John O'Neill

There's been a bit of a fuss over the claim in Lord Adonis's growth report—repeated in a draft of Ed Miliband's localism speech—that four-fifths of the private-sector jobs growth in the UK since 2010 has happened in London. The Prime Minister tweeted: Labour get their facts wrong on jobs - again. How can they ever be trusted with the economy? http://t.co/zTZJVadFhQ #AdonisReview — David Cameron (@David_Cameron) July 1, 2014 And NIESR's Jonathan Portes (who has form taking issue with how numbers on ‘new’ jobs numbers are used) said: @eduardmead @bbcnickrobinson That said, Labour stat certainly wrong. Conservatives much closer, but not on basis of published ONS figures.

Here's a funny thing: Labour claims to be the ‘party of work', but the Tories have reasonable claim to be the workers’ party, given that they’ve overseen the creation of 1.5 million new jobs. Anyway, it was one of the slogans that shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves incanted on her Sunday Politics interview this morning, when she seemed to have a pretty torrid time of it. listen to ‘Rachel Reeves ’ on Audioboo She had to defend her party's leader against his cratering approval ratings and the embarrassment of a leaked election strategy document which shows that people don't trust him on immigration, the economy or welfare.

Labour has a long, hard slog to win arrest the public's loss of faith in its economic competence. The party's latest advert hasn't helped. It shows David Cameron and Nick Clegg as two peas-in-a-pod whose VAT hike has put £450 on your shopping bill. There’s one big problem with the advert: it makes its claim in front of a whole bunch of foods on which you don't pay VAT at 20 per cent. You pay it at zero per cent. Even on the chocolate-chip biscuits. There are some 24 products in the picture and 18 of them are exempt: Fresh fruit and vegetables (peas, sweetcorn, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, red onions, beans, red cabbage, carrots, grapes, apples): all zero-rated.  Chocolate chip biscuits: zero-rated.

‘If you're a saver, this budget is for you’, George Osborne said on Wednesday as he unveiled measures to let people keep more of what they save – such as combining cash and stocks-and-shares ISAs and whacking the subscription limit up to £15,000 from the 1st of July this year. But will people put their money away in savings accounts? The OBR's latest forecasts show that the savings ratio – the percentage of households’ disposable income that they save – will fall by almost a fifth this year, and households will put away significant less than the OBR thought they would last March. [datawrapper chart="http://cf.datawrapper.de/JjUGo/1/"] Households aren't just not saving - they're spending what they've already saved.

Ed Miliband's energy freeze pledge won him 'political speech of the year' but has had the unintended (yet inevitable) consequence of throwing the energy market into a spasm. The head of Npower, Paul Massara, has said that the political uncertainty means we may not have enough power to cover demand. He has told BBC Hardtalk:- 'The amount of spare capacity to meet the peak requirement has dropped from somewhere around 15 per cent to five... and unless the UK can create a politically stable environment to attract new capital, that capital will not come in... The more government creates uncertainty with things like price freezes or other changes, it means there's less certainty and less likely for capital investment.

Some of George Osborne's targets - like balancing the books - are always five years away; he never has to meet them to claim success, as long as he plans to achieve them. But having a falling cash-terms deficit he can be measured on. In March, the OBR forecast that borrowing for 2013-14 would come in just half a billion pounds under last year's total. It now looks like Osborne will easily meet his target. Public borrowing for September this year was £1 billion lower than for the same month in 2012. For the government's financial year so far, Osborne has borrowed £6 billion less than at the same point last year (but that's still almost £57 billion). Borrowing figures have been helped by the strengthening economy. That's boosted tax receipts.

At PMQs yesterday David Cameron said Ed Miliband was suffering 'complete amnesia' over his time as energy secretary. Ed might have forgotten some of his climate change policies that put money on your energy bills - but it doesn't matter - they might not be around for long. As James Forsyth said at the weekend, George Osborne wants to get rid of some of them in his autumn statement. The Department of Energy and Climate Change says there are seven green taxes that put £112 on the average energy bill in 2013, making up just under a tenth of the total. What are they, and which of them is cost-of-living warrior Ed Miliband responsible for? 1. Home improvements for the fuel poor - adds £47 to the average bill. Miliband policy?

Here's the main exchange between David Cameron and Ed Miliband at PMQs today:- listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron v Miliband on energy prices’ on Audioboo After wishing the Prime Minister a happy birthday, Ed made the debate all about his energy price cap policy. By PMQs standards it was a reasonably informed one, but neither Cameron nor Miliband are on a strong footing when it comes to energy price rises: they've both been in governments where prices have soared and little has been done about it. There was a droll exchange between Richard Ottaway and the Prime Minister over scrap metal. Ottaway asked the Prime Minister to welcome the new Scrap Metal Dealers Act ('It'll make the trains run on time').

It may have happened last night, but Damian McBride's interview on Newsnight was responsible for a lot of talk today, not least because it led Jeremy Paxman to say 'McPrickface' live on air.

Britain's no3 political party held their annual conference this week. But before that, the Liberal Democrats met in Glasgow. The week started with Nick Clegg evading questions about Vince Cable's expected absence from a vote on the economy at the Lib Dem conference. 'I don't tell people when they have to turn up to a meeting' said the authoritative leader on the Today programme.