Uk politics

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

The immigration game

The Fake Sheikh, Mazher Mahmood, has a good wee scoop in the News of the World today. The papers’ reporters posed as would-be immigrants, and heard immigration advisers tell them how to game the system. The quotes speak best for themselves.   1. Official from the International Immigration Advisory Service in Manchester. “Floods have come in Pakistan. Say you have lost your family and your home. That’s the best story I can see … Just get me a few photos of the floods and we can say your relatives drowned and your home is gone. The British are very sympathetic.”   2. The same official, to a second undercover reporter.

Peter Hoskin

The axe hovers over welfare (and welfare cheats)

As we know, education and defence have now had their budgets settled – another two ticks alongside the checklist. But that still leaves the third member of the coalition’s trio of sticky settlements unresolved: welfare. The “quad” of David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander will meet today to bash out the final details. Yet some of their key talking points and decisions have already made it into the papers (especially in this article (£) in the Sunday Times). Here’s my round-up, along with brief comments: 1) Crackdown on welfare cheats. George Osborne sets the tone with his article in the News of the World (now also behind

Saturday

David Blackburn

Lansley wants ‘no win, no fee’ medicine

Last week, Andrew Lansley spent the weekend reassuring sceptics about his NHS commissioning reforms. He’s at it again this weekend in an interview with the Times (£). Hoping to calm Claire Rayner’s restless ghost, Lansley emphasises that his reforms will improve patient care and give the patient-come-taxpayer value for money. Medicine and treatment are Lansley’s primary target. On the day that Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish Health Secretary, has protected free prescriptions in Scotland, Lansley proposes this radical solution to regulating and affording expensive treatments: ‘“NICE will be able to give advice about what is the best treatment but it won’t be about saying ‘You must have this’ or even less

David Blackburn

Why the Tories didn’t win

Courtesy of John Rentoul, Tim Bale, professor of politics at the University of Sussex, offers this appraisal of the 2010 election: ‘For all the talk in opposition of decontaminating the Tory brand, of making the party more tolerant and inclusive and less ‘nasty’, the key task facing Cameron when he took over in late 2005 was reassuring voters that the Conservatives could be trusted on welfare and public services.  All the market research suggested that this was the sine qua non — a necessary if not a sufficient condition — of a return to office. When the global financial crisis hit and Britain’s budget deficit ballooned, however, this task remained

Will Tanner

What you need to know ahead of the Spending Review: Crime

This is the latest in our series of posts on the Spending Review with Reform. A list of previous posts can be found here. What is the budget? The UK has one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world, spending a higher proportion of GDP than any other country in the OECD. Total spending on crime amounted to £23 billion for 2009-10. However, recent research suggests that total government spending on public order and safety amounts to more than £31 billion overall. Aside from central government funding, police authorities receive funding from the police, raised locally through council tax. In 2009-10 this amounted to just under a

David Blackburn

Labour to propose raising the top rate of income tax?

Peter Hain is wizened counsellor to young king Ed, or gives that impression at least. The two are close, which makes Hain’s recent comments on tax noteworthy. Hain describes universal benefit as ‘non-negotiable’, adding: “If you start driving a coach and horses through universality you’re effectively saying to middle Britain, ‘you’ve got no stake in the welfare state.’ I think the Tories and Liberals are making a very big mistake on child benefit. There’s an answer to people on higher incomes and that’s they pay higher taxes. And that is the answer to squaring that circle.” Miliband is determined to defend universal benefit regardless of cost and he also favours a

David Blackburn

The government protects yet more spending

This morning’s papers announce that cuts to the defence budget will be considerably less than 10 percent, following an intervention from David Cameron. Liam Fox has fought a valiant rearguard to protect his budget; success has come at significant personal cost.  And that’s not all. The BBC has learnt that the schools budget is to receive a real terms spending increase when the Fairness Premium for the disadvantaged and the Pupil Premium are added to the final reckoning. This is politically interesting: education is the one issue where Labour’s opposition has been coherent. Michael Gove was eviscerated over his incompetent cancellation of the school building project and his free schools

