Politics live blog – Tuesday 21 June 2011

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen 12.01pm: Cameron takes his last question, from a Welsh journalist. Q: Will you give more powers to the Welsh assembly? And will you review the Barnett formula? Cameron says he will consider devolving more power to Wales on a case by case basis. On the Barnett formula, he says this is a complicated issue. But the government is going to set up a Calman-style commission for Wales. Cameron says he has now got to ask the journalists to leave because he has “particularly exciting” lunch guests (ie, the Queen). That’s it. I’ll post a summary soon. 11.53am: Cameron takes a question from a Scottish paper. Q: Alex Salmond wants two questions on an independence referendum ballot paper? And is it right for Scotland to have to wait three years for this vote? Cameron says he respects Alex Salmond’s mandate. But he won’t have an “endless situation” where it is just about getting to a referendum situation to meet Salmond’s needs. If the Scottish parliament votes for a referendum, he will let that happen. Q: The head of the navy and the head of the RAF have questioned how long the Libya operation should last. How long will it last? Cameron says the military chiefs have told him that Britain can carry on the mission for as long as necessary. “Time is on our side,” he says. The pressure is turning up all the time. Q: The health bill will get just 10 days of debate in the Commons. Is that enough? Cameron says 10 days is plenty. The Tories did not get this long when they were in opposition. Sir George Young, the leader of the Commons, is a genuine reformer, he says. Q: Will there be a reshuffle this summer? Cameron says journalists love reshuffles. He is going to disappoint them, and carry on disappointing them for some time yet. Q: Your jail plans sound expensive. And they sound like “the chain gang”. Cameron says he is not proposing chain gangs. But he wants to see community sentences that contain an element of punishment. There are not enough of those at the moment. 11.49am: Cameron takes a question from the FT. Q: Are you confident that British banking system can withstand any shock from Greece? Cameron says British banks have done a “huge amount” to strengthen their capital ratios. Q: Do you think the eurozone will survive? Cameron says he was strongly opposed to Britain joining the euro. But the countries that joined the euro have an “enormous amount” invested in it. They will not let it fail. Q: In opposition you gave the “hug a hoodie” speech. Today you have adopted a much harder line. Which is the real you? Cameron says he never said “hug a hoodie”. In that speech he advocated a tough response to people who “cross a line”. But, before then, people did need more “love”. The state is being a “bad parent” to children in care. 11.46am: Cameron is asked about immigration. Q: Can you clarify the remark you made yesterday about the Lib Dems blocking your immigration plans? Cameron says the government has a good policy. He cares about this. He would like it to “drop off’ the agenda, as happened in the 1980s. Damian Green, the immigration minister, is doing a very good job. He is one of the “unsung heroes” of the government. Q: Would Britain suffer if Greece left the euro? Cameron says Britain suffers when the eurozone suffers. Turbulence in the eurozone is bad for Britain. Cameron says Britain should not be involved in any fresh Greek bailout. It was not involved in the original Greek bailout. The EU financial stability mechanism (which would oblige Britain to pay) should not be used to help Greece, he says. 11.41am: Cameron takes a question from Michael Crick from Newsnight. Q: These measures will add to MoJ costs, won’t they? Isn’t this a huge “kick in the teeth” to Clarke? Cameron says he and Clarke have had a “very good discussion” about this. Clarke knows more than most ministers about how to get savings from a department. Clarke is “happy” with the proposals. Q: What about legal aid? Cameron says there are big plans for reducing the cost of legal aid. Britain currently has the most generous legal aid system in the world. Q: Damilola Taylor’s father has said Clarke should be sacked. Will you sack him? Cameron says he has huge respect for Richard Taylor. But he does not agree with him about Clarke. Clarke has “no problems” dropping a plan and coming up with a better one. Q: Have you dropped your plan to jail anyone caught carrying a knife? Cameron says today’s plan is an improvement. You cannot necessarily do everything you want. 11.36am: Cameron says the government started very quickly when it came to office. On sentencing, he says the Ministry of Justice will save the £130m it will not get from 50% sentence discounts from other parts of its £8bn budget. Today he has made “the right choice”. Q: How will the “defend your property” law work? Cameron says this law will make it clear that people can use “reasonable force” to protect their property. Q: What did you think of “that oaf of a [hospital] consultant” who shouted at you at a hospital last week? Cameron says the doctor was worried about hygiene. Someone in the ward thought the event had been staged deliberately. Q: Will the probation service be affected by the new need to find cuts from the MoJ budget? Cameron says up to now the probation service has not been hit as hard as other parts of the department. But it has not had its budget ringfenced. 