Afternoon summary
- Nick Boles, the skills minister, has written to ministers setting out concessions the government is planning to make on the trade union bill because it fears defeat in the Lords, a leaked letter has revealed. (See 3.15pm.)
- Ben Gummer, the health minister, has told MPs that it is “fast approaching” the time when the government will impose a new junior doctors’ contract. Responding to an urgent question in the Commons, he said “we cannot delay this any longer”. He also said latest estimates suggest 2,884 operations have been cancelled ahead of a 24-hour strike by thousands of junior doctors in England on Wednesday.
- Patrick McLoughlin, the transport secretary, has told MPs that holding the EU referendum in June would not rule out a decision being made on the Heathrow third runway by July. Giving evidence to the Commons transport committee, he said the government still hoped to decide whether to build a new runway at Heathrow or at Gatwick before the summer recess. The EU referendum could lead to some delay, he suggested.
I don’t know yet when the referendum will be; a date has not been set. But there will be a period of ‘purdah’ once that referendum is called and that may influence our availability to be able to take a decision at a specific time.
If the referendum is June 23, a date that has been talked about, then I think we could still be on target to make it before the end of July.
- MPs from different parties have been making the case for electoral reform. At the Make Votes Matter conference the SNP’s Tommy Sheppard said:
We must move on from the 2011 AV referendum which was an unenthusiastic, half-baked attempt at change. Real reform of Westminster is long-overdue and a fairer voting system – where every vote counts – would be a good start to transforming this archaic institution.
In Scotland we already have proportional representation for the Scottish Parliament and local elections – it has proven to work well and gives voters a stronger say in who represents them. It’s time for a fairer voting system to be applied to Westminster elections.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Mark Easton, the BBC’s home affairs editor, says David Cameron promised significant prison reform four years ago.
I want to put rocket boosters under it: PM on prison reform 2012.
— Mark Easton (@BBCMarkEaston) February 8, 2016
We'll put rocket boosters under it: PM on prison reform 2016 #boosters
Cameron's prisons speech - A round-up of reaction
Here is some reaction to David Cameron’s prisons’ speech.
- Lord Falconer, the shadow justice secretary, says he is not sure how Cameron’s plans will make any difference.
Labour has long called for governors of successful prisons to be given greater autonomy and for prisons to become more rehabilitative so it is welcome that the Government is listening and suggesting moving in this direction but given their failure to date we await the details.
It is also important that this takes place alongside a strengthened inspection regime, greater accountability and, crucially, measures to address the rising violence, self-harm and overcrowding across the prison estate.
The scandalous failure David Cameron condemns is his own. The Tories have had five years to improve our prisons and we have heard promises of “rehabilitation revolution” many times before. Instead, they have cut staff, closed effective jails, decreased transparency and presided over a crisis. While Ministers continue to ignore the appalling conditions in our prisons and with no additional funding provided it is unclear how these announcements will make any real difference.
- The Prison Governors Association says in a statement (pdf) governors are not to blame for the problems in prisons.
The assertion that there is a lack of talented leadership in our prisons is untrue. The stripping out of resources, including severe staffing reductions, has been the policy of the Government and of the senior management within the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) for many years now.
Almost every function within our prisons has been centralised, from choosing who provides education and health to who changes the lights. The number of staff, including governors, has been drastically reduced yet at the same time the prisoner population has increased. This has led to an increase in the workloads of all staff, increasing stress levels and sickness rates, which has further exacerbated the problem. There has also been an increase, beyond acceptable levels, in violence, self-harm, self-inflicted deaths and the loss of good order. However, these failures cannot be laid at the doorstep of hardworking and overstretched staff who are doing their best to maintain an effective service.
Today brings a welcome speech from the prime minister, which opens up a space for radical and rational thinking. The prime minister is right to say that we do need prisons, and right to say that we don’t need prisons as they are today.
Prisons are currently violent and overcrowded. As such, they fail everyone: victims, the public, staff and prisoners themselves.
Prison reform, however, is the tip of the iceberg. Improved education and increased autonomy for governors will not work if there are people crammed into filthy institutions with no staff to open the cell doors. We need action now to tackle sentence inflation and the profligate use of prison. Then the Prime Minister’s vision can become a reality.
Suicide of a 47 year woman in Low Newton prison, 12th this year & third woman. Nothing I heard from @David_Cameron will prevent this
— Frances Crook (@francescrook) February 8, 2016
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Anne Longfield, children’s commissioner for England, says she wants arrangements for young people held in custody to be improved.
