Uk politics

Friday

Jonathan Jones

Tim Farron wants competition dropped from the Health Bill

From our UK edition

Will there be further changes to the Health and Social Care Bill? Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron certainly wants some, as he told ITV’s Party People last night: ‘If the new competition introduced through this Bill is removed, then I think it’s better on the books than it is off it… What I want is for the Lords to propose changes that will remove the new competition elements from the Bill and I would like the Government to give way on those things. It's all to play for.’ Farron’s echoing the call made by fellow Lib Dem Shirley Williams last week and by a group of activists who have submitted an emergency motion for their party conference in two weeks.

Jonathan Jones

Which tax cuts would be best for the economy?

From our UK edition

With all these tax cut suggestions kicking about — and with the British economy desperately in need of some oomph — it’s worth asking: which would help growth the most? It’s not of course the only consideration, but it is clearly an important one as we struggle to find our way out of recession.   Fortunately, the OECD is on hand with two recent reports to help answer our question. The first, ‘Tax Reform and Economic Growth’, divides taxes into four broad categories and ranks them on how harmful they are to growth: This suggests that the Centre for Policy Studies is right — on growth grounds at least — to focus on cutting corporation tax.

Jonathan Jones

Transcript: Grayling on work experience

From our UK edition

On the Today Programme this morning, Employment Minister Chris Grayling defended the government's Work Experience programme in light of the recent controversies around it. Here's a full transcript of the interview: Evan Davis: Well how can work experience get such a bad name? A string of high profile companies have pulled out of one government scheme providing work experience for young people. The latest, retailer Poundland, has announced it is suspending its participation in the scheme although it’s not quite clear which scheme it is, because there are several government schemes for getting people, long-term unemployed or young, into work. Let’s see if we can clarify what is going on with the Employment Minister, Chris Grayling. Good morning to you.

Sebastian Payne

Bercow finally gives a fig

From our UK edition

It looks like those £32,500-a-year figtrees won't be staying in Portcullis House for long. While they may add a pleasant ambiance to the building, the huge rent bill has caused much annoyance, including for the Speaker of the Commons. In an interview with House Magazine, John Bercow says he was ‘horrified’ and adds: ‘If we are going to have trees, they absolutely shouldn’t be trees that cause us to fleece the taxpayer in this way, and that must change at the earliest opportunity.If there is a contract and it’s going to cost us more to get out of it immediately than not, then it may well have to wait... but should the present arrangement continue beyond September? Absolutely not.

James Forsyth

Gove knows the importance of adoption

From our UK edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bORDrO3hA5w The coalition’s work on adoption is one of its more impressive bits of public service reform. It starts from the right premise, that adoption is vastly preferable to children being in care. It then uses changes to the regulations, transparency and a plethora of providers to try and increase the number of adoptions. It is, for example, absurd that the current system has left to children being left in care because of worries that their ethnicity does not match that of their potential adopters. Or, that people are being denied the chance to adopt because they smoke. These reforms are being pushed hard by both Number 10 and the Department for Education. Michael Gove, the education secretary, was himself adopted.

Fraser Nelson

The dark side of the Big Society

From our UK edition

The A4e scandal is getting worse. Emma Harrison has quit as David Cameron’s back-to-work tsar, the police are still investigating a case discovered last year and there’s a suggestion their investigation is widening. This is, for David Cameron, the dark side of the Big Society. In my Daily Telegraph column today, I explain why. ‘The Big Society’ is a silly name for a good idea: that lots of companies, charities, etc will help provide government services. They are given freedom to innovate, to create — and the freedom to get things badly wrong. This is the freedom which A4e seems to have availed itself of. It grew like crazy, perhaps too fast. Its internal audit procedure found four staff who had been falsely claiming to get people back in work.

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Detoxifying profit in education

From our UK edition

Profit and education are still two words that should only be put together with caution. The coalition has long-accepted this is a toxic area, as typified by Nick Clegg in September when he proclaimed: ‘Yes to greater diversity; yes to more choice for parents. But no to running schools for a profit; not in our state-funded education sector.’ But as Fraser argued last year, we need profit-making schools to spread the benefits of Michael Gove’s reforms to the most deprived children. To straddle this divide, Policy Exchange has proposed a halfway solution today: social enterprise schools.

James Forsyth

Grayling mounts a robust defence

From our UK edition

The Work Experience scheme is a sensible policy innovation. Giving the unemployed structure to their days, the chance to earn some experience and learn some skills is surely preferable to doing nothing for them beyond bunging them some money every week. Indeed, I would say that it was by far the more compassionate policy. Chris Grayling’s robust response to Polly Toynbee’s criticisms is a welcome example of the coalition taking on its critics. Grayling, who had a torrid election campaign, has recovered his footing at DWP and the Work Programme he is running is potentially transformative. It is based on the idea that the companies and voluntary organisations involved are paid by results.

James Forsyth

The tension’s rising inside the coalition

From our UK edition

Talking to a Downing Street adviser earlier this week, I was struck when they observed that a ‘2014 election wouldn’t be too bad really. David would have done his best, Nick would have done his best. But they just couldn’t make it work anymore.’   The Tories have spent some time recently contemplating the possibility that the coalition might not run for the full length of the parliament. At a recent Chequers away day, the prospect of the Liberal Democrats walking out in 2014 was openly discussed.   That this possibility is even being talked about is revealing of the mood inside the coalition, which is the subject of my piece in the magazine this week. Things are becoming increasingly tense.

