Ed Balls interview transcript: on economy and cutting unemployment

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls was interviewed on Wednesday 16 February on the Jeremy Vine show. Below is an extract from the transcript.

JV: So you were wrong then? In a nice way you were wrong?

EB: The good thing in economics and policy-making is to be cautious and I thought back in 2009 we should be a bit more cautious. In fact, Alistair’s plan to get the economy moving was working. That was a year ago. Since then, unemployment’s not falling, it’s rising. Inflation is going up too and the economy has slowed right down. That shows that our steady cautious approach was working and the sort of Osborne plan is just too deep and too fast and does not learn the lessons of history and our country. We are going back to the 1930s. That was the argument of my Bloomberg speech. And I think many people are saying that they think that was the right argument then and now.

JV: To be clear, your policy is to halve the deficit in four years? That is correct – that is your policy now?
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Caroline Lucas slams replacement for Control Orders

Caroline Lucas MP’s office have released this statement today in response to the decision to replace Control Orders:

It is hugely disappointing that the Home Secretary has chosen to retain the policy of using electronic tagging and accommodation restrictions, which effectively leaves us with control orders by any other name. This is not what we were promised.

The Government could have seized this crucial opportunity to lift the prohibition on the use of police bail, which would ensure that anyone suspected of terrorist activity would be treated with due process through the criminal justice system – rather than continuing to be subject to executive orders. Control orders are not only repressive, they are ineffective in securing convictions – and thus have no place in our society in any form.

But the move was welcomed by Maajid Nawaz, director at the anti-terrorism thinktank Quilliam Foundation:

Today’s review of the government’s counter-terrorism powers is a welcome and positive development. The system of control orders established by the previous government was seen to be an imperfect but necessary evil and it is therefore right that it has been reviewed. It is good news that the Coalition has recognised the problems of the old control orders system while also recognising that, in the absence of any alternatives, scrapping the system altogether is not feasible and may increase the risk of terrorist attacks.

At the same, we should remember that there is no substitute for giving people a fair and open trial. The government, the police and the security services need to make sure that wherever possible suspected terrorists receive fair trials in which they and their lawyers are able to view and challenge all the evidence against them before a jury. British traditions of justice should be upheld and defended wherever possible. Control orders – or whatever system replaces them – should remain only a last resort.

The BBC reported today afternoon that Control Orders in their current form are to end.

Watch: Ken slams cuts to Education Maintenance Allowance

Ken Livingstone has called on the Government to think again after ministers confirmed cuts to the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) scheme.

EMA are means-tested allowances of £10, £20 and £30 paid to 14-to-19 year olds who stay in education and come from families where annual household income is below £30,810.

There are 95,219 recipients of EMA in London. 80 percent of those receive the top rate of £30 a week which would equate to 76,175 top rate recipients losing their EMA. The hardest hit boroughs will be Newham (5,721 current EMA recipients), Croydon (4446), Brent (4232), Ealing (4007) and Lambeth (3799).

Ken Livingstone visited BSix sixth form college in Hackney today and addressed a meeting of students. He said

The abolition of EMA threatens to deter thousands of teenagers in London from learning new skills and gaining qualifications and experience which will lead to a job.”

Now more than ever we need to encourage teenagers to stay on after 16, to gain new skills and experience which will enable them to work and fulfil their potential. It’s time for the government to think again and reverse it’s decision to scrap EMA’s.

Backlash to Alan Johnson’s view Labour should cut Trade Union link

Alan Johnson’s comments today to The Times that Labour should consider breaking Labour’s trade-union link suffered a quick backlash today.

Tom Watson MP said on Labour Uncut

But that’s not really what people like Alan are saying. When they say “one member one vote” they really mean “one Labour party member one vote”. They want to abolish the system that elected Tony Blair back in 1994 when Alan was a trade union general secretary.

And they want to abolish the trade union section all together. This would remove hundreds of thousands of people from participating in the election of a Labour leader. Many would think that a regressive and illogical position to take, but there you go.
…
If we want the simplest, fairest and widest possible ballot to elect a leader we should abolish the electoral college all together and let the votes in all sections of the party have equal weight. Had we done this in May and everyone voted the same way, Ed Miliband would have got the job and won the contest by a country mile. He’d have won by 28, 299 votes.

