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Your 10 questions for would-be MPs | Henry Porter
As we prepare to elect the MPs who should safeguard our rights, what 10 questions on liberty would you put to party candidates?
In about eight weeks’ time we will be voting not just for a new government, but a new parliament of representatives, in whose hands will lie the future of our free society.
We want your help to draft a list of questions that can be put to all the candidates of the major parties to establish their credentials, not as party creatures, but as individuals of conscience who will stand for the values of a liberal and democratic society before any other political interest.
The dying parliament is among the worst in the past 100 years – corrupt, lazy, arrogant and dismissive of the public – but it also contained some good MPs who fought the tide of illiberal legislation and who are aware of the direction Britain has taken under Labour’s authoritarian government. We need many more like them to reassert parliament’s power and to hold the executive to account.
Ten key questions on liberty, rights and democracy is what we want you to be able to ask candidates with a view to getting their pledge of support on the record for all voters to see. Where support is not forthcoming, that should be made public.
Where do we start?
At an event last night to celebrate the launch of Keith Ewing’s book, The Bonfire of the Liberties – now the definitive text on Labour government’s attack on liberty and rights – we listened to a young man named Cerie Bullivant talking about his experience of being subject to the restrictions of a control order for two years without having been found guilty of a crime, or being allowed to know the evidence against him. The system of control orders seems to me one of the worst examples of arbitrary state power in modern Britain. I would ask – will you condemn house arrest of a person who has not been found guilty of a crime in a normal court of law?
Are you worried about trade union rights – the right of workers not to be catalogued on secret databases and blacklists, which affect their ability to gain work? What about the rights to assembly and free protest without being harassed and photographed by our militarised police? Last night we heard from Pennie Quinton and Marc Vallée, who have been prevented by police from carrying out their duties as working photographers. Their stories are part of an important battle over the control and regulation of public space. Should we ask all candidates to declare the commitment to the principle that anyone should be allowed to make an image in a public place without being questioned by the police, PCSOs or the numerous varieties of accredited busybodies?
Each year a very large number of innocent people are stopped and searched by the police who, according to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission report, exhibit obvious racism by picking on black and Asian people. One question might be, “Do you support a repeal of current legislation which allows police to stop and search hundreds of thousands of innocent people without having reasonable cause? And do you condemn the racist bias in stop and search policies, as well as the police national DNA database?
We should attempt to get the assurance of candidates that they will do everything they can to roll back the database state. ID cards and government policies to capture all our communications data and all personal details when we travel abroad are being rolled out. The government is putting pressure on NHS patients to allow their medical records to be uploaded to a database, which many experts believe is innately insecure. Records of all children in England and Wales are being compulsorily uploaded to the Contact database. You may feel strongly about these databases or about the Vetting and Barring Scheme, which some see as one of the symbols of a country that is fast losing the reflexive presumption of innocence. What question would encourage a candidate to explicitly reject the culture of suspicion and mistrust that has grown up in the last 12 years?
One worry is the way demonstrations are being oppressed by hostile police who have little regard for the right of people to engage in legitimate political protest and do everything in their power to photograph individuals for their secret databases. Another concern is the use of the Ripa laws and the growth of invasive databases, some of which have no basis in law – the police ANPR surveillance system, for instance, which captures and retains most vehicle journeys in the UK.
Or you may feel that you want to hear more general declarations about candidates’ fundamental political beliefs, principles they are prepared to sign up to and against which their voting record may be measured. My co-director of the Convention on Modern Liberty, Anthony Barnett, suggests that every candidate is asked to explicitly recognise that the threat to our liberty currently posed by government is greater than that presented by terrorism.
Over to you.
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Westminster wives
about 5 months ago - No comments
She swears, she drinks, she has extramarital flings… The modern MP’s wife is unrecognisable from the simpering cheerleader of the past. So what has changed? And what impact will the other halves have on this year’s election?
When Alicia Collinson’s husband, Damian Green, was first elected as a Conservative MP in 1997, she was provided with a small pamphlet produced by the Parliamentary Christian Wives Fellowship. It was called “Two for the Price of One” and the title was printed across the cover in precisely the same shade of green as the leather benches inside the House of Commons chamber. The eight-page leaflet contained all manner of helpful tips and guidance on how to be a politician’s wife in a breezy style that seemed to have come straight from the 1950s.
“If you look good, you feel good,” the authors stated cheerily, before going on to advise that: “For wives, it is a great help to have a very good relationship with your local garage as you are bound to break down when your dearly beloved is on a parliamentary trip to China and you may need rescuing.”
But it was one sentence in particular that enraged Alicia Collinson. “It’s this one,” she says, pushing the pamphlet across the coffee table and jabbing at the relevant page. “They say: ‘Try to ensure the absent parent speaks each week on the phone to each child personally if possible.’” Collinson snorts with indignation. “That really got my goat. It’s full of things like that, assuming you can do things while your husband’s in parliament. Well, no, you can’t if you’re working, too. There was this assumption that you were just part of the package.”
Times have changed dramatically for the political wife. In previous decades an MP’s wife was expected to be little more than a photogenic adjunct to her husband, someone who could be relied upon to judge cake-baking contests at the village fete and smile prettily in public. Most of the time this charming little creature would be careful not to speak out of turn or proffer any political opinion that might risk embarrassing her husband or his party. Her role, like that of Clementine Churchill or Clarissa Eden before her, was to raise children, run a household and provide constant support to her overworked and sporadically bad-tempered spouse.
On the rare occasion that a wife did speak out, it resulted in a horrified outcry. Margot, the wife of former prime minister Herbert Asquith, was blamed for her husband’s political downfall after she publicly accused her stepson of being drunk. (He had, in fact, been shell-shocked during the First World War.) Now, however, Margot Asquith’s indelicate comment would barely merit a raised eyebrow. In modern politics, it is quite normal for the wife of the chancellor to scream the “c” word in reference to her husband’s treacherous colleagues, as Maggie Darling was reported to have done in Andrew Rawnsley’s recent book about the fall of New Labour. Over the past few months a worrying number of political wives (and it is, on the whole, still largely wives rather than husbands) have crawled out of the woodwork to admit to all sorts of brazen peccadilloes, including binge drinking, promiscuity and the odd extramarital affair.
Sally Bercow, the wife of the Commons speaker, gave an extraordinary interview last December in which she admitted to a debauched past, drinking more than two bottles of wine a day and engaging in a string of one-night stands. “I would end up sometimes at a bar and someone would send a drink over, and I’d think: ‘Why not?’ and we’d go home together,” she said. “I liked the excitement of not knowing how a night was going to end.”
