Parliament

To these eyes, this afternoon’s phone hacking debate was a surprisingly sedate affair. Chris Bryant – proposing a motion to have an inquiry conducted by the Standards and Privileges committee into the News of the World’s actions – seemed to go out his way to depoliticise the argument, and other Labour MPs followed his lead. And so there was relatively little mention of Andy Coulson, with the emphasis instead on the wrongs that might have been done to the House by the police and the media more generally. It was, then, little surprise that Bryant’s motion was passed unanimously. There were some flashes of controversy and acid, though. Bryant himself

I bumped into a Tory MP earlier who one might have expected to be rebelling tonight. But he told me he was, reluctantly voting for the AV bill, because “I owe him [David Cameron] this.” His logic was that Cameron had come to the parliamentary party and told them he was going to offer the Lib Dems this so the party was honour-bound to vote it through. This argument has resonance with Tory MPs. The only thing that limits its appeal is a feeling that Cameron might not have been entirely straight with them about why he had to offer the Lib Dems AV. I expect tonight’s rebellion to be

So, Cameron and Clegg end the summer break much as they started it: with a public statement on the aims and successes of the coalition government. Their article in today’s Sunday Telegraph hops across all the usual touchstones – reform, deficit reduction, people power, and all that – but it lands with an unusually combative splash. In anticipation of tomorrow night’s bellwether vote on the AV referendum and redrafted constituency boundaries, the two party leaders write: “This is an important moment for political renewal. We have different views on the future of our voting system. But we both recognise that there are genuine concerns about the current system. And we

CoffeeHousers may like to see the full leaked letter (pasted below) to which I referred in The Spectator’s cover story this week. It shows how the NUT is using Freedom of Information to try and force school heads to hand over a list of names of anyone who might support a campaign to opt out of local authority control and become quasi-independent Academies. We have blacked out any information that may reveal the source. This letter helps explain why Michael Gove will have so few names next week, when he lists the list of schools who have succeeded in their fast-track application. Out of the 3,000 eligible, a few dozen

MPs have never really got along with the new expenses body, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. But now their mood towards it seems to have become even frostier. I imagine that IPSA’s three-month anniversary, and the rather complacent-sounding celebrations that accompanied it, are something to do with that. Tom Harris’s wonderfully acerbic Birthday message, from a couple of days ago, captures how many MPs feel about the whole affair. In letters to the Telegraph today, Michael Fabricant and Denis MacShane ratchet up the attacks on IPSA. And while many will not see them as the ideal poster boys for a rebellion against an expenses watchdog, it’s worth remembering that they

Much ado about the Office for Budget Responsibility’s growth predictions in the Treasury Select Committee earlier, especially as an OBR official admitted that the cuts and tax hikes in the Budget could conceivably tip us into a double-dip recession. So are the OBR’s official forecasts too optimistic, as some are now claiming? Only time will tell, but we can get a decent sense of things by comparing them with the independent forecasts that the Treasury collect here. And this is the result: In other words, the OBR growth forecasts stick pretty closely to the average independent forecast, although they are a touch more optimistic. Admittedly, these independent forecasts were collected

Tucked away in Nick Clegg’s statement confirming that the referendum on AV was going to be on the 5th of May next year, was the abandonment of the controversial 55 percent rule for a dissolution of parliament. This has been replaced by a far more sensible arrangement. If the government cannot win a confidence vote, there’ll then be 14 days for one that can command the confidence of the House to be formed. If that does not happen, then there’ll be an election. However, if a government wants to dissolve parliament then it’ll require a two thirds majority. But it is still unclear how this rule could be made to

From opposing sides of the coalition’s strait, two warning shots have been fired across the government’s bows. David Davis has challenged Theresa May’s decision to renew the 28-day detention limit for six months pending a review. And Simon Hughes has declared that he and a like-minded posse will seek to amend ‘unfair’ aspects of the Finance Bill. Neither is an outright revolt. Neither move amounts to what Ed Miliband termed ‘cracks appearing in the coalition’. Both Davis and Hughes remain in support of the coalition agreement – Hughes will ‘support the Budget’, and Davis, to his enormous credit, has made excessive and illiberal detention periods his raison d’être. The coalition

1343, PH: Harman has sat down now, so we’ll draw the live blog to a close.  I’ll write a summary post shortly. 1342, FN: I wish I could trash Harman’s response, but it’s actually quite good.  Many a Tory would be secretly cheering her trashing of the LibDems. “The LibDems denounced early cuts, now they’re backing them – how could they support everything they fought against, how could they let down everyone who voted for them?” Again, a fair point. “The LibDems used to stand up for people’s jobs, now they only stand up for their own.” Her main point – that forecasts for unemployment have risen – is a

The opening of the Queen’s speech debate is, traditionally, a light-hearted affair. Peter Lilley opened up with a rather witty speech. He compared the Liberal Democrats to the bastards of the Major Cabinet, it is better to have them inside the Cabinet pissing out than outside the Cabinet pissing in. He went on to warn the new Prime Minister that the appropriate response to John Major and Gordon Brown’s microphone troubles is not to turn your microphone off but to keep ‘your receiver switched on to hear legitimate concerns.’ David Cameron would be well advised to heed this tactfully-expressed advice. Lilley ended with a heart-felt plea to bring the troops