Uk politics

Monday

David Blackburn

Losing control | 4 April 2011

The future of the Health and Social Care Bill is a test of Craig Oliver. For months there has been a steady drip of quiet critiques of the bill; but some Liberal Democrat grandees have suddenly broken cover and burst into open dissent. David Owen and Shirley Williams have called for the bill’s implementation to be slowed and for consultation to re-open. Both are especially concerned that private sector involvement will expose the NHS to competition law, which they believe would be detrimental to the NHS. As Williams put it: “If it looks as if it’s simply part of what’s becoming a private market we’ll be slap-bang in the middle

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Hardly a model of good government

What is going on with the government’s health reforms is highly unusual. Normally, once a bill has gone through second reading and committee stage in the Commons there are very few changes made to it. But the coalition is considering some fairly significant changes to the Health and Social Care Bill in a bid to make it more politically palatable. It is hardly a model of good government.   This state of affairs provides ample opportunity for Ed Miliband to land some blows on the coalition, as he did in this morning’s speech delivered — symbolically — at the RSA, the new home of Blair’s former policy chief Matthew Taylor.

David Blackburn

Rescuing Lansley’s reforms

The fate of Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms is attracting apocalyptic headlines. A report in the Times (£) declares that a ‘last-ditch’ salvage is underway; the FT carries an editorial in similar tone, and the Guardian devotes its front page to David Cameron’s attempt to save face. Over at Conservative Home, Jonathan Isaby relates how the strategy will unfold. The principles of the bill will remain intact, but it will be delayed using the ‘natural pause’ in parliamentary procedure. During this time, the details of the bill be scrutinised and the government will also use this time to reiterate its view that these reforms are necessary for the NHS to manage

Sunday

David Blackburn

A month to go and still none the wiser

It’s supposed to be the day of rest, but there’s no rest for the wicked. The two sides of the alternative vote referendum have been exchanging blows all day. It seems the pro-AV camp have purged black poet Benjamin Zephaniah from some of their leaflets. Apparently, Zephaniah is all present and correct on leaflets sent to London addresses; but he has been apparently replaced by Tony Robinson in those sent to Sussex and Cornwall. The No campaign has described its opponents as “ashamed” of Mr Zephaniah’s colour, and the Yes campaign said the allegation was a “new low”. It’s six of one and half of dozen of the other, and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition is in a mess of its own making over the NHS

The NHS is, as Nigel Lawson once remarked, the new national religion of this country. This makes it difficult to discuss the subject in a rational matter and any attempt to reform it is likely to run into its own Pilgrimage of Grace as Andrew Lansley and the coalition are discovering. The government’s problem is that it can’t do a simple u-turn. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, Cameron can’t shelve this scheme without bringing his own judgement into question. Once Cameron and Clegg signed the introduction to the white paper setting out these reforms, they crossed the Rubicon. So instead the coalition is left trying to tinker and

David Blackburn

Northern Ireland unites, sort of

A man hunt is underway for the perpetrators of yesterday’s murder in Omagh, and the administration at Stormont and the PSNI have presented a united front against antediluvian dissidence. Meanwhile, Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister, is accused by groups associated with the DUP and the Traditional Unionist Voice of having attended an illegal march commemorating the IRA last October. Sectarianism is still rife.

David Blackburn

Trouble with the big society

A gaggle of academics have written to the Observer to condemn the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for accepting £100m from the government. The AHRC is conducting research into the big society, and the allegation is that the settlement was conditional, an allegation which is denied.  Doubtless the 69 signatories are dons of the tweedily conservative variety, but their objections perhaps explain why Cameron’s flagship policy is so mistrusted. They write: ‘When academic research is used to promote party political ideologies its quality and value decline. It also threatens democracy and the constitution. While academic work may be partly paid for out of public funds, this ought not to

