Pmqs

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

A taxing PMQs for Cameron

And on it rumbles. Last month’s budget seems to have created more niche-losers than any tax settlement in history. Those who feel deprived are still squealing about it. At PMQs today Ed Miliband took a swipe at the Prime Minister on their behalf. Billionaires get bungs, grannies get mugged. That’s the headline Miliband was aiming for but didn’t quite find. He adopted his best silent-assassin mode and politely asked the PM to confirm whether or not a bonus of £40k was winging its way into the wallets of Britain’s top earners. Cameron couldn’t switch subject fast enough. The Budget, he claimed, was all about cutting taxes for 24 million workers

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Unemployment is down but are prospects up?

The government has fallen on today’s numbers showing employment up by 53,000 and youth unemployment down by 9,000. This is the first quarterly fall in unemployment for over a year. One coalition source describes the news as a ‘good reminder of what really matters, both economically and politically.’ Certainly, these figures will provide David Cameron with some protection in his first post-Budget PMQs. Ed Miliband won’t be able to make his usual jobs attack. But politically one of the key questions will be who is getting these jobs. One of the worries for the coalition is that a huge amount of the new jobs that are being created are going

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

A quiet PMQs, ahead of today’s main event

It started like a bit of good old political knockabout. PMQs opened with a planted question from Mark Menzies (Con, Fylde) asking the PM about Britain’s sick-note culture. Cameron, looking suitably grave, declared that the fake-sniffle problem afflicts even senior management. Ed Miliband, he told us, had recently claimed he was too ill to attend a rally called by health workers. Three hours later he was seen heartily cheering at a football match having been driven to the ground in a Rolls Royce. ‘What was it,’ asked Cameron, ‘that first attracted the Labour leader to the multimillionaire owner of Hull football club?’ This prompted howls and jeers from every part

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The significance of Clegg’s PMQs win

Nick Clegg’s assertive performance at PMQs today was a demonstration of the fact that he now feels more confident than he has since his failure in the AV referendum. The deputy Prime Minister doesn’t crouch defensively at the despatch box anymore, and he brushed off some rather good one-liners from Harriet Harman. She joked that the only thing the deputy Prime Minister stands up for these days is the PM entering the room.   Clegg and his team feel that things are looking up for them, that they are setting the agenda. Even the Lib Dem’s lowly poll rating isn’t dampening their mood.   So, what does this change mean

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Nick rises to Harriet’s limp challenge

Basketball in America. Netball at PMQs. Harriet Harman, Labour’s venerable form-prefect, took her leader’s place today and lobbed a few rubbery missiles at the PM’s under-study, Nick Clegg.  It came down to arithmetic. Even if Hattie had stormed it at PMQs she had no hope of reviving her extinct career. But Clegg has it all to play for. He was ready for it too. Assured, combative and well-briefed, he filled his replies with fresh, punchy rhetoric. (Mind you, his match-fit performance should be credited to his party activists. Clegg must have spent the last 22 months fielding nasty questions from chippy wonks at Lib Dem constituency meetings.)  Hattie tried to

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Labour’s PMQs strategy: the Super-Vulnerable Voter ploy

A sombre and muted PMQs this week. Dame Joan Ruddock raised the issue of benefits and asked David Cameron if he was proud of his new reforms. Tory backbenchers cheered on the PM’s behalf. ‘Then would he look me in the eye,’ Dame Joan went on, ‘and tell me he’s proud to have removed all disability payments from a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy.’ This tactic — the Super-Vulnerable Voter ploy — is highly manipulative and highly reliable. But Dame Joan had forgotten something which Mr Cameron is unlikely to forget. Explaining his reform of the Disability Living Allowance he glared angrily at her. ‘As someone who has had a child

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Afghanistan tragedy overshadows PMQs

