PMQs live blog | 8 February 2012
PMQs 8 February
Uk politics
Wednesday
Miliband to keep pressing on with his NHS attacks
The last PMQs before recess gives Ed Miliband a chance to have another go at the coalition’s NHS reforms. I suspect that the ‘Andrew Lansley should be taken out and shot’ quote that appeared in Rachel Sylvester’s column (£) will make an appearance at some point. Miliband will keep going on the NHS because he knows it is one of the Tories’ biggest vulnerabilities and one of the few subjects on which Cameron isn’t confident attacking. Based on past performance, any PMQs where the focus is on NHS reform will produce at least a score draw for the Labour leader. But I still don’t expect Cameron to move
Lawson: Abolish DECC
Did we need to replace Chris Huhne at all? Nigel Lawson, a former editor of The Spectator (amongst other things), has an intriguing idea in a letter to today’s FT: just break up the Department for Energy and Climate Change. It has done nothing to encourage the development of shale gas, which — as we argue in a leader in tomorrow’s Spectator — could keep Britain in energy for the next 100 years without the need to build another windmill. Lord Lawson, a former energy secretary, says that Ed Davey: ‘…has the opportunity to enter the history books as the only minister to use his position to abolish it for
Tuesday
Cameron is right to focus on quality apprenticeships
If there are ‘no votes in skills’, as the old dictum goes, there seem to be some in apprenticeships. Hence David Cameron’s call this morning for apprenticeships to become a ‘gold standard’ qualification ranking alongside degrees from the best universities. His goal is to rectify Britain’s shockingly poor performance on mid-level skills compared to world leaders such as Germany. So how hard would it be for us to catch the Germans? The numbers speak for themselves. Of every 1,000 employed people in England 11 are apprentices; compared to 40 in Germany. Here, fewer than one in ten employers are training an apprentice; in Germany it’s roughly a third. Although the
Ignore the European Court and deport Abu Qatada tonight
The Al-Qaeda preacher Abu Qatada is a Jordanian national who is in the UK illegally (having come here in 1993 on a forged United Arab Emirates passport). The headache he has caused successive UK governments looks like finally reaching a peak. But there is a simple solution to the problem he poses. Last month, not only for the first time in the decade-long Qatada process, but for the first time ever in an extradition case, the European Court of Human Rights cited Article 6 ‘rights to fair trial’ to ensure that Abu Qatada could not be returned to Jordan. The Court had previously played around in the Qatada case only
What’s Lembit up to nowadays?
Why, this, of course: And that’s not him singing, in case you were wondering. Hat-tip: Guido
No-one emerges from the health reform smash-up with any credit
Andrew Lansley should be grateful for small mercies. Rachel Sylvester’s column (£) today may quote a Downing Street source to the effect that ‘Lansley should be taken out and shot’, but there is yet no sign that a hundred Conservative MPs will write to the Prime Minister to say that the Health Secretary’s reforms have to stop. We’ve had such a letter for wind farms and for Europe, but on the NHS it’s not very likely. Most Tory MPs find the NHS a difficult rallying point at the best of times. And these are the worst: they are acutely embarrassed by the car-crash that has been the Health and Social
Where has the pro-EU camp gone?
Did you see that amazing article by a group of pro-EU businesspeople? What about that clever ad paid for by ‘Better To Be In’, the new pro-EU lobby group? Nope, me neither. The reason we haven’t seen anything like that is because the pro-European camp in Britain is in total disarray. Like a beaten army, it is withdrawing in a state of confusion, while some diehards stage energetic but un-strategic counterattacks against the advancing Eurosceptic forces. A letter from pro-EU businessmen was, frankly, unimpressive: the signatories were hardly a who’s who of Britain’s business community, and even included some former officials. Hardly a show of strength. But yesterday’s letter from
Monday
Cameron’s coming battle over the ECHR
The coming release of Abu Qatada on bail is going to put bellows under the whole debate about the European Court of Human Rights. In his recent speech to the Council of Europe, David Cameron rightly protested about a situation with terror suspects in which ‘you cannot try them, you cannot detain them and you cannot deport them.’ We will now find out how quickly Cameron is prepared to act on this issue. If Cameron wants to makes changes to the Courts and the Convention, then he is going to have to get agreement from every member of the Council of Europe. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to
Sunday
Don’t let’s be beastly to the bankers
The Twitter hashtag #BankerOutrage was launched by Radio Four yesterday summing up a very popular mood. It’s not unusual for bankers to be hated after crashes. After the South Sea Bubble burst in 1721, there were calls in the Lords for the bankers involved to be dumped in sacks filled with serpents and dropped in the Thames. But that was the immediate aftermath: what’s odd now is the timing. As we say in the leading article of this week’s Spectator, Hester had a bonus twice the size last year — and no one seemed to care. Now, it’s suddenly a crisis and Fred the Shred’s knighthood is a matter of
The government will have to fight for Lords reform
House of Lords reform is one of those subjects that make most people’s eyes glaze over. But it is going to dominate the next parliamentary session. The Queen’s Speech will include a bill for elections in 2015 for 20 per cent of the seats in the Lords using a ‘Proportional Representation’ voting system. This bill will take an age to get through the Commons, where it has to start if the coalition is to use the Parliament Act to push it through, let alone the Lords. One of the things that’ll be fascinating to watch is how large a Conservative rebellion there is on the issue. There are already Tory
