Cameron welcomes falling unemployment figures: Politics Live blog
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Version 0 of 1. 5.16pm GMT17:16 Afternoon summary It’s been a pretty quiet day for political news, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been some interesting developments. That’s all from me for today. I’ll be live blogging again tomorrow and then Andrew will be taking the reins back next week. Thanks so much for all the comments. Updated at 5.21pm GMT 4.44pm GMT16:44 Just in case anybody is thinking of placing a bet after McVey’s comments today ... Esther McVey is 50/1 to be next Tory Leader. pic.twitter.com/piOEmDTSTH 4.37pm GMT16:37 The Spectator’s Isabel Hardman is reporting that a group of MPs is plotting to derail the vote in the Commons on the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes. She says that they feel the vote being held so close to the election could be a “distraction from the campaign”. Hardman writes: I understand that MPs are considering tabling a motion that calls for the packaging policy to be extended to anything that is vaguely bad for health, including alcohol and sugar-rich food such as Frosties. This is of course to make a point rather than because the MPs have suddenly decided that Andy Burnham is right. In late January, the government announced it was to press ahead with legislation on plain packaging for cigarettes before the general election after years of delay and conflicting claims about the success of a similar Australian scheme. Updated at 5.23pm GMT 3.59pm GMT15:59 This Guardian article from Dawn Foster is interesting. In it she highlights that the Office for National Statistics will not publish the most recent Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data until after the election. She writes – The last HBAI figures, published by the Department for Work and Pensions in July 2014, covered the 2012/13 financial year: crucially ending just as welfare reform came in. So, the impact of the bedroom tax, the removal of council tax assistance schemes, changes to disability living allowance and employment support allowance, and benefit sanctions are not reflected in any of this data. The figures that will most accurately show the nationwide effect of the coalition’s policies, meanwhile, will be published just after the country heads to the polls. The New Policy Institute thinktank wrote to the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, back in September expressing concern over the delay, pointing out that statistics on the state of the economy appear shortly after each quarter, whereas the publication of HBAI is increasingly being delayed. 3.31pm GMT15:31 Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has been defending his party’s Mansion Tax policy to the Financial Times. “For the people who are asset-rich and very prosperous, a couple of hundred quid a month isn’t going to make a difference”, he says. “They would spend that on lunch.” Neil Kinnock says mansion tax won't hit the rich any more than a decent lunch http://t.co/oqFYpuVZ9i Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has said before that people who own homes worth between £2 and £3m would pay around £250 a month in mansion tax under Labour proposals. Updated at 5.24pm GMT 3.13pm GMT15:13 Some more polling from YouGov out today seems to suggest that Tony Blair’s offer of help to Ed Miliband in the run-up to the general election in May might not actually be that useful to the Labour leader. YouGov asked people: “Thinking about retired politicians playing a role in the current election, do you think getting support from the following politicians would be an asset or a liability for today’s politicians?” Former Tory prime minister John Major was deemed to be the best asset, scoring a net zero among the general public and +21 among Conservatives supporters. Paddy Ashdown came a close second, on net -1, and net +45 among Liberal Democrats. But trailing behind is Tony Blair, with net -47, and a surprisingly low net -22 among Labour voters. You can read about the research in more depth here. 2.24pm GMT14:24 Labour demands apology for Iain Duncan Smith's Miliband tax avoidance allegations A Labour spokesperson told the Guardian’s Rowena Mason: Iain Duncan Smith brings politics into disrepute by repeating what is a straightforward lie. Ed Miliband has made sure all taxes due have been paid. The people admitting to avoiding tax are Tory donors and the people refusing to act to tackle tax avoidance are Iain Duncan Smith, George Osborne and David Cameron. Mr Duncan Smith should retract and apologise today. If he does not, he will be known for his dishonesty as well as his incompetence. Speaking on BBC News earlier today, Iain Duncan Smith accused the Labour leader Ed Miliband of avoiding tax. Do you want to risk that with the chaos that comes from a Labour party who are completely at odds with each other and can’t seem to get their lines right, whether it’s on