Cameron at the liaison committee - Summary
Here are the main points from David Cameron’s evidence to the liaison committee. At times it got rather tetchy, and Andrew Tyrie certainly delivered on his promise to deliver “robust questions”. (See 3.35pm.)
- Cameron said he would consider a call from the Met police to strengthen the law relating to bail conditions, in particular to make it harder for suspects to be able to avoid surrendering their passports.
- He said the government would renew efforts to enable individuals and churches to take in Syrian refugees if they want. Initially the priority was focusing on councils that wanted to help, he said, but now he was willing to “open it up a bit more”.
I’m very happy to do that, I think if people make offers and the churches have made offers, we should try and take them on.
I suppose you could say that means Cameron wants to help more people be like Helen Pidd (a very good ambition for any government.)
- Cameron said he would look into claims that up to 81 civilians have been killed by RAF airstrikes in Iraq, but he said that the government’s own assessment at the end of last year was that no civilians had been killed by the British attacks.
- Cameron rejected a call by Andrew Tyrie, the committee chairman, for the intelligence and security committee to be given unlimited access to information about drone strike killings. In a series of tense exchanges, Tyrie, backing up a point made by Harriet Harman, said the ISC’s inquiry into the August drone attack could not be complete because it did not have access to military information. As a result an unsympathetic observer might conclude that its report will be “meaningless”, Tyrie said. Cameron strongly rejected this. He said the ISC’s job was to look at intelligence, and that it would get access to the intelligence about the attack. He also rejected Tyrie’s call for ministers to abandon their power to withhold information from the ISC. Cameron said this would be irresponsible. He told Tyrie:
You have to be incredibly careful with highly sensitive information, information that if revealed could result in somebody’s death. The source that gave you that information would be, could be, at risk.
You are asking me should the government have no hold back on the intelligence it gives to the ISC? Instinctively I would be very worried about that because there might be a piece of intelligence so sensitive that its release in anyway could endanger the source of that intelligence. In that case, the government should keep that intelligence as tightly held as possible.
- Tyrie said that the government’s intervention in Libya had created a “breeding ground” for Islamic State (Isis). He told Cameron that the “humanitarian balance sheet of this intervention doesn’t look good”.
The failure to engage in nation building has created a breeding ground for Isil ([Isis].
Cameron said the Libyans did not want the West to “go in heavy handed with boots on the ground” to help them construct a government. He told Tyrie:
We were involved in nation building. We were there to help the Libyan people. We tried to do it in a way that was more remote than what had happened in Iraq. On this occasion, clearly it didn’t work.
- Cameron played down the prospect of publishing written guidelines governing drone attacks. Harman urged him to do this, but Cameron said that, while he would consider her request, it could cause problems.
- He said some of the 70,000 non-extremist Syrian opposition fighters were “relatively hardline Islamists”. He added:
They are not all the sort of people you would bump into at a Liberal Democrat party conference.
- He refused to say voting for the Iraq war was a mistake.
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He rejected claims he was “backsliding” on his commitment to tackling climate change. He told the committee:
I totally disagree with anyone who says that on the one hand Britain has helped to pioneer this climate change agreement and on the other hand is somehow backsliding on its green commitments. It’s total and utter nonsense ...
Whether you look at solar or offshore wind - where we have the biggest offshore wind market anywhere in the world - whether you look at the Green Investment Bank, which is the first in the world, whether you look at the fact that we are reinvesting in our nuclear programme, whether you look at the fact that we are the first developed country to say that we are going to phase out coal-fired power stations, on any reasonable assessment, you would say that Britain is more than fulfilling its green commitments.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
Andrew Tyrie goes next.
Q: A civil servant called Iain Mansfied wrote a prize-winning report on what Brexit might look like. But he is not allowed to give evidence to select committees about this. Will you let him do so, in a personal capacity?
Cameron says he did not know this case would come up. But civil servants are expected to support the government’s position, he says, implying the answer will be no.
And that’s it. The hearing is over.
I will post a summary soon.
Crispin Blunt takes Cameron back to foreign affairs.
Q: Islamic State (Isis) need to be taken out of the part of Syria where they are in control. One soldier said, if the regional armies did not do this, we should. Isis could be rolled up in weeks, he said. Has planning for this started?
Cameron says he does not agree with that approach.
It would be counterproductive to deploy Western troops in this way, he says.
He says the action taken in Syria has taken out 25% of their oil revenues, 10% of their revenues overall.
Cameron says he had a constituency case where farmers dredged a stream. They were being taken to court by the Environment Agency. The agency thought they were destroying the habitat for water voles. As they inspected the river, two water voles appeared - making the point that the water voles had not lost their homes.
