Politics live blog - Monday 31 January

Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen

8.38am: The health and social care bill, the legislation that will put GPs in charge of an 80bn NHS commissioning budget, gets its second reading in the House of Commons today and David Cameron is in salesman mode. He has written an article for the Times (paywall) attacking five "myths" about the reforms and he has just given an interview on the subject to BBC Breakfast. As the Observer revealed at the weekend, a recent YouGov poll found that only 27% of voters are in favour of the way the bill will allow more private firms to provide NHS services. I'll post more on the Cameron interview in a moment.

Here's a list of what's on the diary for today.

10am: Stephen Pattison, head of the UN department at the Foreign Office from 2001 to 2003, gives evidence to the Iraq inquiry.

2pm: Pattison continues to give evidence to the Iraq inquiry, alongside John Buck, the Foreign Office director for Iraq from 2003 to 2004.

After 3pm: Peers start the 15th day of committee stage debate on the parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill. Ministers are threatening to take an unprecedented step and impose a guillotine if Labour peers carry on with their filibuster.

3.30pm: A Foreign Office minister is expected to make a statement in the Commons about the situation in Egypt. This hasn't been confirmed yet, but I'm told it's very likely.

After 3.30pm: MPs start debating the health and social care bill.

As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and brining you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and an afternoon one at about 4pm.


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