Politics blog + PMQs live - Wednesday 19 January
Rolling coverage of all the day's developments including prime minister's questions at midday
11.47am: Lord Hill, the education minister, has announced a 90m funding package for sixth-form colleges. The money will pay for refurbishment and new buildings.
11.43am: Jeremy Hunt's speech to the Oxford Media Convention is now on the culture department's website.
11.34am: The Unite union has launched a Don't Break Britain campaign this morning. It has published the results of research showing what impact the public spending cuts are having and it is urging the government to tackle tax avoidance, invest in regeneration, abandon the NHS reforms and protect youth services. This is from Len McCluskey, the union's general secretary elect.
Never mind Nick Clegg's alarm clock Britain this is alarm bell Britain.
This is clear, unequivocal proof that working people striving to raise their families and do a decent job are being kicked in the teeth by this government.
It is heart-breaking to hear of workers, who are not well paid, told their salaries will be slashed. It is take a cut or take a hike. What on earth has this got to do with growing our economy?
This wanton social vandalism will not create one penny in national wealth, in fact it will cost us in unemployment benefits and social despair.
11.28am: And here's Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary, on the unemployment figures.
The RMT warned that this government is following old-school, right-wing Tory ideology and it suits their purposes to keep a pool of mass unemployment as a weapon to try and drive down wages of conditions of those in work, hoping they will cower under the threat that they could be ne! xt. The time to fight back now and it is down to the unions to harness the anger of those who have lost their jobs, and who find themselves under the cosh, to mount a fighting campaign that can turn the tide on the undiluted fiscal fascism of this right-wing, ConDem government.
11.10am: Douglas Alexander, the shadow work and pensions secretary, has been on BBC News talking about the unemployment figures. According to PoliticsHome, this is what he said:
This is the second set of figures in a row that we've now seen unemployment rising. That was the case in the latter half of last year, whereas in the early part of last year when there was a different government with a different approach, we still saw real action against unemployment. So my worry about Chris Grayling is not that he's not concerned, but that he's not taking the necessary action ... We do need to see the public and the private sector in balance if we're going to see the kind of recovery that we need and we frankly think that the decisions that the government has reached - cutting too far and too fast helps begin to explain the emerging trends that we've now see.
10.53am: You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.
As for the rest of the papers, here are the stories and articles I found particularly interesting.
Andrew Grice in the Independent say relations between Andy Coulson and Steve Hilton have reached a new low.
Admirers of Mr Coulson query Mr Hilton's judgment, claiming he goes "through the back door" to re-open decisions by appealing directly to Mr Cameron.
One source, referrin! g to the allegations against the News of the World, said: "Steve and Andy have never been close. Relations have gone from bad to worse because of recent events."
Ian Birrell in the Times (paywall) on why David Cameron admires the Nordic countries. (Cameron is hosting a dinner tonight to mark the start of the UK Nordic/Baltic summit.)
It is not just the free schools and foundation hospitals of Sweden that have so captivated the coalition. It is Denmark's environmental policies, Finland's criminal justice system and Norway's aggressive promotion of women in the boardroom. And above all, it is the high quality of life, low poverty rates and sense of social harmony that make these countries consistently top lists of the best places in the world to live.
So where once it was Tony Blair who saw the Scandinavians as role models for new Labour and Gordon Brown who loved their high tax rates, now it is David Cameron who admires their public services, their informality and their sense of contentment. "He always jokes that he wishes Britain could be a Nordic country," said one aide.
Anushka Asthana and Richard Ford in the Times (paywall) says ministers are interested in a plan being put forward by Lord Ramsbotham, the former chief inspector of prisons, for the number of under-18s in custody to be cut by two thirds.
Lord Ramsbotham will call on the Justice Secretary to scrap all young offender institutions and instead place teenage criminals in neighbourhood "academies" within one hour of their home. The centres would be used to provide intensive activities aimed at rehabilitating and educating them.
The Times can reveal that Crispin Blunt, the Prisons Minister, has already expressed interest in pursuing the idea and even asked the authors to produce more detail on particular aspects of the scheme. The Ministry of Justice admitte! d last n ight that it wanted to cut the number of young people in custody to a minimum. But the view could place ministers on a collision course with the Tory Right, with many MPs already concerned that their party will be seen as soft on crime.
Nicholas Timmins in the Financial Times (subscription) says Nick Clegg will today urge banks "to help create a new class of investment where private cash is put into projects that produce public good as well as a potential return to those who invest".
Amid the row over bankers' bonuses, Mr Clegg is expected to urge the banks to put something back into society by supporting social impact bonds and other forms of social investment.