I am hopeful that the ambition shown by the government in reforming adult prisons today will be reflected in its plans for the children’s secure estate. Like adults, the rate of reoffending of children in custody is appalling with 67% of children reoffending within 12 months of release.
Custody should be far more ambitious for children - promoting education, wellbeing and the longer-term development of children, to foster desistance from crime. The dramatic reduction in the number of children in custody provides a unique opportunity for root and branch reform and with this, a chance to further reduce numbers - possibly by half - by using more community sentences and technology, wherever they can.
Whilst we warmly welcome the commitment to enable greater use of community sentencing for mothers we urge the government to ensure this amounts to an investment in much more than tagging. To truly break the cycle, women affected by the criminal justice system need specialist support to address common life experiences of domestic violence and sexual abuse, substance misuse, poverty, homelessness and difficulties with mental health.
Updated
James Treadwell, a senior lecturer in criminology at Birmingham City University, has sent out a comment on David Cameron’s prisons speech. He says that trying to rehabilitate prisoners in jail is unlikely to succeed because it misses the point.
For 80 per cent of our current prison population, prison is a bad idea. They are there not because they are a danger to the public, but because they are socially inadequate.
They are mentally ill, poor, poorly educated, unemployed and lacking in even basic life skills. This might sound pejorative, but it’s true, and you will not rehabilitate those socially inadequate people in jail. You just won’t.
You won’t change the prospects for their children, you won’t stop their offending, you won’t get them jobs, you won’t re-educate or change them and you will not increase their pro-social attitudes or victim empathy.
Treadwell says these offenders should receive punishment in the community.
The Department for Business is not saying much about the Socialist Worker scoop. (See 3.15pm.) A spokeswoman said:
We do not comment on leaks. The government is committed to implementing the trade union bill and to balancing the right to strike with the right of millions of people to go about their daily lives.
Ministers planning concessions over trade union bill because they fear Lords defeats, leaked letter reveals
We don’t get the Socialist Worker in the office (although we do get the Morning Star - essential reading for anyone following Labour now that Jeremy Corbyn is leading the party) but perhaps we should because it has a very good story today - the leak of a letter showing that the government is planning a series of concessions over the trade union bill.
Here is an extract from the Socialist Worker story.
The document, dated 26 January 2016, shows that the Tories expect the House of Lords to defeat “flagship” parts of the bill. Socialist Worker has a letter, marked “Official—sensitive”, from Nick Boles, minister of state for skills, to Oliver Letwin and Chris Grayling ...
Boles hopes that “a willingness to give some ground on certain aspects of the bill may lead to a less hard line response to the bill on other issues”.
The suggested concessions include:
- Conceding a review into whether unions should be allowed to conduct e-ballots for strikes. This is needed because “the threshold provisions (the flagship element of the bill) will be defeated if we do not make some move towards accepting the possibility of electronic balloting”. Boles made a point of saying there would be no date for such a review to report. He cynically said, “I would not propose that we should announce the period in which the review should report”.
- Setting up a procedure to consult (underlined in the original) the Scottish parliament and Welsh Assembly on the bill. In addition Boles suggests the government may have to retreat further in Scotland and Wales.
- Withdrawing the increase in the notice period for industrial action from seven days to 14 days.
- Increasing the time that a ballot is legally valid from four months to six months.
- Deleting the need for a picket supervisor to wear an armband and badge.
The Tories’ disarray should lift everyone as the TUC’s week of action against the bill begins on Monday, tomorrow.
Here’s a comment from Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, on the story.
The TUC continues to oppose the trade union bill in its entirety. However, we are pleased that ministers recognise that large parts of it are not fit for purpose.
This letter exposes the huge legal and constitutional problems the Bill will face if it is to come into law in Scotland and Wales. And it recognises the independence of the Certification Officer is under threat.
The changes discussed in this correspondence are important. However, they do not go far enough. While ministers are right to call for check-off arrangements to remain in Scotland and Wales, they are still planning on banning public sector employers in England from deducting union subs via payroll.
And holding a review into electronic balloting without an end date is simply not good enough. If online balloting is safe and secure enough for the Conservatives to select their candidate for London Mayor, there can be no excuse for delaying its introduction for union members.