Saturday

Martyn Frampton

Desperate rearguard

The murder of a police officer in Northern Ireland once again proves that the threat from dissident republican terrorism remains only too real. This latest attack comes against a background of various attempted bombings and hoax alerts that have disrupted life in the province. Back in January, a sophisticated “double-tap” bomb attack on a police patrol in north Belfast was only narrowly averted. Since then a series of incidents have occurred in Derry, Belfast and Fermanagh. Going back further, the last two years (since the triple murder of March 2009) have seen the bombing of banks, courthouses, police stations and even MI5’s regional headquarters in Northern Ireland. Just over fourteen

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Parliamentary privilege must be protected from over-mighty judges

Sometimes, one does really wonder about the British judiciary. Its decision to issue injunctions which bar people from talking to their MPs about an issue, as revealed in The Times this morning, displays a shocking contempt for parliament. It suggests that the court have learned little from the Trafigura case. The justification for these so-called ‘hyper injunctions’ is that if someone tells an MP about a case, it can then be raised in parliament and what the MP said reported under parliamentary privilege. But parliamentary privilege exists for a reason: MPs must be able to raise any issue they want in parliament. For judges to try and limit it goes against

David Blackburn

BREAKING: Car bomb explodes in Omagh, County Tyrone

Not clear as yet if there have been any casaulties. More to follow. Reports are sketchy, but it seems that the blast took place in a residential road, away from the crowded central shopping areas that were the scene of the bloody atrocity committed 13 years ago.  The bomb was planted underneath the car of a local Catholic PSNI officer .The officer is critically wounded.  This act is very likely to have been perpetrated by extreme Republican dissidents; and it follows a trend of Republican/gang violence against police in the province, a battle for which London and Stormont allocated more than £240 million last month. UPDATE: DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson reports that the

Gordon Hector

Trouble over the NHS reforms – inevitable or not?

Was the stooshie over health reforms inevitable? From much of the coverage, you’d think it was always going to end in tears, as people line up to criticise Lansley and rumours about Number 10’s search for a dignified exit strategy (£) swirl around the Westminster village. But it didn’t have to be like this. For a start, the basic idea is one that should be easy to sell to the public. Matthew Parris has pointed out (£) that people intuitively look to their GP as the route into healthcare. It shouldn’t be hard to convince the public they should lead commissioning. It’s been difficult mainly because the health professionals aren’t on-side.

David Blackburn

Planning to ruin Lansley’s party

How can Nick Clegg recover from defeat in the AV referendum? Andrew Grice considers the question in his column and reveals that Clegg is not too bothered about AV: his sight is trained on a bigger prize. ‘A U-turn in the controversial NHS reforms to hand 80 per cent of the budget to GPs and scrap primary care trusts (PCTs). Mr Clegg is convinced that there must be big symbolic changes to the NHS and Social Care Bill.  That would not be good news for Andrew Lansley…He knows that Mr Cameron will demand some changes and is prepared to see a few technical amendments to the Bill during its passage through

David Blackburn

Clearing up after the storm

The recession has made Britain’s banks less competitive and they should be broken up, concludes the Treasury Select Committee. As the banking system spiralled towards oblivion in 2008, the market became more concentrated. ‘The financial crisis has resulted in significant consolidation of the UK retail market. Well known firms such as HBOS, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford and Bingley have either exited the market or merged with rival firms. A large number of building societies have merged, undermining the diversity of provision in the sector. Whilst these ‘rescues’ were necessary in order to preserve financial stability, the consequence has been to reduce competition and choice in the market.’ Each merger

Friday

Fraser Nelson

At last, Grayling takes on the Ancien Regime

To disguise the radical nature of reform, one need only make it boring. And here Chris Grayling has succeeded spectacularly. Today he has announced further details on the ‘Work Programme’ and the ‘Benefit Migration’, which sound like the type of well-intentioned but doomed reforms that ministers tried over the Labour years. The welfare state has incubated the very ‘giant evils’ it was designed to eradicate. There are, scandalously, 2.6 million on incapacity benefit right now – a category which ensures they don’t count in unemployment figures. Brown didn’t care much, but Grayling is taking this head-on. In tests on 1,700 IB claimants in Burnley and Aberdeen, it was found that