Unlike the quietly spoken, loyal wife of parliamentary legend, Mrs Bercow appeared to be wholly unconcerned as to whether she might be diminishing her husband’s professional kudos. Her political opinions, too, are unashamedly opposed to her spouse’s: whereas John Bercow was a Tory MP before becoming speaker, Sally Bercow is standing as a Labour councillor in Pimlico, central London.
Then, in January, it emerged that Iris Robinson, the wife of the Northern Irish first minister, had an affair with a 19-year-old when she was 58. The ensuing barrage of “Mrs Robinson”-themed newspaper headlines forced Peter Robinson to stand down temporarily. Although both the Robinson and Bercow sagas are extreme examples, there is a growing trend for parliamentary spouses to emerge from the shadows.
Samantha Cameron, wife of the Conservative leader, is creative director at Smythson, the luxury stationery firm. Ed Miliband’s partner, Justine Thornton, is a senior environmental lawyer. Sarah Brown, wife of the prime minister, enjoyed a successful career in public relations before taking up permanent residence in No 10. Shadow chancellor George Osborne’s wife, Frances, is a bestselling biographer, and Sandra Howard, wife of former Conservative leader Michael Howard, has written three novels.
“I think the role has changed a bit,” says Mrs Howard, whose latest novel, A Matter of Loyalty, was published last year. “Three decades ago there were more wives who didn’t have their own career. Cherie Blair did us a really good service by continuing to work as a barrister while her husband was the prime minister because no one could ever complain about a spouse working again.”
“It’s a shift that mirrors what has happened in society,” agrees Alicia Collinson, author of Politics for Partners: How to Live with a Politician and a barrister specialising in family law. She deliberately chose not to take her husband’s surname. “I got very criticised in the press when Damian first became involved in politics because I was a barrister and had my own job, but now the constituency isn’t fussed about it… I used to know one MP who talked about his wife being ‘the hostage’ in the constituency.” Collinson takes a sip of her tea. “He’s now married to someone else.”
Not only are political wives no longer quite held hostage in the shires, they are seen as potential vote-winners. The impact of Michelle Obama, who has expanded the role of political wife and is seen as a crucial asset to her husband’s success, is beginning to make itself felt in the UK. Whereas in the past an MP’s spouse was occasionally wheeled out by central office for a pre-election photo opportunity, the modern political wife has a far more complex role. She must juggle the demands of career and family while developing a public persona that is sufficiently straightforward to be inoffensive and yet interesting enough to intrigue the electorate. Her clothes will be scrutinised and her past raked over. She is expected to have an opinion and yet to keep it to herself. And when her husband films a YouTube broadcast from his bespoke Notting Hill kitchen, she must appear in the background amid the cereal boxes and Blu-Tacked toddlers’ paintings, busy and yet in control: the perfect appeal to the Mumsnet generation.
Perhaps it is unsurprising that some political wives, like Sally Bercow or Iris Robinson, chafe against the restrictions imposed upon them. Others, like Miriam González Durántez, wife of the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, take a more relaxed approach. González, who heads up the trade department of the international law firm DLA Piper, says that a political wife can be “supportive without being submissive… I am sufficiently confident to understand I can have a proper career, and I also understand I happen to be married to Nick and people will want legitimately to have a look into who he is as a person – and provided that they respect our children I’m happy for anybody to have a look. What you see is what you get.”
When we meet in a boardroom at her company headquarters in London, González seeps unapologetic glamour. She has film-star looks and hair that appears expensively blow-dried. Today she is wearing a grey silk shift dress, a chunky gold necklace and fashionable high-heeled ankle boots. It would be difficult to imagine anyone less like the pink-cheeked, floral-swathed MP’s wife of popular imagination.
González embodies the new breed of “Sam Cams”, the independent career women and mothers who happen to be married to politicians but who are determined not to be defined by their spouses and who share the running of the household as equally as possible. The Cleggs have three sons under the age of eight: their father takes them to school every morning and their mother puts them to bed at night.
“Nick’s well known with the neighbours for going to do a very early interview and coming back to go to school before going to Westminster,” says González. Do the children understand what their father does? “Partly. My five-year-old thinks he’s the captain of the Liberal Democrats. My eight-year-old is quite perceptive and understands some of it – he advises on plans to capture Osama bin Laden.”
Westminster hours, however, remain extremely inconvenient for MPs with young children (even since Labour’s landslide victory in 1997, when 120 of the new MPs were women, many of whom were appalled by the unsociable working hours and pitifully outdated office equipment). “It isn’t friendly for families,” says González. “I remember, for example, being very, very shocked – and let’s put this into context: it must be a Westminster village reaction – but I remember Nick saying at some point: ‘I’m a father before being a politician’, and some colleagues were actually thinking: ‘What a weird thing to say.’ I was thinking: ‘Surely that is a perfectly normal thing to say?’ I think it’s incredibly unuseful that Westminster tends to vote at 10 in the evening rather than at four in the afternoon, like you would do in any other kind of job. There’s a lot of evening engagements and media engagements, and that takes a toll on the family.”
It is perhaps partly for this reason that some wives still choose to stay quietly behind the scenes, determinedly ignoring the onward march of equal opportunities. For every Miriam González there is a “Surrendered Wife” like Norma Major, who stood smiling and faithful beside her husband without uttering a single controversial word in public throughout his premiership and who remained loyal to him even after it emerged that he’d had an affair with Edwina Currie. Pauline Prescott, who stood by husband John despite a dalliance with his secretary, calls herself one of a “dying breed” in her autobiography, and is dismissive of “women’s libbers”.
Sandra Howard, who did not publish her first book until her husband had stood down as leader, says the old-style political wife works on the principle that “anything you can do to help, you do. If allowing the person you love to do what they want to do means a little bit of not thinking about what you want to do, it’s almost a non-question.”
The Surrendered Wife must bite her tongue when asked for her opinion, lest she run the risk of embarrassing her husband. “I remember being told that a political spouse will never win the seat for their partner, but they can sure as hell lose it,” says Howard.
When the expenses scandal broke last year, it emerged that almost 80 MPs employed either their wives or girlfriends as parliamentary assistants, secretaries or case workers. (Political husbands are still very much the exception to the rule: Caroline Flint, the Labour MP for Don Valley, employs her husband Phil Cole to run her constituency office, while Margaret Beckett’s spouse, Leo, has been her parliamentary assistant for years.) At the time, there was an outcry at the thought of family members cashing in courtesy of the taxpayer, and the rules governing the employment of spouses and family members are currently under review. The constituency wives, many of whom had worked extremely hard for their MP husbands, felt they had been unfairly scapegoated. Alicia Collinson recalls a trip to the local garden centre with her husband at the height of the expenses scandal to buy some plants. “A man driving his car wound down his window and shouted out: ‘I hope you’ve got a receipt for that,’ and then drove off thinking he was very clever. We’ve never claimed for gardening. It was just ignorant.
