Uk politics

Wednesday

Patrick Nolan

Reforming maternity pay

From our UK edition

While it is widely accepted that the costs of family breakdown are significant, there is less agreement on policy options to support families. Pete Hoskin set out arguments against a simplistic subsidy approach earlier today. Putting together ideas that work is made even harder by the catastrophic state of the government’s books. New policies should provide real value for money and be (at least) revenue neutral. In our latest report, Reform identified a set of cost-effective reforms to one area of support for new families – maternity and paternity pay and leave – which is currently underperforming. This system of support receives surprisingly little attention, although it currently costs taxpayers around £2 billion every year.

Lloyd Evans

Helicopters hover over PMQs<br />

From our UK edition

One of the strangest and most dramatic parliamentary terms ended today in bizarre fashion. The fiasco over fiddled expenses has preoccupied Westminster for months but it was helicopters in Afghanistan that dominated PMQs. From whoppers to choppers. The Speaker seems to have ruled against public lamentations over battlefield casualties and, without these solemnities, our MPs had more time to ask questions and the PM had more time to avoid answering them. David Cameron said the Afghan mission needed, ‘a tighter definition, greater urgency and more visible progress,’ in order to maintain public support. Brown’s definition was looser rather than tighter.

James Forsyth

How close we came to Chancellor Balls

From our UK edition

Sue Cameron’s Notebook in the FT is one of the best guides there is to the mood in Whitehall. The main focus of her column today is the discontent among the Mandarins about the fact that huge cuts will have to be made but they are getting no guidance from their current ministers as to where and how this is to be done. But the bit which stood out to me was how advanced Ed Balls plans for moving to the Treasury were. Cameron reports that: "Some in Whitehall have still not recovered from the reshuffle drama when schools secretary Ed Balls had his hopes of becoming chancellor dashed. 'It was Shakespearean,' says one onlooker. 'Ed had his finger on the crown. He’d even cleared his diary and said goodbye to his civil servants. He knew he was moving – then he didn’t.

Peter Hoskin

Why I remain unconvinced about the Tories’ tax break for married couples

From our UK edition

Ok, Fraser - I'm not going to let this tax 'n' marriage debate rumble on interminably, but I do want the final word!  First, I appreciate your response - it makes a very strong case, but one which fails to convince me.  Why?  Well, largely because I agreed with most of it already.  As I said in my original post, IDS and others have unearthed plenty of statistics which show just how important marriage is to the functioning of society, and to the lives of people within it.  This evidence, much of which you raise, is important and shouldn't be ignored.   But there are still reasons - beyond those set out by Philip Collins today - for being wary of, specifically, tax-breaks for married couples.  For starters, what's to be gained from them?

James Forsyth

A mutual decision?

From our UK edition

There is an interesting little story tucked away in today’s Daily Mirror, the government might only sell off Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley on condition that they are turned into mutually-owned societies. Jason Beattie reports that the idea of turning them back into building societies is being backed by John McFall, the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, and 29 other Co-Operative party Labour MPs. I suspect that if Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley are de-nationalised this side of the election, something that I suspect Brown would like to do, the price will be the key determinant.

Fraser Nelson

Why marriage should be recognised in the tax system

From our UK edition

Cameron has been fairly bold in entering the debate on marriage, because we don't like do that debate in Britain. Not really - it's private, and we Brits don't like debating private things. Anything which helps marriage can easily be paraphrased as "deploying fiscal incentives to force something which should largely be a private decision". And not by the left, but by our very own Pete Hoskin in the below post. Now, we are a heterodox bunch of baristas here at CoffeeHouse and we do disagree - so here is why I think Pete is wrong. I'd like to have a go offering some of the "convincing answers" he's looking for. Right now, millions of couples are better off apart under the perverted incentives of the welfare state. The Tories would remove this anomaly.

Peter Hoskin

Love and marriage?