Lunchtime summary
- David Cameron has said that staff in high-performing prisons could receive bonuses under this plans to change the way prisons operate. Governors will get much more freedom to determine how jails are runs, and performance data will be published, allowing jails to be ranked in league tables. Cameron also said he wanted to speed up the deportation of foreign offenders and that the police would get new powers to require foreign nationals to hand over their passports and make them declare nationality in court. And he said the government would also work with mobile phone network operators to block mobile signals to jails. I will post more from the speech when the full text is available.
- Cameron has defended Downing Street’s decision to suggest that leaving the EU could result in the “Jungle” refugee camp at Calais relocating to Kent. There were lots of opposition politicians in France who wanted to tear up the treaty that means British border controls are enforced at Calais, he said. He said Britain should not give them the excuse to abandon that treaty.
There are any number of opposition politicians in France who would love to tear up the excellent agreement we have with France to make sure that we have our borders on their side of the Channel. I don’t think we should give those politicians any excuse to do that.
My colleague Alan Travis has written a Reality Check on how realistic Cameron’s claim is. Here is his article.
And here is his conclusion.
Cameron is scaremongering when he implies Brexit would necessarily lead to a mass invasion of asylum seekers from Calais to Kent because the current bilateral agreements have nothing to do with the EU.
There is however a risk that France could end the treaty as a “countermeasure” to Britain leaving the EU, but if that occurred it would be two years before it took effect.
It is highly unlikely thatmigrant camps à la the Jungle would be set up in the south-east as new asylum seekers in Britain are either dispersed to Home Office funded accommodation or held in immigration removal centres.
- The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said leaving the EU would be “a huge step into the unknown” , with most of the possible outcomes likely to result in lower GDP growth. Even a run of opinion polls suggesting that voters may back Brexit in the upcoming referendum is likely to cause business uncertainty and prompt companies to hold back on investment decisions, said Oxford Economics. As the Press Association reports, the warning came in the annual Green Budget produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in association with Oxford Economics (OE), which predicted “significant uncertainty” during the two-year negotiation on exit terms which would follow a vote to leave. Speaking at the launch of the Green Budget in London’s Guildhall, OE’s lead UK economist Andrew Goodwin said:
There are a vast range of possible outcomes, but it is very apparent that most of the scenarios in terms of Brexit fall on the downside. Most of them involve worse outcomes in terms of GDP growth than the baseline forecast. The less migration is restricted and the more the government follows a free trade agenda, the less negative those outcomes are.
Updated
PM dodges direct answer when asked if Michael Gove will support him in #euref #gonefishing
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) February 8, 2016
Q: How concerned are you about deaths in custody. They have gone up five-fold in 25 years?
Cameron says you cannot just put these down to cuts. But the number of deaths is appalling. It needs to come down.
Q: Do you accept that the deal with France over border checks at Calais is a bilateral one, and not related to the EU?
Cameron says it is a bilateral agreement. And it is very good for Britain. He is working hard to ensure it stays.
But there are a lot of opposition politicians in France who would love an excuse to tear up that treaty.
People who want Britain to leave have to start answering questions about what it would be like for Britain if we left the EU. They “fear” that, he says. But the time will come when they start having to answer these questions.
Q: Do you think all previous governments have been too keen to write off prisoners?
Cameron says people always present prison reform as “soft”. But getting prisoners to receive proper education is not soft. And it is not soft asking someone in their 20s to admit to the fact that they have a reading age of a four-year-old.
This topic has not been given the political leadership from the top it needs.
Q: Labour tried weekend custody and ditched the idea. Are you considering this, as the Daily Mail reports?
Cameron says tags did not work in the past. People could cut them off. But satellite tracking tags create new possibilities, because you can monitor where someone is at every minute of the day.
These are not soft options, he says.
Q: Do you back the extension of Bernard Hogan-Howe’s contract as Met police commissioner?
Cameron says that is a matter for the home secretary and the mayor of London, not him. But he works well with Hogan-Howe.
Q: The prison population has doubled since the 1990s. Would you like to see it come down?
Cameron says that is the wrong question. The government should not be targeting a number. But what it should do is ensure that when prisoners are sent to jail, there is rehabilitation.
Judges should sentence according to what they see fit.
Q: What do you say to critics who say this is privatisation by the back door?
Cameron says there are private prisons and they play a valuable role.
But he is talking about reform within the public sector.
Cameron's Q&A
Cameron is now taking questions.
Q: You have cut the prisons budget. So aren’t you to blame for what you describe as the “scandalous” failure of prisons?