"There is the potential here," he will say, "for the financial services industry to enter into a new social contract with the nation by becoming part of a new movement for social investment."
Daniel Martin in the Daily Mail says Clegg wants councils to be given new tax-raising powers.
Local Government Chronicle magazine has been passed a leaked letter from Mr Clegg to David Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander and others.
In it, he calls for the introduction of American-style local sales and fuel taxes and parking levies, to enable councils to be almost entirely self-financing.
Currently, the vast majority of council finance comes from the Government giving local authorities little chance to raise money should they decide to.
Mr Clegg's aim is to increase accountability and interest in local politics by handing a wide range of tax raising powers to councils which could spend the money as they see fit.
Tom Newton Dunn in! the Sun says a YouGov poll for the paper shows that Conservative voters have "fallen in love" with Clegg, naming him as their second choice to replace David Cameron as prime minister if Cameron were to stand down.
The Lib Dem leader was beaten only by William Hague, a YouGov poll for The Sun reveals today.
He got 17 per cent of Tory support compared to the Foreign Secretary's 39 per cent.
No other Cabinet minister hit double figures.
The news is likely to infuriate Tory bigwigs including Chancellor George Osborne (five per cent) and Defence Secretary Liam Fox, who got just one per cent.
James Lyons in the Daily Mirror says private health care bosses have donated 750,000 to the Conservatives. It says their firms are "set to cash in on Conservative plans to rip apart the NHS".
Sam Coates in the Times (paywall) says the neutrality of the Speaker has been called into question because he wrote to a constituent saying he thought fox hunting was wrong.
John Bercow has infuriated constituents and angered Tory MPs by writing to a constituent this month that he had switched sides on the issue.
On the Speaker's official stationery, he wrote that the ban was enforceable, backed by a "compelling" argument and in no need of review. He added: "The public as a whole support the legislation and consider that hunting foxes with a view to killing them is wrong in the 21st century. I support that view ...
The switch has angered members of the local Conservative association in his largely rural Buckingham seat, who first selected him as a candidate for the 1997 election in part because of his support of hunting.
Jack Doyle in the Daily Mail says Alastair Campbell's diaries show that Cherie Blair tried to buy a 3,500 bed for Downing Street at the taxpayer's expense.
In June 1997 Mr Campbell wrote: 'TB [Tony Blair] was in a fury over the story about their new 3,500 bed, which was on the front page of The Sun.
'Following her shopping in New York, there was a touch of the Imeldas [Imelda Marcos, extravagant former 'first lady' of the Philippines] about the coverage surrounding CB [Cherie Blair].
'He knew nothing about it, was livid and said he would pay for it himself. It was only then I realised it was meant to be paid for out of public money.'
Daniel Martin and Miles Goslett in the Daily Mail say Lord Mandelson is being lined up to become an adviser to Lazard, the investment bank.
10.46am: And David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, has issued this statement about the unemployment figures.
These figures are disappointing and once again slightly worse than expected. For the second month in a row unemployment is up, employment is down and the level of inactivity has seen a marked increase. Employment has declined for both full time and part time jobs and the number of people working part time because they could not find a full time job rose to its highest level since comparable records began in 1992.
10.29am: Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, has put out this statement about the unemployment figures.
Today's grim jobless figures show that rising unemployment is more than an Autumn blip, and that it could get much worse in 2011.
With more than a fifth of young people out of work, we face a real danger of losing another generation of young people to unemployment and wasted ambition.
By abolishing EMA, pricing young people out of university and cutting support to get them back i! nto work , the government is punishing youngsters for a mess they didn't cause.
Employment is now falling at its fastest rate since the recession and many of those finding work are settling for insecure temporary work.
With the worst of the cuts still to come, this government risks making high joblessness a permanent feature of our economy. It must change course before it's too late.
10.20am: The Iraq inquiry has just published a fresh tranche of transcripts and declassified documents. They include extracts from joint intelligence committee reports and the transcript of a private evidence-gathering session with Sir John Scarlett, head of the joint intelligence committee at the time of the war and later head of MI6.
10.02am: Chris Grayling, the employment minister, has put out this statement about the unemployment figures. (See 9.44am.)
These figures serve to underline the scale of the challenge we face. We inherited the largest budget deficit in peacetime history and high levels of worklessness, which we are determined to bring down by rebalancing the economy and supporting private sector jobs growth.
We are already seeing some improvement in the number of vacancies in the economy. More personalised support for jobseekers will be on offer through Jobcentre Plus and for the long-term unemployed who need extra help we are introducing our Work Programme in the summer, which will offer support tailored to individuals' needs so that they can get into jobs and stay there.