From our UK edition

Ok, I must admit I'm quite wary of Tory plans to encourage marriage via a £20-a-week tax break for married couples.  Not because I don't think marriage is a positive social force.  I do.  And Iain Duncan Smith's usually excellent Centre for Social Justice - who are pushing the tax break proposal, along with other, more convincing, ideas, in their recent Every Family Matters report - has unearthed enough statistics over the years to prove that it is.  But there's something crude and debasing about deploying fiscal incentives to force something which should largely be a private decision, based on sappier motives such as love, between two people.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Another goat goes

From our UK edition

News is breaking that the Health Minister Lord Darzi is leaving the government. By my count, that means Lord West is the ony one of Gordon's goats still in post.

Peter Hoskin

The slowdown in government

From our UK edition

It's no secret around Westminster that civil servants are giving up on the Labour government and are wait-wait-waiting for the Tories to shuffle into power.  But few articles have captured that process so well as Rachel Sylvester's column in the Times today, which contains this striking passage about the suspended animation along Whitehall: "It is said that the Civil Service has the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce. And slowly but surely the government machine is coming to a halt. Contracts are delayed, decisions deferred, reviews welcomed. When Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, announced a U-turn on ID cards recently, he was only catching up with his civil servants.

James Forsyth

The tide turns on public spending

From our UK edition

If further proof were needed that the public’s attitude to public spending has changed it comes in the latest Guardian / ICM poll. It finds that 64 percent of voters think that spending should be being reduced now as opposed to 28 percent who want it increased: the electorate is on the other side of Brown’s favourite dividing line. Even among Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters, a majority favour cuts. Amongst those who favour cuts, the Tories have a significant advantage. 46 percent of those who support cuts think Labour would cut too little with 21 percent saying it would cut too much. With the Tories, 30 percent worry they would cut too much and 22 percent that they would not cut enough.

Peter Hoskin

Public in favour of ringfencing defence spending

From our UK edition

A timely poll from PoliticsHome which finds that two-thirds of the public think defence should be protected from any spending cuts.  Here's their graphic with full results: The question, of course, is whether this kind of public pressure forces any of the main parties to actually shield defence from cuts.  With the debt burden as it is, its difficult to see them doing so while also sticking to their current commitments in other areas. UPDATE: Ok, just to provide a bit of context in the wake of some thought-provoking comments from CoffeeHousers below.

Daniel Korski

Time for a British Manley Commission?

From our UK edition

If the government wants to stem the haemorrhaging of elite support for NATO’s Afghan mission, there is one major thing it can do at this stage: establish a British version of the Manley Commission. In Canada, ex-Deputy Prime Minister John Manley was asked by the Harper government to take a hard look at Canada’s role is Afghansistan, and lay out a clear plan. Its work effectively rebuilt Canadian support for the war effort. The Brown Government is simply not trusted to give an honest assessment of what is happening on the ground or give the military what it needs. The Defence Secretary is an unknown entity outside of Westminster (and even inside), and can hardly be expected to succesfully champion something as contentious as the war.

Peter Hoskin

Coulson in the clear?

From our UK edition

It's worth following Andrew Sparrow's typically excellent live blog of the Commons culture committee's first public hearing into the recent NotW "phone-hacking" claims.  So far, the biggest revelation has come courtesy of Nick Davies - the Guardian journalist behind the story last week - and it's one which will please the Tories: "Davies says he has the names of 27 journalists from the NoW and four from the Sun who used a private investigator to get information. Some of the requests were legal, like electoral register searches. But many were not. Davies says he does not want to name the names. "I'm a reporter, not a police officer." But there are a number of senior editorial executives on the list. One was Greg Miskiw, the assistant editor, news, at NoW.

Fraser Nelson

Behind the swine flu panic

From our UK edition

I am instinctively sceptical about health scare stories, so have been watching the Swine Flu story with much suspicion. We are seldom reminded that it's less serious than normal flu. Hysterically, Andy Burnham claims there could be up to 100,000 infections a day in Britain next month - the latest worldwide tally is 121,000. We are told how many die from swine flu, but not how many have also died from normal flu so we can put it in context (the DoH, remarkably, can't tell me).   Proper diagnosis is not being done by our doctors. Virtually anyone with a summer cold is being told to stay at home for seven days - result! - and prescribed Tamiflu just in case.  I went hunting for the normal flu figures, but found something else instead: that this is a London flu.