Cameron says the government is spending 25% less on the Ministry of Justice. But there has been a 25% drop in crime too, he says.
Q: Do you really think asylum seekers could set up camp in the UK if Britain votes to leave the EU?
Cameron says he is 100% focused on getting the right deal for Britain.
But there are “any number” of politicians in France would would love to tear up the treaty allowing Britain to enforce border checks at Calais. We should not give them an opportunity to do that, he says.
Cameron turns to rehabilitation.
He mentions an American judge who uses a programme that involves offenders being liable to drug tests after their sentencing. Offenders who fail get sent to prison.
It has turned into possible the most effective community sentence anywhere.
- Ministry of Justice to pilot “problem-solving” courts that focus on offenders with particular problems like drug addiction.
Cameron says Michael Gove, the justice secretary, has commissioned a review of radicalisation in jail. Cameron says he is prepared to consider major changes when it reports.
Cameron says a new social enterprise is being set up to get high-quality graduates in involved in prison education.
It will be headed by David Laws, the former Lib Dem schools minister.
Cameron says currently it is impossible to find out which prisons perform best on various performance indicators.
New data will be produced, he says. It will cover: re-offending rates against predicted levels; employment rates for prisoners post-release; how may go into permanent accommodation; literacy rates; and other key skills.
Cameron says this data will be used to produce league tables.
- Bonuses will be paid to prison staff in high performing prisons, Cameron says.
Cameron says he wants to improve prison education.
This will involve turning young offenders institutions effectively into high-performing schools.
Cameron announces shakeup of youth custody: new secure academies to replace young offender institutions #prisonreform
— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawBBC) February 8, 2016
Cameron says Taylor review recommends replacing youth jails with network of small secure 'free schools' - could be big...
— Alan Travis (@alantravis40) February 8, 2016
And he wants to ensure that the best graduates go into this work.
Updated
Cameron says he wants to give prison governors more control over running their prisons.
The prison service is incredibly centralised, he says.
He says there are 924 prison instructions and orders in force.
They run to 46,000 pages in total, he says.
They govern things like how many jigsaws a prisoner can have in his cell, how many sheets of music they can have (12 currently, he says) and how many pairs of underpants they can have.
He says this means prisoner governors cannot innovate.
The prison governor he met this morning made that point, he says.
Instead, the government will give governors the freedom to innovate, following the academies model that applies to schools.
Cameron says nonsense to think you can free 10,000s of prisoners with no adverse consequences #prisonreform
— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawBBC) February 8, 2016
Cameron says prison is not a holiday camp but jailing ever more offenders "not financially sustainable" #prisonreform
— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawBBC) February 8, 2016
Cameron says that he wants fewer foreign prisoners in British jails. They should be deported, he says.
But it can take time for governors to find out an inmate’s nationality.
- Cameron says police will get new powers to force foreign suspects to hand over their passports. And foreign prisoners will be made to declare their nationality in court.
David Cameron's prisons speech
David Cameron is delivering his prisons speech now.
He says prison reform matters.
My starting point is this: we need prisons. Some people – including, of course, rapists, murderers, child abusers, gang leaders – belong in them. For me, punishment – that deprivation of liberty – is not a dirty word.
I never want us to forget that it is the victims of crime who should always be our principal priority. And I am not unrealistic or starry-eyed about whatprisonscan achieve.
Not everyone shows remorse and not everyone seeks redemption.“But I also strongly believe that we must offer chances to change; that for those trying hard to turn themselves around, we should offer hope; that in a compassionate country, we should help those who’ve made mistakes to find their way back onto the right path.
In short: we need aprisonsystem that doesn’t see prisoners as simply liabilities to be managed, but instead as potential assets to be harnessed.
But the failure of our system today is scandalous.
46% of all prisoners will re-offend within a year of release. 60% of short-sentenced prisoners will reoffend within the same period. And current levels ofprisonviolence, drug-taking and self-harm should shame us all.“In a typical week, there will be almost 600 incidents of self-harm; at least one suicide; and 350 assaults, including 90 on staff.
This failure really matters. It matters to the public purse: this cycle of reoffending costs up to £13 billion a year. It matters to you: because in the end, who are the victims of this re-offending? It’s the mother who gets burgled or the young boy who gets mugged. It matters to the prison staff - some of the most deeply committed public servants in our country – who have to work in dangerous and intimidating conditions. And yes, it matters to the prisoners themselves, who mustn’t feel like society has totally given up on them.
