Politics live blog - Monday 31 January
Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen
10.54am: I'm off to the Downing Street lobby briefing now. I'll post again after 11.30am.
10.47am: 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, I've already mentioned the David Cameron article in the Times. (See 9.53am.) Here are a couple of other articles worth noting.
Elizabeth Rigby in the Financial Times (subscription) says Chris Huhne is at loggerheads with the Treasury over whether the green bank will be able to raise money from the private sector.
The Treasury has already earmarked 1bn for the bank, to be spent on green infrastructure projects such as renewable energy. It has also privately confirmed that more than 1bn of funds from asset sales will also be made available, according to two ministerial aides. But in return for the additional funds, officials are trying to prevent the energy secretary and Vince Cable, the business secretary, from establishing it as a bank. The bank is one of the flagship green initiatives of the coalition.
A commission on how the bank should operate led by Bob Wigley, a former European head of Merrill Lynch has recommended it should have powers to raise finance from the private sector. But the Treasury is concernedthebank will increase national debt and would prefer it to act simply as a fund, dispensing grants and loans.
Anita Singh in the Daily Telegraph says Ed Miliband has described himself as "a bit square" in a GQ interview with Piers Morgan.
T! he Labou r leader also confessed that he was often beaten up in the school playground and listed the three famous women he would take to a desert island as Teri Hatcher, Rachel Weisz and Scarlett Johansson.
Asked what his chosen talent would be if he were to appear on Britain's Got Talent, Mr Miliband replied: "Oh God... er... I used to be good at the Rubik's Cube." No other answer was forthcoming ...
He denied ever taking drugs during his years at Oxford University. "I was a bit square," he said. Nor did he indulge in under-age drinking: "I was too square," he insisted, adding that his only brush with the law was a speeding offence.
10.41am: Vince Cable is seen as the second worst Lib Dem member of the government by party members, according to a poll for the website Lib Dem Voice. That is an astonishing decline for someone who was seen as so important to the party a year ago that his face was plastered alongside Nick Clegg's on the Lib Dem battlebus. Lib Dem Voice asked party members to say how satisfied they were with the performance of Lib Dem ministers, and other senior members of the party. Tim Farron, the new party president, comes top overall, with a +69% satisfaction rating, and Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, is the highest-ranking minister, on +65%.
There have been two notable casualties, and they are the satisfaction ratings for the two men who led the party into the 2010 general election: Nick Clegg, whose rating has dropped from +60% (Sept.) to +33% (Nov.), and now stands at +18%; while Vince Cable's rating has plummeted still further, from +60% (Sept.), to +47% (Nov.), and now stand at just +8%.
10.09am: "Gang injunctions" are coming into force today. These are Asbo-style court orders that can be used to prevent people engaging in certain gang-related behaviour. They can even be used to stop people wearing gang colours. There are more details o! n a news release on the Home Office website.
9.53am: Here are the main points that David Cameron has been making today. I've taken the quotes from his NHS article in the Times and from his BBC interview, which has been covered by the Press Association and PoliticHome.
On the NHS
Cameron suggested the government had not explained its NHS plans very well. "We need to explain [the plans] more, we need to explain them better," he told the BBC.
He insisted that doing nothing was not an option.
The number of people with three or more long-term health conditions is set to rise by 30 per cent in eight years. The cost of drugs has been growing by 600 million a year and medical technologies are continuously advancing. Now ask yourself: do you think the NHS will be able to cope with all this if we just put in a little money and carry on business as usual?
He said the NHS reforms did not amount to a "revolution". It was an "evolution", he said.
GP-led commissioning, patient choice, payment by results and Foundation Trusts have all existed in one form or another over the past 15 years. And the NHS has always worked with a range of social enterprises, charities and private companies. The difference is that we plan to make these changes effective right across our NHS.
