The Conservative Party conference opened yesterday in a rather wet Birmingham. This is the first in a series of updates on proceedings from the ICC.
Sunday
The first day saw a number of ministers giving interviews including David Cameron who told Andrew Marr that benefits would be rationalised into a universal payment. He also hinted that the Government were considering cutting some child benefits although he promised an extra £164 million pounds towards colon cancer screening. In events that may foreshadow UK politics for the next five years, there were demonstrations against the cuts in Birmingham and the General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union told union activists to start planning for strikes. However, media reports suggest that the planned BBC strikes will not go ahead.
Channel 4’s Dispatches programme showed interview footage from a senior News Of The World journalist who claims that, David Cameron’s Director of Communications, Andy Coulson listened to the intercepted voicemails he has said he knew nothing about. It seems that this damaging story may be making an appearance during the Conference.
There was a tub-thumping speech by William Hague but Sunday’s most memorable moment was during a Q+A when Minister for Decentralisation, Greg Clark, held out a large guidance document from a newly defunct Regional Assembly and dropped it on the floor with a thud. He then delicately waved its 6-page replacement in the air as if to illustrate the thrust of Conservative policy.
Delegates were also treated to a performance from an ‘asian’ dance troupe. In a continuation of this variety show theme, Ann Widdecombe will apparently be sashaying across the stage with Anton du Beke on Tuesday and William Hague will be introducing the Prime Minister with a cabaret version of Sinead O’ Connor’s “Nothing Compares To You”.
Policy Announcements
Francis Maude announced that from now on council datasets provided though Freedom of Information requests would have to be provided in a reusable and machine-readable (i.e. computer) format. He said this was in response to councils who deliberately tried to make it difficult for companies and social enterprises to gain access to information about financial planning and where contracts were being tendered. Clearly this will be a boon for companies who want to do business with councils.
Eric Pickles also gave a speech in which he said that he wanted to see “home rule” in Britain’s major cities, in other words leadership by elected mayors, to tackle social problems. He announced that budgets across the public sector (social services, care, housing and health improvement) would be pooled to underpin this and that councils would be rewarded for delivering results. Mr Pickles also said that he wanted to see Councils merging their departments to make them more efficient and thereby protect front-line services.
Monday
The main theme for today was the economy. George Osborne’s speech was the highlight and although he expressed some aspirations for promoting real growth in the economy and moderating City bonuses his announcements focussed on cutting benefits. The details are below.
Boris Johnson gave a speech during the short infrastructure and skills session which focussed on the tube strike and accused the Unions of playing politics with its timing. He also called for a legal requirement of 50% support from all tube drivers before a strike can proceed in future.
Rory Stewart MP told a fringe event hosted by Respublica about how the people in his Cumbrian constituency saw the ‘Big Society’. He said that it required local people to take responsibility for their needs, such as housing, through democratic institutions such as parish councils. He also suggested that funding should be organised though local co-operatives or mutual banks instead of through grants. His exposition ties in neatly with Coalition plans for rural communities to vote on whether to grant planning permission for housing.
Policy Announcements
As foreshadowed by the Prime Minister yesterday, George Osborne announced that child benefits would be means tested to exclude households with one parent who pays 40% tax. This was seized upon as being unfair because a household with 2 parents just under the threshold would still receive the benefit even though they would earn more than a household with only one higher rate taxpayer. He also said that the total amount of benefits available to a family would be limited to the amount earned by the average working family (although it was not explained how much this would be).
Osborne also made some interesting pledges. He said that he would focus expenditure on promoting growth and that it should be in areas other than just financial services. He also announced that he would not allow banks to pay bonuses unless they were lending to small businesses. However, it is hard to see how concrete these pledges are since no firm commitments were made.
Earlier in the day, and amid protests from StopHS2, the Secretary of State for Transport, Phillip Hammond, announced that the Government would be supporting the ‘Y’ option for the HS2 high-speed rail link. This would see the track splitting above Birmingham with one branch travelling to Manchester and the other going to Leeds.
Written by Nick Sutcliffe