Friday

James Forsyth

The cuts are almost settled

We are entering the end game of the spending review. The Department of Education settled this morning, according to both Tory and Lib Dem sources. Although there is confusion about whether the money for the pupil premium is coming from inside or outside the education budget – Clegg’s speech suggested outside but other Whitehall sources are not so sure. Liam Fox has told friends that he knows the final number for the defence budget and that it is a lot better than expected over the summer. Fox has played a blinder in terms of defending his budget but this has come at a huge personal cost for him. Even supporters

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition’s liberal approach to sentencing could be the final straw for the middle class

Today brings another couple of reminders of the coalition’s potential political problem with the middle class. In the Telegraph, Peter Oborne attacks Cameron and Osborne for a “morally disgusting” policy of targeting the middle class for an outsize share of the fiscal pain. While the Mail’s front page screams ‘What does get you locked up?’ as it details how 2,700 criminals who have more than fifty convictions were not sent to prison. Now, this is, obviously, the result of the last government’s sentencing policies. But, as the Mail points out repreatedly, this is a regime that Ken Clarke wants to make more liberal. In other words, even fewer people would

George Trefgarne

The true scale of the cuts

George Osborne likes to spend his weekends at Dorneywood, the chancellor’s official residence near Slough, but I doubt this one will be  particularly enjoyable. He will be burning the midnight oil as he prepares next Wednesday’s spending review. No doubt he will also be taking calls from ministerial colleagues, muttering dark threats about aircraft carriers, the arts, sport, the roads budget, overseas consulates – you name it. And just when the numbers all add up he will probably have to start all over again after discovering that No10 has  promised to save some wind turbines because Steve Hilton bumped into somebody at a drinks party.   Meanwhile, we can expect

Tom Clougherty

Privatization revisited

The similarities between now and the early years of the Thatcher government can easily be overplayed. Yes, there are parallels: a public sector grown fat on government profligacy, unions leaders stirring up resentment, and a government unsure about quite how radical it wants to be. But there are clear differences too: the political dynamics, the industrial landscape, and, indeed, the magnitude of the fiscal crisis. Nevertheless, there is at least one successful Thatcher-era policy that is desperately due a comeback: privatisation. It won’t have escaped many CoffeeHousers’ notice that, despite the tough talk on the deficit, the government is still borrowing almost £20m per hour. The cost of servicing our

Peter Hoskin

Clegg sweetens the pill with a fairness premium

Only five days to go until the spending review – and after weeks of emphasis on the cuts we’re about to see, the government has today unveiled a new spending commitment. It comes courtesy of Nick Clegg: a new “fairness premium” targeted at the least well-off young people. Lib Dem Voice has full details here, but the basic point is that £7 billion will be spent, across 4 years, on programmes for disadvantaged 2 to 20 year-olds. Much of this will go towards the “pupil premium” that we’ve heard so much about, and which should advance school choice in the most deprived areas. Putting aside his genuine commitment to it,

Thursday

Patrick Nolan

The welfare money-go-round

Next week’s spending review will involve hard decisions. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will go. People in work will find employment conditions less generous with, for example, greater contributions required for their pensions. People out of work will find benefits provide less assistance and be under greater pressure to return to work. Goods in shops will be more expensive, with the basic VAT rate going up, some new schools will no longer be built, more hospitals will be under pressure to close and students will face higher tuition fees.   These changes are necessary but are just the start. To get the deficit under control in this Parliament, much more