Neil Parish, the Conservative chair of the environment committee, goes next.
Q: What is your long-term plan on flooding?
Cameron says one part is building capital schemes. Another part is getting partnership funding, so the private sector contributes to the cost of flood defences.
He also wants all government departments to address flooding issues.
For example, after the Somerset floods, the government asked the Dutch for advice.
People says don’t build on a flood plain. But London is a flood plain, and we need to build there, he says.
Q: Will farmers be encouraged to take on water and manage it? Farmers need a carrot to do this.
Cameron says that makes a lot of sense.
Q: Why did you scrap the carbon capture and storage investment despite promising to put £1bn into it?
Cameron says the last two governments have poured money into these new technologies.
But at the moment the CCS technology is not working. You could spend £1bn, but the technology would not be competitive in the market.
The government hoped the costs would come down. But they did not.
The CCS would still cost £170 per megawatt hour. That compares with nuclear energy costing £90, or onshore wind costing £70.
Q: But you are cutting subsidies for onshore wind too.
Cameron says the cost of energy from onshore wind is coming down.
Angus MacNeil, the SNP chair of the energy committee, goes next.
Q: There are claims that RAF airstrikes have resulted in the death of about 80 civilians in Iraq. Are these claims being investiagated?
Cameron says, at the time of the Syria debate, the government’s information was that there had not been any civilian deaths as a result of RAF attacks in Iraq.
Q: Independent monitoring groups think there have been between 72 and 81 deaths.
Cameron says if that is what is being claimed, the government can investigate.
Cameron says the governnment needs to do more. We have seen three “one in 100 year” events since 2007.
We need to get better at everything, he says.
But this time the military got involved more quickly, and money was dispersed more rapidly.
In the past the Environment Agency used to balance protecting homes against protecting the environment. That has changed. Now they have been told to prioritise protecting homes.
Q: You have faced criticism for not pursuing a green agenda in the UK, even though you pushed it in the Paris talks.
Cameron says he totally disagrees.
Let’s take solar, he says.
Q: What about international investment in renewables. On the Ernst & Young analysis, we have tumbled down the ratings.
Cameron says he does not accept that.
98% of solar panels installed in the UK have been installed since he became prime minister.
We are the first developed country to say we will phase out coal-fired power stations.
He says greenhouse gases fell by 8% last year.
Q: There was good British and EU leadership on this. Has this made you rethink your views on an in/out EU referendum?
Cameron says this shows what can be achieved when Britain works with its European partners.
They are now switching to climate change, and Huw Irranca-Davies, the Labour chair of the environmental audit committee, goes next.
Q: What was your verdict on the Paris talks?
Cameron says he thought the outcome was pretty good. At one point it had looked as if 2 degrees would be lost as a target, that there would be no review mechanism, and that the call for progressively increasing ambitions would be taken out.
He says he always knew there would be some deal. But it turned out to be better than it might have been. He praises the role played by Amber Rudd, the energy secretary.
Clive Betts, the Labour chair of the communities committee, goes next.
Q: How are the extra costs on services generated by taking in Syrian refugees going to be paid for?
Cameron says we have a well-funded health service and well-funded education system. It was considerations like this that made him decide taking in 20,000 Syrians would be right.
He says he wanted local authorities to come forward and offer to take refugees, and they did.
Cameron hints he may toughen up bail rules to ensure passports get seized more quickly
Q: In the case of Siddhartha Dhar, he was asked to give up his passport. But it was 36 days before the police followed that up. Mark Rowley, the Met head of counter-terrorism, told my committee this afternoon that bail powers were toothless. He said that there should be immediate handover of passports, and that breach of bail should be a criminal offence.
Cameron says he is happy to look at this. He knew Rowley was going to make these points.
- Cameron hints he may toughen up bail rules to ensure passports get seized more quickly.
Cameron says for years it was impossible to get information about passengers travelling in the EU. He says Vaz’s committee has done good work on this.
The hearing has resumed. Keith Vaz is asking questions again.
David Cameron says he thinks EU border controls are getting better. But there is a desire to do more. Within the last month there has been a breakthrough on passenger records, he says.
There is a vote in the Commons now, so the sitting has been suspended for 15 minutes.
Cameron says he will be back. Although, judging by his exchange with Andrew Tyrie (see 4.46pm), it wouldn’t be surprising if he decides he has had enough.
(My transcript write-up probably does not do justice to quite how tetchy and bad-tempered this got. Cameron and Tyrie were repeatedly talking over each other, and at some points Cameron’s usual bonhomie vanished. There were moments when it seemed he was losing his temper.)
