Echoing his plea in yesterday’s Daily Mirror for conscionable Lib Dems to help Labour crush the worst cuts, Ed Miliband told the Scottish Labour conference: “A week from Tuesday we will force a vote in the House of Commons on housing benefit. Our appeal is to all MPs of conscience. Join us, vote against these unfair and unworkable changes and force the government to think again.”
The police have contradicted Vince Cable’s claim that they advised him to pull out of a visit to Oxford University today – what would have been the first ministerial visit to Oxford since the publication of the Browne Review into higher education funding. More than 12,000 students had signed up on Facebook to protest the Browne Review this afternoon.
In response to Liberal Democrat MP Bob Russell at the end of Prime Minister’s Questions today, David Cameron confirmed that the “key change” in housing benefit was “a cap of £20,000”, a measure which, according to the June budget, will save only £65 million by 2014/15 – the least effective revenue raising measure the government has announced.
A leading health think tank has warned the NHS faces a funding gap of £6 billion a year by 2015. The King’s Fund says that, contrary to George Osborne’s claim the NHS will get an annual real-terms rise of 0.1 per cent, the NHS will in effect face a reduction of more than 1 per cent a year if it is to maintain existing levels of treatment and cover, given changes in the population.
Labour leads the Tories in the Times/Populus poll series for the first time in three years in the wake of the comprehensive spending review as voters begin to realise the full scale of the coalition’s cuts agenda. Ed Miliband’s party are up one point on 38 per cent, with the Conservatives down two points on 37 per cent and the Liberal Democrats up one point on 15 per cent.
At a time when the government is eager to cut spending, their policy on universities, which will cost money not save it, can only be seen as ideological. The government will pay fees up front, with students indebted to the government for decades.
Nick Clegg appeared on Desert Island Discs this morning, putting the worries of the world to one side and revealing his favourite tunes, reports Shamik Das.
The government’s aim to “spark a competitive school sport revolution”, outlined only a month ago, looks set to become yet another broken coalition promise, following the cuts to school sport outlined in the Comprehensive Spending Review this week and the subsequent axing of targets and strategies which have resulted in increases in participation in school sport and rises in the number of pupils playing competitive sport.
This week the government unveiled the biggest cuts to public spending in decades. The regressive, unfair cuts (source: IFS), will lead to 500,000 job losses, with services up and down the country severely cut or axed completely. Johann Hari, in The Independent, described Britain as a “colder, crueller country” in the wake of the cuts.
Lecturers accused Nick Clegg of “spinning his way out of trouble” over university funding today, following his u-turn over tuition fees, writes Shamik Das.
