Coalition

Monday

James Forsyth

Fox in the dock?

Split-stories have their own momentum. As soon as you know that a certain secretary of state is in the dog house with Downing Street, you start seeing things through that prism. So when I saw that the press release on the government’s new national security strategy contained quotes from the PM, the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Development Secretary, but not the Defence Secretary, I immediately regarded it – and perhaps wrongly – as part of the Westminster Fox hunt.   Liam Fox’s appearance on the Politics Show on Sunday was ill-advised. By celebrating his defiance of the Treasury’s demands and trumpeting the PM’s support for him, he

Peter Hoskin

The coalition outlines its national security concerns

What a curious creature this National Security Strategy is. For some reason, I expected something more than a 39-page document in the same mushy pea colour scheme as the coalition agreement. But that is what we’ve got – and it doesn’t really tell us much. The centrepiece of the document comes on page 27 (reproduced below), with a neat, three-tier guide to the security risks facing this country. At the highest priority level are atrocities such as “chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack by terrorists,” and “hostile attacks upon UK cyberspace”. Further down, there are mentions for “organised crime” and “disruption to oil or gas supplies,” among others. But, before

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Laws helps Gove

Michael Gove has just been explaining in the Commons where the £7 billion for the fairness premium that Nick Clegg announced on Friday will come from. Revealingly, David Laws was present as Gove answered this urgent question. I understand that Laws was crucial to both the pupil premium being implemented at a decent level and the real-terms increase in the schools Budget.   Laws himself told John Pienaar’s show last night that “obviously I’ve talked to him [Nick Clegg] about some of the things that I’ve been associated with in the past, like the schools funding issue… because I was the schools spokesman in the last parliament”. I hear that

Peter Hoskin

Alan Johnson’s economic gamble

The most shameless line of Alan Johnson’s big speech came at the beginning. “Being in opposition does not mean pretending to be in government,” he averred, “we will not be producting a shadow spending review.” Which would be fair enough, were it not for one simple fact: the Brown government didn’t produce a spending review when one was due, last year, either. In which case, Labour’s new economic policy is much like their old one. They are sticking by the Alistair Darling plan to halve the deficit over this Parliament, which is encouraging given some of the alternatives. Yet there is still not much detail about how this might actually

Peter Hoskin

The presentational battle begins in earnest – as the double-dip warnings wind down

Rule 97 in the Practitioner’s Guide to Westminster Politics: if you want to get a message out pronto, then corral a bunch of impressive names into writing a letter to a national newspaper. We saw the tactic used by both Labour and the Tories before the election. And we see it again today, with a letter in the Telegraph, drafted by the Tory peer Lord Wolfson and signed by 35 business leaders, pushing George Osborne to “press ahead with his plans to reduce the deficit”. And you know what? He may just do that. In truth, these kinds of letters are hardly a bad thing for the government, however stage-managed

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

What about the Home Office?

The less we hear from Theresa May, the more I worry about the Home Office budget. I’m hearing rumours of her taking a 30 percent cut, which I first dismissed as a piece of expectations management. But now I’m beginning to wonder. We know that defence is settled – about an 8 percent real-terms cut. The NHS, which absorbs a quarter of government spending, will have real-terms increases (something even the left-leaning IPPR doesn’t back). The schools budget has escaped relatively unscathed, we read. So what’s left? Again, there’s so much deliberate misinformation out there that I hesitate to give a rumour round-up. But here goes.   One major victim

Peter Hoskin

The universities strike back

A wander through to p.14 of the Sunday Times delivers one of the most eyecatching political stories (£) of the day. The headline: “Cambridge may go private in fees row”. And the content: that officials at Cambridge Uni are dissatisfied with the findings of the Browne review, which they see as too restrictive. Their issue is with the fees that are imposed by the government should a university charge above £6,000 for a year’s tuition. This, they claim, prevents them from pulling in the kind of Big Bucks that Ivy League institutions have in their bank accounts – and could lead to British universities falling behind. So, why not go

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne gets behind infrastructure

One of the most significant things we have seen today is George Osborne’s announcement that Crossrail, Mersey Gateway, the big science project Diamond synchrotron and universal broadband would all go ahead. Osborne has decided that it is worth cutting deeper now in other areas to protect the kind of investments that will make Britain a more attractive place to do business down the line. As I said after the Budget, Osborne’s desire to protect this kind of capital spending is a key part of his plan – along with his reductions in corporation tax – to boost the private sector in Britain as the public sector is downsized. The Crossrail

Peter Hoskin

The axe hovers over welfare (and welfare cheats)

As we know, education and defence have now had their budgets settled – another two ticks alongside the checklist. But that still leaves the third member of the coalition’s trio of sticky settlements unresolved: welfare. The “quad” of David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander will meet today to bash out the final details. Yet some of their key talking points and decisions have already made it into the papers (especially in this article (£) in the Sunday Times). Here’s my round-up, along with brief comments: 1) Crackdown on welfare cheats. George Osborne sets the tone with his article in the News of the World (now also behind

Saturday

David Blackburn

Lansley wants ‘no win, no fee’ medicine

Last week, Andrew Lansley spent the weekend reassuring sceptics about his NHS commissioning reforms. He’s at it again this weekend in an interview with the Times (£). Hoping to calm Claire Rayner’s restless ghost, Lansley emphasises that his reforms will improve patient care and give the patient-come-taxpayer value for money. Medicine and treatment are Lansley’s primary target. On the day that Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish Health Secretary, has protected free prescriptions in Scotland, Lansley proposes this radical solution to regulating and affording expensive treatments: ‘“NICE will be able to give advice about what is the best treatment but it won’t be about saying ‘You must have this’ or even less