“The climate has changed. The respect that parliamentarians were held in is no more… the level of contempt one experiences is quite extraordinary. It’s been very unpleasant. A lot of spouses have been very upset.”
Another wife, who has run her husband’s constituency office for the last 17 years, says: “I got very badly bruised by the whole thing. People don’t realise how hard we work or the hours we put in. We’re the ones who are there at seven in the morning or 11 at night when the phone goes.”
It is perhaps these wives – the uncomplaining troopers who keep their husbands’ schedules organised and their stationery cupboards stocked with Post-it notes – who provide the bridge between the surrendered spouses of the past and the sleekly independent career women of modern times.
But although the increasing number of MPs’ wives pursuing their own careers has been heralded as some sort of feminist breakthrough, much of the media coverage of these women remains distinctly sexist. There is a lingering sense, in spite of the enormous strides made by women such as Cherie Booth and Miriam González, that a political wife’s role is to gaze adoringly at her husband as he makes a keynote speech or to be photographed walking along the Brighton seafront during party conference season, appearing well dressed but not too glamorous in case she is accused of being out of touch with the common man (or woman).
So it is that Sarah Brown – doubtless influenced by the intimate confessions of her Michelle Obama about the president’s bad morning breath – has twice taken to the podium to introduce her husband to the Labour party conference. In 2008 she smiled ingratiatingly and called him “my hero”. Last year she exclusively revealed that Gordon was “not a saint – he’s messy, he’s noisy, he gets up at a terrible hour”.
Mrs Brown, who gave up a career in PR, has carved out a niche as an electoral accessory whose job it is to show Gordon in a warmer, more modern light. One minute Mrs Brown will be in a TV studio, eyes welling up as she listens to her husband unburden his soul to Piers Morgan, the next she will be opening London Fashion Week wearing an Erdem dress and updating her Twitter account (1,118,558 followers and counting, including Paris Hilton and Naomi Campbell).
Sarah Brown has provided us with a whole new category of political spouse: a wife who knows how to exploit modern media in order to promote herself and her husband as a successful brand. She is known to have used her sartorial influence to overhaul her husband’s wardrobe and her PR savvy to insist that the couple went on holiday in Southwold, Suffolk last year in an effort to prove their fondness for England. In fact, so successful has she been in modelling herself as cheerleader-in-chief that one member of the prime minister’s inner circle is said to have dubbed her “Mrs Goebbels”.
As the general election approaches, the leaders’ wives in particular will have a prominent role to play in wooing the voters. Already there have been snide comments emanating from government sources that Samantha Cameron does less charity work than her counterpart in No 10. And at the recent Tory spring conference it felt as though far more attention was paid to the cut of Mrs Cameron’s silk ruffled blouse than to what her husband had to say about fixing “broken Britain”.
“I think the trouble with politicians is they have a fixed image in the media which doesn’t involve their personality,” says Alicia Collinson. “So having another side to both David Cameron and Gordon Brown and allowing their wives to convey something that isn’t just the stiff upper lip of a politician can be helpful for the electorate in the run-up to an election. They can see what a politician is like from every angle.”
But reactions to Sarah Brown’s celebrity among the other political wives are mixed. Some find her acting the part of adoring spouse on the national stage a touch retrograde. Miriam González says she’d always go to see Nick deliver a major speech and would expect him to do the same, but adds that: “I wouldn’t ask him to come to the podium to kiss me afterwards, and that is not what I’d do in reverse.” Others, like Alicia Collinson, believe that having a loyal wife in the public eye “suggests that the politician has at least got good taste”.
And perhaps in the end it is not a wholly irrational reason to vote for a particular MP. They might lie about tax rises, cheat on their expenses and have terrible breath in the morning, but at least they have the love of a good woman who knows how to make friends with Paris Hilton on Twitter.
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More money makes society miserable, warns report
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Economics experts argue that Britain’s thirst for status symbols harms our well-being
The national belt-tightening expected to follow next month’s budget could prove to be of more benefit to the nation’s sense of well-being than if wealth levels were to soar, according to a new study.
Complex economic formulas developed by two professors of economics, Curtis Eaton and Mukesh Eswaran, and published in the current edition of the Economic Journal, suggest that greater affluence can seriously damage a nation’s health. Based on their mathematical modelling, the economists advance the theory that once a country reaches a reasonable standard of living there is little further benefit to be had from increasing the wealth of its population. Indeed, it could make people feel worse off.
They believe their work shows that, as a nation becomes wealthier, consumption shifts increasingly to buying status symbols with no intrinsic value – such as lavish jewellery, designer clothes and luxury cars. But they warn: “These goods represent a ‘zero-sum game’ for society: they satisfy the owners, making them appear wealthy, but everyone else is left feeling worse off.”
Their work owes much to the economist Thorstein Veblen, who in 1899 coined the term “conspicuous consumption” in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen argued that people seek status through conspicuous consumption, which derives its value not from the intrinsic worth of what is consumed but from the fact that it permits people to attempt to set themselves apart from others. As the economy grows, people increasingly choose status symbols or “Veblen goods” over other goods.
“Those with above-average wealth consume Veblen goods with a positive impact on their happiness,” the authors write. “But those with below-average wealth simply cannot afford these goods, so they have a negative impact on their happiness. This is known as ‘Veblen competition’. As average wealth rises, people grow richer but not happier.”
The pair believe their research helps to explain why empirical studies show that levels of happiness and feelings of community in affluent countries have stagnated, despite growth in real incomes.
There is another downside. As people yearn for more status symbols they have less time or inclination for helping others. This, the authors argue, damages “community and trust”, which are vital to an economy because they ensure the smooth running of society. They conclude: “Conspicuous consumption can have an impact not only on people’s well-being but also on the growth prospects of the economy.” The theory may go some way to explaining the public backlash against the louche lifestyles of the UK’s footballers, bankers and politicians.
It fits into a debate within economics about how to measure a nation’s true wealth. Many economists believe they need to focus more on measuring happiness. The belief that a focus on individual wealth creation can be divisive has spread around the worlds of politics, psychology and science. Clinical psychologist Oliver James has argued that there is an epidemic of “affluenza” throughout the developed world, with attempts “to keep up with the Joneses” triggering huge increases in depression and anxiety.
Last year a bestselling book by two epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, called The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, suggested that Britain and America were the countries with the widest gulfs between rich and poor in the developed world, and as a result had the most health and social problems.
Nevertheless, Eaton and Eswaran, from the universities of Calgary and British Columbia respectively, do not believe the developed world’s obsession with wealth shows any signs of abating. The pair predict that “it is likely that conspicuous consumption will become worse as time progresses”.