David Blackburn

Labour’s economic credibility goes on tour to Brussels

Bill Cash’s amendment to the EU budget bill may not have been the victory that the signatories to Douglas Carswell’s more incendiary effort hoped for, but it is significant. It is exactly in line with government policy that seeks to cap the EU budget and search for cuts. As Treasury Minister Justine Greening put it in the debate last night: ‘I will not hide from the House the Government’s frustration that some of our partners – and those in EU institutions – do not seem to understand how bizarre it is, when national budgets are under such extraordinary pressure, that the EU should be immune from that.’ The EU Commission

David Blackburn

MacShane suspended

Denis MacShane, the lachrymose MP for Rotherham, has been suspended following the Privilege and Standards Committee’s decision to report him to the Metropolitan Police. MacShane also got into scalding water recently when he castigated a member of IPSA’s staff with what might be termed ‘most unparliamentary language’. MacShane is one of the old guard who had a flagrant disregard for the public purse. But, even so, he has a point when it comes to IPSA. A bad system is no better than one easily exploited. Ben Brogan explains in his Telegraph column: ‘No wonder then that they, along with the MPs who survived the May cull, are frustrated by the

Max Chambers

The bonfire of the quangos

Policy Exchange has been arguing for some time that the Youth Justice Board  should be abolished, with its functions shared between the Ministry of Justice and local councils. It has just been revealed that the body will indeed be scrapped, despite rumours that the Justice Secretary tried to buy more time before making a decision on its future,  before eventually losing out to the Cabinet Office.  There will inevitably be concern at the news from various children’s charities and penal reform organizations who will argue that young offenders need to be treated as a distinct group. So, why did we argue for the YJB to be scrapped and what will

David Blackburn

Dramatic cut in pension relief

The coalition is not afraid of the moneyed classes, or Peter Mandelson’s ‘filty rich’. Tax relief on pension contributions is to be dramatically cut.  The allowance will be decreased from £250,000 per annum to £50,000 and the pension cap will fall from £1.8m to £1.5m and retiring workers could be taxed at 55 percent on any sum above that sum. These changes will save the Treasury £4bn per annum, mainly by limiting how much of a bonus pot or a windfall can avoid income or capital gains tax. The Telegraph describes the move as a ‘raid’ on the ‘squuezed middle’, which is not strictly true. The previous governnment made similar

David Blackburn

Cameron’s government has been brave so far; it must not flinch at the finish

The spending review’s actors are jostling for position at the final curtain call. Bit-part players are stealing for the prominence of the centre, Whitehall’s bigger beasts fight to preserve their dwindling limelight and the leadership try to direct and subjugate the warring egos. Defence seems more or less settled, with the navy’s grandiose element apparently securing its two super-carriers. Doubts remain over the education budget’s final reckoning and welfare is unsettled as yet. Après child benefit, le deluge – so to speak. An attack on the principle of universal benefit would have predictable consequences. Questions have arisen about the government’s commitment to the winter fuel allowance and the cold weather

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Boles: the coalition is David Miliband’s natural home

Nick Boles is fast becoming ubiquitous. He wrote an article for this morning’s Guardian, urging Labour’s wounded Blairites to join the coalition, where ‘there is room for everyone inspired by the desire to transform the way that government works and give people more control over their lives.’ He writes: ‘If President Obama can keep Republican Robert Gates as secretary of state for defence, does Britain have to forfeit the remarkable talent of David Miliband? Can the coalition afford to do without the passionate expertise of Andrew Adonis as it completes his quest to connect Britain’s great cities with high-speed rail? Must we try to build the “big society” without the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tories defying the profligate European Union

Anyone who thought the new intake of Tory MPs were a bunch of automatons should take a look at the House of Commons order paper today. MPs have been asked to sign away 60 percent more of British taxpayers’ money to Brussels, in defiance of British public opinion. For years, they have done so without qualms. But the Conservatives, who were so rightly outraged at the way Labour whipped through the Lisbon Treaty, are challenging this. In an age of austerity, when we’re cutting child benefit and asking if Britain can afford to be a world-class military power, why should MPs sign off a 60 percent increase in the amount