Arron Banks, the co-founder of Leave.EU, has joined Liam Fox and Vote Leave in accusing David Cameron of scaremongering.
Having failed to deliver the fundamental reform of the European Union that he promised in his Bloomberg speech, the prime minister is now resorting to scaremongering.
The agreement we have to process migrants in Calais is with France, not the EU. There is no reason for this to change on Leaving the EU.
The key issue here is that we should not have to accept migrants that have arrived from a safe country. The scandal of countries effectively waving migrants through Western Europe to our shores will only end when we are able to control our borders again.
Number 10 lobby briefing - Summary
Here are the main points from the Number 10 lobby briefing.
- The prime minister’s spokesman confirmed that David Cameron does believe that leaving the EU could led to the “Jungle”, the Calais camp for asylum seekers, coming to the UK. This emerged overnight, but until this briefing the claim was only coming from an unidentified source. The spokesman defended what the source told the Telegraph. The spokesman said:
I think the point being made here is that we currently have these juxtaposed controls with France. Should the UK leave the European Union, there is no guarantee that the controls will remain in place. If those controls were not in place, then there would be no stopping thousands of people coming across the channel overnight, arriving in Kent and claiming asylum ... The camp, and the people in the camp, would effectively move overnight to the south east of England.
Some commentators have said it is ridiculous to suggest that, if more migrants came to the UK, they would set up a Calais-style camp in Kent instead of moving to towns and cities where they might find proper accommodation or work. But, when the spokesman was asked to clarify if Cameron really thought that this was a possibility, the spokesman said he did think this - because it was impossible to know for sure what would happen. He said:
We do not know. What we know is that there are thousands of people in northern France who clearly want to come to the UK to claim asylum. If you put an end to the control regime that we currently have, that would potentially see thousands of people coming overnight to Folkestone and other entry points. The system would have to deal with thousands of people almost overnight in a very similar geographical area.
- The spokesman rejected claims that Cameron was “scaremongering”. He said:
This is about raising a genuine concern.
- The spokesman claimed the French might decide to abandon the 2003 Le Touquet treaty if Britain left the EU. This is a bilateral treaty, not an EU one, and in theory it should not be affected by Britain’s EU membership. The spokesman said there was no guarantee the treaty would continue if Britain left. But what guarantee was there that the treaty would remain in place if Britain remained in the EU, the spokesman was asked. He replied:
Fundamentally this is based in part on the spirit of positive cooperation that we both have as members of the EU ...
There’s a a spirit of positive working relationship between our two countries on a wide range of issues and one of those is the issue of migration, particularly those people who are in northern France and who are seeking to come to the UK. Potential departure from the EU throws that whole relationship into question.
- The spokesman sidestepped questions about whether the French had ever told Britain that they would abandon the Le Touquet treaty if Britain left the EU. Asked about this, he just said Britain had regular discussions with the French at all levels.
- The spokesman dismissed claims that Number 10 claims about Calais were a breach of an understanding that he should not campaign against Brexit while other ministers are still prevented from campaigning for Brexit. The spokesman said that Cameron had been clear about how the collective responsibility rules would apply.
- The spokesman said the government was not making contingency plans for what might happen were Britain to vote to leave the EU. Asked why not, he said the government was focusing on its EU renegotiation and getting the best deal.
- The spokesman said that Cameron did not accept the claim Boris Johnson makes in his Telegraph column today that Cameron should have tried harder in his EU renegotiation to regain control of UK border policy. “You have seen the vast amount of time and effort that the prime minister has put into this process,” the spokesman said. The spokesman also refused to answer the question Johnson posed in his column about whether Cameron’s new law to assert the sovereignty of parliament would turn out to be “bazooka or popgun”. Asked about this, the spokesman replied: “Let’s wait and see when we get there.”
- The spokesman said said the government continued to be interested in how to make more use of tagging for prisoners. This was in response to a question about the Daily Mail’s write-up of Cameron’s prisons speech.
Monday's Daily Mail front page:
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) February 7, 2016
Lock up prisoners just for weekend#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/MqIxiFtuyl
- The spokesman said the UK government did not accept SNP claims that it was trying to embed ongoing cuts in the fiscal framework agreement it is trying to negotiate with the Scottish government. This is the deal that will determine future Westminster grants to Scotland when Holyrood gets new tax-raising powers. The spokesman said the government was trying to ensure fairness for both the Scots and the people of the UK as a whole.