9.44am: The unemployment figures are out. Here's the top of the story that Alan Jones has filed for the Press Association.
Unemployment has soared by 49,000 to 2.5 million, with a record number of young people out of work, new figures showed today.
One in five 16 to 24-year-olds are jobless after an increase of 32,000 in the quarter to November to 951,000, the highest figure since records began in 1992.
Emplo! yment le vels have fallen, redundancies have increased and the number of people classed as economically inactive has reached 9.3 million, today's grim figures revealed.
The only bright news from the Office for National Statistics was a 4,100 fall in the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance last month to 1.46 million. The unemployment rate is now 7.9%, but for 16 to 24-year-olds it is 20.3%.
There were 157,000 redundancies in the latest quarter, up by 14,000 on the previous three months.
The inactivity rate is now 23.4% after an 89,000 increase in the number of people classed as economically inactive, including students, those looking after a sick relative and people who have given up looking for a job.
The number of people who have taken retirement before reaching 65 increased by 39,000 to 1.56 million, the highest figure since records began in 1993. Employment fell by 69,000 to 29 million, the biggest drop since the summer of 2009.
9.34am: Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the University and College Union, told the Today programme this morning that up to 70% of pupils receiving the education maintenance allowance (EMA) may drop out if they stop getting the money. According to PoliticsHome, this is what she said:
What we found [in our own research] ... is that 7 out of 10 of those students say they will drop out of their course if their EMA is withdrawn. Of that, over a third are saying that they would not have started their course without it. That tells me something very important. If we're trying to do something which is about ripping people out of poverty, and that's good for all us of, why on earth would we cut something that is so clearly successful and so clearly needed by those, as I say, from households on less than 20,000 per year.
But that figure is very different from the figure used by ministers, who says that 90% of pupils receiving EMA would stay on at school without it. Graham Stuart, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons education commit! tee, mad e this point when he was interviewed on Today.
The EMA goes to nearly half of all 17-18-year-olds in full-time education in the country. As few as one in ten students would not continue if it were not for the EMA. The government's case is that savings have to be made somewhere and, after the orgy of spending under Labour, the government has nothing but a diet of hard choices and this is one of them.
9.15am: John Healey, the shadow health secretary (pictured,left) has been attacking Lansley's plans in interviews this morning. According to PoliticsHome, Healey told Sky that the government was promoting a privatisation agenda.
Of course [the NHS] can be improved but many of the aims the government had could be achieved by the evolution of Labour's reform rather than this revolutionary big bang reorganisation, which isn't just about GPs. It's about taking off any limits for hospitals to treat private patients in NHS beds. It's about opening up the NHS in every area to private health companies. And fundamentally it will change the NHS, as well as being very high cost, 3bn which should be spent now on patient care and not on internal management reorganisation.
9.13am: Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has written an article for ConservativeHome about his health reforms. He says he is implementing the "sunlight is the best disinfectant" philosophy of American judge Louis Brandeis.
We know that a more open NHS can be a safer, stronger, better NHS. For example, if you have heart surgery in England, you now have a greater chance of survival than almost any other European country over the last five years, death rates have halved and are now 25 per cent lower than the European average.
How did this happen? Cardiac professionals were open and transparent. They collected analysed and published their outcom! e data. They admitted weaknesses, shed light on good and bad practice across the NHS and encouraged all cardiac units to improve.
Today's Health Bill will make this sort of transparency common practice by overhauling the messy and inadequate system of accountability.
8.53am: There's plenty on the diary today. The barricades are going up at Westminster, because there is a rally against the plans to scrap the education maintenance allowance, and this afternoon Andrew Lansley is publishing the bill that will radically transform the NHS. Those are just two of the highlights. Here's a full list.
9.30am: Unemployment figures are published.
10am: Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, speaks at the Oxford Media Convention. As my colleague Mark Sweney reports, he is going to unveil plans for a new national television channel that can act as a "spine" for new local TV services.
10am: Tom McKane, deputy head of the defence and overseas secretariat at the Cabinet Office from 1999 to 2002, gives evidence to the Iraq inquiry.
10.30am: Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, gives evidence to the Lords constitution committee.
12pm: David Cameron takes prime minister's questions.
12.30pm: MPs start debating a Labour motion urging the government to rethink its decision to scrap the education maintenance allowance.
2pm: Sir Stephen Wall, Tony Blair's Europe adviser, gives evidence to the Iraq inquiry.
2.30pm: Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, publishes the health and social care bill.
At some point today Norman Baker, the transport minister, will also publish a white paper on local transport.
As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a luncht! ime summ ary at around 1pm, and an afternoon one at about 4pm.
Comments