Politics live blog – Thursday 12 April

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen 10.13am: Andrew Turner asks when the government will set up a commission to investigate the West Lothian question, as it has promised to do. Clegg said the government decided to set out its plans for Lords reform first, because these will have a bearing on the West Lothian question. Q: Are you saying that one version of Lords reform would mean that you would not have to address the West Lothian question? No, says Clegg. It’s just that the two issues overlap. “This is a pragmatic issue of chronology and interaction between those two questions,” he says. Mark Harper says that if the Lords is wholly or largely elected, that will raise the same questions about Scotland’s representation as those thrown up by the West Lothian question. 10.09am: Andrew Turner, a Conservative, is asking questions now. Q: How many hours do you spend on constituency work? On ministerial work? And in cabinet? Clegg says it varies enormously. He cannot give a precise answer. Some weeks he finds himself “immersed” in constitutional reform. Some weeks he focuses on his duties as deputy prime minister. “It comes and goes really,” he says. Q: How much time do you spend on party work? Clegg says it is an intriguing question, but not one he can answer. “I don’t keep a timesheet in that sense.” Mark Harper, the Conservative constitutional reform minister, is giving evidence alongside Clegg. He says his workload varies too. 10.04am: Graham Allen, the chairman, asks if the result of the referendum has dealt a blow to the case for reform. Clegg says the need for constitutional reform remains. He says he is not “undimmed or discouraged” about the need to get on with reform. Q: It has been said that the arguments weren’t presented well during the campaign. Are there lessons to be learnt about how the case for constitutional reform can be made? Is there a case for parliament having a more serious role? Clegg says he agrees with Allen’s characterisation of the campaign as one that was “disfigured” by party politics. It reinforced his view that, where politicians can develop ideas together, that should be encourged. As chair of the group looking at Lords reform, he tried to get people to move forward on a consensual basis. 10.01am: Nick Clegg has just started giving evidence now. He is talking about the AV referendum result. He says that, as far as the actual result is concerned, “the less said, the better”. But it won’t affect other aspects of the government’s reform programme. 9.56am: Nick Clegg will be giving evidence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee shortly. You can watch it here on the parliamentary website. I’ll be covering it in detail until about 11am, when I will focus instead on the David Laws report. 9.31am: Lady Hamwee, one of the Lib Dem peers who abstained last night instead of voting with the government over elected police commissioners, told the Today programme that the vote was not a deliberate display of “muscular liberalism”. It just reflected the strength of feeling on the matter, she said. She also insisted that the vote against the government was consistent with what is set out in the coalition agreement. It was not planned to be muscular or assertive but it was pretty kind of truthful. We are not so far from the Conservatives. Both parties want more democracy in the governance of policing. But what the coalition agreement said was that the new model should be subject to “strict” checks and balances. There was certainly no confidence that what is in the bill at present amounts to that. I hope what has happened is going to allow a rethink which will reflect better the coalition agreement. 9.28am: For the record, here are t he latest YouGov GB polling figures. Labour: 42% (up 12 points since the general election) Conservatives: 36% (down 1) Lib Dems: 8% (down 16) Labour lead: 6 points Government approval: -23 9.04am: Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, was on the Today programme this morning just before 8am. As usual, PoliticsHome was monitoring. Duncan Smith did not have much to say about the youth employment initiative coming later today, but he did have some interesting things to say about welfare in general. Here are the main points. • Duncan Smith strongly attacked Labour’s record on jobs and wage equality. “Labour, for all the money that they threw at these things, left us with a record level of youth unemployment and wage inequality that is at record levels, the worst in my lifetime,” he said. • He claimed Labour’s Future Jobs Fund was ineffective. “The Future Jobs Fund was six times more expensive than anything else that they were doing and actually created jobs only in the public sector, which, once the money ended, those poor people, young people, crashed out of work straight away and then start carrying a wage scar,” he said. I didn’t know the phrase “wage scar”, but I’ve just been consulting Professor Google. It means the long-term impact of unemployment, caused by the fact that young people who are unemployed tend to lose out later in life when they do get into work because their average earnings are lower than they otherwise would have been. • He said nearly 50,000 firms had offered to create work experience places for young people. “What we’re trying to do is give young people a chance to get some experience of the working world in the private sector, for the most part, and then see with the private sector how we develop that,” he said. “That’s the key area of developing private sector jobs.” • He defended the decision to scrap the education maintenance allowance. I spent many, many months talking to young kids who are at school and large numbers of those I talked to would readily admit that the maintenance allowance wasn’t a vital and critical area for them, but for poorer children it was,” he said. 8.50am: William Hague, the foreign secretary, has put out a statement about the meeting he and David Cameron are having today with Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who, as chair of the Libyan National Transitional Council is leader of the Libyan rebels. I am very pleased to welcome Mr Abdul Jalil to the UK. The NTC is a legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The situation in Libya remains of very serious concern, and this visit provides a welcome opportunity to discuss with Mr Abdul Jalil the latest situation on the ground and to look at how the UK and international community can continue to support the Libyan people. We will discuss a range of issues, including the establishment of a permanent NTC office in London and the provision of further non-lethal equipment and support to the NTC. We will explore in more detail the measures agreed at last week’s Contact Group meeting in Rome, including the operation of a Transitional Financial Mechanism, which was driven by the UK. The Transitional Financial Mechanism comes into operation today and will allow the NTC to provide essential services to the people of Libya. We will also share views on the situation in Western Libya, which remains deeply troubling. Colonel Gaddafi continues to brutalise his own people. The British government urges him to stand down immediately and initiate a real ceasefire, so that the legitimate needs of Libya’s people can be met. Abdul Jalil is holding a press conference at 3pm. 8.34am: When Nick Clegg promised “muscular liberalism” yesterday, we didn’t think that was going to involve voting down flagship proposals in the coalition agreement. But the defeat in the Lords over elected police commissioner s suggests relations in the coalition really have changed. It wasn’t an official rebellion – technically, only 13 Lib Dem peers rebelled – but if you look at the Lords analysis of the division list you will see that only 36 of the 92 Lib Dems in the Lords voted with the government, suggesting that Clegg didn’t try very hard to get his troops out. Clegg is sharing a platform with David Cameron later today, and with luck they will have something to say about this. Otherwise, it’s a reasonably busy day. Here’s a full list of what’s coming up. 9am: David Cameron meets Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the chair of the Libyan National Transitional Council, at Number 10. It’s the first time the two men have met. 9.30am: The Department for Work and Pensions releases its annual poverty statistics . 10am: Nick Clegg gives evidence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee. He’s expected to be asked about Lords reform, the alternative vote referendum and the fixed-term parliaments bill . 11am: The Commons standards and privileges committee publishes its report about David Laws . It is expected to recommend that Laws should be suspended from the Commons for seven days . 12.15pm: Michael Gove , the education secretary, announces the government’s response to the Wolf review on vocational qualifications in a statement to the Commons. 12.30pm: Cameron and Clegg share a platform at an event to promote a government initiative on youth employment. Around 3pm: MPs will debate on a backbench motion tabled by the Tory MP Adam Afriyie calling for a shake-up of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority . As usual, I’ll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and an afternoon one at about 4pm. House of Commons House of Lords Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

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