- The spokesman said the government did not intend to water down its controversial “pay to stay” plans to charge market rents for social housing tenants with good salaries.
- The spokesman said there were no changes to government plans to force trade union members to opt into political funds, instead of running them on an opt-out basis. Labour says this proposals will have a crippling impact on the party’s fundraising.
- Justine Greening, the international development secretary, will make a statement on Syria in the Commons this afternoon.
- And Greg Clark, the communities secretary, will make a statement in the Commons on local government finance.
I’m just back from the Number 10 lobby briefing. And I can report that Number 10 is in no mood to back down from its suggestion that the Calais “Jungle” will come to the UK if Britain votes to leave the EU. The prime minister’s spokesman did not quite say that the whole of the Kent countryside will be plastered with tents if Britain votes for Brexit, but one got the impression that they would not worry too much if that was the way it was written up.
I will post a proper summary in a moment.
Liam Fox, the Conservative former defence secretary, has also accused David Cameron of scaremongering over Calais.
(1/2) Sad and disappointed to see our Prime Minister stoop to this level of scaremongering #Calais @David_Cameron @Number10gov #EUref #EU
— Dr Liam Fox MP (@LiamFoxMP) February 8, 2016
(2/2) especially as he knows the #Calais agreement is nothing to do with the #EU and agreed between the two govts @David_Cameron #EUref
— Dr Liam Fox MP (@LiamFoxMP) February 8, 2016
I’m off to the lobby briefing now. I will post again after 11.30am.
IFS expresses reservations about a sugar tax
The IFS is also calling for a review of alcohol taxes, and expressing reservations about a sugar tax, the Press Association reports.
Ministers should “seriously” consider revamping alcohol taxes to target the damage caused by problem drinking, a respected economic thinktank has recommended.
Revamping the duties on alcohol to make spirits and strong cider more expensive relative to other drinks would be a better option than minimum pricing if the government wants to tackle harmful drinking, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
But the thinktank cautioned ministers to be “careful” before introducing a sugar tax of the kind advocated by campaigners including TV chef Jamie Oliver, warning it could have unpredictable impacts on people’s diets and would not be able on its own to bring consumption of sugar down to recommended levels.
In its Green budget report, published ahead of chancellor George Osborne’s March 16 budget, the IFS noted that the share of tax revenues coming from duties on alcohol, tobacco and road fuel has fallen from more than 1 in every 10 collected in the 1970s to around 72p out of every 10 now - and is set to fall further to 60p by 2020.
And it found that drink taxes are “very badly targeted at the social harms caused by alcohol consumption”, because they are not focused on heavy drinkers and are levied at hugely different rates on different types of alcohol.
The duty on a litre of 7.5% strength cider is 39p, compared to £1.38 on a litre of beer of the same potency. And there has been a trend over recent years towards lower taxes on spirits, which are favoured by problem drinkers.
“The government is said to be considering introducing a minimum price for alcohol,” said the thinktank. “If it wants to tackle harmful drinking, it would be better to sort out these anomalies in duty rates and to reverse the long-term trend to lower duties on spirits, which are disproportionately consumed by heavy drinkers.”
The IFS warned that imposing the tax on sugary drinks alone “could simply lead people to increase other sugar consumption - perhaps by eating more chocolate, which also contains saturated fats - and in any case could not on its own bring sugar consumption down to recommended levels”.
The effect of a more broad-based sugar tax on consumption of other nutrients and diet overall is “uncertain”, it warned.
And implementing a sugar tax successfully would be “much harder than for traditional excise duties because diets are complicated and multi-faceted”.
The IFS said: “Careful, evidence-based design and a clear understanding of its role alongside other initiatives are needed before any such policy is rolled out.
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has criticised Downing Street for using the Calais “Jungle” camp to make the case against Brexit. He said in a statement:
The leave campaigns simply refuse to acknowledge the threat that turning our back on Europe would have to our national prosperity and security. They have no plan, and no idea of the turmoil it would cause.
But we must not trade blows based on fear, or wilfully stoke a hazardous row on immigration. Rather than turning people who are fleeing war and persecution into a political piñata we should all focus on what can be done to help.
We should be confident in our ability to make the case that by remaining in, every family, every business, and every person in Britain is part of a stronger, safer and more prosperous nation.
IFS says Osborne could have to impose big cuts or tax rises at short notice to hit his surplus target
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has just published its annual green budget. It’s always a long document that contains and extensive - and not always very welcome - analysis of government tax policy.