Cameron says government will investigate making it easier for people to in refugees
Keith Vaz, the Labour chair of the home affairs committee, goes next.
Q: Congratulations for reaching the target of taking 1,000 Syrian refugees by Christmas. Why did the numbers go up so quickly just before Christmas?
Cameron says he would like to say it was having an activist prime minister. The government has kept the pressure up on this, he says.
Q: Will you look again at taking up offers from individuals and churches offering to take refugees?
Cameron says he is happy to look at this. But it was right to focus on what local authorities could do first.
- Cameron says government will investigate making it easier for people to take in refugees.
Updated
Q: Will all relevant information held by ministers be released to the ISC?
Cameron says he will look at this, but his instinctive answer would be no.
Q: We have a committee (the ISC) there to do this job. They are full of intelligent people.
Cameron says you have to be “incredibly careful” with “highly sensitive information”. People’s lives could be at risk, he says. There may be occasions when it is not safe to release information because a source may be at risk.
Cameron says it is his job to be sceptical of requests like this. He could say yes, but he might find he was not able to keep the country safe.
Andrew Tyrie goes next.
Q: You are not giving what the ISC needs to do its job. This was a military operation, this attack?
Cameron says it was an operation in defence of the UK using a military asset.
Q: But you have excluded the military operation from scutiny by the ISC.
Cameron says the government is engaged in a military operation against terrorists who are trying to attack the UK. If you don’t think there is a cell of people in Raqqa trying to attack this country, “you don’t know what you are talking about”.
Q: In your letter to me, you says military operations are not part of what the ISC can look at. So how can the ISC do its job properly?
Cameron says the ISC wants to know if this was a justified operation. The ISC will see the intelligence that justified it.
Q: But the ISC need to look at the military operation to make an assessment.
Cameron says the committee can ask him if he thought it was justified. He appeared in the Commons, and explained it. He gave what detail he thought he could. He said he would be happy to give further answers as to whether it was necessary and proportionate. If it was not proportionate, it would not have passed the legal test.
He says he cannot and should not reveal the intelligence he has. Therefore the ISC is there to look at the intelligence. They can decide whether the government made the right decision.
Q: But if they cannot look at the military aspects of this, in order to judge the proportionality of the use of force, a sympathetic member of the public may conclude the ISC’s work is incomplete. A less sympathetic person would conclude the ISC’s assessment was meaningless.
Cameron says he does not accept that. The ISC is there to look at intelligence, and that is what it is doing.
Q: Why won’t you change the memorandum of understanding to allow the ISC to look at the military aspects of this?
Cameron defends the current arrangements.
Q: Asking for a published policy, and independent oversight, is not unreasonable. You might benefit from agreeing to these ideas.
Cameron says the ISC is getting access to the intelligence assessments backing up the August drone attack. It is not true to say they are being stopped because it is a current operation, he says.
On a lighter note ...
Cameron untroubled by qs from MPs on liaison committee so far. No 10 hair unit won't be happy with this tho... pic.twitter.com/gT1cSZttmj
— Jason Groves (@JasonGroves1) January 12, 2016
Q: Do you agree there should be some sort of oversight after a targeted killing, so that it can be established that there was full justification? The intelligence and security committee could do this. They are security cleared.
Cameron says the ISC is investigating the intelligence around the attack he ordered in August. The ISC is more powerful than it was before, he says.
Harriet Harman goes next. (See 3.59pm.)
She says she has two questions about the targeted killing by a drone he announced in September.
Q: Will you publish your policy on this? You said in the Commons this was a “new departure”. We need to know what the legal basis and the operation framework for decisions like this are. We know there are some people you kill, some you avoid killing, and some in a third category, who you do not seem to mind killing. We need to know who is in this grey area.
(Harman’s question has gone on for ages.)
Cameron says he does not have a straightforward answer.
He says he set out the basis of the decision he took in the Commons. He thinks the policy is clear. Harman suggests he set out his policy in as much detail as the Americans. But the Americans have a much more extensive drone programme.
He says it would be difficult to write this all done in a policy statement.
But the overall basis is clear. The government only takes this action in extreme circumstances, where there is no alternative, and where the action is legal.
He will think about Harman’s call for written guidelines.
But he can see disadvantages. What if you leave out a scenario, and so people feel misled? And there would be a danger of giving information to our enemies.
- Cameron plays down the prospect of publishing written guidelines governing drone attacks.
Tyrie says the “humanitarian balance sheet” in Libya “doesn’t look good”.
Cameron does not accept that. He defends the military intervention there.