the health service or whether it’s on people who pay tax, let alone the man who runs the Labour party who seems to have managed to have avoided tax as well? 2.19pm GMT14:19 The New Statesman’s political editor George Eaton has interviewed shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher, who has said he would like to see the railways brought back under “public control”. “Privatisation was a disaster for the railways. I’m adamant about putting the whole franchising system, as it stands today, in the bin,” he tells Eaton. “The public sector will be running sections of our rail network as soon as we can do that.” I’m not saying let’s go back to some sort of 70s and 80s British Rail, I don’t think sensible people are, actually. But I think we’ve got to make the starting point that privatisation was a mess, it was botched and what you’ve found is, in a sort of piecemeal way, little changes were made, often in response to horrendous events, whether it was Hatfield and rail maintenance coming back in house, or Railtrack imploding and Network Rail being set up, Network Rail now being on our books, we are dealing with the consequences of one of the worst decisions that any government has made. 2.02pm GMT14:02 Labour one point ahead of Conservatives in YouGov/The Sun poll The latest polling from YouGov and The Sun has Labour one point ahead of the Conservatives on 34%. The results are as follows – Conservative 33%, Labour 34%, Liberal Democrat 6%, UKIP 15%, Green 7%. People were asked on the 16th and 17th February who they would vote for if there was a general election tomorrow. You can look at the results in more detail here. Updated at 2.35pm GMT 1.55pm GMT13:55 Esther McVey says she would like to become prime minister Speaking on ITV’s Loose Women this lunchtime, minister for employment Esther McVey said she would like to be prime minister one day. “If I had to do a yes or a no, I’ll be honest, I’ll say yes”, she said. McVey – who is MP for the Wirral West – said that it didn’t bother her that David Cameron went to Eton and Oxford University. “I’ve never been part of the politics of envy”, she said. When asked why she is a Conservative, she said: For me, it is about safety and security – not just of the individual, but also of the country. The Conservative message has never been a sexy one; it’s like: ‘live within your means, you can’t spend what you haven’t got, but work hard, endeavour, and you will succeed.’ And you know what, that is true in life, full stop. There isn’t magic money falling from the trees; you can’t promise to give stuff you haven’t got, you’ve got to earn it, you’ve got to have it. She recalled the time she stood as a Conservative party candidate in her school election in 1979. Her slogan was “vote McVey, vote the right way”. 12.51pm GMT12:51 Lunchtime summary 12.28pm GMT12:28 The Telegraph’s former comment editor and the current executive editor of ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman, has written about Oborne’s accusations that the paper has allowed the interests of advertisers to affect its editorial decisions. He writes – If Peter says he resigned for the reasons he gave, then he resigned for the reasons he gave. The timing is odd, since Seiken is no longer at the helm. And Peter may wish, in retrospect, that he had gone public before the Telegraph told him in response to his resignation that his column would be discontinued. But such decisions are seldom easy. He will have found this one painful. He is unlikely ever to starve, but to leave without having another post lined up was ballsy none the less. We will hear more about the condition of the media from the man who popularised the notion of a Political Class. But the weight of his new charge is greater than the evidence that supports it. The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade has also written about Oborne’s resignation, saying – In September 2013, Peter Oborne wrote a piece in the Daily Telegraph in praise of Ed Miliband, calling him a brave and adroit leader. I remarked at the time that he was a columnist renowned for going against the grain of the newspaper for which he writes. It is to his credit that he did so and was to the Telegraph’s credit that it hired him and published him for five years. He never subscribed to the paper’s large-C Conservative line on many subjects. Updated at 12.33pm GMT 12.00pm GMT12:00 Here’s a roundup of some of the most interesting political comment around today – Is Labour prepared for a second Cameron government?, David Talbot for Labour Uncut The public ought to be on the verge of offering a bitter repudiation of the Prime Minister and his party. But, seemingly, they are not. The Conservatives and Cameron are within touching distant of at least winning the most seats. The final machinations of the election’s outcome are beyond even the wisest, but one this is clear; Labour must now hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. Two years ago many within