11.34am: Cameron is still taking questions. Q: Is U-turning too often a sign of indecisive government? Cameron says he does not accept that. The government has acted decisively, he says, citing cutting the deficit, welfare reform and academies. Often people say the government is trying to do too many things. I don’t make any apology for listening as you go along and making sure that you get things right … Being strong is about being prepared to admit that you did not get everything right first time. If you were told how to improve a policy, but did not respond out of fear, that would not be leadership. It would be the opposite, he says. 11.30am: Cameron is taking questions now. Q: Are you making too many U-turns? Cameron says he takes responsibility for what has happened. He does not think it is a sign of weakness to listen. In fact, it’s a sign of strength. Q: Why did you get sentencing wrong? Cameron says the government produced a green paper with “interesting ideas” in it. It was right to explore the 50% sentence discount idea. “As an idea, it failed – and it rightly failed.” There would be no point having a green paper if you were not willing to listen to the responses, he says. Q: What changed your mind? Cameron says his mind changed when he realised cutting sentences was being driven by the need to cut costs, not to speed up the justice system. 11.29am: The opening statement is over. Cameron seems to have ripped up the sentencing plans, and launched an entirely new consultation. The government’s law and order policy has suddenly become rather hardline. 11.26am: Cameron is still talking. He says people do not understand indeterminate sentences. This system will be reviewed, with a view to replacing it with a tougher system. • There will be more life sentences. Cameron says these are well understood. • Serious offenders will no longer be eligible for release after serving half their sentence, Cameron says. Cameron says he is announcing a new review covering this today. Legislative proposals will be brought forward later this year. The public need to know that dangerous offenders will be locked up for a long time. Cameron says he is “returning confidence to the system”. 11.20am: David Cameron is opening his press conference. He starts by saying it’s a proud day because he is hosting a lunch for the Queen. It’s to mark the Duke of Edinburgh’s 90th birthday. He turns to sentencing. He wants to make sure that people are safe, that the police are accountable and that prisons are effective. Half of prisoners reoffend within a year of leaving. Around 10% are foreigners. It’s a “hugely expensive” system and it does not work. The government wants to make prison work. Three principles lay behind this. First, prison must protect the public. Second, serious criminals should go to prison for a long time. Third, breaking the cycle of re-offending should be at the heart of the system. People who run prisons should be paid according to their success at cutting re-offending rates. Anyone who thinks tackling re-offending is going “soft” on crime “couldn’t be more wrong”. Ken Clarke’s legislative proposals are one part of this approach. There will be tough action on knife crime. • There will be a compulsory jail term for anyone threatening someone with a knife. • Squatting will be turned into a criminal offence. • Homeowners who use reasonable force to protect themselves will not be prosecuted. Cameron confirms that the 50% sentence discount plan has been dropped. People working in the system said a 50% discount was too high. The money that would have been saved through this will be saved through “greater efficiency” in other parts of the budget. 11.16am: Nick Clegg was on Kenneth Clarke’s side over sentencing. But Clegg didn’t say so in public. James Forsyth has posted a good blog on this at Coffee House. Clegg’s circle believes that the Tories want to put them on the wrong side of the public on a whole bunch of populist issues: notably, welfare, immigration and crime. Their response is to fight in private when the public is against them and in public when it is with them—as it was on the NHS. 11.01am: David Cameron (left) will be giving his news conference too. It’s an open news conference – journalists can ask about anything that they want – but obviously it has been timed for today so that Cameron can personally announce the government’s new sentencing policy. After the rape row, Cameron may be worried about letting Kenneth Clarke take the lead on this issue (although Clarke will be making a formal statement in the Commons later). But Cameron will also have to address concerns that his government is now incapable of facing down any opposition to a policy. Here’s Tim Montgomerie on the subject in a recent post on ConservativeHome. Talking to a Conservative MP last night, however, he warned that the Coalition’s dizzying inability to stick to a course was threatening backbench discipline. One day, he said, the whips are asking us to write letters to constituents defending the