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Conservative defector condemns party’s ‘vile letter’ and hostility towards Europe
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MEP Edward McMillan-Scott accuses Tories of euro-scepticism and ‘double standards’ for expelling him while only suspending Lord Archer
The former leader of the Tories in Europe launches a scathing attack on David Cameron’s Conservatives today, accusing them of “visceral euroscepticism”, “twisted” thinking and bullying tactics that forced him out of the party.
Edward McMillan-Scott, who defected to the Liberal Democrats on Friday, has also accused the Tories of “extraordinary double standards” for expelling him permanently, having only suspended Lord Archer, who was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury in 2001.
Writing in today’s Observer, McMillan-Scott, who remains a vice-president of the European parliament, says the Tories unleashed a “campaign of vilification” against him after he claimed that Michal Kaminski, the Polish MEP who now leads their centre-right group in the EU, had an antisemitic, homophobic and racist track record.
A strong pro-European and member of the Tory party for 43 years, McMillan-Scott gives voice to years of frustration at the party’s hostile attitudes to the EU under present and past leaders, including William Hague.
In his outspoken attack on the party over its handling of his expulsion, McMillan-Scott says he has been smeared by Tory press officers who have tried to claim he is the one who holds antisemitic views.
He adds that they have distorted facts about his defection and claims that the party produced no documents to support its case when he appealed against expulsion. “I am not bitter, but they are twisted. It is not a nice party now,” he writes.
He accuses Cameron of tolerating eurosceptics who depart from the party line while persecuting him, a pro-European, for daring to express sincerely held doubts about the leadership credentials of a controversial fellow MEP.
“David Cameron shields his europhobes,” he writes. “No murmur was made when last weekend Lord Tebbit in effect encouraged Conservatives to vote Ukip in the general election against the Speaker, John Bercow. The dog whistle is really at a lower pitch: that Ukip supporters know that there is a real home for them, back in the Conservative party.”
Last night, speaking from the Liberal Democrat spring conference in Birmingham, McMillan-Scott said the party had shown “massive double standards” by expelling him while suspending Jeffrey Archer for five years.
When the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, mentioned McMillan-Scott’s name at a rally on Friday night there was a huge roar from activists. Yesterday he was seated in the front row for a question-and-answer session, so Clegg could welcome him.
The row over McMillan-Scott blew up last year when he stood as vice-president of the European parliament against Kaminski, who was Hague’s choice. Following McMillan-Scott’s stand, Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the Conservative MEPs, withdrew the party whip.
On 15 September, without any prior notification, McMillan-Scott was expelled from the Conservative party after 25 years as an MEP, four years as leader of the MEPs and three years on the party’s board.
• Hague is also likely to come under fire if he declines an invitation to appear this Thursday before a parliamentary committee investigating the granting of a peerage to Lord Ashcroft .
The three Tory members of the public administration committee – David Burrowes, Ian Liddell-Grainger and Charles Walker – have already said that they will not attend the one-off meeting, at which confidential Cabinet Office records relating to the decision to grant Ashcroft a peerage in 2000 will be discussed.
But the event is now in danger of running into farce. Ashcroft, a “non-dom” who does not pay UK tax on his overseas earnings, is unlikely to appear in person and Hague, too, looks doubtful.
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Recovery yields Alistair Darling a £12bn budget windfall
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Chancellor will cite state investment in jobs as key to lower-than-expected unemployment
Alistair Darling will claim next week that government action to protect jobs has saved around £12bn, as Labour uses the pre-election budget to spell out key economic dividing lines with the Tories.
In what is expected to be the most political budget in decades, the chancellor will cite government investment in jobs programmes as a major reason why unemployment has turned out to be dramatically lower than economists predicted. Last year’s budget anticipated that the level of unemployment, based on National Audit Office assessments of independent forecasts, would be 2.09 million people in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.44 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. By December’s pre-budget report (PBR), however, the government had revised the forecasts to 1.72 million for 2009 and 1.91 million for 2010, saying that this would save up to £10bn over five years from lower unemployment benefits alone.
Since then, the Observer has established that Darling’s officials have cut the forecasts still further. The latest projections for unemployment are for it to hit 1.72 million in the final quarter of this year and 1.75 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 – a further 200,000 lower than in the PBR plans, potentially freeing up an extra £1bn-£2bn.
The work and pensions secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: “In the 80s and 90s unemployment continued to rise even after the recession ended, because the government failed to put the necessary support and training in place and keep it there as the economy returned to growth.” She claimed that the Conservatives would cut back investment in jobs programmes and “put the economy at risk, even though the clear evidence shows helping people back to work saves money for the future too”.
This week Cooper is expected to announce that the government will subsidise another 7,000 jobs for young people, bringing the total created under the Future Jobs Fund to 117,000. The funding will pay for work at the national minimum wage, targeted at under-25s and people living in unemployment hotspots.
Last night Treasury sources insisted that most of the windfall savings from lower-than-expected unemployment would be used to cut the deficit, rather than for pre-election giveaways.
Darling believes the budget could spark a sell-off in government markets unless he stands by his pledge to halve the deficit within four years. Ministers believe that they have a credible plan to put the public finances back in order, through targeted investment in the economy, which they say will speed progress towards sustained growth; the introduction of tax rises such as the 50p rate for top earners (from this April) and national insurance rises from next April; and efficiency savings across government. But Darling is not expected to spell out any more details of specific departmental spending cuts so close to polling day.
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Can Katy Perry stop EMI going to America for a song?
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Billions of pounds of debt, the internet and piracy are crippling one of Britain’s most iconic firms
It is a tale of sex, debt and rock’n'roll that is unlikely to have a happy ending. When Guy Hands, a City financier with a penchant for fast food and an insatiable appetite for deal-making, came up with a plan to buy EMI, Britain’s flagship music company, using billions of pounds of borrowed money, many wondered how he could possibly make a decent return on his investment. As it has turned out, he couldn’t.
This weekend EMI’s new chairman Charles Allen, the former ITV chief executive hired by Hands last week to run the music arm of the company, is battling to ensure its independence, assembling a rescue plan for the company that signed the Beatles and became synonymous with the golden age of British pop.
Sources close to the company say Allen, a former accountant whose eclectic musical tastes encompass Lily Allen and Edith Piaf, is “rolling up his sleeves” and working to ensure the company does not breach the terms of its bank loans, but there is no doubt EMI is in peril. “It is a very, very big moment,” according to Claire Enders, founder of media consultancy Enders Analysis. “The next two or three months are critical for the future of EMI.”
Allen’s predecessor, Elio Leoni-Sceti, left suddenly last week just as the final touches were being put on a rescue package, prompting fears over the company’s future. The business is effectively being propped up by its past, surviving on the revenues generated by artists signed during a 30-year period when British music dominated the world.
