Politics live blog - Tuesday 1 February
Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen
12.46pm: Here's some minor deregulation to report. Norman Baker, the transport minister, is going to let councils decide for themselves if they want to change the classification of their roads (for example, by downgrading an A road to a B road). As the news release explains, at the moment they need Department for Transport approval.
12.35pm: The Sunday Times Newsroom twitterer thinks that David Miliband's speech in the NHS debate last night was like "an oasis in a desert of technicalities and platitudes". You can read it in Hansard. Here's an extract:
At exactly the time when we are looking at the localisation of health provision, the government have appointed someone to look at the nationalisation of social care provision and its funding. This is not a health and social care bill; it is a health without social care bill.
"The real choice is not between stability and change, but between reforms that are well executed and deliver results for patients and reforms that are poorly planned and risk undermining the NHS".
Those are not my words but those of the chief executive of the King's Fund. The Hippocratic oath says that we should "Do no harm". The bill fails that test. It aims at irrevocable change and threatens real harm, and that is the reason to oppose it in the Lobby tonight.
11.59am: I've now had the chance to read the speech from Damian Green, the immigation minister, about the way the student visa system has been abused. It should be on the Home Office website later today. In the extract I quoted earlier (see 10.06! am) Gree n said that he had been making some inquiries and that he had found some "unpleasant things" about the way the system is operating. Now that I've read the speech, I can reveal what he was talking about.
Green said the abuses occured in the private further education sector. There are 2,298 colleges on the UK Border Agency's list of colleges licensed to sponsor foreign students. Of those, 744 are private colleges. And only 34 of them are inspected by Ofsted.
Many private providers perform the important function of language and other preparatory training before entrance to Universities. But there are a significant number where we do need to take action. In a sample of students studying at private institutions about which we had concerns, up to 26% of them could not be accounted for. We know they entered the UK, we know they are no longer at the college who sponsored them but we are unable to identify them as having left Britain.
Green also said 58 colleges had had their licences revoked. He said that he had looked closely at what went in in these places.
In one, no classroom study was being undertaken. Instead students were being sent on so-called work placements in locations up to 280 miles away from the college where they were supposed to be studying on a regular basis. They were working excessive hours.
In another case, students were found working in 20 different locations and undertaking no study time. The work placements, which were supposed to be in the health and social care sector, included jobs as a cleaner in a pizza chain and as a hairdresser. The college was also employing a worker illegally on a fake British passport.
In another case, there were 2 lecturers for 940 students. Students were attending classes for 1 day a month and working excessive hours the rest of the time.
The fact that these colleges have had their licences revoked would suggest, you might think, that the system is actually working quite well. But Green said that the ! governme nt was going to impose tougher standards on this sector, for example by a stricter system of inspector for colleges not regulated by Ofsted.
11.39am: The Daily Telegraph Wikileaks story about the Lockerbie bomber came up at the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning. Nothing new, said Number 10. The Bill Rammell letter quoted by the paper (see 11.01am) was released some time ago under the Freedom of Information Act, the prime minister's spokesman said. Apparently it's on the Foreign Office website.
11.22am: Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the former Conservative Lord Chancellor, has criticised the European Court of Human Rights for not giving Britain a clear idea as to what it needs to do to makes its law on prisoner voting compatible with international human rights legislation. According to PoliticsHome, this is what Mackay told the Commons political and constitutional reform committee this morning.
The court have said what we have done is wrong, you must go away and think again, but they haven't told us in any detail what meets their criteria ... It's not the most helpful situation, I have to say, for people trying to be loyal to the court without getting in a muddle.
11.12am: Andy Coulson has now left Downing Street for good. He actually finished yesterday, when he said a "proper goodbye" to David Cameron and other colleagues, according to a Number 10 source. Apparently "good progress" is being made towards finding a successor.
11.01am: 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 some of the politics articles worth noting.
Christopher Hope and Robert Winnett in the Daily Telegraph say that Wikileaks files show that British ministers secretly advised Libya on securing the successful early release of the Lockerbie bomber.