the Labour party would now not believe it, but Miliband’s prospects of becoming Prime Minister are fading – and fast. Will Ed Miliband’s fate be decided in classrooms and on campuses?, Mary Riddell for the Telegraph While the political focus is on City boardrooms and Swiss banks, Ed Miliband’s fate could be decided in the classrooms and campuses of Britain. In a campaign that is being recast as a battle of the generations, the Tories have tried to lure the grey vote with pensioner bonds that will pay up to 4 per cent interest and cost the taxpayer millions of pounds. What was Ed Balls thinking? Was he thinking at all?, Matthew Norman for the Independent At some political debacles you want to weep, and at others you have to laugh, but with Ed Balls And His Odd Job Receipts the emotional reaction is different. At this fiasco, you cannot bear to look. You want to leave the room, because this is like one of those Ali G interviews which delicate souls like myself find too excruciating to endure. It is the comedy of gross embarrassment without the comedy. Typical. They’re flying the fat people again, Isabel Hardman for the Times Why bother trying to solve big problems, such as a housing shortage, poor mental health care or a miserable lack of treatment for drug addictions and alcoholism, when you can go fly a little kite instead? Spin doctors of all parties seem to buy their kites from the same shop, announcing year after year the same policies on capping class sizes (©Tony Blair, 1997, David Cameron, April 2010, and Ed Miliband, February 2015), protecting homeowners who attack burglars in their properties (© the common law, Labour 2008, Ken Clarke, 2011, and Chris Grayling 2012 and 2013), and cracking down on tax avoidance to fund pleasant-sounding policies (© anyone working on fiscal policy for either main party since the money ran out). An EU referendum will be a nightmare for Britain. But it has to happen, Rafael Behr for the Guardian The Labour leader war-gamed the scenarios with his advisors and saw that a referendum conceived in tactical expediency would be misshapen from the outset. It would devour ministerial time and energy, stoking social division and creating economic uncertainty. It would sabotage European diplomacy, erecting barriers of resentment between Britain and its partners as they grapple with epoch-defining challenges. 11.22am GMT11:22 Here’s the Guardian report on those ONS employment figures. Here are the key points. 11.05am GMT11:05 Duncan Smith accuses Miliband of avoiding tax Speaking on BBC News just now, Iain Duncan Smith has accused the Labour leader Ed Miliband of avoiding tax. Do you want to risk that with the chaos that comes from a Labour party who are completely at odds with each other and can’t seem to get their lines right, whether it’s on the health service or whether it’s on people who pay tax, let alone the man who runs the Labour party who seems to have managed to have avoided tax as well? Updated at 11.11am GMT 10.55am GMT10:55 Just before I wrapped up the live blog yesterday evening, news broke that Harriet Yeo, a former chairman of Labour’s ruling national executive committee, who is a councillor in Ashford, had left the party over its policy on not holding an EU referendum. She has written in today’s Telegraph about why she will be supporting Ukip in the general election. My politics has never fitted perfectly into one mould, at no time more so than now. For me, Britain’s relationship with Europe is the single most pressing political issue. While the Tories claim they will offer a referendum by the end of 2017, we have heard David Cameron’s ‘cast iron guarantees’ before. I have little faith. Pushing the legislation through parliament will be lengthy and difficult, and may require the Parliament Act. I am not confident that it will happen in time... UKIP is not anti immigration. Indeed, UKIP is not anti anybody. Nigel Farage’s party simply wants to give Britain the ability to control its own borders – and its destiny. We are a unique nation. I do not believe our proud history or our future is best served as a disempowered member state of an expanding federal Europe. Her announcement comes as recordings leaked to the Guardian’s Rowena Mason reveal Labour parliamentary candidate in Ashford, Brendan Chilton, saying that his party could be wiped from the map of MPs in parts of southern England if if doesn’t stop the advance of Ukip. 10.40am GMT10:40 David Cameron welcomes ONS unemployment figures The prime minister has finished speaking now. The questions from the audience were all quite friendly and ranged from football to childcare to HS2. Cameron started his speech by highlighting figures released by the Office for National Statistics about an hour ago, which show that unemployment fell by 97,000 between October and December to 1.86m. “I’m not saying we have solved all our problems, but we are on our way,” he said. “The deficit’s coming down, the jobs are coming, the production