Politics blog + PMQs live
Andrew Sparrow with all today's politics news – including prime minister's questions at midday
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11.29am: Downing Street refused to answer questions about the latest WikiLeaks revelations, and what Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, was saying about David Cameron before the election, at this morning's lobby briefing. The prime minister's spokesman said Cameron thought King was doing a "good job", but declined to respond when asked whether King retained Cameron's confidence. "The issue of confidence simply doesn't arise," he said.
11.16am: For the record, here are the latest YouGov GB polling figures:
Labour: 40% (up 10 points since the general election)Conservatives: 40% (up 3)
Lib Dems: 10% (down 14)
Government approval: -8
10.50am: Setting up directly-elected police commissioners could cost £130m in the first year, the Press Association is reporting. The Home Office has now published the police reform bill, and a press notice to go with it, and the Press Association has got the £130m figure from one of the associated documents.
10.38am: Rob Garnham, the chair of the Association of Police Authorities, has taken to the airwaves to take a pop at Nick Herbert. He rejected Herbert's claim (see 9.27am) that police authorities are invisible. "I'd contest that starting point about not being visible and not doing the job," Garnham said. "We've been delivering efficient and effective policing for many years now." According to PoliticsHome, he also insisted that having elected police commissioners would be a mistake.
Police authorities are raising what we see as real risks behind moving to what might be deemed an American system. There's a real risk over politicisation, there's the cost of elections as well, and the transition. We estimate it's going to cost an additional £100m over the existing costs at the moment. Police authorities and the Association of Police Authorities is very much against the proposals to move policing governance from a body of 17 people and place all that power in the hands of one elected commissioner.To be fair, the government's plans involved the abolition of police authorities, so it's hardly surprising that the body that represents them is opposed.
10.20am: David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, has said that Mervyn King should resign. Blanchflower made the call in an article for Comment is free, written in response to today's Guardian revelations about how King apparently pressed David Cameron and George Osborne to develop more detailed deficit reductions plans before the election. My colleague Helene Mulholland has the full story here, and here's an extract from Blanchflower's piece:
During my time on the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), King made it abundantly clear that members should not comment on fiscal policy and should stay out of party political matters. He has failed to follow his own advice. How could Ed Miliband or Alan Johnson ever trust King to give them advice on economic policy, now he has shown his true party political colours? Once independence has been compromised it can never be restored.
10.17am: The Tory MP Jesse Norman is launching a campaign to get PFI companies to cut their costs and repay money to the taxpayer. He says that if PFI firms were to cut the amount they charge the public sector buy just 0.05%, that would release £500m that could be spent on local services. He has got more than 50 MPs to support his campaign.
He has also set up a PFI Rebate campaign website inviting people to sent in their PFI horror stories.
Here's the statement Norman has put out explaining what he wants:Under Gordon Brown the decision was made to push PFIs wherever possible, putting huge pressure on schools and hospitals to contract out not just on the construction process but also on long-term provision of services. The PFI obligations taken out on Mr Brown's watch now total over £200bn, and will cost this country for decades.
We are seeking a very modest saving of 0.05% on the payments under PFI. The major PFI companies include Innisfree, Semperian, Serco, Balfour Beatty, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS. These firms have done extremely well out of PFI over the past decade, and it is right that they should contribute now to our national economic recovery. In these difficult economic times, no one should be exempt.
9.55am: But did Clinton and Clegg discuss tuition fees? Did she manage to find out whether he is going to vote for or against the government legislation allowing tuition fees to go up? MPs did not have much luck when they asked Clegg about this yesterday (although Lib Dem MPs did vote with the Tories against Labour after an opposition day debate on tuition fees last night).
But a Lib Dem peer has told Clegg and his colleagues to stop sitting on the fence. In an interview on the Today programme, Lord Willis – the former Lib Dem education spokesman Phil Willis – says the Lib Dems should "bite the bullet" and back the government plans.The reality is that we either bite the bullet and believe that the proposals ... are the ones to take us forward in terms of higher education or we don't. They do take us forward and it is time the Liberal Democrats now simply got on board and said, "Well, let us back them; let us sell them." I would like Nick to say that and I would also like Vince to say that. I hope Vince will reconsider that position [on abstaining].
9.53am: Nick Clegg has met Hillary Clinton at the OSCE conference at Kazakhstan, his office have just told us. Clegg has put out this statement:
We discussed a wide range of issues, including Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East peace process and Sudan. I made clear to Secretary Clinton that recent WikiLeaks disclosures would not affect our uniquely strong relationship. UK-US co-operation will continue with the same depth and closeness as before.
I also took the opportunity to raise the case of Shaker Aamer, the last remaining British resident detained in Guantánamo Bay. I stressed the importance to the UK of early movement on his case.
9.27am: Nick Herbert, the minister for policing, has been giving interviews this morning about the policing and social responsibility bill. PoliticsHome has been following them all. Here are the main points.
• He cited London as an example of why it was a good idea to make the police accountable to an elected figure.[Boris Johnson said] he wanted tougher action on knife crime ... [and] a uniform presence on public transport and that was delivered with the agreement of the commissioner of the Metropolitan police. That reform has been very popular and we want to extend it now to England and Wales to give the same say to local people in the rest of the country.• He said that police authorities, which currently oversee the work of the police, are "invisible" and "weak".
Nobody knows who these police authorities are, 96% of the public can't even name the chair of their police authorities. As a result, what happens is Whitehall interferes a hell of a lot, setting targets and bureaucracy. The consequence is a lot of the box ticking and costs that police forces have to deal with.• He denied claims that having elected police commissioners would "politicise" the police.
8.39am: David Cameron was up early this morning. At 6.16am I received an email from Downing Street saying that he was already on his way back to London from Zurich, where he has been lobbying for England's 2018 World Cup bid. "The prime minister continued his work to build support for England late into the night last night, with meetings with the Fifa delegates from Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, and the USA," said a spokesman. Cameron is returning to London for PMQs. Later he will return to Zurich. (Why couldn't he just leave it to Nick Clegg? Because, as Paul Waugh reports on his blog, Clegg is in Kazakhstan for an OSCE summit.)
Here's what's in the diary for today:9.30am: The Home Office publishes the policing and social responsibility bill. As Owen Bowcott reports in the Guardian today, a home affairs committee report out today to coincide with the bill says police officers should have to go through a four-year "cooling off" period if they want to become one of the new elected police commissioners that the government is creating.
9.45am: The supreme court will publish the ruling explaining why it decided that the three MPs accused of fiddling their expenses cannot use parliamentary privilege to avoid a criminal trial.Midday: Prime minister's questions
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.
http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/PJ/KATERINA-PAYNE-INCIDENT.htm
The McCanns refused to hand over Madeleines medical records...with the releasing of the news that JonBenet was an abused child we have to now ask was Madeleine McCann an abused child and if she was why is the might of the British Goverment covering it up ?
