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Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Government could face another welfare rebellion in the Lords

Remember those rebellions in the Lords on welfare earlier this year? Well, the fight hasn't disappeared entirely from the Upper Chamber. Secondary legislation filling in the detail of the Welfare Reform Act is the new battleground, and I understand another uprising could be on the cards over regulations affecting disabled people. Baroness Thomas of Winchester, who regularly cropped up on the Naughty List last year when peers revolted on the welfare reform primary legislation, is calling on the Government to think again about its regulations for the mobility component of the Personal Independence Payment, the benefit replacing the Disability Living Allowance.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron needn’t fear renegotiating Britain’s relationship with the EU

Nick Clegg has made a not-so-startling intervention in the debate about Britain's relationship with Europe today, warning that Britain must avoid selling itself short in a renegotiation. His interview with the Guardian is a necessary piece of positioning ahead of David Cameron's Big Europe Speech in mid-January, and this kind of differentiation is something the Tories are more than happy for the Lib Dem leader to continue doing. So in some ways, Clegg warning Cameron not to overdo it on Europe isn't at all significant. But the Deputy Prime Minister makes an important observation in his interview about Britain's bargaining power.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

High Court judge: Gay marriage is ‘wrong policy’

Sir Paul Coleridge's intervention in today's Times (£) on gay marriage has ensured the debate won't go quiet after various angry Christmas Day sermons. The High Court Judge tells the paper that introducing weddings for same-sex couples is the 'wrong policy', adding: 'So much energy and time has been put into this debate for 0.1 per cent of the population, when we have a crisis of family breakdown. 'It's gratifying that marriage in any context is centre stage… but it [gay marriage] is a minority issue. We need a much more focused position by the Government on the importance of marriage.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Banking Commission to force Chancellor’s hand on reform

As is becoming increasingly clear to David Cameron, the problem with answering calls for an inquiry into a scandal in one industry or another is that at some point that Inquiry will report back with a bunch of recommendations which may or may not be politically expedient to implement. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards came up with proposals last week for an electrified ring fence, which the Treasury politely said it would look at, and Vince Cable rather more bluntly said the government should ignore, preferring instead that ministers get a move on with implementing the Vickers proposals, rather than opening up the whole debate again.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Tory MP mulls boundaries rebellion

In spite of the best efforts of its ministers in the Lords, it looks as though the government is going to face a vote on the dreaded boundaries legislation early next year, with the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill returning to the Upper Chamber in January. The big story is that the Lib Dems will be able to kick the reforms away until 2018 using an amendment, but it isn't just the members of the smaller Coalition party who will be rebelling against government policy. Tory MP Glyn Davies has now come out as an opponent of the reforms, too. On his blog, he writes that he is 'contemplating voting against my government for the first time' for a number of reasons.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

The party of little tykes

Whose fault is it that the Tory party is so rebellious? Some think it's the beastly backbenchers, while others argue it's the Tory leadership. I was amused to watch a beaming Brian Binley lead David Cameron into the 1922 committee on Wednesday, given the backbencher was only recently penning an angry letter to the press about how the Prime Minister was ruining everything. There will always be people like Binley in every party, and Downing Street has made very clear that it would answer his desire for a move to the right by staying firmly in the centre ground. But are there really are so many other Conservative MPs who started out as thorns in the flesh from their first day in Parliament?

Isabel Hardman

An electric fence to keep the City of London’s light from dimming

The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards was conceived in those tumultuous days following the first Libor revelations. At the time, some hoped that its report would lay the blame squarely at the feet of a certain former city minister. But the cross-party committee of peers and MPs has produced a sober report this morning which makes for relatively comfortable reading for those Labour politicians whose regulatory system saw the birth of Libor rigging as it does not name them. It is slightly less comfortable for the Coalition, which now has to consider whether to beef up its existing plans for banking reform. It doesn't contradict the spirit of the Vickers reforms, but it does go further, calling for an 'electrified' ring fence between the retail and investment arms of the banks.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith doesn’t support a welfare cash card

Those nasty Tories, they're at it again. Now they're trying to stigmatise benefit claimants by giving them special welfare cash cards so they can't buy booze or cigarettes with their child benefit. That Dickensian Iain Duncan Smith was talking about the value of such a card on the lunchtime news, and has caused a bit of an uproar. Except they're not planning to do anything of the sort. I've just spoken to a source close to the Work and Pensions Secretary, who has completely refuted the idea that he's going to bring a card in. The only hint he was making was that some vulnerable claimants such as people struggling with drug addictions might be better helped by a card, not every benefit claimant. The source says: 'This is not something that is being considered, it is not in the pipeline.

