Politics live blog – Monday 27 June 2011

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen 12.08pm: Now a question from ITV. Q: Does Wen think British military intervention in Libya has gone too far? Wen says this is a question that Cameron should answer first. Cameron says Britain is enforcing a UN resolution. Wen says the UN security council resolution 1973 should be complied with. The Chinese hope that the issue will be resolved through political, peaceful means. “We respect the choice made by the Libyan people,” he says. China has been in contact with the Libyan government and with the Libyan opposition. Foreign troops can win the war in a place, but they cannot win the peace. Lessons should have been learnt from the Middle East. Q: Is Cameron happy about the fact that Chinese money is funding the next generation of railways in the UK? Cameron says Britain is an “incredibly open economy”. He welcomes investment from abroad. He has set up an organisation, Infrastructure UK, which tries to attract investment from abroad into infrastructure projects in the UK. Wen says China has made tremendous achievements in the development of high speed rail. 12.03pm: They are now taking a question from a Chinese journalist. Q: Cameron said he intended to pursue a partnership for growth with China. But trade between the UK and China has been falling as a proportion of EU-China trade. Britain has also been overtaken by Germany in this regard. Does something need to change? If so, what? Cameron says British exports to China grew by 40% last year. Since November last year they have gone up by 20%. The performance is “good”, but he wants it to be better. Britain is the second largest investor in China, Cameron says. Countries like Germany have a larger share of manufacturing. But Britain is strong in services. These areas expand as a country like China opens up. Cameron say Britain is creating lots of intellectual property. It is essential that intellectual property rights are respected. Wen suggested a summit on this. Dyson, for example, specifically mentioned problems it is having in this regard. 11.57am: Wen is answering a question now. Q: Does Wen accept China will have to make progress on human rights and democracy? Wen says the question suggests the questioner has not visited China often. China has 1.3bn people. He says he has not visited all parts of China, but he has visited more than the questioner. He says he agrees with Cameron that the ideas of democracy and human rights have “emancipated the mind”. But China is developing in its own way. In the future China will have an improved democracy. And it will be based around the rule of law. China is addressing inequality issues, so its people will have human rights in the economic field. Human rights are written into law, he says. China has a 5,000-year history. In the past China was exposed to untold sufferings. That taught China never to lecture others. China talks to others on the basis of equality, he says. 11.51am: They are taking questions now. Q: Does Cameron worry that he is supporting a regime that is inimical to his beliefs? Cameron says there is no “trade off” in the UK-China relationship. “We have a dialogue that covers all of these issues,” he says. He discusses human rights “at this level”. But there is also a separate human rights dialogue. Cameron says he believes economic and political developments should go “hand in hand”. But the important thing is that the two countries can discuss these matters. 11.46am: Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, is talking now. He says this is his first visit to the UK since the formation of the coalition. He and Cameron had constructive talks. Britain’s ranking in China-EU trade is slipping down, he says. That is why it is important to intensify it. Wen says he wants to announce some “good news”. A pair of pandas will be sent to Edinburgh Zoo. They will arrive before the end of the year. On human rights, he says the countries need to engage in more than “finger pointing”. Next year will be the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UK and China. He hopes the future will be brighter. 11.43am: Cameron is now talking about bilateral cooperation. The two countries are working together to promote growth. They are agreed on the need to tackle climate change, he says. A new dialogue between the two countries covering economic growth strategies will be set up, he says. There will also be a further round of the UK-China human rights dialogue, Cameron adds. He says that the two countries are different and that no one country if perfect. Wen is “very welcome” in the UK, he concludes. 11.40am: Cameron says he is pleased that Wen Jiabao went to Stratford yesterday. Wen is a great fan of Shakespeare, Cameron says. At today’s summit they have made great progress. On bilateral trade, they took a step forward. The UK has the experience to help China move up the financial value chain. Since Cameron’s visit to China last years, British exports to China have increased by a fifth. Today deals were agreed worth £1.4bn. By 2015 Cameron and Wen want bilateral trade to be worth $100bn. Cameron says he will continue to argue for free trade. 11.39am: David Cameron is opening the press conference now. 11.25am: David Cameron and Wen Jiabao , the Chinese premier, should be starting their joint press conference shortly. I’ll cover as much of it as I can from the TV, although the 24-hour news broadcasters may decide not to give it the full treatment. In the meantime, here’s some background reading. • Patrick Wintour’s story on how today’s UK-China summit will clinch deals worth more than £1bn. • A Downing Street news release about the summit. • A Foreign Office news release about the summit. 