is increasing, we are the fastest-growing major economy in the Western world.” He added: “We’ve had another 100,000 increase in the number of people in work in our country. In fact, there are more people in work in our country today and more women in work in our country today than ever before in our history.” Labour’s Stephen Timms, their shadow employment minister, said: Today’s fall in overall unemployment is welcome but five years of the Tories’ failing plan has left working people £1,600 a year worse off since 2010. Low pay has left millions of working families struggling to make ends meet and has led to billions more spent on the housing benefit bill. Today’s rise in youth unemployment is extremely worrying and shows the Tory plan is failing the next generation. Updated at 11.12am GMT 10.19am GMT10:19 Asked if he thinks HS2 will happen, Cameron says “Yes, definitely”. He says this country is behind when it comes to the railways. “We’re spending more money on the railways over the next five years than we have since Victorian times.” Cameron says HS2 provides a “huge opportunity of linking up eight of Britain’s largest cities”. He says the plans are about “capacity and connectivity”. “We’ve had economic recoveries before when too much of the growth is centred in London and the South East”, he says, before talking about the Conservative party’s “northern economic power house” idea. 10.14am GMT10:14 Cameron says that he is happy that Villa has hired Tim Sherwood, whoever that is. Cameron says we need a business friendly government, a good education system and competitive tax rates. He says that Britain should be welcoming to foreign investment. We shouldn’t worry about foreign companies, he says. He points to German investment which turned a “not very successful Rover factory” in Oxford into a very successful Mini factory. 10.06am GMT10:06 Cameron says he has never driven a Rolls Royce and that he hasn’t driven a car in four and a half years. For security reasons, he is driven around in an armoured car, which is – unfortunately – a Jaguar. 10.05am GMT10:05 Cameron is now saying that he wants more women to study science subjects. He says that we need people in employment to go back into their schools and talk to children about their career options. “Our parliament is more representative now”, he says. He says that the Conservative party has gone from having 17 women MPs to over 50. “That’s still not enough, but it’s changing and I think it’ll change more in the next election”. He says that child care puts a lot of women off going into politics. Cameron says he doesn’t want to tell women to go out to work or to stay at home, but he wants them to have a choice. 9.59am GMT09:59 Cameron reveals took his son to Aston Villa QPR match and son came out a Chelsea fan. Deadbeat dad. How does a Villa supporter end up with Arsenal daughter and Chelsea son? Your children's football allegiances are in your power- no!? 9.54am GMT09:54 Now, Cameron is being asked about football. Apparently he’s an Aston Villa fan. Who knew? “Hoping for a couple of Villa wins to lift us out of the danger zone.” The person asking the question said he was told “DC” was coming and thought that meant David Coulthard. He was apparently disappointed to see the prime minister. 9.52am GMT09:52 He is asked about a possible coalition with Ukip. He says he has led a coalition government for the past five years. “I don’t know what Ukip would do if they had a bunch of MPs, but they might well ally with Labour.” He says Greens and SNP would probably ally with Labour. “I’ll be recommending a vote for the Blue team and I want an all out victory.” 9.47am GMT09:47 Cameron is asked about how he is protecting the country from the threat of Isis. He says: “The threat comes from a poisonous narrative of islamist extremism. A death cult, if you like.” He says the threat is here already and the police and security forces have stopped plots to behead police officers. Cameron says that we shouldn’t charge into other countries. The struggle with extremism is going to go on for decades, he says, but we can win it. “It is the struggle of our time”. The struggle is one that we will be fighting “certainly for my political lifetime and probably beyond”, he says. 9.43am GMT09:43 David Cameron is welcoming new ONS figures that show total unemployment fell by 97,000 down to 5.7% in the last quarter. He’s told the audience that they can ask anything. “Don’t hold back”. 