Isabel Hardman

Why the Tories aren’t worried about the benefit wars

The government has just published the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill, and everyone's pointing to polls which underline their own point about whether limiting the rise in benefits payments to 1 per cent is going to play well with voters. Labour types are brandishing the Independent/ComRes poll, which says 'a surprising high 43 per cent disagree' that the government is right to cap the rise at 1 per cent. What they aren't mentioning, of course, is that 49 per cent think the government is right: so hardly a resounding rejection of the policy. On the right, there's a Populus poll for the Conservative party which tests Labour's argument that support for the Bill drains away when voters hear it includes in-work benefits. Respondents were asked to agree or disagree with a series of statements.

Isabel Hardman

Francis Maude strikes conciliatory note in stand-off over senior civil servants

Francis Maude's latest plan to get the civil service working more effectively sounds very sensible: so sensible, in fact, that it's a wonder it has taken so long. The problem is that he currently can't be as sensible as he'd hoped when it comes to appointing senior civil servants. The headline announcement is that the government has published the personal objectives of 15 permanent secretaries, along with those for Sir Bob Kerslake and Sir Jeremy Heywood. The worst performing 10 per cent of those civil servants will be identified and put into a programme of performance management. Ministers will also have more involvement in assessing their permanent secretaries' performance. All very sensible. There's some interesting detail in the individual plans that's worth looking at.

Isabel Hardman

Mitchell row could make MPs think again before criticising a colleague in trouble

Tory MPs - and the occasional Lib Dem, too - were flocking around Andrew Mitchell in the Commons yesterday to show their support for the former chief whip. He is enjoying a new wave of support in his party, rather than languishing as persona non grata on the backbench. But the picture is still not clear. Mitchell himself admitted that he swore during the exchange with the police: less politically toxic, perhaps, than 'pleb', but swearing at a police officer is still something that can land you with a fine in a Magistrates Court. And there are two other police officers who claim the chief whip said both words. Another person who has not emerged unscathed from this row is Sir Jeremy Heywood. He reviewed the CCTV footage himself, but seems not to have noticed that there were no witnesses.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron promises Tory MPs strong 2015 offer on Europe

David Cameron's appearance before the 1922 committee was designed to reassure his party, and he tried to do this by promising them that the Conservative party would be strong on Europe in 2015. It has been a hard term, and today's PMQs was savage, so the Prime Minister decided to start his speech by telling them to think about the Conservative party's record in government. He touched on welfare, on schools, on the NHS - in particular mixed sex wards and waiting times - and income tax. He is clearly looking forward to the next election, too, as he mentioned the appointment of Lynton Crosby, to cheers from those listening, as well as attacking the Labour party. He also told the MPs about the importance of a strong and united Conservative party.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband might talk a good game on food banks, but he’s still wrong

David Cameron made a perfectly good stab at explaining what the government is doing to support families who are struggling at Prime Minister's Questions today. He said: 'I agree with the right hon. gentleman that we need to do more to help the poorest in our country. That is why we have lifted the personal tax allowance and taken 2 million of the lowest paid people out of tax altogether. Let us take someone who is on the minimum wage and works full time - because of the tax changes that we have made, their income tax bill has been cut in half. I would also make this point: because of the decisions that we made in this government to increase the child tax credit by £390 ahead of inflation, we have helped those families with their bills and we will continue to do more in the future.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Improve human rights by quitting Strasbourg court, Tory Bill of Rights advisers argue

As expected, today's report from the Commission on a Bill of Rights offered little. With a membership evenly split between Tory and Lib Dem nominees, it was set up to fail. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, who resigned from the Commission in March, tells me that this problem was exacerbated by the way in which it was run: it was barred from discussing either the European Court of Human Rights or the Convention. He says: 'The Commission was not able to have a productive discussion because of the determination of the civil service to produce an artificial argument'. Attention now moves to what the Conservatives will say about the matter in their manifesto.