The full document is here (pdf). And there is a list of section by section presentations here.
Here is the start of the Press Association’s preview story.
Chancellor George Osborne may have to impose large additional tax rises or spending cuts at very short notice to meet his target of balancing the nation’s books by 2019/20, an influential economic think-tank has warned.
With a surplus of just 10 billion - or 0.5% of national income - forecast for the last year of this Parliament, Osborne has very little margin for manoeuvre and could be knocked off course by bad news on GDP growth, share prices or wages, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
Even if he makes it to the March 2019 budget with his plans intact, the chances of Mr Osborne having to hike taxes or slash spending further are greater than one in four, the think-tank warned in its Green Budget report, published ahead of the Chancellor’s March 16 Budget.
And it said that, even if economic figures turn out well, meeting the surplus target will mean hiking fuel duties in line with inflation (which has not happened since 2011), taking child benefit away from more high-earning families (because current plans depend on the threshold at which the cuts apply being frozen) and allowing the number of wealthy households paying the 45% top rate of income tax to grow further by keeping the threshold frozen at 150,000.
Although the real-terms cuts of 1% in public spending planned by 2019/20 are smaller than some expected, they “won’t be easy” to deliver, the IFS said.
On current plans, total public spending in 2019/20 will reach its lowest share of national income for more than 60 years with the exception of 1999/2000 and 2000/01. Spending on public services other than health will be at its lowest level as a fraction of national income since at least 1948/49, at a time when the population continues to grow and age.
The target announced by Osborne last year of running a surplus “in normal times” is “very inflexible” and radically different from those adopted by previous governments - who achieved surpluses only eight times in the past 60 years - said IFS director Paul Johnson.
He warned that “this could come at a cost”, requiring “big tax rises or spending cuts with very little notice in order to ensure it is met.”
This is from the Conservative former children’s minister Tim Loughton.
Rather than Brexit bringing 'Jungle' to Kent it is failed EU immigration policy which has brought 'Jungle' to our borders at Calais now
— Tim Loughton (@timloughton) February 8, 2016
Thom Brooks, a law professor at Durham University specialising in immigration law, thinks Brexit could lead to more asylum applications in the UK.
@AndrewSparrow Key point is Brexit would mean UK leaving Dublin agreement on returning asylum seekers to 1st country in EU entered. 1/2
— Thom Brooks (@thom_brooks) February 8, 2016
@AndrewSparrow Likely would lead to more asylum applications to hear in UK 2/2
— Thom Brooks (@thom_brooks) February 8, 2016
But he thinks what is more interesting is David Cameron’s apparent change of tactics in terms of how is trying to make the case for staying in the EU.
Big story today is not PM silly remarks about poss Jungle in SE post-Brexit but not selling proposals anymore. Change of tactic? #euref
— Thom Brooks (@thom_brooks) February 8, 2016
Patrick O’Flynn, the Ukip MEP, thinks he has spotted another obvious flaw in Number 10 ‘Calais “Jungle” moving to England’ claim.
"I want to smuggle myself into the UK so I can pitch a tent on the South Downs," said no Jungle resident ever. #ProjectFear
— Patrick O'Flynn (@oflynnmep) February 8, 2016
In an interview last year Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, was asked if France would abandon the 2003 Le Touquet treaty if Britain left the EU. He did not explicitly say yes, but he dropped a strong hint that it might, saying: “It is obvious that leaving the EU will always result in countermeasures.”
Here is Robert Oxley, head of media at Vote Leave, on the prime minister’s intervention.
The deal that allows UKBA staff in Calais is a bilateral deal, not a feature of our EU membership.
— Robert Oxley (@roxley) February 7, 2016
Briefing of Calais jungle Brexit story looks rushed. No connected event/speech, just a vague briefing. Mr Mannering is evidently panicking
— Robert Oxley (@roxley) February 7, 2016
Lawyers for Britain, a group of lawyers campaigning for Brexit, say Downing Street and Rob Whiteman are wrong about Calais.
1) Le Touquet Treaty regulating UKV+I operations in Calais/Gare du Nord is entirely separate from EU Treaties. #FUD https://t.co/u9HoH4MfdQ
— Lawyers For Britain (@lawyers4britain) February 8, 2016
2) Even if France terminates Le Touquet Treaty, there would still be no jungle in Dover/St Pancras, just as there is none currently at LHR.