government’s plans to reform school sports funding, the EMA, forestry privatisation, the NHS… and the next day they are abandoning or diluting those plans. “Ten times bitten, eleventh time shy,” he said. Tory MPs simply won’t get up in the Commons and defend controversial reforms if they are going to be made to look silly. And here’s Jonathan Isaby at ConservativeHome making a similar point. Over the last few days I have been talking to a number of Tory MPs to ascertain the gravity of these issues, and I certainly sense a lot of concern among usually loyal backbenchers along exactly the same lines as those outlined by Tim’s source. “When I get a torrent of emails about a controversial issue now, I leave them for seven days before replying, because there’s an increasing chance that the line is going to change, ” said one MP with whom I discussed the matter. Another is using a longer timescale: “I let the letters and emails on anything where there’s a hint of U-turn pile up for thirty days. Frankly I don’t want to make myself look stupid by defending a policy only for it to change a few days later”. Cameron will have to show that he’s still got a grip. We’ll hear from him soon. 10.43am: 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, here are some stories and articles that are particularly interesting. • Thomas Harding in the Daily Telegraph says the head of the Air Force’s combat operations has told MPs that, if the Libya operation continues beyond the summer, the RAF’s ability to carry out future missions will be under threat. Air Chief Marshal Sir Simon Bryant has told MPs that intense air operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East are placing a “huge” demand on equipment and personnel. In a briefing paper delivered to senior politicians and obtained by The Daily Telegraph, the RAF’s second in command said morale among airmen was “fragile” and their fighting spirit was threatened by being overworked. Many areas of the RAF were “running hot”, he warned, while the servicemen’s sense that the nation valued their efforts was being undermined by the Coalition’s defence cuts. • Helen Warrell in the Financial Times (subscription) says an academic study suggests that government policies will fail to get net migration down to below 100,000 a year. Net migration stands at 242,000 so would have to come down by more than 142,000 over the next four years if the coalition was to meet its pledge by 2015. But analysts at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford have calculated that Home Office’s policies – reducing immigration for workers, students and their families from outside the European Union and making it harder for migrants to settle in the UK – would cut net migration by a total of 75,000, leaving a deficit of 67,000. • Mary Riddell in the Daily Telegraph says Labour’s family policy review has identified support for a “kinship” allowance. Last week, however, I spent an afternoon with a citizens’ jury of mothers convened to finalise the ideas on family that will now go forward for consultation. These women, from a political cross-spectrum, had been asked to bring an object symbolising their daily lives. The most popular were their children’s games consoles, symbolising an atomised society, and stories about rising gas and energy prices they had clipped from newspapers … Of the ideas they discussed, including community centres for all ages and extra citizenship teaching, the most popular was a scheme to give grandparents the right to take paternity leave to cover for an absent father as well as pay and leave entitlements for those who care full-time for their grandchildren. A “kinship allowance” is now likely to be a key part of Labour’s policy. • Bruce Anderson in the Financial Times (subscription) says that Steve Hilton is Thatcher’s heir in Number 10. The two are both outsiders, with the impatience that brings. She was not only the first woman PM, at a time when that seemed equally improbable; she also had an implacably restless temperament. So too does Mr Hilton, whose father fled Hungary in 1956, and who is even more impatient than she was. He is driven to fury by the waste in Britain of vast sums on social projects that only add to social misery. No socialist can fulminate more pyrotechnically about the destruction of life chances under the present system and the need for fundamental change to liberate human potential. An old-fashioned Tory will assume that human endeavours often end. By those criteria, Mr Hilton is not a Tory. His eccentricity of deportment makes him conspicuous, and others suspicious. People are simply not used to discalced Conservatives. In the Middle Ages, those who were uneasy about events but did not want to criticise the monarch often denounced the king’s evil counsellors. Some Tories who are unhappy about aspects of government policy have cast Mr Hilton in that role. But in Downing Street, his restlessness is greatly valued. 