In October 2008 as negotiations on the prisoner transfer agreement were ongoing [Abdelbaset] al-Megrahi was diagnosed as suffering from cancer.
It can now be disclosed that within a week of the diagnosis, Bill Rammell, a junior Foreign Office minister, had written to his Libyan counterpart advising him on how this could be used as the grounds of securing al-Megrahi's compassionate release from prison.
Rob Dixon, a senior Foreign Office official, met with the American Ambassador to brief him on the letter. An official American memo on the meeting states: "FCO Minister for the Middle East Bill Rammell sent Libyan Deputy FM Abdulati al-Obeidi a letter, which was cleared both by HMG and by the Scottish Executive, on October 17 outlining the procedure for obtaining compassionate release.
Michael Savage in the Times (paywall) says David Cameron's brother-in-law now supports the government's NHS reforms.
Aides quickly played down the importance of the criticisms, arguing that he had meant only to use the concerns of Dr [Carl] Brookes, who is married to the Mr Cameron's sister, Tania, as an example of unfounded fears about the reform programme.
Last night a statement from Dr Brookes, issued through Mr Cameron's office, stated that he was actually "supportive of the reforms of the NHS".
Philip Stephens in the Financial Times (subscription) says George Osborne is ready to strike a deal with the banks over lending and bonuses.
Whitehall officials report that George Osborne, the chancellor, wants to strike a bargain that would provide cover for an official climb-down. The banks would promise to in! crease t heir lending to small and medium-sized businesses and to lop a token amount from this year's bonuses; the government would tone down the political rhetoric.
The trouble is that this is a rotten deal for taxpayers a point some of the Liberal Democrats in Mr Cameron's coalition seem to have grasped. It is all but impossible to fix sensible lending targets in advance; and even harder to hold the banks to any promises they may make.
Jim Pickard and Tim Bradshaw in the Financial Times (subscription) says that media and advertisting groups have rejected government requests to donate millions of pounds worth of adverts and advertising space as a contribution to the Big Society.
The government, one of the advertising industry's biggest customers, has already cut its annual spending on marketing from 200m to 100m since last year's general election.
Before Christmas, it tried to use its dominant position to cut costs further by asking media companies to provide free work on social issues ranging from health campaigns to army recruitment.
But in a recent submission, the industry voiced alarm at the plans from Francis Maude, cabinet office minister, and Steve Hilton, the head of policy at Downing Street who has championed a more inclusive Big Society.
10.51am: Tory backbench MPs are to be given a free vote on the David Davis/Jack Straw motion opposing prisoners being given the right to vote, Paul Waugh reports on his PoliticsHome blog. The motion is being debated next Thursday, under the procedure that allows motions chosen by backbenchers to be put to the vote. Waugh has also published the text of the motion that will be debated.
That this House notes the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Hirst v the United Kingdom in which it held that there had been no substantive d! ebate by members of the legislature on the continued justification for maintaining a general restriction on the right of prisoners to vote; acknowledges the treaty obligations of the UK; is of the opinion that legislative decisions of this nature should be a matter for democratically elected lawmakers; and supports the current situation in which no sentenced prisoner is able to vote except those imprisoned for contempt, default or on remand.
10.30am: Mary Creagh, the shadow environment secretary, has written to all Tory and Lib Dem MPs with public forestry in their constituencies urging them to back the Labour motion being debated tomorrow opposing the government's proposed sell-off. Here's an extract.
Our public forests and woodlands are a precious part of our national heritage. In recent weeks there has been huge public concern about the government's proposals to sell off England's forests ...
The wholesale sell off of England's forests now proposed by your government was not mentioned in either your general election manifesto, or the coalition agreement. There is no political mandate for such a sale.
10.12am: Jeremy Paxman had a Jim Naughtie moment on Newsnight last night as he was trying to say the word "cuts". You can find watch the clip here on YouTube.