Will Tanner

What you need to know ahead of the Spending Review: Crime

This is the latest in our series of posts on the Spending Review with Reform. A list of previous posts can be found here. What is the budget? The UK has one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world, spending a higher proportion of GDP than any other country in the OECD. Total spending on crime amounted to £23 billion for 2009-10. However, recent research suggests that total government spending on public order and safety amounts to more than £31 billion overall. Aside from central government funding, police authorities receive funding from the police, raised locally through council tax. In 2009-10 this amounted to just under a

David Blackburn

The government protects yet more spending

This morning’s papers announce that cuts to the defence budget will be considerably less than 10 percent, following an intervention from David Cameron. Liam Fox has fought a valiant rearguard to protect his budget; success has come at significant personal cost.  And that’s not all. The BBC has learnt that the schools budget is to receive a real terms spending increase when the Fairness Premium for the disadvantaged and the Pupil Premium are added to the final reckoning. This is politically interesting: education is the one issue where Labour’s opposition has been coherent. Michael Gove was eviscerated over his incompetent cancellation of the school building project and his free schools

Friday

James Forsyth

The cuts are almost settled

We are entering the end game of the spending review. The Department of Education settled this morning, according to both Tory and Lib Dem sources. Although there is confusion about whether the money for the pupil premium is coming from inside or outside the education budget – Clegg’s speech suggested outside but other Whitehall sources are not so sure. Liam Fox has told friends that he knows the final number for the defence budget and that it is a lot better than expected over the summer. Fox has played a blinder in terms of defending his budget but this has come at a huge personal cost for him. Even supporters

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition’s liberal approach to sentencing could be the final straw for the middle class

Today brings another couple of reminders of the coalition’s potential political problem with the middle class. In the Telegraph, Peter Oborne attacks Cameron and Osborne for a “morally disgusting” policy of targeting the middle class for an outsize share of the fiscal pain. While the Mail’s front page screams ‘What does get you locked up?’ as it details how 2,700 criminals who have more than fifty convictions were not sent to prison. Now, this is, obviously, the result of the last government’s sentencing policies. But, as the Mail points out repreatedly, this is a regime that Ken Clarke wants to make more liberal. In other words, even fewer people would

George Trefgarne

The true scale of the cuts

George Osborne likes to spend his weekends at Dorneywood, the chancellor’s official residence near Slough, but I doubt this one will be  particularly enjoyable. He will be burning the midnight oil as he prepares next Wednesday’s spending review. No doubt he will also be taking calls from ministerial colleagues, muttering dark threats about aircraft carriers, the arts, sport, the roads budget, overseas consulates – you name it. And just when the numbers all add up he will probably have to start all over again after discovering that No10 has  promised to save some wind turbines because Steve Hilton bumped into somebody at a drinks party.   Meanwhile, we can expect

Tom Clougherty

Privatization revisited

The similarities between now and the early years of the Thatcher government can easily be overplayed. Yes, there are parallels: a public sector grown fat on government profligacy, unions leaders stirring up resentment, and a government unsure about quite how radical it wants to be. But there are clear differences too: the political dynamics, the industrial landscape, and, indeed, the magnitude of the fiscal crisis. Nevertheless, there is at least one successful Thatcher-era policy that is desperately due a comeback: privatisation. It won’t have escaped many CoffeeHousers’ notice that, despite the tough talk on the deficit, the government is still borrowing almost £20m per hour. The cost of servicing our

Peter Hoskin

Clegg sweetens the pill with a fairness premium

Only five days to go until the spending review – and after weeks of emphasis on the cuts we’re about to see, the government has today unveiled a new spending commitment. It comes courtesy of Nick Clegg: a new “fairness premium” targeted at the least well-off young people. Lib Dem Voice has full details here, but the basic point is that £7 billion will be spent, across 4 years, on programmes for disadvantaged 2 to 20 year-olds. Much of this will go towards the “pupil premium” that we’ve heard so much about, and which should advance school choice in the most deprived areas. Putting aside his genuine commitment to it,

Thursday

Patrick Nolan

The welfare money-go-round

Next week’s spending review will involve hard decisions. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will go. People in work will find employment conditions less generous with, for example, greater contributions required for their pensions. People out of work will find benefits provide less assistance and be under greater pressure to return to work. Goods in shops will be more expensive, with the basic VAT rate going up, some new schools will no longer be built, more hospitals will be under pressure to close and students will face higher tuition fees.   These changes are necessary but are just the start. To get the deficit under control in this Parliament, much more

David Blackburn

Labour’s economic credibility goes on tour to Brussels

Bill Cash’s amendment to the EU budget bill may not have been the victory that the signatories to Douglas Carswell’s more incendiary effort hoped for, but it is significant. It is exactly in line with government policy that seeks to cap the EU budget and search for cuts. As Treasury Minister Justine Greening put it in the debate last night: ‘I will not hide from the House the Government’s frustration that some of our partners – and those in EU institutions – do not seem to understand how bizarre it is, when national budgets are under such extraordinary pressure, that the EU should be immune from that.’ The EU Commission

Max Chambers

The bonfire of the quangos

Policy Exchange has been arguing for some time that the Youth Justice Board  should be abolished, with its functions shared between the Ministry of Justice and local councils. It has just been revealed that the body will indeed be scrapped, despite rumours that the Justice Secretary tried to buy more time before making a decision on its future,  before eventually losing out to the Cabinet Office.  There will inevitably be concern at the news from various children’s charities and penal reform organizations who will argue that young offenders need to be treated as a distinct group. So, why did we argue for the YJB to be scrapped and what will