The list of talent on EMI’s books reads like a roll call of rock royalty: David Bowie, Queen, Lennon and McCartney, the Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd. As an incubator of home-grown musical talent, the company is without equal and its position as one of the “big four” global record labels is a source of national pride; it exists to make money but EMI also safeguards the country’s status as a place where music that matters is made.
If EMI disappears or falls into foreign hands, many music industry figures worry that future generations of British acts may find it more difficult to find a worldwide audience. Jazz Summers, who manages former Verve vocalist Richard Ashcroft, who is signed to EMI, said: “If you look at their track record, they have broken more British acts in America than anyone else, and the same is true in other countries.”
EMI is in crisis because it is burdened with what sources close to the company describe as a “ludicrous” amount of debt, racked up after it was bought in 2007 by Hands’s private equity company Terra Firma. EMI Music currently has three artists in the top 15 of the album chart for the first time this century, including Blur vocalist Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, and it is on course to make a profit of £200m this year, but a staggering three quarters of that will go on interest payments.
Hands borrowed heavily to fund the deal, using money provided by Terra Firma’s investors, and EMI’s valuable back catalogue, as collateral, but even then some questioned whether he was right to pay the amount he did for a business that was struggling to come to terms with downloads and a dramatic decline in physical music sales. The industry has lost between 30% and 50% of its revenues in the last five years, but the irony is that EMI is currently outperforming its peers, which include Sony BMG and Warner Music.
It had the biggest-selling album of 2008, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, and reissued the Beatles digitally remastered back catalogue last year. Acts including Lily Allen and Katy Perry are selling well, but the way the company is structured means it cannot trade its way out of trouble.
Before the credit crunch, loans could be refinanced cheaply, but now EMI is struggling to meet its debt repayments in the wake of the severe economic downturn. It has been forced to cut costs dramatically, laying off close to 20% of its workforce. The company is now worth £450m, around a tenth of what Hands paid for it. Some big acts, including Radiohead, have already left, muttering that the money men simply didn’t understand the music business.
Last week one of EMI’s biggest-selling groups, Pink Floyd, won a court action preventing the company from making tracks from their 1970s album Dark Side of the Moon available to download individually. That was widely portrayed as a victory for artistic integrity – the group want their masterpiece to be consumed from start to finish, as they originally intended – but it also illustrates the challenges the music industry faces in an era of huge upheaval, when illegal downloading is costing it dear and making money from talent discovered and developed at huge cost is more difficult than ever.
If Allen cannot persuade Terra Firma’s investors to stump up another £120m, EMI will be in breach of its loan terms, and its main creditor – US bank Citigroup – could seize control of the company. If it does so, Citigroup is likely to sell it to Warner Music, an American rival which was outbid by Hands for EMI three years ago. The situation is complicated by Terra Firma’s decision to sue Citigroup in New York, accusing it of forcing EMI towards administration so it can take possession of the company and make a profit from a quick sale, allegations that the bank denies.
Hands is a larger-than-life tax exile, a hero in the Square Mile whose reputation has been badly tarnished by the EMI debacle. He now concedes he overpaid for EMI, but his miscalculation means he could be about to hand a much-loved cultural institution into the keeping of the Americans.
At the end of last year Cadbury’s city shareholders agreed to sell the nation’s favourite chocolate company to Illinois-based Kraft. The prospect of another household name passing into foreign ownership, particularly a national champion in one of the few industries in which Britain still excels, is an unsettling one.
One senior music industry executive explained: “For British music, the fact that there was a very successful British company to sign for was hugely significant.” However, others say the temptation to indulge in flag-waving should be resisted. Enders said: “Britain is one of the places people come looking for talent and that won’t change. There are a lot of players in the market and advances paid to acts such as Florence and The Machine have gone up.”
If EMI does fall into the hands of an American rival, she added, it might ultimately safeguard its future. “It would be better for EMI to have less indebtedness. It will have much more firepower.”
EMI could survive. It is still lining up the sale of some prized assets. It was reported last month that the Abbey Road studios in London could be sold off. The company later insisted the studios should stay under its ownership and was working with “third parties” about funding a “revitalisation project”.
Raising the possibility that a part of the nation’s cultural heritage could be sold provides a graphic reminder of how the company’s huge debt is forcing it to make unpopular decisions.
It may not matter if British acts are no longer championed by a UK company as long as the country continues to produce talent and A&R men from overseas arrive here in search of the next Lily Allen or Amy Winehouse. “In the end the music business is the same as it ever was,” Enders said. “It’s about hits.”
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Edward McMillan-Scott: Standing up to extremism in Europe cost me my place with Tories
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What the Conservatives say publicly about Europe is not what they really think, says the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber
William Hague has been using positive words to describe the Conservative party’s future relations in government with our EU partners. I have been around the higher circles of the party for long enough to know that a visceral euroscepticism has been growing there since John Major’s day. I had a stand-up row with Hague when, while leader of the Tory MEPs, he tried to get me to back his “Never to the Euro” ticket.
It was chilling to hear the then party leader say to one very senior spokesman at an EU meeting some years ago: “We can say what we like here, but it will be different when we are in government.” I should have left then, instead of carrying on the pro-European fight from within.
David Cameron shields his europhobes. No murmur was made when last weekend Lord Tebbit in effect encouraged Conservatives to vote Ukip against the Speaker, John Bercow, in the general election. The dog whistle is really at a lower pitch: that Ukip supporters know that there is a real home for them, back in the Conservative party. Dan Hannan MEP plays the same game, even declaring that he had resigned his spokesmanship in Europe to campaign full-time for a referendum on EU in-or-out. No slapdown there, either; certainly no expulsion. But then he is a chum of Sam Cameron’s; they were at Marlborough College together.
My decision to join the Liberal Democrats this weekend was made easier by the vile letter the lawyers conducting my appeal against expulsion last year from the Conservative party received last weekend. They described it to me as “intemperate”, and advised me that, since the party refused to supply any documents about my expulsion, there was no hope of a fair final hearing next Thursday at Tory HQ. So I withdrew from the appeal and thereby resigned from the Conservative party I have served more or less faithfully for 43 years.
No doubt my successful stand for re-election last July as European parliament vice-president against the “official” candidate from Poland’s Law and Justice party, Michal Kaminski, put forward by Cameron’s controversial new group, caused him some discomfiture. But the campaign of vilification against me when I explained my reasons – that Kaminski had a recent antisemitic, homophobic and racist past – was so bizarre that it began to attract attention.
Indeed, Toby Helm in this newspaper was the most attentive. He had been present at the national commemoration in July 2001 of one of the most notorious massacres of the second world war in Nazi-occupied Poland. At Jedwabne in July 1941, more than 400 Jews were rounded up by their Polish neighbours and herded into a barn where they were burned.