10.06am: I haven't seen the Damian Green immigration speech yet (see 8.35am), but the Press Association were given an extract in advance and their overnight story includes this passage.
I believe attracting talented students from abroad is vital to the UK but we must be more selective about who can come here and how long they can stay.
People imagine that students come here for a few years to study at our universities and then go home - that is not always the case.
Too many come to do courses below degree level as a cover for staying and working.
I have been turning over the stones in this area, and I have to report that some unpleasant thin! gs have crawled out. We need to stop this abuse.
When I see the full text, and find out more about the "unpleasant things" that have been crawling out, I'll post more.
9.21am: For the record, here are the latest GB polling figures.
YouGov for the Sun
Labour: 42% (up 12 since the general election)
Conservatives: 40% (up 3)
Lib Dem: 8% (down 16)
Government approval: -19
ComRes for the Independent
Labour: 43% (up 13)
Conservatives: 34% (down 3)
Lib Dem: 10% (down 14)
9.07am: Taxes are on average going up in April, but some Tories are already agitating for tax cuts. Last week Boris Johnson told the Daily Telegraph that the government should "set a course for low tax". At ConservativeHome Tim Montgomerie has come up with four ways George Osborne could establish his credentials as a tax cutter. And today two Tory MPs who sit on the Treasury committee have said much the same. According to PoliticsHome, Mark Garnier said that at the end of the parliament there would be will be "a very strong case for reducing that top rate of income tax to 40%". And Andrea Leadsom called for "some statement on the direction of travel towards lower taxes for individuals as an incentive to work".
8.52am: Social workers should spend less time filling in forms and more time talking to children, Professor Munro's report on child protection says. I can't find the report yet on the Department for Education's website, or on Munro's website, but the Pres! s Associ ation has a story. Here's an extract.
Professor Eileen Munro also wants to strip Ofsted of the power to evaluate reports into the deaths of abused or neglected children.
And the regulator should scrap making pre-planned checks on children's services in favour of unannounced visits, the review found.
Prof Munro's report also stresses the importance of having a management and inspection
process that monitors whether children are getting the help they need, rather than being a "tick-box exercise".
She said: "Everyone in the profession can think of meetings and forms that don't actually make a child safer.
"Whilst some regulation is needed, we need to reduce it to a small, manageable size.
"Professionals should be spending more time with children, asking how they feel, whether they understand why the social worker is involved in their family, and finding out what they want to happen."
And this is what Munro told the Today programme this morning.
We are not giving enough attention to whether we are actually protecting children. One of the problems is that rules give people a sense of security, but it is a false sense of security.
8.35am: Like many people, I suspect, I decided to start the day by putting my postcode into the government's new crime mapping website (which Alan Travis has written about in today's Guardian). And, like many people, I couldn't get it to work. Nick Herbert, the police minister, has just told the Today programme the site is getting 75,000 hits a minute, or 4.5m an hour. If you do manage to get onto it, do let us know what you think.
As for today's other attractions, here's the list.
9.15am: Damian Green, the immigration minister, gives a speech defending his plans for a crackdown on student visas.
10am: Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the former lord chancellor, g! ives evi dence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee about prisoner voting.
10.15am: Theresa Villiers, the transport minister, gives evidence to a Commons committee about EU transport policy.
10.30am: Three former cabinet secretaries, Lord Armstrong, Lord Wilson and Lord Turnbull, give evidence to a Commons committee on civil service reform.
10.30am: Ray Mallon, the mayor of Middlesbrough, gives a press briefing on why he thinks the government cuts are unfair.
11.30am: Bernard Gray, the new head of procurement at the Ministry of Defence, gives evidence to the Commons public accounts committee.
12.40pm: Lady Neville-Jones, the security minister, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about the government's review of counter-terrorism.
At some point today, Tim Loughton, the children's minister, is publishing Professor Munro's report on child protection.
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 lunchtime summary at about 1pm and an afternoon one at about 4pm.
Comments