Storm in an Indian teacup
So, does India want the UK’s aid or not? If you believe the Indian finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, the funds are unnecessary, ‘peanuts’ even. The Daily Telegraph reports that British ministers ‘begged’ the Indian government to take the money. The story is likely to garner attention, especially as aid to a growing power like India is a contentious proposition. But before taking the Indian Finance Minister’s word — and the Telegraph’s reporting — as truth, it is worth looking at a few facts. First, Mukherjee made the statement in 2010, as reported in the Financial Times at the time. Since then the Finance Minister has publicly described himself ‘very pleased’
Public opinion is split on Gove’s reforms
It seems most of the public agrees with the need to improve our schools. A YouGov poll out this morning shows that 53 per cent think education standards have deteriorated over the past 10 years, while only 12 per cent think they’ve got better. 48 per cent think exams are too easy; just 28 per cent say they’re ‘about right’ and a mere 3 per cent think they’re too hard. And when it comes to discipline, the consensus of inadequacy is especially strong: 83 per cent say schools are ‘not strict enough’, while 0 per cent say they’re ‘too strict’. You don’t see 0 per cent in response to questions
Saturday
The danger for the Lib Dems
Today’s papers make clear just how damaging the next phase of this whole Chris Huhne business could be to the Liberal Democrats. The danger is that because this story is a very human drama it cuts through to the public in the way that some minor dispute over policy would not. The Mail, for instance, reveals that Nick Clegg’s wife Miriam called Vicky Pryce as soon as the news broke about the charges saying ‘If you need somewhere to stay, if the kids need support, we’re here’. Patrick Wintour is surely right when he writes that the concern for the Liberal Democrats ‘must be the consequences of a drawn-out court
The other Miliband under attack
By now, we’re all used to waking up to newspaper columns describing Ed Miliband’s flaws and proclaiming him unfit to lead the Labour party. But today, it’s David Miliband who’s under fire in two articles – one by Roy Hattersley in the Guardian and the other by Matthew Norman in the Telegraph. They’re both in response to the elder Miliband’s New Statesman article, the significance of which Pete wrote about on Thursday. In Hattersley’s case, it’s a direct response, as it is his views that Miliband rejected, labelling them ‘Reassurance Labour’ and saying: ‘The problem with the definition of social democratic politics by the Reassurance Labour tendency is not just
Friday
Higher weekend mortality is not down to Saturday night drunks
You’re more likely to die if admitted to hospital during the weekend. It’s a shocking truth, and one that’s explored further in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine today. Last year, as Pete blogged at the time, the 2011 Dr Foster Hospital Guide discovered that emergency patients are 10 per cent more likely to die if admitted at the weekend. Today’s report goes further than that, and finds that patients are 16 per cent more likely to die if admitted on a Sunday as opposed to a weekday — for all admissions, not just emergency. It’s a finding that undermines the idea that the increased mortality rate can be put down
What Huhne’s case means for the Lib Dems
The biggest danger for the Liberal Democrats from this coming trial is that it turns the party into the butt of everybody’s jokes. Having gone into government and lost much of their original support by taking tough decisions, they have consoled themselves with the hope that they have now established themselves as a serious political party. Their aim at the next election will be to present themselves as a credible party of government who will make the Tories more compassionate and Labour more fiscally responsible. But at the top party they are aware that there is a danger that a trial of Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce
Keir Starmer’s statement on Huhne
And here’s the full text: ‘This statement is made by the Crown Prosecution Service in the interests of transparency and accountability to explain the decisions reached in the cases of Mr Christopher Huhne and Ms Vasiliki Pryce and to explain the time taken in arriving at these decisions. A criminal complaint was made to Essex Police in May 2011, alleging that Ms Pryce had accepted responsibility for a speeding offence committed by Mr Huhne in 2003. That complaint was investigated by Essex Police and a file was passed to the CPS in late July 2011. The CPS advised that further investigations should be made, including obtaining certain material from a
Chris Huhne charged by the CPS
The CPS was building up to a bang, not a whimper, after all: the Director of Public Prosecutions has just announced that Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce will have criminal charges brought against them for ‘perverting the course of justice’. Both will appear in court on 16 February. We have not yet heard from the minister himself, although there are reports that he will resign to ‘clear his name’, etc. And even if he didn’t volunteer to leave, all signs are that Cameron and Clegg will act on the advice of the cabinet secretary and shunt him out anyway. And his replacement? As it stands, the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey
The strange survival of Labour England
Any CoffeeHousers with a taste for schadenfreude should read David Miliband’s article in the New Statesman. We have to move beyond big government, he declares. We need a growth strategy. I’m not sure if any Labour leader has ever argued otherwise: maybe, as Miliband implies, it has found one now. But, as I ask in my Daily Telegraph column today, what’s worse: a party that’s stuck in 1983, or a modernising movement that’s aiming for 1987? But talk to any Tory, and it’s hard to find any who think the 2015 election is in the bag. Four factors should prevent us from writing off Labour’s chances: 1) David Cameron is