10.10am: Ed Miliband was speaking at the Times CEO summit this morning, in front of an audience that included the News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch. According to the Press Association, the Labour leader said those at the top had to show “responsibility” on the issue of pay. Here are the main points. • Miliband condemned excessive salaries in the City. Those at the top had to show “responsibility”, he said. For the system of free enterprise and the system of wealth creation to continue to command credibility, we do need to make sure that pay and performance are linked. The excesses we have seen at the top in parts of the financial services industry in the past do none of us any good. Just as it is right to say that those at the bottom of society should show responsibility, so it is right that those at the top show responsibility too. We have got to make sure that reward is in proportion to effort in what we do. • He said that scrapping the 50% top rate tax rate was not a priority for Labour. But he did not rule out proposing its abolition in the party’s 2015 election manifesto either. How do we sustain support for the free enterprise system that we all believe in? Partly, you don’t do it by cutting taxes for those right at the top when other people are facing real economic hardship. • But he ruled out returning to the “penal” tax rates for high earners of the 1970s. New Labour brought about a number of innovations for the Labour Party. One of them I intend to keep is that strong relationship with business. I want to celebrate wealth creation in this country. We are not going to go back to the penal tax rates of the 1970s under a future Labour government. That is not what we are about, because we must be a country that celebrates enterprise and rewards those who work hard and do well. 9.59am: Nick Clegg (left) is in Brazil today and he’s making a speech. According to the text I’ve just received from the Cabinet Office, the deputy prime minister will be saying that Brazil should have a permanent seat on the UN security council. Our institutions must be more nimble. Better equipped to guard against risk, respond to crises, enforce rules and norms that advance our shared success. That will be impossible until those institutions are reformed to suit the modern world. Until they reflect today’s geography of power, with all of the major powers properly heard. Nations – like Brazil – who should be shaping the agenda, offering unique insights, being part of the big decisions, and then using your power to see those decisions through. Huge strides have been taken in establishing multilateral cooperation over the last sixty years, but the reality is, unless new actors are brought fully into the multilateral system, they will increasingly look for other ways to operate and our international institutions will become increasingly defunct. The UK doesn’t want to see that happen. That’s why we actively support a permanent seat for Brazil at the UN Security Council. 9.50am: Here’s Ed Miliband (left) on the sentencing announcement. The public were rightly appalled that the government was proposing that people who committed rape should see their sentences cut by 50% and be let out within as little as fifteen months. Now the prime minister has to ask how did he get himself into the position of making a proposal which hasn’t thought through. It is yet another example of this government not being in touch with people and making proposals which they then have to abandon. 9.34am: According to Kenneth Clarke (left), the government is not performing a U-turn. This is what the justice secretary told BBC News this morning. I’ve taken the quote from PoliticsHome . I’m going to the Cabinet and we’re publishing the Bill and later this morning and today, the prime minister and I will be announcing our response to all the consultation. We’ve changed parts of it, both on legal aid and on sentencing. It’s not another U-turn it’s a perfectly balanced package of radical reform, which is very necessary, and obviously I have to first of all discuss it in Cabinet and then explain it to my parliamentary colleagues. Technically, Clarke has a point. The government floated the 50% sentence discount idea last year in a green paper, Breaking the Cycle (pdf), and that made it clear that this was only a proposal. “We want to ensure that defendants are encouraged to plead guilty at the earliest opportunity by reducing the sentence given for an early guilty plea (the “sentence discount”),” the green paper says (in paragraph 216). “We are considering whether this could be better achieved by introducing a maximum discount of up to 50 per cent that would be reserved for those who plead guilty at the earliest stage.” But Clarke defended the idea in the Commons. When Labour’s Sadiq Khan urged him last month during justice questions to drop the plan, Clarke replied: We are going to give the outcome of our consultation shortly, but I think that that proposal is likely to survive. This was a proposal with clear government support. To my mind, describing today’s announcement as a U-turn seems perfectly fair. 9.07am: Here’s some reaction that has already come in to the forthcoming announcement from the Ministry of Justice, which will include cuts to legal aid as well as changes to the sentencing rules. I’ve taken the quotes from the Press Association and PoliticsHome. From Sadiq Khan , the shadow justice secretary We’re in danger of blaming all this on Ken Clarke. We’ve been expressing concerns about these plans for the last six months, since December, and what Ken Clarke has been saying consistently – I’ve asked this on the floor of the House, ‘do you have the support of the Cabinet in these plans?’ – he said consistently ‘the cabinet is behind me, the prime inister is behind me.’ What has happened at the eleventh hour is David Cameron has realised that his government is appearing to be out of touch with ordinary people around the country. From Richard Taylor , the father of Damilola Taylor Ken Clarke does not know what is going on in the streets, he does not know what criminality is about. He is taking decisions about what he does not know about. David Cameron’s decision to abandon the Ken Clarke statement is right. From Des Hudson , chief executive of the Law Society What we have yet to hear from the government is how they are proposing you and I will get access to justice if we can’t get legal aid. We are in the time of austerity; I note however that the Atlee government was also in a time of austerity back in 1949 and principles and values that they saw as important and worth paying for still it seems to me apply today. From Conservative MP Ben Gummer We are a fiscally challenged country here, we’ve got to find savings across the board, and 15% cuts or 16% cuts to legal aid really is – it will still be the most expensive legal system in the world, and we will be getting to a system where we will have comparable levels of access as in other European countries and common law jurisdiction. Sweden have had family mediation trials for many years and they do it very successfully. What we’re doing adopting the best practice for better mediation and actually it’s just what the Lord Chief Justice supported himself into our jurisdiction, it’s better for families. 8.54am: Dave Prentis (left), the Unison general secretary, told the Guardian last week that the strike his union was planning over cuts to public sector pensions would be “the biggest since the general strike”. Today he said it could go on indefinitely. According to PoliticsHome , this is what Prentis told BBC News from Manchester, where Unison is holding a conference. When we move to industrial action, we’ve got over 1.1m workers, mainly low paid, mainly women, covered by our pension schemes and they will be asking to take action. It will be the biggest strike since 1926. It will be indefinite until we get an agreement … It’s quite clear that this coalition will not move if we take one day of action and have a demonstration. It will take sustained action. We’re not going to be starved back to work like the miners were. We’re talking about women workers, mainly low paid workers, and we will look after them in that action. 8.36am: Another day, another U-turn. Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, is publishing his revised sentencing plans today and, as the Guardian and others papers are reporting prominently, he has abandoned plans to give a 50% sentence discount to people who plead guilty early. By my count, this is the third U-turn in this area. Two weeks ago, on the morning of PMQs , Downing Street let it be know that there would be no 50% sentence discount for rapists. Then, at the end of last week, after the Sun ran a story under the headline: “Ken Clarke … the paedophiles’ pal” (on the grounds that paedophiles would still qualify for the 50% discount, the Ministry of Justice said they were being excluded from the 50% plan . Ministers thought it might be possible to keep the scheme for less serious offenders, but today Clarke will confirm that the idea has been dropped completely. David Cameron is giving a press conference this morning and, with his government now getting a reputation for performing U-turns at a rate that makes one giddy just watching, one of his main tasks will be to show that he still has a clear sense of direction. That’s the main news, but there are other things going on too. Here’s a full list. 9am: The cabinet meets. 10.15am: A range of experts give evidence to the Commons transport committee about the High Speed Rail project. 10.30am: Keir Starmer , the director of public prosecutions, and others give evidence to a Commons committee on terrorism prevention and investigation measures (TPIMs), the replacement for control orders. Around 11am: The Ministry of Justice is publishing its justice bill , alongside a written statement on “proposals for the reform of punishment, rehabilitation, sentencing and legal aid”. 11.15am: David Cameron hosts a press conference in Downing Street. 1pm: Cameron hosts a lunch for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at Downing Street to celebrate the Duke’s 90th birthday. 2.30pm: George Osborne , the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons. Around 3pm: Peers start a two-day debate on reform of the House of Lords. More than 100 peers have put their names down to speak . 3.30pm: Kenneth Clarke , the justice secretary, makes a statement in the Commons about his justice bill. 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 and an afternoon one at about 4pm. House of Commons Kenneth Clarke Sentencing David Cameron Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

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