Hackney Councillor Luke Akehurst, on Labour’s NEC, was similarly dismissive:

Apparently it would be more democratic to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of political levy paying union members and deny them a vote in Labour leadership contests, opine the various ex-Ministers quoted.

One even says that the unions are “increasingly an irrelevant structure in British society anyway”. I find this deeply distasteful. Actually I find it offensive. There are echoes of some of the bitter anti-union talk that was doing the rounds at Annual Conference, which on probing turned out to be rooted in a contempt not just for the union role in the Party but for their industrial role defending workers against employers.

Former Labour MP and minister Tony McNulty took to Twitter and said:

We are consolidating on 40%+ in the polls, the new Shadow Cabinet is starting to find it’s feet, the fightback is on – so let’s have a row…

…and start fighting each other!!!! Is that really a good idea and the best we can offer the country?? Labour – unite and fight back!!!

We’re still waiting for a reaction from the unions.

Labour MP writes to civil service over Andy Coulson

Jon Trickett, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, is writing a letter to the head of the civil service to ask questions about Andy Coulson over allegations of illegal phone-hacking at News of the World.

Mr Trickett is to seek assurances from Sir Gus O’Donnell that no civil service time has been spent advising Mr Coulson, who is director of communications for David Cameron, in relation to the scandal that occurred while he was editor of the Sunday paper.

A Conservative official said last night that the questions were irrelevant, given that there had been “no intervention” by any civil servants on the matter.

Labour is seeking to keep up the pressure on Mr Coulson, who spoke to police investigating the phone-hacking allegations on Thursday after voluntarily meeting them at his solicitor’s offices. He had offered to talk to the police two months ago, according to Downing Street, and was not cautioned or arrested.

…more at the Financial Times

Libdem PPC leaves party after Clegg’s “u-turns”

Nick Clegg has been dealt a blow by a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate’s decision to defect to Labour in protest at his leader’s acceptance of Conservative policies and abandonment of key elements of his party’s programme.

Andrew Lewin, at 23 the youngest Lib Dem candidate in England at the May election, urged the party’s MPs to oppose controversial cuts in housing benefit in a Commons vote tomorrow. He claimed hardly any Lib Dem MPs support them, saying the party was being forced to swallow “a virtually unreformed Conservative agenda”.

Although several councillors have left the party in protest at the Coalition’s policies, Mr Lewin is the first candidate to walk out.

The public relations consultant insisted his views had not changed and that it was the Lib Dems who had moved away from him.

… more at The Independent

AV reform bill finally passes Parliament

The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill has finally passed through the Commons which means that an AV referendum will be held on the same day as the Scottish and Welsh Assembly elections (and others), fixed term Parliaments, redrawing of all the Parliamentary boundaries, and a significant reduction in the number of MPs.

Parliament had rejected amendments to allow voters a choice of what kind of voting system they would prefer, changing the date of the referendum so it did not skew the elections taking place on the same day and reducing the number of Ministers in Parliament to account for the fact that the number of backbenchers would have been drastically reduced.

The Lib Dems voted as an extremely disciplined block throughout this process against all motions to improve the bill and have been rewarded by a similarly disciplined block of Tories voting for a bill they’d rather have never existed.

In the end the bill passed with 321 votes for to 264 against. The bulk of those who voted against the unamended bill were Labour MPs but they were joined in the no lobby by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.

She was rightly concerned about reducing the number of constituencies and that this was to be done without a proportionate reduction in Ministers, thus strengthening the executive. She was also worried that the date of the referendum would unduly distort local and national assembly elections and, of course, that the referendum itself fell far short of a real choice on electoral reform.