Andrew Tyrie, the committee chair, also presses Cameron on whether it would have been better to leave Saddam Hussein in power. Cameron does not accept this. Look at Northern Ireland, he says. The government is still having to deal with the consequences of Gaddafi giving semtex to the IRA many years ago.
Cameron says the JIC was set up after the Iraq war to give credibility to intelligence assessments.
(He is wrong about that. The JIC has been around for years, and was set up well before the Iraq war. He may be talking about some other new process.)
Cameron says some of the opposition forces are Islamist, some are relatively hardline Islamists, and some are more like secular democrats, he says.
Q: If the government won’t name these supposedly moderate groups, it is impossible to assess whether they really are moderate.
Cameron says he is trying to be frank.
They are not all the sort of people you would bump into at Liberal Democrat conference.
But there has to be an alternative between the Islamists and the Assad regime, he says.
He says he does not accept the argument that the Sunni population in Syria are too extreme to take part in the government. That is a “counsel of despair”, he says.
He says the 70,000 figure does not include the 20,000 Kurdish fighters in Syria.
If those 70,000 fighters do not exist, who have Assad’s 240,000 troops been fighting all this time?
Q: Why won’t you name the groups the 70,000 supposedly moderate opposition troops in Syria belong to?
Cameron says this was a figure that he got from the joint intelligence committee. Some are in the Free Syrian Army.
But the 70,000 are not all impeccable democrats, he says. Some are Islamists.
He says he will not name the groups because he does not want to give Assad a list of groups and areas he should be targeting.
Q: Are there times were it is better to leave a brutal but secular dictator in place, on the grounds that he might suppress extremism?
Cameron says he does not agree with this argument. With a country like Syria, leaving a dictator in place would still cause problems for a country like the UK.
PM: Assad in power is threat to UK nat sec on 2 grounds. 1) Migration. 2) Daesh recruiting sergeant
— Nicholas Watt (@nicholaswatt) January 12, 2016
But he agrees with Lewis that there are lessons to be learnt from what happened in Iraq.
Cameron refuses to say voting for the Iraq war was a mistake
Julian Lewis, the chair of the defence committee, goes next.
Q: In 2003 we voted for the removal of Saddam Hussein. He was as brutal, if not more so, than President Assad. Do you agree with me that this was a terrible mistake?
Cameron says:
I don’t choose to go back over those votes and take that view.
But there were lessons to be learnt, he says.
De-Ba’athification was the biggest mistake, he says. It left Iraq with no state and no authority.
The extent of the hell rained down by Assad has been as bad, if not worse, than what Hussein did. Assad has been using starvation as a weapon of war.
- Cameron refuses to say voting for the Iraq war was a mistake.
Q: Shouldn’t we support the Kurds being present at the Syria peace talks?
Cameron says the government wants to be as inclusive as possible. But they need to keep the talks on track, he says.
The hearing has started.
Crispin Blunt, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, is asking question.
David Cameron says he hopes to make a comprehensive Gulf trip in the coming months.
His recent trip to Saudia Arabia was cancelled not because he wanted to express disapproval, but because he has been busy with the EU renegotiation, he says.
Cameron at the liaison committee - Some of the questions he will face
Here is some background to the questions that may come up.
Syria
A Commons spokeswoman has said that Harriet Harman, the former Labour deputy leader, is going to ask David Cameron about drone strikes.
Harriet Harman, chair of joint committee on human rights, will be putting the PM under pressure through questions at Liaison Committee this afternoon as to why there is no published govt policy on the use of drones for targeted killings, and no system of accountability.
Harman herself has tweeted about this.
PM at liaison cttee this pm. Re drone killings - why still no published policy and why no independent accountability? @UKParlJCHR
— Harriet Harman (@HarrietHarman) January 12, 2016
Here is a summary of what happened when Harman’s committee questioned Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, about drone strikes.
And here is the Ministry of Defence memo Fallon sent to Harman’s committee on this topic (pdf).
On Syria, the Times’s Matthew Chorley wonders if the use of Brimstone missiles will come up. This is from his morning Red Box briefing.
With Syria on the agenda, let’s hope that they at least remember to ask the PM about news that Britain has used Brimstone missiles against Islamic State in Syria for the first time.
Intriguingly, the deployment of the radar-guided precision missiles came just hours after Cameron struggled to explain why they had not yet been used during an interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday.
The UK involvement in military action in Syria has been slight to say the least, and before the weekend’s activity amounted to one bombing raid in four weeks.
Which suggests the Commons debate on extending airstrikes at the beginning of December has had a bigger impact on Hilary Benn’s career than on the fight against Isis.