At the time of the apology, Kaminski was the local MP and he made it his business to organise opposition to the commemoration. He denies this now, as he denies so much else of his easily discovered past, using the Nick Griffin defence: “If I said it then, I would not say it today.”
Last week Cameron was interviewed by the Jewish Chronicle and assured its readers that he would bear down hard on extremism in Britain. This sits uneasily with a man who propitiates it in Europe.
Conservative press officers hounded Labour over Damian McBride. The same pack have been repeatedly reported to me by journalists as using heavy tactics. One hapless Yorkshire Post journalist was called one week by six Tory boys demanding a right of reply for Kaminski. He coolly and properly said that, if he accepted that, he would also have to give space to Nick Griffin. The same team put it about that I was antisemitic because I once met Hamas – actually to tell them to stand for election. They are out again this weekend distorting the facts about my defection to the Lib Dems. I am not bitter, but they are twisted. It is not a nice party now.
A move to the Lib Dems is easier because I have known, liked and respected Nick Clegg for some years, whether as a key negotiator on trade while Sir Leon Brittan was EU commissioner or later as an MEP.
Most of my family are liberals and I am comfortable joining the Liberal family. From being a liberal Conservative I have become a conservative Liberal. And it is not a nasty party.
Edward McMillan-Scott is MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber and continues to sit as an independent vice-president of the European parliament
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NHS ‘neglects’ parents of sick children
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Top doctor accuses hospitals of failing to provide beds for families, who end up exhausted, stressed and depressed
The NHS is adding to the suffering of parents with a child in hospital by not giving them somewhere to sleep, the UK’s top children’s doctor has warned.
Far too few hospitals provide parents with accommodation so they can stay beside their ill son or daughter, Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, told the Observer.
He said it was “not good enough” that some parents have to sleep on a pulldown bed or an unused patient’s bed, sometimes for weeks or even months, in order to keep a vigil by their child. Some end up exhausted and reduced to tears by sleep deprivation and the lack of privacy, he added. He accused the NHS of neglecting the needs of people who deserved a better deal for playing a key role in their child’s recovery.
“Every week, hundreds of pre-term babies are born and thousands of children end up in hospital with a broken limb, cancer or cystic fibrosis. But there aren’t enough family accommodation facilities across the NHS and the situation is not good enough. In my experience, the majority of parents who are in hospital overnight are on a Zedbed beside their sick baby or child,” he said.
“They will be woken frequently throughout the night when other children are admitted, or the ward buzzer sounds, or the lights go on and off. They will often become exhausted. Parents can’t be expected to sleep on a put-you-up bed for weeks on end,” he added.
“This is a major issue, as more than 40 hospitals are looking to a charity to provide what we as a college regard as an essential service. But there are over 250 children’s inpatient services across the NHS and provision is far short of what’s required. We believe that, whenever children are admitted to hospital, their parents or carers should be able to stay with them. The NHS is trying as hard as it can, but it can do a lot better,” Stephenson said. He wants every parent whose child has more than a short stay to be offered a private room with washing and cooking facilities.
Stephenson praised the role played by Ronald McDonald House Charities, which is backed by the McDonald’s fast-food chain. It houses more than 400 parents or families every night in its network of 14 houses and 29 sets of family rooms at 43 hospitals across the UK.
Action for Sick Children welcomed Stephen son’s remarks. Some hospitals do provide good parents’ facilities, said the charity’s Jo Waterson. For example, the new Manchester Children’s Hospital has a pulldown bed beside each bed and in each patient’s room. But while more hospitals are addressing the problem, it is still a recurring complaint from parents, she said.
The shortage of parental rooms is most acute in neonatal wards. Over 1,000 premature babies are born every week. A neonatal ward containing 25 babies may have just four rooms for mothers and fathers, he said. Emma Pugh’s son, Tom, now two-and-a-half, weighed just 1lb 2oz when he was born at 23 weeks in her local hospital in Hereford. He was treated in the special care unit at Birmingham Women’s Hospital, 70 miles away, where there were no overnight parental facilities.
Pugh said: “It meant three-to -four-hour, 140-mile round trips for me, Gary and our three-year-old, Nancy, which was horrendous. I did that journey every day for three months. Having to leave Tom, especially on days when things weren’t going well – he was given a less than 10% chance of survival – was gutting. That lack of parental accommodation at the hospital added to our stress, cost us £150-£170 a week in fuel, made our life even more difficult than it already was and, crucially, took away time with Tom.”
Andy Cole, chief executive of the sick and premature baby charity, Bliss, said: “Around 50% of special care baby units do not provide accommodation for parents. Families are already facing an extremely traumatic and stressful time. To be faced with not being able to stay with or even be near their baby is inconceivable.”
A department of health spokeswoman said that the department’s National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services stresses that the NHS and parents are partners in looking after children receiving treatment. She said: “It also recommends that hospital care of children and young people should be provided in buildings that… cater for parents and siblings, with suitable provision for overnight stay. These must include access to meals and relaxation, and must respect parents’ privacy.” She added that it was for the NHS locally to decide how such facilities are provided and to what level.
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Liberal Democrats start to believe that this election could be different
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From eternally Tory Eastbourne to the Labour heartlands of West Yorkshire, the Liberal Democrats are convinced that they can take seats off both main parties at the forthcoming general election and end up holding the balance of power in a hung parliament. Could it really happen?
Annemarie Field smiled, her pale blue eyes sparkling in the sunshine. “I always used to say that if you put a blue rosette on a cornflakes packet it would win a general election in Eastbourne. This town is Conservative.” She should know, having worked for the town’s two local papers since 1985. But this year might be different.
Eastbourne is one of the top target seats for the Liberal Democrats, who are determined to overturn a Tory majority of 1,124. Field described the party’s campaigners as an army of “yellow ants” marching through the streets. With two months to go, they are delivering 45,000 leaflets and 25,000 targeted letters every fortnight. Their candidate, Stephen Lloyd, will knock on 2,000 more doors before 6 May.
“We don’t have multimillion-pound donations from Lord Ashcroft or the unions,” said Danny Alexander, the MP who chairs the group in charge of the party’s manifesto. But the Lib Dems appear to have something else: an unprecedented ability to organise locally.
That is what they are doing against the Tories in the south – and against Labour, largely in the north. It is a geographical spread which brings accusations that the party changes its message to suit its audience.
In this seaside town, the Lib Dems’ focus has been car parking – and, in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal, on the sitting Tory MP’s second home.
“The Lib Dems are desperate for Eastbourne,” said Field, walking into the newspapers’ main office. “If I was a gambling person I wouldn’t know who to put my money on,” she said to a male colleague. He swung his chair round to face her and nodded. “In fact, I might put my money on Stephen Lloyd,” he said. “Me too,” boomed another, raising his arm.