Caroline voted for the second reading of the bill (ie before the amendments were put) because she supports the principle of a referendum and wanted to have the opportunity to try and amend the bill – to increase the options on the ballot paper to include proportional representation and other voting systems, as well as to try and decouple the voting reform elements from the proposals to reduce the number of constituencies. Understandably she was very disappointed to see Lib Dems voting against their own policies, but then we’ve come to expect now I guess. The result was that the bill which MPs had to vote on yesterday in its third reading was unamended on the key issues and thus impossible for Caroline to support, much as she would have loved to back the principle of voting reform.

Of course, the Green Party of England and Wales doesn’t go as far as our Northern Ireland counterpart who recently took the decision to campaign for a no vote in the referendum. We’ll be having a modest campaign in favour of AV, with the safeguard that no significant party funds are to be spent on the campaign.

Certainly the referendum for AV itself is far from won and YouGov polling has shown that support for the move has fallen away. Just a few months ago polling was showing general support for the idea but now just 32% would vote in favour and 43% against, probably in order to give the government a kick.

If AV does pass the next general election will look very different to the last one. It’s likely, for example, that the coalition parties will recommend a second preference for each other and all parties will have to take a firm decision on what recommendations they do or do not make to the electorate.

We have the exciting prospect of candidates praising each other in the hope of gaining second preferences and, of course, denouncing each other for their official choice of second best. I’m particularly interested to see the reactions of candidates who are ‘endorsed’ as second preference by the BNP or UKIP as well as curious as to what approach Green members want to take.

Event celebrates life of Michael Foot MP

Join friends and family celebrating Michael’s rich, long and varied life with stories, music and readings

Special guests include:
Jo Brand, Prunella Scales, Francis Wheen, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Goodman, Rodney Bickerstaffe, David Steel, Roy Hattersley, Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband.

With music from: The Tredegar Town Band, and the London Welsh Chorale

Compered by: Jon Snow

7pm, Monday 8th November 2010
Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue
Click here to book
(limited to 4 per order and with voluntary contributions to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament)

From a press release

Watch: Andy Slaughter MP hits back at Tory view that deep cuts are needed

From an exchange in Parliament late last week, Andy Slaughter MP hits back at Tory suggestions that deep cuts are needed in UK’s spending in order to stave off financial meltdown.

video via Imran Ahmed

Ed Balls writes to Home Secretary over dometic violence protection orders

During the Labour leadership campaign, both Ed Balls and David Miliband ran online petitions to stop the government from scrapping the piloting of Domestic Violence Protection Orders.

The programme has been known to help women who face domestic violence.

Today, in his capacity as the new shadow Home Secretary, Ed Balls will write to Theresa May with the petition and urge her on the issue.

Letter below

Dear Home Secretary,

We are writing to urge you to reverse your decision to halt the piloting of Domestic Violence Protection Orders – the first phase of a programme giving police an important new power to protect victims of domestic abuse across England and Wales.

The Orders give the police the power to ban a violent partner from a family home for two to four weeks. They are aimed at intervening in cases where police are worried about violent behaviour within a household but do not have enough evidence to bring a criminal charge, or where the victim of violence needs time to recover from the shock of an attack, and to decide what to do.

They were due to be available everywhere in a few months’ time, but now it seems that their very future is in the balance. We understand that you have said their fate depends on the outcomes of the Spending Review.

We think these Orders are too important to be delayed in this way, let alone abandoned altogether as now seems a definite risk. In other countries they are proven to be of significant benefit to victims of domestic violence, leading to fewer women and children having to flee home suddenly for refuges, and to fewer becoming homeless. They are cost effective too, saving money from other public service budgets, including from Health.

Victims of domestic violence – who include children as well as women and, more rarely, men – are highly vulnerable and need all the help they can get. Domestic Violence Protection Orders would enhance their safety and welfare, and would give the police an important extra power.

You have said this new police power would be too expensive, but we believe it is wrong to put a price on the safety of victims of violent abuse, and the sums involved are in any event tiny when judged against your Department’s overall budget.

We call on you to implement Domestic Violence Protection Orders now, not sacrifice them in the rush to find deep cuts.

Yours sincerely,

Ed Balls MP, Shadow Home Secretary
and approximately 2,000 other names attached

We will also publish her response.