Chorley says that, since the Commons vote to authorise air strikes against Islamic State in Syria, the RAF has only been bombing for five days.
Syria vote: What was all the fuss about? Just five days of bombing since Dec 2 https://t.co/Ao2nxN0dDZ pic.twitter.com/FdnvOpaZ5h
— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) January 12, 2016
Climate change and flooding
Two MPs have already said they want to ask Cameron about carbon capture and storage technology. Here is my colleage Rowena Mason’s preview story.
David Cameron is to be questioned about his broken pledge to spend £1bn developing carbon capture technology when he appears before a Commons committee.
Before his appearance before the liaison committee at 4pm on Tuesday, the prime minister was accused of double standards for abandoning a commitment to hold a competition to encourage the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS), which could lead to decarbonisation of coal and gas, at the same time as professing to be serious about tackling climate change.
Just a year ago, Cameron had told the same group of MPs, made up of select committee chairs, that CCS was “absolutely crucial” for the UK, before funding for a £1bn trial was later scrapped.
Angus MacNeil, the chair of the energy and climate change committee, and Huw Irranca-Davies, the chair of the environmental audit committee, plan to challenge Cameron about the government’s decision, arguing it undermines the commitment to tackling climate change.
And Michael Jacobs, from the IPPR thinktank, has written a piece for Huffington Post on four climate change questions Cameron should answer.
Cameron questioned by MPs about Syria and climate change
David Cameron will be giving evidence to the Commons liaison committee at 4pm. He will be questioned about Syria and about climate change and flooding. The hearing should last about 90 minutes.
The liaison committee is a committee made up of all the chairs of Commons select committees and it has been holding regular sessions with the prime minister since the Tony Blair era. The idea is to allow the prime minister to be held to account by parliament in a setting that involves rather more forensic questioning than you get at PMQs.
In the past these sessions have been moderately enlightening - but a bit dull.
Today’s may be a bit better. Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative chair of the Treasury committee, has replaced Sir Alan Beith as chair. Beith was never a man likely to be hired as the next Jeremy Paxman, but Tyrie is a bit more flinty. And he has put out a statement telling Cameron to expect “robust questions”. Here’s an extract.
Power should be scrutinised by Parliament wherever it lies. Over the last quarter of a century, more power has accumulated in No.10. This is why a good number of MPs concluded many years ago that prime ministers should be expected fully to explain their actions, and in a way that enables more thorough and less partisan exchanges in parliament than the weekly half hour of prime minister’s questions.
When the prime minister comes before the liaison committee on Tuesday, he will be cross examined on his direct role in the UK’s intervention in the Syrian conflict, and on climate change.
The public will expect robust questions from the select committee chairmen, and a thorough explanation of his decisions and actions from the prime minister.
Earlier I said that Jonathan Faull, head of the European Commission group working on the EU renegotiation, would be giving evidence to the Lords EU committee in Brussels. He is, but the session is taking place behind closed doors, with reporters excluded.
A Lords spokeswoman said the committee would be publishing a transcript later this week.
This is from the Telegraph’s Matthew Holehouse.
Even the heads of intelligence services give evidence to Parliament in public. Commission not so brave. https://t.co/gCAgA3cRaJ
— Matthew Holehouse (@mattholehouse) January 12, 2016
In the Commons MPs are just voting on a Labour amendment to the housing bill.
In the debate Roberta Blackman-Woods, the shadow housing minister, strongly criticised the “pay to stay” measures in the bill - the proposals to force tenants in social housing on higher earnings (probably £40,000 per household in London, £30,000 elsewhere) onto pay a market rent. She told MPs:
We are not necessarily against a gradation in rent paid but we do not think the pay to stay proposals that remain in the Bill are in any way acceptable.
These proposals will hit people on modest incomes hardest and this section of the Bill is seemingly a continuation of the Government’s assault on council tenants and a cash grab by the chancellor.
It is entirely anti-localist as local authorities and indeed housing associations already have the discretion to charge high income tenants higher rents.
Lunchtime summary
- Large numbers of children are underachieving at school because of a growing regional inequality in education, which is having a damaging effect on life chances, according to new research from the Social Market Foundation. The report was published as the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg launched an SMF commission on inequality in education that he will chair. A report by the independent thinktank Social Market Foundation, says geographical inequality in educational outcomes has grown over the last 30 years. While 70% of pupils in London now achieve five A*-C GCSEs, only 63% manage the same in Yorkshire and Humber.