It is not only in Eastbourne where the Liberal Democrats are increasingly optimistic. At their party’s spring conference in Birmingham this weekend, the same conversations could be heard in the hallways, the restaurants and the bars. There was talk of whether the party could gain from public fury about expenses; debate about how the words “hung parliament” had thrown the party into the news like never before; chatter about whether Nick Clegg could exploit his role as equal player in the three televised leaders’ debates.
By yesterday many were daring to consider the question: could the 2010 general election be a turning point? They were boosted by the news that Edward McMillan-Scott, a former Tory MEP who once headed the party’s grouping in Brussels, had joined the party.
Then there was the rallying call from their leader. “On Monday morning I want you to get out there and go for broke in what will be the biggest fight of our political lives,” he told delegates, who rose to their feet and roared in appreciation. It all sounded good, but then again hadn’t they heard it all before? Wasn’t it much more likely that the activists dressed in yellow would wake up on the morning of 7 May disappointed again?
Some disagreed. “I think this election is starting to look different,” said Olly Grender, a former party director of communications who worked with Paddy Ashdown. “What is uniquely interesting is the strength of feeling that it is time for a change, and the same strength of opinion that David Cameron is not the embodiment of that change. That creates an opportunity for the Liberal Democrats.”
Grender said the televised debates were vital. The fact that broadcasters, and in particular the BBC, were taking the party seriously would create a “ripple effect”. Then there was the “hung parliament scenario”, which Grender called a “double-edged sword”. It made the party relevant but also raised fears among voters of its economic dangers.
“I headed the media in 1992 and anyone involved in that campaign came out deeply scarred,” said Grender, as he recalled the “absolute certainty” with which pollsters predicted a hung parliament in the exit polls and the “absolute nonsense” that proved to be the cold light of day.
Grender said it was “critical” that Clegg was not drawn on the issue. On Friday he wasn’t. On stage, he referred to “you know what”, baiting journalists looking for any sign that he was ready to make a pact. Clegg lifted up his red tie, then smiled and pulled open his jacket to reveal a blue lining.
Today he will tell delegates in his conference speech that it is for the public to decide. “I am not a kingmaker. The 45 million voters of Britain are the kingmakers. They give the politicians their marching orders, not the other way around. It’s called democracy,” he will say.
Clegg says his party is interested in promoting its four main areas of policy focus: tax, education, cleaner politics and the financial crisis. Nevertheless, fears emerged among left-of-centre delegates at the weekend that he would get too close to Cameron .
Yesterday evening MPs and others gathered for a fringe meeting to formally launch the Social Liberal Forum – a pressure group committed to “reinventing the left” in Britain. Some admitted they were uneasy about the notion of a Tory-Lib Dem pact.
Clegg had aimed to reassure delegates by clarifying comments that appeared to support the former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. “I violently opposed and was hostile to pretty well everything she did,” he said.
But Grender argued most delegates would not put themselves on the left-right political spectrum. “There is a strength of philosophy and it is liberalism.”
Many people spoke at conference about what was happening outside, on the streets of Birmingham, through Yorkshire and into Newcastle, across Cambridge, London and into the south-west. Tim Farron, who is defending a majority of only 267 in Cumbria, told delegates that the Lib Dems had to deliver 10 times more leaflets that their rivals just to be heard. In a rousing speech, the MP compared the campaign to a football match in its final five minutes.
John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said he had seen activists in action in his own constituency and “boy, are they fighting for it”. But he also introduced a dose of realism, saying that the national polls suggested the party was “indestructible yet uninflatable”. That said, the key to the general election could be the Lib Dem-Tory marginals, he said. The results there could determine whether or not Cameron won his much-yearned-for majority.
In Eastbourne, seagulls flocked above the union flag flapping in the wind over the station, beside neat, landscaped gardens which run parallel to the beach and above rows of well-kept, sizeable homes. At 100 Seaside Road last week, the windows were filled with yellow and orange posters. Four volunteers sat inside the front room rhythmically picking up leaflets and stuffing them into envelopes.
This war room has been active for years, not months, funded by Lloyd and a large number of relatively small donations. The candidate’s message is persistently local: his three top issues are a campaign against a parking scheme, a fight to save a local college and policing.
As one of the writers at the Eastbourne Herald claimed: “You can’t win in Eastbourne with Lib Dem policies.” And Lloyd’s team were having “field day” attacking the local Tory MP, he added, largely because it had emerged that Nigel Waterson’s children went to school near a home he owns miles away in Beckenham, Kent.
“I live locally, I shop locally, I know the issues that people experience every day because I experience them too,” said Lloyd, repeating the mantra he has used to the people of Eastbourne.
The other message repeated again and again was that only the Lib Dems could beat the Tories in Eastbourne. Lloyd, whose own roots are in the Labour party, said he was grateful for the votes Labour supporters might bring.
The Tory response is to stress the other side of the equation. “The question that matters in this is election is whether people want five more years of Gordon Brown or David Cameron and the Liberal Democrats do not feature in that,” said Waterson. He criticised Lloyd’s campaign as “particularly nasty and personal” and warned it could backfire.
But if the question for the Lib Dems in affluent towns in the south-west is how to persuade Labour supporters to back their assault on a Tory incumbent, how can it challenge Labour in some of the most deprived wards in the country? Does it cynically change its message to boost its chance of election?
Bradford East is another seat the Lib Dems are desperate to secure – this time by seizing it from the Labour MP, Terry Rooney. In 2005 it wasn’t a target. The candidate, David Ward, remembers the “battle bus” flying straight past his office on its way to Leeds North West. “But this time it will stop,” he said. “The party is relentless with target seats.”
Ward’s constituency was added to the list two years ago and since then central office has demanded monthly updates about the number of leaflets and letters dispatched and doorsteps trodden. Clegg has already visited a number of times.
Ward drove his car around the constituency to demonstrate its diversity. He passed through the attractive cottages at the northern tip, before turning in to one of the most deprived estates in the country. Some of the houses lay deserted with huge metal plates hauled up over windows and doors. At others the gates had fallen off their hinges.
The estates gave way to Bradford Moor, where shops such as Sana Fabrics, Ahmed Foods, Nangla Furniture and Akbar’s lined the streets. In Bradford East half the children were on free school meals, there were five big working-class estates and in the poorest ward a child was five more times likely to die than in Ilkley, an affluent spa town outside the city, said Jeanette Sunderland, the leader of the Lib Dems on the local council and Ward’s campaign manager.
Sitting back into her chair in the campaign headquarters, she flung her hand up towards a map of the sausage-shaped constituency, colour-coded by deprivation. “That means poverty,” she said, sweeping her hand over the lower half of the map, which was red. “And no one lives up there,” she said, pointing to the smaller area of blue.