— Lawyers For Britain (@lawyers4britain) February 8, 2016
3) UK fines airlines transporting passengers with no visa: thus airlines police our air borders. The same would be done with rail and sea.
— Lawyers For Britain (@lawyers4britain) February 8, 2016
Former UK borders chief says Brexit could lead to asylum applications rising by 50,000
On the Today programme Rob Whiteman, a former chief executive of the UK Borders Agency, said he thought David Cameron was entitled to claim that, if Britain left the EU, the French would not want to continue the arrangement that allows Britain to conduct border checks at Calais, not Dover.
He said that before this system was introduced in 2003 asylum claims in the UK were running at the rate of around 80,000 a year. After stricter controls were introduced at Calais, with vehicles being checked for migrants, asylum claims fell to around 30,000.
Whiteman said he thought the French would not want to continue this arrangement if Britain left the EU.
The bilateral treaty takes a lot of work on the French side to maintain, and I think it is almost certain if we did leave the EU the treaty would come to an end. It is not a foregone conclusion. But I think it is fair [for] the prime minister to claim the French would almost certainly bring it to an end.
Whiteman said that if this would happen “we would probably see, let’s say, another 50,000 asylum claims a year, which we used to get before the treaty came in place”.
He said the French would not want to continue the arrangement because, although it had lots of advantages for the UK, it did not help France much.
I think at the time the French felt there would be an upside for them, in that if it was clear that people could not easily get to Britain it would stop Sangatte building up again. The camp was closed. But history has shown that not to be the case. The French authorities still have a huge amount of pressure on their side. And now the “jungle” as it is called as developed. So there is not much upside for the French.
We had to start a new live blog for technical reasons so our apologies to those readers who had already commented on the first blog, which has now been redirected (minus the comments, unfortunately) to this one.
My colleague Patrick Wintour points out a key weakness in the prime minister’s claim.
Cameron to warn if UK leaves EU, the "Calais jungle" comes to the UK, but Calais deal is a bilateral, not EU, treaty https://t.co/wj8bXct4oF
— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) February 8, 2016
Last week Lord Rose, head of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, said his side would not be running a “Project Fear”-style campaign. But his memo does not appear to have been received in Number 10 where today they are running a startling “scare” about what might happen if Britain were to leave the EU.
David Cameron’s team have briefed the Daily Telegraph that Cameron will warn about the Calais refugee camp being displaced to the south of England if Britain votes for Brexit.
Here’s the Telegraph story, and here’s how it starts.
David Cameron is to warn that a Brexit would leave Britain vulnerable to terror attacks and that migrant camps will spring up across the South East of England.
The Prime Minister will make national security issues the centrepiece of his campaign to keep Britain in the European Union.
It is understood he will set out the argument in the days and weeks after he calls the date of the referendum, which is expected to be set later this month ...
Under the 2003 Le Touquet treaty between the UK and France, Britain is allowed to conduct border controls at French rather than UK borders – meaning it checks for migrants stowing away on lorries or trains bound for Britain in Calais, not Dover.
However, Mr Cameron will warn that if Britain leaves the EU, France will stop allowing UK officials to make the checks.
“The French would love to pull out of the arrangement,” a senior source said. “We will be telling people - look, if we leave the EU the Jungle camp in Calais will move to Folkestone. That is not something people want.”
Downing Street has not said this on the record yet, but a Number 10 source told me this morning that they were not challenging the accuracy of the Telegraph story.
Monday's Telegraph front page -
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) February 7, 2016
PM: Brexit will bring 'Jungle' to Kent #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/6fuh5Iyvwp
This morning Matthew Elliott, the Vote Leave chief executive, accused Cameron of “blatant scaremongering”. He said:
This is blatant scaremongering from Number 10 that has no grounding in reality. UK border controls are in France because of a bilateral treaty, not because of our EU membership, and a result of the camps in Calais, not the cause of them. Clearly, No 10 is in a blind panic over the failing renegotiation.
I will post more on this story as it develops.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: David Cameron visits a prison.
10am: The Institute for Fiscal Studies publishes its green budget.
11am: Number 10 lobby briefing.
12.45pm: Cameron gives a a speech on prisons policy in London.
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1.30pm: Make Votes Matter holds a conference on electoral reform.
2.30pm: Patrick McLoughlin, the transport secretary, gives evidence to the Commons transport committee on airport expansion in the south east.
I will be paying particular attention to the Calais story and Cameron’s prisons speech but I will be also covering all the breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
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