- Junior doctors have been told to defy orders from a West Midlands hospital to return to their wards just two hours into strike action because of pressure on services. In the first strike by hospital doctors in 40 years, up to 38,000 members of the British Medical Association (BMA) across England began the action at 8am on Tuesday. The 24-hour strike over a new pay and working hours contract being proposed by the government has meant hospitals have rescheduled about 4,000 non-emergency operations, 13% of the normal daily total.The doctors have agreed to provide emergency care for the first of two planned strikes this month but have threatened to withdraw those services in a third strike in February.Within two hours of the start of the strike, Sandwell hospital in West Bromwich said it had declared a level four incident and told its junior doctors they must attend work. But the BMA said they should refuse to do so until the seriousness of the situation had been established through the correct process.
- Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, has refused to rule out the EU referendum taking place within six weeks of the Scottish, Welsh and local elections on 5 May. In the Commons Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, said holding the referendum before the middle of June would be “disrespectful”. He asked Hammond:
Can I put it to you that if the referendum was held within six weeks after the date of the elections then the two campaign period would intersect, with all the complications that would arise. Therefore can I ask you, again, will the date of the referendum be at least six weeks after the date of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish elections?
But Hammond refused to give this assurance, saying it would be for the Commons to decide the date of the referendum.
Jeremy Corbyn chaired his first meeting of his shadow cabinet since the reshuffle this morning, and Stefan Rousseau, the Press Association’s chief political photographer, was there to record it.
There are 31 members of the shadow cabinet. They seem to have given up getting trying to get them all round the same table.
Updated
Number 10 lobby briefing - Summary
Here are the main points from the Number 10 lobby briefing.
- Downing Street defended the NHS reform plans that have triggered today’s junior doctors’ strike. “We want to ensure that there’s a fair deal for doctors while making sure that we can deliver our commitment to a high-quality, 24-hour, seven-day NHS,” the prime minister’s spokeswoman said. She said that the death rate for stroke victims was 20% higher at weekends, and that newborn deaths were 7% more likely at weekend. But, when pressed, she did not claim these figures were a direct result of staffing levels at weekend.
- David Cameron wants countries like Turkey to relax their ban on Syrian refugees doing paid work, the spokeswoman said. At cabinet this morning Cameron told colleagues about his plans for the Syria donor conference being held in the UK at the start of next month. Cameron did not want it just to be a conventional ‘pledge’ conference, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said. As well as looking at what money donor countries could contribute, it would also look at “a more innovative approach to supporting refugees through jobs and education”. The spokeswoman said the government was “working hard” to persuade countries like Turkey, which are home to large numbers of Syrian refugees, to allow them to work. Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, will visit Turkey later this week, she said. The donor conference was one of four topics discussed at cabinet this morning, alongside the floods, the government’s strategy to improve life chances, and the junior doctors’ strike.
- The spokeswoman said the housing bill would this afternoon become the first piece of legislation to go through the new ‘English votes for English laws’ legislative consent process. After the bill has had its report stage, an English-only legislative grand committee will approve the English-only sections before the bill goes on to get its third reading later this evening.
I’m just back from the Number 10 lobby briefing. I can’t pretend it was hugely exciting, but I will post a summary in a moment.
In the Commons Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, is taking questions. He welcomed Pat Glass, the new shadow Europe minister, to her post, but included a jibe at Labour about the sacking of Pat McFadden.
Hammond tells MPs: ‘It is a sad indictment of today's Labour Party that you get sacked for refusing to excuse the actions of terrorists.’
— Ned Simons (@nedsimons) January 12, 2016
I’m off to the Number 10 lobby briefing now. I will post again after 12.30pm.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
As for the rest of the papers, here is the PoliticsHome list of top 10 comment articles, and here is the ConservativeHome round up of today’s politics stories.
And here are two comment articles worth reading.
On Tuesday junior doctors may strike against the Tories’ proposed revisions to their contract, which ministers say will help make the National Health Service fully operational seven days a week. The fact that it is not already should be the political sensation — but doctors are strolling the race for public sympathy. Last month an NHS staff choir achieved the Christmas number one single in the pop charts with a song so syrupy it might be prescribed as cough relief. Any reform to any public service, however sincere and plausibly life-improving, smells of improvident meddling even to the citizens who stand to gain.
This riddle is hard to untie but we can consider a theory. What if the liberal teleology is not just simplistic, but the opposite of the truth? That is, dizzying choice in our private lives could actually heighten our craving for static institutions where we can find them. We fear structural reform of the state because of, not despite, the great lifestyle upheaval brought about by geniuses at the nexus of technology and commerce in recent times. We are creatures of balance, not masochists for endless change and ever greater atomisation.