Isabel Hardman

Ken Clarke’s concession on secret courts fails to calm Lib Dem fears

Ken Clarke's announcement that the government will accept a major House of Lords amendment to the Justice and Security Bill might ease the legislation's passage through the Commons. The Lib Dems and several senior Conservative figures, including Andrew Tyrie, have been pressing the government to accept the amendment, which gives judges more discretion on whether a court should sit in secret. So those parliamentarians will be happy. But there is still a fight on the cards, albeit not in either chamber of Parliament. The Liberal Democrat grassroots remain horrified by the Bill's proposals for secret courts in general, even though they aren't currently getting much traction with their MPs when it comes to scrapping the legislation entirely.

Isabel Hardman

Chris Grayling wants a robust response to the European Court, but will he get his way?

It's a big day for Chris Grayling: the long awaited Commission on a British Bill of Rights reports today. But the Justice Secretary is already setting himself up for disappointment, with reports swirling in the press that the Commission has failed to reach a strong conclusion. In any case, as Grayling acknowledges in his op-ed in the Telegraph today, there isn't much he can do about reforming the rights landscape in this country while the Tories remain in Coalition with the Lib Dems. Grayling says he will 'read and digest the report of the Commission, and will see what help it gives me to deliver change in the short term'. But he adds that he will 'also be looking clearly towards the next election, and starting work on ensuring that we had a real plan for change then as well'.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Will the Lords really slay the gay marriage bill?

Think the Commons is in uproar at the moment over gay marriage? Just wait until the legislation makes its way into the House of Lords. The received wisdom is that equal marriage will go into the upper chamber, but never make it out alive after a savaging from socially conservative peers. But is that true? If it's uproar you're looking for, then you're unlikely to be disappointed, but the chances of angry words in the chamber translating into embarrassing defeats for the government aren't quite so high. Remember that after 13 years of Labour in power, the House has a large liberal-leaning majority. There are 224 Labour peers and 90 Lib Dems.

Isabel Hardman

The Tories mustn’t make another silly pledge on benefits in 2015

As the country approaches a general election, a party leader, desperate to reassure a key group of voters, makes a very silly pledge. He is as unequivocal as possible that, in spite of the big spending implications in a time of economic crisis, he will stick to this silly pledge to keep his target voters happy. Months later, a Coalition has formed, and those target voters are enraged because that promise turned out to be worth little more than the paper it was written on. We all know that this is what happened with the Lib Dems and their extraordinarily stupid pledge to block rises in tuition fees.

Isabel Hardman

The gumming up of Whitehall

Tony Blair is paying a visit to journalists in the Commons this week for a festive lunch. Last week, David Cameron complained to lunching hacks about the 'gumming up' of government; perhaps the former Prime Minister will wish to add his own thoughts today on the ingredients of that sticky gum that makes the progress of the Whitehall machine so glutinous. One of the gummy bits in Whitehall at the moment is the way permanent secretaries are appointed. Last week the Civil Service Commission blocked plans by Francis Maude to allow ministers to pick the most senior civil servants in their departments from a list of approved candidates, opting instead for an independent panel to recommend candidates.

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg wants gory government: so should the Tories

There's nothing wrong with Nick Clegg putting some distance between his party and the Conservatives. Today the Liberal Democrat leader is going to open up about the gory details of government, explaining where his party has held the Tories back, and heralding a new era where he and colleagues are honest about what they actually think of policies. On Friday, I argued that this sort of honesty about the workings of coalition government was a good thing. But there is one caveat to this. Conservative MPs are pretty unhappy at present, and it's not just that they are overtired before the Christmas break.