Behind Sunderland stood a flip chart on which were written four key policies for the Lib Dems. “We take the complex national messages and we explain why they matter to you in Bradford East,” she said. “The £10,000 personal income tax allowance will benefit everyone, while the mansion tax on homes worth more than £2m will hit no one. There are no millionaires in this constituency. There isn’t a house worth £1m, never mind £2m. And the pupil premium to target the most deprived school students will bring in £12m.”
Here too, leaflets are being printed in the thousands. And it is an example of another way that the Lib Dems target areas – starting with a council seat, then another, until they have a ward, then two, then more. Finally, as is now the case in Bradford East, they throw all their energy into securing an MP.
Here too there is leaflet after leaflet reminding voters that there is one party that can’t win: this time, it’s the Tories.
Both Sunderland and Ward rejected the claim that the Lib Dems changed their message to suit the town. Sunderland said it was about talking about the parts of the message that were relevant . “In Little Horton ward in Bradford there is no point talking about tax – most are on benefits,” she said. Electoral reform was a non-issue in Bradford, especially for families where the decision was whether to eat or warm their houses.
Ward claimed disillusionment was rife in Bradford East. To prove his point promised that the first person he asked would not know the name of their local MP. He was right. “I haven’t got a clue,” she said in a strong local accent, laughing. Mubarak Khan, a 42-year-old taxi driver, said he had always backed Labour but now wouldn’t bother voting at all. “They promise and don’t deliver – on education, health, transport, even policing. I won’t be voting.”
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Lib Dems refuse to support Tory spending cuts
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Nick Clegg describes George Osborne’s plans to slash budgets as ‘economic masochism’
The Liberal Democrats have distanced themselves from the Conservatives by warning they would not support plans to cut public spending too early in the next parliament.
The party’s leader, Nick Clegg, said early deep cuts would be “economic masochism”. It came as the Lib Dem treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, hit out at the Tories’ economic plans. In his speech at the party’s spring conference in Birmingham, Cable accused the Conservatives of engaging in a “phoney war over cuts” that would affect millions of lives. He also hit out at George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.
Cable said the Tories were trying to present their economic team as “‘Slasher’ Osborne and the Hard Men”. But, he added, they appeared to have taken cuts straight after the election off the table – at least for now. “Or at least that’s what I think they said. I’d love to attempt a critique of the Tories’ budget plans, but I have no idea what they are. I think the present line on the budget is: ‘Trust us and we’ll tell you after the election’,” he told cheering delegates.
He added: “People are desperate to see the back of this Labour government. But they don’t want the same old Tories. And make no mistake they are exactly the same.”
He also claimed that David Cameron’s party and its “cronies” were trying to create financial panic to frighten people into voting for them. “Playing fast and loose with the financial stability of this country for political gain – destabilising the markets – is dangerous, irresponsible and wrong,” said Cable.
He did not limit his criticism to the Conservatives. Cable, having famously compared Gordon Brown to Mr Bean, this time made delegates laugh when he said the prime minister sounded like the Chelsea footballer Ashley Cole, pleading: “Give me another chance.”
The Lib Dems had identified £15bn worth of reductions in public spending that would cut the deficit, he said. The party has come under an increasing level of scrutiny as the polls narrow. Observers are watching for any signs to suggest whether the Lib Dems would be prepared to make a pact with Labour or the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament. That is the scenario suggested by two polls released today.
YouGov research for the Sunday Times finds that the Tories’ lead has narrowed from five points to four over the past week. An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph places Cameron’s party seven points ahead – not enough for a majority. The same research suggests that the Lib Dems have strengthened their position and are now on 21 points.
Clegg will discuss a hung parliament when he addresses MPs today. “People often ask me what the Liberal Democrats will do after the general election. Some days I read we’re planning a deal with Labour, some days that we’re planning a deal with the Conservatives, other days that we’ll refuse to talk to anyone at all,” he is reported as planning to say.
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Pressure on Tories to name mystery MP who sabotaged anti-poverty bill
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Campaigners demand David Cameron names member who killed bill protecting developing world from vulture fund bankers
Pressure is growing on David Cameron to identify the mystery Tory MP who deliberately scuppered a landmark anti-poverty bill that could have stopped “vulture” bankers profiteering from the developing world’s debt burdens.
Debt campaigners have reacted in fury and disbelief to the killing of the bill and Labour MP Sally Keeble, one of the bill’s backers, has accused the Conservatives of “duplicity” by pretending to back the legislation and then sabotaging it at the last minute.
Campaigners are now calling on the leader of the opposition to clarify his view of the bill and asking whether the MP concerned will be identified. The international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, has sent a letter to Cameron demanding an explanation.
The frustration has been compounded by the secrecy surrounding the events in the House of Commons last night. During the reading, three Tory MPs were seen to huddle together on the benches before one shouted the word “object!”, which under parliamentary procedure effectively stopped the bill passing.
Three Conservatives were in the chamber – Christopher Chope, Andrew Robathan and Simon Burns – but none have admitted intervening. The Tory treasury spokesman David Gauke, who was on the committee which debated the bill, insisted the Conservatives had wanted to see the bill go through and that the MPs, two of whom are Tory whips, did not have the support of the frontbench. He said he did not know which one had made the objection. “We have our suspicions,” he said. “It is a pity. Our view was let’s go with the bill but that was not to be. Everyone recognises that this was a rushed process.”
But Keeble said that there had been plenty of time to debate the bill, both for two hours in the chamber and at committee stage. “All concerns that had been raised had been dealt with and the bill had been watered down already as a compromise to the Conservatives,” she said.
“It’s blatantly obvious that this was duplicitous behaviour by the Conservatives whose commitment to international development is deeply suspect. The three men went into a huddle and then no one can see who actually objects. It’s disgraceful behaviour.”
Nick Dearden, director of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: “It is an outrage that one MP has taken it upon himself to effectively kill a bill which has the support of the vast majority of the House. His move will mean many of the poorest countries in the world will continue suffering at the hands of reckless and unethical investors.
“This action has destroyed the hopes of many people across the developing world that we might put an end to the appalling practice of vulture funds.”
Vulture funds buy up the debts of poor countries, often at a fraction of their face value, and pursue them through the international courts, in many instances despite agreements by other creditors to give the country debt relief.
Campaigners wanted the legislation to apply retrospectively, because it could help countries such as Liberia, which lost a £13m case in London against two vulture funds late last year. Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has urged parliament to pass the new law. The scuppering came a day after former Tanzanian President Benjamin William Mkapa backed the bill, saying: “I hope the international community joins hands to put an end to these deplorable activities of the vulture funds.” The bill also has the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Andrew Gwynne MP, who proposed the bill, said: “It is staggering the Conservatives are still unwilling to support even the most basic legislation to help reduce third world debt.”
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