Peter Hoskin

Defending his own premiership

From our UK edition

The Times's story of how Bob Ainsworth came to be Defence Secretary is equal parts extraordinary and disheartening.  Here are the key passages: "Mr Ainsworth’s predecessor, John Hutton, had indicated to Mr Brown in mid-May that he was thinking of leaving the Government. Mr Hutton, recently remarried, had a compelling family reason for wanting to step down. But Mr Brown, preoccupied with the elections and the possibility of a leadership challenge, appears to have spent little time thinking about the vacancy. It wasn’t until around noon the day after the polls that he began to focus on who should oversee Britain’s military and its engagement in Afghanistan.

Monday

Peter Hoskin

A burden for future governments

From our UK edition

If you haven't already, it's well worth reading Robert Peston's analysis of the first annual report from UKFI, the government's banking wing.  There are plenty of fascinating titbits in there, but this passage on how long it will take the government to sell its shares in Lloyds and RBS rather jumped out at me: "As the annual report makes clear, flogging perhaps £100bn of stock in Lloyds and RBS - which is what the holdings may easily be worth in a couple of year - can't be done overnight. That's just too big a mouthful for investors to swallow quickly. How can I be certain?

Peter Hoskin

What did Mitchell mean?

From our UK edition

Andrew Mitchell is doing the media rounds to discuss the Tories' new policy paper on international development, and he seemed to let slip with a major claim on defence spending to the BBC earlier.  Here's how the indispensable PoliticsHome reports it: "Mr Mitchell said that it was not a question of choosing between the budgets for defence and international development, adding that the two departments would work much more closely under a Conservative government. 'I don't think that defence will face cuts, but it's not a question of either or, you have to do both," he said. 'The development effort in Afghanistan which hasn't always gone well and so to upgrade we need to have much closer coordination than we've had in the past,' he added.

Fraser Nelson

Continuing the immigration debate

From our UK edition

My post on immigration the other week was picked up by BBC World Service, who invited me to discuss it with Lord Maurice Peston (podcast here). I regard it as one of the most important yet least discussed issues in Britain right now, and my original also raised some typically robust comments and critiques from CoffeeHousers. My point is that Britain has a dangerously dysfunctional labour market, one so flawed that when the economy expands it sucks in foreign workers rather than tackling our unemployment. I also revealed that all net job creation in the private sector can be accounted for by immigration. Anyway, allow me to respond to some of the points raised: 1. THE BORIS FACTOR.

Daniel Korski

Who watches the watchmen?

From our UK edition

In the US, a storm is brewing over Dick Cheney’s alleged role in concealing an intelligence programme from Congress. Whatever the details of the alleged offence, it raises an interesting question: should oversight of the intelligence community intrinsically be different from other kinds of parliamentary oversight? Over in the States, Legislators were content to delegate the management of intelligence agencies to the executive until a series of abuses was revealed in the early 1970s, and the House and Senate Committees on Intelligence were set up in 1977. In Britain, however, Parliament has only had scant role in overseeing the intelligence community.

Sunday

Daniel Korski

The UK “surge” debate

From our UK edition

The support for Britain's involvement in Afghanistan is, for the first time, showing major signs of fraying. Nick Clegg broke ranks with the other party leaders last week, and this weekend the total number of British deaths went beyond the number of soldiers killed in Iraq. Understandably, the Sunday papers are filled with stories about the lack of troops and kit. The Observer reports that an emergency review is taking place in the MoD to see if more soldiers need to be sent out. So what to make of it all? First of all, it is clear that there were too few troops and civilians deployed to start off. I have given my take on what went wrong initially in Helmand to the Foreign Affairs Committee, as have some of the protagonists like Ed Butler.