He claimed that the reforms did not involve privatisation. Instead, they were about progress. This is what he told the BBC:
I think it is a good thing if patients and their GPs are able to choose between different providers. What matters, I think, to patients I'm one too is, you know, do I get a really good service, do I get it quickly, is it good, is it free? And that's what it will continue to be. But if your ! GP says 'well I can get you that heart check up quicker down the road at a private clinic or with this social enterprise or even here in my GP surgery rather than waiting to go to hospital', that seems to me to be good progress but it will be free.
He said patients would decide whether hospitals would stay open. When asked if some hospitals would "go to the wall", he did not deny that this could happen. But he said this did not contradict the stance the Tories took before the election, when they opposed hospital closures.
What the last government did, is they had top-down plans to shut hospitals. They actually said 'the days of the district general hospital are over' ... I said that's wrong, and the hospitals that we have will depend on the choices people make. People like their local hospital, they use their local hospital and as long as they go on choosing it and using it it will remain open.
On fuel duty
He strongly hinted that there will be a fuel duty stabiliser plan in the budget. Cameron has already said that he would like to introduce a fuel duty stabiliser, a scheme that allows duty to go down when oil prices go up, so that the motorist does not get unduly penalised. In the past his support for this has always sounded rather half-hearted, not least because experts, like Robert Chote, the new head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, have dismissed the idea as unworkable. But today he virtually committed himself to it.
What we are trying to do is have a system where, when the oil price goes up, we share the difficulty of that with the motorist. I think that's fair. That's what we are going to try to do.
On the economy
He dismissed the idea that there was an alternative to the government's economic strategy.
The Opposition is suggesting an alternative. I just happen to think th! ey are w rong. If we suddenly said 'We are going to tear up our Budget plans, we are going to turn the taps of Government spending back on again, we are not going to care about the deficit', I think the rest of the world would say 'How can I have confidence in Britain if they are not going to pay down their debts?'
On Egypt
He declined to say whether he thought President Mubarak could stay in power in Egypt.
"We want the response of the Egyptian government to be that there needs to be a proper, orderly transition to a more democratic situation where there are greater rights, greater freedoms, better rule of law and that sort of reform, to show to people in Egypt that their concerns and their aspirations are being listened to," he said. When asked if reform could take place with Mubarak in power, he said: I've said what I've said and I'm not going to pushed further.
9.09am: John Cridland has taken over as director general of the CBI. In an interview on the Today programme this morning, he said the CBI would be putting pressure on the government to ensure that 2011 is a year of growth.
We've been talking to government ministers, they are putting plans together for growth. I think the budget will be a budget for growth, we're working with them on that, but our message is they need to get on with it. It's our job in the CBI to help the government deliver but also to keep their toes to the fire.
According to PoliticsHome, Cridland also urged the government to change the new Bribery Act.
Exporters won't be able to hoover up the demand in developing countries like Asia if the new Bribery Act prevents them from knowing which side of the law they stand [on] ... The problem is the regulation's not fit for purpose. I'm afraid none of the definitions have been properly defined.
8.56am: William Hague, the foreign secretary, has been speaking about developments in Egypt. According to PoliticsHome, Hague said political reform was necessary in Egypt to stop "extremists" benefiting from instability.
That would be a major setback for the Middle East peace process and so there is that concern about the situation. But the way to address that concern is for the Egyptian leaders to embrace change to establish a broadly-based government to show that there will be a proper transition to free and fair elections.
For more on Egypt, do read the live blog about the crisis being written by my colleague Matthew Weaver.
8.47am: Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary (pictured, left) has become the latest figure to suggest that he has been a victim of phone hacking. His lawyers have written to the Metropolitan police about this. Crow has put out this statement:
RMT has had suspicions that journalists may have had access to private information about my movements and my union's activities that date back to the year 2000 and we are now asking for the police, as part of their renewed investigation, to disclose to us any evidence or information that they may have uncovered in respect of the News of the World.
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 v oters 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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