I have rarely heard the House of Commons as quiet as it was at the start of PMQs today. The sad news from Afghanistan was, rightly, weighing on MPs’ minds. The initial Cameron Miliband exchanges were on the conflict there with the two leaders agreeing with each other. In some ways, though, I wonder whether the country would not benefit more from some forensic debate about the strategic aims of the mission. However the volume level in the House increased when Joan Ruddock asked the PM if he was ‘truly proud’ of taking benefits away from disabled children. Cameron, with a real flash of anger, shot back that ‘as someone

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

These NHS bouts are becoming more insipid by the week

Health reforms again dominated PMQs today. That’s four weeks in a row. And the great debate, like a great sauce, has now been reduced to infinitesimal differences of flavouring. David Cameron repeated his claim that 8200 GP practices are implementing his policies. But, corrected Ed Miliband, that’s not because they love the reforms. It’s because they love their patients. He quoted a Tower Hamlets health commissioner who berated the PM for confusing reluctant acquiescence with whole-hearted endorsement. Fair enough. But this nicety won’t resonate beyond the tips of either men’s brogues. The rest of the bout was a repeat of last week’s effortful stalemate. Mr Miliband had a list of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband can count on the NHS in PMQs, but not much else

Today’s main PMQs drama came after the session itself had ended. Julie Hilling, a Labour MP who Cameron had said was ‘sponsored’ by the union whose leader threatened to disrupt the Olympics last night, said in a point of order that she was not ‘sponsored’ by Unite. The Labour benches were in full flow, jeering at Cameron as he was leaving the chamber. Cameron then returned to the despatch box and pointed out that she had declared a donation from Unite to her constituency Labour party in the register of members’ interests. I suspect that this row about the meaning of the word sponsorship will rumble on. Labour hate the

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Miliband snipes, Cameron deflects, Bercow bobs

Let’s be honest. I shouldn’t say this but I can’t help it. I’m fed up. The NHS reform process has been dragging on for months, and still there’s no end in sight. Ed Miliband brought it up at PMQs for the third week running. The position remains the same. Miliband loves it. Cameron lives with it. The PM claimed that 8,200 GP practices are now practising his reforms and the Labour leader replied with a list of professional bodies — nurses, doctors, midwives, radiologists — who oppose them. And that’s exactly the trouble, for me, at least. If the issue were a race-horse some crazy campaigner would plunge beneath its

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband revels in his NHS attack

Today’s PMQs was a reminder that whenever Ed Miliband goes on the NHS he is guaranteed a result. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Miliband enjoying himself as much in the chamber as he was today. When Andrew Lansley leaned over to try and tell Cameron the answer to a question, Miliband mockingly remarked ‘Let me say to the Health Secretary, I don’t think the PM wants advice from you’. As Cameron’s assaults became more direct, Miliband did not — as he often does — go into his shell. As he sat down at the end of it all, the Labour leader had to push down on his knee to

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

In PMQs, Cameron plays for a draw on the NHS

How much does it cost to change a light bulb? Three hundred quid, said David Cameron at PMQs today. Ed Miliband came to the House eager to pile more pressure on the PM and his unloved NHS restructuring plan. Cameron fought back by citing the health bungles Labour presided over while in office. Billions wasted on kaput computers. Hundreds of millions blown on phantom operations. And dead light bulbs that cost more to replace than a week’s holiday in Spain. Cameron’s tactics were better than in previous weeks. Rather than citing some lone wolf medic who supports his reforms he gave us a surprise announcement, albeit unsourced. ‘Ninety-five per cent

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband gets the better of Cameron on the NHS

As expected, Ed Miliband went on the NHS and it helped deliver him a points victory. Whenever Miliband raises the issue at PMQs, David Cameron’s rather overly macho body language gives away that he knows he is playing on a sticky wicket. The exchanges today were not particularly enlightening but Miliband had the better of them. There was, though, one effective counter-attack from Cameron where he compared what is happening to the NHS in England to what is happening in Wales where the devolved administration is sticking with the status quo. There’s mileage in this argument if the coalition has the patience to develop it. But part of the problem