11.18am: Liam Fox, the defence secretary, is giving his speech about the MoD reorganisation now. I’ll post a full summary once I’ve read the full text, but it sounds as if Fox is on pugnacious form. He’s just called the defence spending plans drawn up by Labour “a deliberate lie”. 11.13am: My colleague Patrick Butler is writing a live strikes blog. Today he will be using it to explain the proposals to cut public sector pensions that have triggered the strikes taking place on Thursday. 11.05am: Labour’s new general secretary will be Chris Lennie, according to Dan Hodges. On a New Statesman blog, Hodges says the appointment has been confirmed by senior party officials. It is understood that Lennie, a former acting general secretary with current responsibility for Labour Party fundraising, will be appointed for what a party insider described as “an interim period” of two years. The relatively short-term nature of the appointment is understood to be an attempt to address concerns among the trade unions that their favoured candidates have been overlooked … Lennie is regarded by Labour sources as a solid, experienced official, who carries minimal political or ideological baggage. “Chris is basically a fixture,” said one MP. “He’s been around for a long time, not doing anything especially remarkable, but not doing anything particularly terrible.” Another party official said, “Chris is coming in with one brief and one brief only. Cut costs and sort out the finances. That’s it.” 10.38am: You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here. As for the rest of the papers, I’ve already mentioned Jack Straw’s revelations about insurance companies selling information to claims management companies. (See 9.59am.) Here are some other stories and articles that are particularly interesting. • Andrew Gilligan in the Daily Telegraph suggests Tory councils are just as likely to waste money as Labour ones. Which party do all four of the highest paid councillors in England belong to? Whose councils employ seven of the 10 best-remunerated officials in local government, including four of the top five? In London, whose councils have more staff on six-figure incomes? The answer is that champion of taxpayer value, the Conservative Party. Over the past year, Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has tormented his enemies in Lefty town halls for their “nuclear-free local authority policy officers” and “chief executives on £230,000 a year”. But in recent weeks the irresistible force of the Pickles man-mountain has finally run up against the immovable object of hundreds of his own councillors. • Lord Ashdown in the Times (paywall) says MPs must not allow peers to block Lords reform. Our second chamber is too important to be a retirement home for ex-MPs past their sell-by date (myself included), when it could be properly democratically elected. The House of Lords is already political. How could it be otherwise? The question is whether its politicians are put there by the powerful — or the people. • Alex Spence in the Times (paywall) says new research suggests British firms could lose £15bn of business as a result of the Bribery Act. The Bribery Act, set to come into force on July 1, will streamline existing anti-corruption legislation into what lawyers believe will be the toughest graft-busting regime in the world. Under the new rules, individuals could face up to ten years in prison for paying bribes to win work, while companies could be held criminally liable if they do not have “adequate procedures” in place to stop illicit payments being made on their behalf. However, the restructuring and forensic consulting specialist Alix Partners argues that such strengthened corporate liability could jeopardise up to a tenth of the business carried out by British companies in overseas markets where corruption is prevalent, including in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. 9.59am: I’ll post a full round-up of the papers shortly, but one of the best stories is in the Times, where Jack Straw , the former foreign secretary, appears to be carving out a new career as an investigative reporter. And a very good job he’s doing too. He has discovered that insurance companies are selling the details of drivers who have accidents to personal injury lawyers or claims management companies so that they can encourage drivers to sue for damages. The Times have got a front page story out of the revelations (paywall), which are explained in a column written by Straw (paywall). Straw says he started making inquiries when he was prompted by a constituent. Incredulous, I asked how it could be in an insurance company’s interest to sell information to a claims company that was used to make a claim against the self-same company. “If we don’t sell this information, others in the know will do so — recovery firms, garages, credit companies, the insurance company on the other side, even the police.” (One police force made £1.3 million in 2008-9.) The income from this trade is huge, £200-£1,000 for each referral. There can be several from just one accident. Referral fees are now a crucial part of all insurance companies’ revenue streams. Many drivers are encouraged to submit claims of dubious validity for whiplash injury. Straw says this “racket” is driving up costs for everyone. The number of registered claims management companies has doubled to 3,400 in two years. Their high-pressure sales techniques have led to a phenomenal growth in the number and value of claims for personal injury. The cost of personal injury claims has doubled in ten years, from £7 billion to £14 billion. [Association of British Insurers] analysis shows a direct link between the number of claims companies in a region and the level