9.40am GMT09:40 David Cameron is due to speak at the Goodwood Rolls Royce factory near Chichester in West Sussex. Blue skies for PM's trip to Rolls Royce in Chichester. "He will answer questions about anything," employees told. pic.twitter.com/CK3EmM39HW David Cameron is due to speak at Rolls Royce motor cars factory in Goodwood Sussex. It's like Top Gear. 9.34am GMT09:34 Oborne calls for an inquiry into Telegraph's lack of HSBC coverage The Telegraph’s chief political commentator Peter Oborne resigned from his post yesterday evening in spectacular fashion. Explaining the reasons behind his departure in a long post on the website Open Democracy, Oborne claimed the paper deliberately suppressed stories about HSBC, including last week’s revelations, in order to keep its valuable advertising account. You can read the Guardian article here and his Open democracy post here. A Telegraph spokesperson denied Oborne’s accusations and said: It is a matter of huge regret that Peter Oborne, for nearly five years a contributor to the Telegraph, should have launched such an astonishing and unfounded attack, full of inaccuracy and innuendo, on his own paper. Oborne has just been on BBC News calling for the Telegraph to set up an independent inquiry into the relationship between its advertising department and its editorial department. The Daily telegraph must explain, not to me, not to you, but to its readers, what was the editorial basis behind the decision to give no coverage at all on day one to the HSBC story and six paragraphs on the bottom left on page two. What were the editorial decisions? He continued: I’d like to ask HSBC what were the reasons for stopping the advertising in the Telegraph two years ago and what were the reasons for stopping the advertising in the Guardian two weeks ago. It looks to an outsider like HSBC is doing something very troubling which is using its advertising as a leverage to get soft coverage in newspapers. And this raises very serious issues about the free press. He stressed that the Telegraph was a “fantastic newspaper” with a tradition of fairness and accuracy: “It’s been a fantastic newspaper for a hundred years.” Updated at 11.13am GMT 9.12am GMT09:12 Liberal Democrat energy secretary Ed Davey has been speaking to the BBC’s Today programme about the CMA report. Although these are early days for the inquiry I strongly welcome the direction of travel. I set up the CMA when I was the competition minister – I was keen that Ofgem set up this inquiry and we’ve backed the commission from day one. We haven’t waited for the Commission’s findings because we’ve been very active in trying to promote competition to encourage switching. I think we may need to do more and what I’m looking forward to with this inquiry is to see if there’s the evidence for us to go further and faster and we won’t flinch from taking tougher action if that’s what’s needed. He said he would not be opposed to breaking up a big energy company – [The inquiry is] quite right to warn that the battle hasn’t yet been won. There’s two ways you do it – first of all you increase the number of challenges to the big six, and we’ve done that. Their market share has gone from less than 1% in 2010 to more than 10% today and there are some financial analysts in the city who think it’s going to be 30% by the end of the decade. I’ve always said that If there needs to be further action I certainly wouldn’t shrink from seeing an energy company broken up. But you have to do that on real evidence and the CMA will provide that evidence. 9.05am GMT09:05 Shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change Caroline Flint has responded to today’s report from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has been investigating the energy market since last summer. It suggests that loyalty to your energy provider doesn’t pay off. Here’s the Guardian article on the report. The CMA concludes that from 2012 to 2014, more than 95% of dual-fuel customers of the big energy companies could have saved up to £234 a year if they had changed supplier or tariff. She says that Britain’s energy market is broken and that millions of consumers are being overcharged. Energy bills are £300 a year higher under the Tories. The number of families with children who cannot afford their energy bills is at a record high. Time after time, David Cameron has ignored warnings about rip-off energy bills, opposed Labour’s plans to reform the energy market and create a tough new regulator, and let the energy companies get away with overcharging millions of consumers. Households and businesses cannot afford another five years of this Indeed, the only reason we’re even having a full market investigation is because of the spotlight Ed Miliband and the Labour Party have put on the energy market. In fact, before Labour announced our price freeze, the Government rejected the idea of a competition inquiry. The final report from the CMA investigation won’t be published until the end of the year. Updated at 11.26am GMT 8.55am GMT08:55 The prime minister is about to speak at one of his ‘PM Live’ events in Sussex. Parliament is in recess and it’s half term for schools – and it looks a bit like today will be a quiet one for political news. (Those could be my famous last words.) I’ll be filling in for Andrew this week, covering all the breaking political news from Westminster, as well as bringing you the most interesting political comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @fperraudin. |