This does not mean patients want to receive variable care. Taxpayers do not enjoy being treated in an offhand way. It is just that points of fixity are precious in our world, and we will endure rather a lot to preserve them. Certain institutions can, as the footballer Gary Neville said of Manchester United, “stand against the immediacy of modern life”. The state is good at this. In a sense, we like the NHS for the same reason we like the royals. It is a conservative impulse as much as a socialist one.
One of the most exciting events I attended last year was on the theme of start-ups, individuals and groups from around the country, including many poorer areas, who have made the most of the communications revolution to innovate, starting up their own companies from nothing. For them a Monday-to-Friday job would be as odd as being required to speak Latin.
Yet the dispute with junior doctors is partly about working weekends and the Government’s desire for seven-day provision in hospitals. In this respect the doctors’ protestations are as outdated as Arthur Scargill’s insistence that every pit should remain open even if there were no economic case in their favour.
The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, states the obvious rather than the contentious. Patients do not choose to fall ill on the basis of a five-day week. There is currently a meaningless row about how vulnerable a patient is who falls ill on a Friday night, but anyone who knows someone in such a position is aware that in most cases they must lie there with fingers crossed until the following Monday.
Hunt is speaking for all of us in seeking to establish reliable provision seven days a week. In regarding Saturday as a working day he is not a freak, but aware of the changing patterns of work. He could have had an easier time doing what a series of Labour Health Secretaries did and accepting the doctors’ terms without posing too many questions. Instead he carries around with him a book by Eric Topol, The Patient Will See You Now, highlighting his determination to empower the patient.
There’s an intriguing tweet from Robert Peston this morning. He made his debut as ITV’s political editor yesterday, and on the News at Ten he was there was a chance of Boris Johnson being offered a big cabinet job by David Cameron in the hope of keeping him onside ahead of the EU referendum. It was a version of a story that has been around for a while.
But on Twitter this morning Peston firms it up a little, saying Johnson will be offered one of the “top five” cabinet jobs.
So Gov source tells me @David_Cameron will offer @BorisJohnson "top 5" cabinet job to buy his support in EU ref https://t.co/mElOlbWUGj
— Robert Peston (@Peston) January 12, 2016
That is intriguing because no one ever talks about the “top five” cabinet posts. There is a general understanding that there are three great offices of state - chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary - below the post of prime minister, which obviously counts as the fourth one.
So why talk about five? It might just have been casual shorthand for “a senior job”, but if it was used intentionally, then it is worth looking at the current cabinet list. Ministers are ranked in order of seniority and in fifth place is Michael Gove, the justice secretary and lord chancellor. Could Johnson be offered his job? That doesn’t seem at all likely, but being lord chancellor would probably appeal to Johnson’s sense of self-importance, he’s married to a QC and, as a Eurosceptic, he might be suited to handling the British bill of rights challenge. Weirder things have happened ...
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn has issued a statement today supporting the striking doctors. He says the government should apologise to them and negotiate a “fair deal” that will allow them to get back to work.
Govnt must apologise to junior doctors & negotiate a fair deal that gets our #NHS working again #JuniorDoctorsStrike pic.twitter.com/wJpxjK6Ze7
— Jeremy Corbyn MP (@jeremycorbyn) January 12, 2016
In the Lords last night peers debate the trade union bill. Three Labour peers used the debate to give their maiden speeches, and here are extracts from all three.
Dave Watts, the former MP and former chair of the parliamentary Labour party, used his speech to criticise ‘croissant socialism’ and Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle.
I will deviate for one second from my main speech and the main point I wish to make. I say to my own party leadership that last week was disastrous for us. When we should have been concentrating on holding the Government to account for the floods and for this Bill, we involved ourselves in an unnecessary reshuffle. We lost two of our best communicators, Michael Dugher and Kevan Jones. My advice to my own party leadership is that they should take less notice of the London-centric, hard-left political class who sit around in their £1 million mansions, eating their croissants at breakfast and seeking to lay the foundations for a socialist revolution. It is not the job of the Parliamentary Labour Party to sit around developing ultra-left-wing policies that make it feel good; it is its job and responsibility to come forward with policies that will help us to win the next general election. For those who do not want to take on that task, can I suggest that they join a society in which they can enjoy sitting around having a philosophical debate about the meaning of socialism? Working people need a practical Labour Party and trade union movement that will address their practical, day-to-day issues.
Spencer Livermore, Labour’s 2015 general election campaign director, recalled a careers teacher who had a big influence on him.