of claims. In the North West, with a high density of claims companies, 40 per cent of claims have a “bodily injury component”, compared with 25 per cent across the country — yet the region’s roads are no less safe. The “bodily injury” that the claims company was enticing Phil [Straw's constituent] to make was for “whiplash”, which now accounts for 80 per cent of all claims. It’s perfect for the claims companies: a soft-tissue injury that no scan or X-ray can pick up, so claims rely on the patient’s description. It’s usually entirely trivial. Respectable medical websites prescribe paracetamol. The cost to the NHS of treating whiplash is only £8 million. The cost to insurers of whiplash claims is £2 billion. Very odd. 9.50am: For the record, here are the latest YouGov GB polling figures (from yesterday’s Sunday Times). Labour: 43% (up 13 points since the general election) Conservatives: 36% (down 1) Lib Dems: 9% (down 15) Labour lead: 7 points Government approval: -27 9.24am: Britain and China are expected to agree deals worth more than £1bn as David Cameron and Wen Jiabao , the Chinese premier, meet today in Downing Street. As Patrick Wintour reports in the Guardian today, one key deal involves supplying China with clean coal technology. But some of the other aspects are less high-tech. According to the briefing note sent out by Downing Street, chickens and breeding pigs are also at the heart of the burgeoning British/Chinese relationship. The reopening of the Chinese market for UK poultry exports is also expected to be agreed. This market is worth around £10m to the UK annually and will help to safeguard jobs and livelihoods. The British pig industry is already benefiting from the agreement reached by [Vince] Cable in the autumn which led to resumption of exports of pig meat and major new contracts for the supply of breeding pigs to China. During the summit, a further deal to supply 800 breeding pigs is set to be signed worth more than £1m and the approval of 5 more UK establishments for the export of pig meat, worth more than £25m. 9.03am: Liam Fox (left) has given at least four broadcast interviews this morning about his reorganisation of the Ministry of Defence. As usual, PoliticsHome have been on the case. Here are the key points. • Fox said there would have to be another defence review to bring defence spending fully under control. When the coalition came go power, it found that unfunded liabilities in the MoD’s budget were worth £38bn, he said. It was always unlikely that we could eliminate that in one go. We’ve taken quite a lot of the programme through the defence review that we had last year, but it will certainly take another defence review and a lot of change to eliminate that unfunded liability. • He said the reorganisation being announced today would make the MoD more efficient. It is all about ensuring that we get better management because … the way in which the MoD has run has not really been to the benefit of defence as a whole. There has been too much waste and there has been too much lack of control over major projects and we intend to bring that back … I hope that the changes that I will set out today will mean that we have a more efficient process and the changes that we will set out to procurement will stop the sort of nonsense that we’ve had in the past of funding to the tune of billions of pounds projects that never see the light of day. • He said the re-organisation would also give the military more freedom. “I also want to stop politicians micro-managing, allowing those who know how to run the services the freedom to do so,” he said. The reforms would also allow “greater freedom for career progression in the armed forces”, he said. • He rejected suggestions that the mission in Libya was unsustainable. I think that we’ve made it very clear that the way in which we are carrying out this mission is sustainable along with our allies and I think that it’s very important that when you’re in a conflict, you do not raise ideas in the minds of your opponents that we may not be willing to carry this through. • He insisted that killing Colonel Gaddafi was not Nato policy. When pressed on this by John Humphrys on the Today programme, Fox said: “You are asking me to say is it our policy to kill Colonel Gaddafi and it is not.” 8.51am: Defence and China are the key issues on the agenda this morning. David Cameron has talks with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, and the two men are hosting a joint press conference. And Liam Fox is announcing a major shake-up of the Ministry of Defence. Fox has already given a series of interviews this morning and I will summarise them in a moment. In the meantime, here’s a full list of what’s coming up. 11am: Liam Fox , the defence secretary, is giving a speech about the Ministry of Defence re-organisation. As Nick Hopkins reports , Fox is promising “a vision of transformation on a scale not seen in defence for a generation”. Fox is also expected to make a statement to the Commons later. Around 11.15am: David Cameron and Wen Jiabao , the Chinese premier, are holding a joint press conference. 2.15pm: Union officials are due to meet the government for further talks about the proposed cuts to public sector pensions. 2.30pm: Theresa May , the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons. Around 3pm: Peers begin a debate on changing the rules to enable peers to “retire” from the House of Lords. 3.30pm: Cameron is expected to make a statement in the Commons about last week’s EU summit. 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 after 4pm. House of Commons Trade unions Wen Jiabao China David Cameron Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

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