afternoon, but – just like the previous two sessions – there was rather more heat generated than light. So far as Labour are concerned, this monthly Q&A is little more than an opportunity to barrack the Lib Dem leader – and they set about the task with undisguised relish. Unfortunately for them, though, Nick Clegg bites back. Hard. Answering a question from Chris Bryant – in which the Labour MP referred to coalition housing benefit cuts as a “cleansing” of the poor from city centres – he

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’

David Cameron’s cuts agenda is winning him some unusual praise from the American hard Right — from the sort of people the British political class considers beyond the pale. For instance, Pat Buchanan, the former presidential candidate and hardliner extraordinaire, is so impressed by Britain’s austerity measures that he has affectionately labelled Cameron the ‘Tea Party Tory’. He writes, ‘Casting aside the guidance of Lord Keynes — government-induced deficits are the right remedy for recessions — Cameron has bet his own and his party’s future on the new austerity. He is making Maggie Thatcher look like Tip O’Neill.’ I wonder how Steve Hilton would feel about this particular bit of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A double boost for the coalition’s economic strategy

Perhaps, the most important thing about the 0.8 percent growth figure for the third quarter announced this morning is that all but 0.1 percent of it came from the private sector. The strength of the private sector in this quarter suggests that the coalition is right to think that the private sector can more than make up for the jobs that will be lost in the public sector over the coming months. In another piece of good economic news for the coalition, Standard and Poor have taken Britain’s triple A credit rating off negative outlook and returned it to stable. This should help keep the yield that the government has

David Blackburn

The growing need for elected police commissioners

The police are more Thin Blue Line than The Sweeney. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has found that 15 of 22 police authorities perform ‘adequately’, which is defined as meeting ‘most of the minimum requirements of the specified role…they were most effective at dealing with local short-term policing priorities’. More worrying, with forces facing 20 percent cuts: only 4 authorities were judged to have set clear strategic direction and ensured value of money. Worse still, the report found that: ‘In just over half of the police authorities inspected, there is little or no account made of the delivery of efficiencies or workforce modernisation’. These administrative shortcomings are adversely affecting operations,

Peter Hoskin

Stronger than expected growth

The growth figures for the third quarter of the year have just been released, and it’s better than we thought: 0.8 percent, twice the 0.4 percent figure that was expected, but down on the 1.2 percent achieved in the spring. In any case, it should play well for Osborne & Co. We’ve just witnessed the fastest third-quarter expansion of the economy for a decade. Double speed, rather than double dip. Really, though, these figures throw up more questions than conclusions. By far the most important is: where next? The coalition would have been untroubled by an even larger reduction in growth now (caused by weak consumer spending, among other variables),

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Which side are you on? | 26 October 2010

At last, The Guardian is reporting the grassroots rebellion in education. It has picked up on the story of Fiona Murphy who blogged on Coffee House yesterday about her trouble with the Tory-run council in Bromley. But hang on… the “grassroots revolt” of which the Guardian speaks is the councils, trying to protect their monopoly control over state schools. Here is the extract: “A flagship government policy has provoked a grassroots revolt against the coalition, with senior Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors lining up to attack the introduction of free schools, one of education secretary Michael Gove’s most cherished projects…Coalition councillors are fighting the education secretary’s plans, claiming that they

Monday

James Forsyth

Too many of today’s MPs would have been on the wrong side at Marston-Moor

We are about to find out how many coalition MPs are lobby fodder. In half-an-hour or so, the House of Commons is going to vote on whether any reduction in the number of MPs should be matched by an equivalent reduction in the number of ministers. If this measure is defeated, the power of the executive will be increased, the payroll vote will be a larger proportion of the House than it is today. Sadly, it looks as if the executive will defeat Charles Walker’s amendment. Tory MPs admit that there is absolutely no intellectual defence for the government’s view that the number of MPs can be reduced by 10

Peter Hoskin

Cable takes his wind-up act to the stage

A luminous streak of self-aggrandisement in Vince Cable’s speech to the CBI this afternoon, which began thus: “I should acknowledge that that the CBI has been remarkably far sighted; Digby Jones first invited me to speak to you eight years ago, the first Lib Dem asked to do so. I recall some members wondering ‘Vince Who?'” And continued, as Paul Waugh notes in a typically insightful post, with a passage that will wind up the Business Secretary’s detractors in the Tory party: “Just a few years ago, most people in politics, not only Gordon Brown, thought the growth problem had been solved. The only dispute was between those who shared

David Blackburn

Cameron prepares for the Brussels offensive

David Cameron’s first battle with the EU opens on Thursday. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy hope to introduce a treaty that will deliver tough sanctions on eurozone members that break budget guidelines. Their success rests on David Cameron’s support. Europe is built on quid pro quos, so Cameron will ensure that the new treaty does not prejudice Britain whilst also seeking to repatriate competences. He will avoid the more avant garde suggestions of outspoken eurosceptics – he knows that a UK Sovereignty Bill and exemption from pan-European customs arrangements are unfeasible unless Britain rescinds its membership – and, in the delicate context of coalition, seek practical assurances instead. The regulation