Matthew Sinclair

Why property tax rises aren’t the answer

From our UK edition

When Tim Montgomerie first started calling for new wealth taxes I was horrified. Sweden has only just abolished its wealth tax after seeing hundreds of billions of kroner leave the country in capital flight over a number of years. Other countries have found wealth taxes are associated with narrow bases, high costs of collection and often very unfair treatment for different classes of assets. We should not replicate that here. As his proposals have been refined though, it isn’t that bad. More bands would be a relatively reasonable way of making the Council Tax system more progressive.

Fraser Nelson

Why George should listen to Danny

From our UK edition

In the new Spectator, we back the Liberal Democrats’ plans to raise the tax threshold to £10,000 — provided that the money is found by cuts in state spending rather than the pensions raid they propose. It’s not top of my list of tax cuts, but we have to accept the realpolitik. It’s the only tax-cutting option that has advocates in the Treasury. There are plenty of proposals around to cut taxes and wake the British economy from its ‘lost decade’ slumber. The need to use tax cuts as a remedy to the deficit will be familiar to anyone who has followed the American presidential debate: every candidate, even Romney, has their own list of radical tax cuts.

David Owen

How to remain a nation state

From our UK edition

Britain out of Brussels' clutches by 2020? It can happen, says David Owen, in a piece for the magazine this week. It's based on a speech to Peterhouse College, Cambridge. Here's the full version: In all the controversy about the eurozone and Greece it is easy to ignore one simple fact: maintaining a core eurozone is creating an unstoppable momentum towards a United States of Europe. On 7 February 2012 the German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated very clearly her direction of travel. The eurozone crisis for her is to be the springboard to another Treaty to replace the Lisbon Treaty. She said ‘Step-by-step, European politics is merging with domestic politics.

Peter Hoskin

Rumble in the Commons

From our UK edition

From the Sun: ‘A LABOUR MP was arrested late last night for assault after allegedly headbutting a Tory rival in a House of Commons bar. Witnesses allege Eric Joyce, 51, launched an unprovoked attack on Stuart Andrew, 40. It is claimed Joyce, MP for Falkirk, had to be held back by several Labour colleagues. A source said: “Stuart was given a Glasgow kiss.”’ Read the full report here. UPDATE: Joyce has been suspended by the Labour Party. The Standard's Joe Murphy has a particularly detailed account of it all here.

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

The forgotten victims of the Troubles

From our UK edition

This post, marking the 40th anniversary of the Aldershot bombing, was published earlier on the Biteback website. But as its author, Douglas Murray, is a regular here on Coffee House, and as its subject matter is so important, we thought we'd re-post it here: The 30th January this year was the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day when members of the British Parachute regiment shot dead fourteen civilians on the streets of a British city. The constant commemoration of that day by families of the dead and injured was one of the things that kept its memory alive and eventually led to the British government setting up the Saville Inquiry.

Jonathan Jones

Your guide to all those tax cut proposals

From our UK edition

Nick Clegg, Ed Balls, Liam Fox, David Davis, the Centre for Policy Studies, the Centre for Social Justice and the Sun. It seems almost everyone thinks George Osborne should cut taxes in his Budget next month — the only disagreements are over how. Here’s a quick guide to the main proposals so far: There will doubtless be other suggestions before 21 March when we will finally learn which, if any, Osborne has chosen. UPDATE: The table originally gave the cost of the CPS' corporation tax cut as £8.5bn. This is their 'static' estimate of the cost, but a more realistic estimate, derived from the Treasury's ready reckoner, is £4bn.

Lloyd Evans

Miliband snipes, Cameron deflects, Bercow bobs

From our UK edition

Let’s be honest. I shouldn’t say this but I can’t help it. I’m fed up. The NHS reform process has been dragging on for months, and still there’s no end in sight. Ed Miliband brought it up at PMQs for the third week running. The position remains the same. Miliband loves it. Cameron lives with it. The PM claimed that 8,200 GP practices are now practising his reforms and the Labour leader replied with a list of professional bodies — nurses, doctors, midwives, radiologists — who oppose them. And that’s exactly the trouble, for me, at least. If the issue were a race-horse some crazy campaigner would plunge beneath its thundering hooves. But it’s not. It’s a set of abbreviations.

Peter Hoskin

Murphy launches Labour’s defence review

From our UK edition

Remember when Jim Murphy spoke about defence cuts last month? It was not only a smart refinement of Labour's fiscal position, but also a preview for the defence review that they're conducting as an alternative to the government's SDSR. Well, that review was officially launched this morning, and I was in the audience on reporting duty. Here's a quartet of quick observations that I bashed out on my phone: 1) Cuts, cuts, cuts. There was, it is true, a greater emphasis on the ‘constrained fiscal circumstances’ in Murphy's opening remarks than there is the consultation paper that Labour released today. But that emphasis was still striking in itself.

James Forsyth

Miliband revels in his NHS attack

From our UK edition

Today’s PMQs was a reminder that whenever Ed Miliband goes on the NHS he is guaranteed a result. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Miliband enjoying himself as much in the chamber as he was today. When Andrew Lansley leaned over to try and tell Cameron the answer to a question, Miliband mockingly remarked ‘Let me say to the Health Secretary, I don’t think the PM wants advice from you’. As Cameron’s assaults became more direct, Miliband did not — as he often does — go into his shell. As he sat down at the end of it all, the Labour leader had to push down on his knee to disguise the adrenalin shakes he was having.

James Forsyth

A taxing problem for George Osborne

From our UK edition

Today’s FT reports that additional council tax bands are being considered as part of the Budget process. But there are several problems with introducing new council tax bands. First, this would require a wider revaluation, something that the coalition has ruled out explicitly and that would almost certainly drive up council tax for most people.   A revaluation, as a parliamentary question from George Osborne’s former chief of staff Matt Hancock established, would cost around £200 million. It would also take two to three years to complete, meaning revenues from any new band wouldn’t start accruing until either very close to, or even after, the next election.