David Blackburn

An election jam in Leicester spells trouble for Clegg

Nick Clegg is campaigning in Leicester today, ahead of the local election. The Labour party has just confirmed that Sir Peter Soulsby has stood down as MP for Leicester South today to seek election as the town’s Mayor. A happy coincidence? Probably not. Labour are already running a coherent campaign in Leicester. Michael Crick points out that the by-election will fall on 5 May, together with the local council elections, the Mayoral election and the referendum on the alternative vote.  A party spokesman has opened new parliamentary candidate Jonathan Ashworth’s (who used to work for Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband) campaign by saying: ‘Both Peter and Jon will offer the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A shameful episode

Libby Brooks’ piece in The Guardian today is shameful. Writing about the violence that followed last weekend’s march, she  argues that the ‘relevant question is not whether or how to condemn those acts – but if any coherent agenda lies behind them and how important it is for that to sit neatly with the agenda of the whole’. She even quotes approvingly the idea that the violence can be beneficial as it might push the government to do a deal with the moderate elements of the movement and wants us to remember that ‘the vast majority of damage on Saturday was sustained by property, not persons (84 people were treated

David Blackburn

Shaky dealings are damaging the reputation of Britain’s universities

A delegation from Durham University flew to Kuwait in February to build what it termed ‘academic partnerships’. They succeeded. On Monday afternoon, Durham University announced the formation of the ‘Al-Sabah Programme in International Relations, Regional Politics and Security.’ In an internal document sent to academic staff, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris Higgins, revealed that that this seat had been ‘funded personally by Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabah of Kuwait’, the Kuwati Prime Minister, and that the ‘£2.5million endowment will support the Al-Sabah Chair, associated research and two PhD studentships in perpetuity’. Al-Sabah has made what is politely termed a singular contribution to democratic traditions. He was appointed in 2006 by his uncle, the

David Blackburn

How to encourage the others

Lord Malloch Brown has inverted Voltaire’s maxim on the execution of Admiral Byng: treat Moussa Koussa well to encourage the others. Most of this morning’s papers expect further defections from the Gaddafi regime ‘within days’. These defections are expected to come from Gaddafi’s civil administration; the Colonel’s military and security arms remain fiercely loyal. The Foreign Office refuses to give a ‘running commentary’ on events, but the confidence of its officials is ill-disguised. It is increasingly apparent that Tripoli is spiralling into desperation and that the fetid regime is fracturing. The Guardian reports that an aide of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Mohammad Ismail, has been in London. Details are scarce but

Thursday

James Forsyth

Welfare to work will be the first big test of the coalition’s new model for public services

Moving people from welfare to work is going to be the first big test of the idea that public services should be paid for by the state but don’t have to be provided by the state. The coalition intends to task private sector and voluntary groups with moving the unemployed back into the labour force and then pay them by results. For every person they move back into stable employment, they will be paid a fee—based on how long the person has been out of the labour market—out of the saved welfare payments. Tomorrow, the government intends to announce the groups that have successfully bid for these contracts. I understand

Peter Hoskin

Ed Balls ties himself in knots

The Most Annoying Figure in British Politics™ is spread absolutely everywhere today: in the newspapers, on Twitter and, most notably, in interview with the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan. The interview really is worth reading, not least because it pulls out and probes some of Ball’s arguments, both for himself and for Labour’s fiscal reasoning. Guido has already dwelt on the former — “I’m a very loyal person,” quoth the shadow chancellor — but what about the latter? Three things struck me: 1) Oh, yeah, there was a structural deficit. The Big News here is probably Balls’s admission that Labour did run up a structural deficit (i.e. a deficit that remains