In Britain today, a boy born into a middle-class family is 15 times more likely to be middle-class himself than a boy born into a working-class family. I know that to be true. When I was 16, a careers teacher came to visit my school. Seeing each of us in turn, she sat me down in the classroom and asked what my next steps might be. I said that after my A-levels I wanted to go on to university to study economics. “Oh no,” came her reply, “university isn’t for pupils from this school”. I express gratitude today not only to my family for their support and encouragement but to that careers teacher too; I found her to be a powerful source of motivation as I sought to prove her wrong. I was very proud to go on from school to university, but I remain angry that I was the only one in my school year to have done so.
And Dawn Primarolo, the former Treasury minister and former Commons deputy Speaker, said the Guardian’s Sports Direct revelations highlighted the importance of unions.
Noble Lords will know from recent revelations what can occur when workers are powerless to stand up to employers who have no conscience and no scruples. Unfortunately, some employers push beyond the bounds of decency. Look at Sports Direct. In pursuing profit, expansion and success for the company, it has deployed unacceptable employment practices. The absence of a trade union means that employees have no voice and no one to represent them, and are unable to do it themselves for fear of victimisation. Desperate to keep their job, they suffer degrading and humiliating conditions, and their relationship with their employer resembles that in a Victorian sweatshop.
Updated
Here is the full text of Nick Clegg’s speech launching the inequality in education commission.
He is serving on it with the Labour MP Stephen Kinnock and the Conservative MP Suella Fernandes. In his speech, Clegg appealed for more cross-party collaboration on other political issues.
We are in a particularly volatile period in British politics right now – perhaps the most turbulent and unpredictable since I was at school myself in the 1970s.
In these circumstances it is both easy and tempting for parties to retreat to their comfort zones and indulge themselves in tribalism.
It is a temptation that we must resist.
This country faces huge challenges, of which growing inequality and its impact on social mobility is just one.
If we are to compete in the globalised 21st century economy; if we are to build and sustain a health and social care system as more and more of our citizens are living longer lives; if we are to tackle the growing threats of terrorism and climate change and rise to the myriad other challenges we face, then like-minded politicians must learn to put their tribal differences aside and work together in the national interest.
Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader and former deputy prime minister, is back. He is chairing a cross-party commission on educational inequality for the Social Market Foundation and he has been giving a speech about it this morning. He says children are at risk from “postcode inequality” because school performance varies so widely across the country. He argues:
What is now becoming clear is that inequality in education comes in many shapes and sizes. It is not just the relative wealth of parents that holds large numbers of bright kids back: it is postcode inequality too. What part of the country a child grows up in has a real impact on their life chances.
The Social Market Foundation has analysed how well children aged eleven performed over three generations – those born in 1958, 1970 and 2000 – using verbal reasoning tests which could be compared accurately across all three groups.
For the youngest group – those who are in secondary school today – there were stark differences in performance in different regions. Those living in London, the South East and the North West had the highest proportion of high scores. Whereas those living in the North East, Yorkshire and the West Midlands had the highest proportions of poor scores.
We may live on a small island – but which corner of it our children call home makes a huge difference to their life chances too.
And here is an extract from the SMF analysis.
Initial research by the SMF for the commission examines inequalities in educational attainment at age 16 and age 11 and how these trends in inequality have evolved over time. The research reveals marked regional disparities in educational outcomes:
- GCSE performance at age 16 across England and Wales shows variations between regions, with over 70% of pupils in London achieving 5 good GCSEs compared to 63% in Yorkshire & Humber.
- The SMF finds that regional differences in attainment are already apparent by the end of primary school and they are observable even when you control for other factors such as ethnicity and income.
- Analysis across different cohorts of children sitting exams at age 16 shows that regional inequalities have remained stubborn and in some cases worsened over the last three decades. Areas such as the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, the West Midlands and the East Midlands have persistently under-performed, behind whilst London’s performance has surged.
- Comparing the performance of 11-year olds born in 2000 with those born in 1970 reveals that the geographic area a child comes from has become a more powerful predictive factor for those born in 2000 compared to 1970.
I will post more from Clegg’s speech shortly.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, gives a speech at the launch of the Social Market Foundation inquiry into educational inequality.
Around 12.40pm: MPs resume their debate on the housing bill.
3pm: Mark Rowley, a Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee on countering extremism.
3pm: Jonathan Faull, head of the European Commission group working on the EU renegotiation, gives evidence to the Lords EU committee in Brussels.
4pm: David Cameron gives evidence to the Commons liaison committee on Syria and on climate change.
Obviously, we’ve got the junior doctors’ strike too. But I won’t be covering much on that here because we have got a separate live blog focusing on it.
As usual, I will also be covering 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.
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