Political coverage from Sam Coates on Times Online.
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We reported this morning that private companies and charities are being frozen out of the NHS, prompting accusations that the Government has bowed to pressure from the unions. Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, is facing a Cabinet backlash, criticism from the former ministers John Hutton and Alan Milburn and attacks from the CBI and charity groups over proposals to limit outside involvement in the NHS. The Department of Health will publish new guidelines shortly that limit private companies and charities to providing services not already offered or in areas where the existing NHS is failing - the subject of a huge internal battle.
A draft of these guidelines obtained by The Times makes the NHS-first policy clear:
“Only if there was
insufficient improvement within a reasonable timescale and the scale of
under-performance was significant would the PCT [primary care trust]
consider engaging with other potential providers or other solutions
(eg, franchising).”
This is regarded as a dramatic shift from the policy set out by Alan Johnson when he was Health Secretary and miles away from the work of Alan MIlburn. His document, Necessity Not Nicety,
suggested that primary care trusts should become more competitive and
commercial, but Burnham is understood to think that this unsettled
the health service.
One thing particularly upsetting Blairites in the tone of a letter from Andy Burnham to Brendan Barber, the TUC General Secretary, thanking them for the help they have given him and suggesting which they say suggests unions have wholesale dictated the policy. This is, of course, heavily denied by Burnham's office who say that the switch could mean more private provision in the NHS. But they also point out that the NHS has "proved itself" over things like MRSA and it's "only fair" they are given a chance.
For the rest of the letter click here Progress, the Blairite pressure group, are deeply upset about this move, and the matter will shortly move into Lord Mandelson's intray as he prepares to receive a complaint from the CBI.
Richard Lambert, CBI Director-General, today (Monday) commented on the speeches by the three main party leaders at the CBI's Annual Conference in London.
Mr Lambert said:
"All three party leaders rightly addressed the need for a strategy for economic growth, and its importance in reducing the public-sector deficit. However, each spoke with a different emphasis.
"Mr Brown warned that attempts to rebalance the budget too soon could threaten growth. Mr Clegg said a government could take its time, but stressed the need for clarity about the measures needed. Mr Cameron emphasised the risk of tackling the public deficit too late.
"All three were lively speeches that engaged the minds of the hundreds of business leaders in the room, and prompted many questions."
Gordon Brown will no doubt exaggerate the significance of the party's ability to defend the rock-solid Labour seat of Glasgow North East in yesterday's by-election.
But the win also highlighted the difficulties that opposition parties will face in unseating Labour at the general election.
Labour won the seat vacated by Lord Martin of Springburn, the former Speaker who stood down in June, securing almost 60 per cent of the vote at the expense of Scottish National Party.
The result suggests that the Conservatives will get little help from the SNP in overturning Labour’s majority at the next general election.
Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, had boasted that his party would win 20 seats - 18 seats from Labour - in Westminster, which would have eased David Cameron’s task to ensure that the Conservatives become the largest party in the House of Commons.
However, the result and recent polling suggests that the SNP is on course to take only one seat from Labour — Ochil and South Perthshire.
This means that the Conservatives still face their biggest test to secure a majority, taking every seat won in 2005 plus 117 additional seats, surpassing the electoral achievements of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill.
The Tories showed little sign of any advance in the by-election, securing 5.2 per cent of the vote, narrowly ahead of the BNP. Seven of the party’s 117 target seats are in Scotland.
Labour successfully campaigned as the insurgent opposition in Scotland, attacking the SNP government in Holyrood. In a possible preview of the general election, the SNP found it difficult to hit back on issues such as Afghanistan, the Prime Minister’s personal standing and expenses, since they were defending their own record.
George Osborne disagrees with this analysis, saying he did not think that the result was “relevant” to the rest of the Britain.
“Come the election, what we will be looking at is Labour’s record in power and Gordon Brown will be the incumbent, and he will be the one who has to explain why he has got so much badly wrong.”
The result was poor for the Liberal Democrats, who came sixth with just 474 votes, behind Tommy Sheridan, the former socialist MP, and the BNP. The party’s failure to do better, given Nick Clegg’s visit, the length of the campaign and its success in past Scottish by-elections, mean that the result is worrying for party strategists.
This says it all really. Somewhat ironic this is about a cyber-security appg. Click on "read more" then start at the bottom
Continue reading "MPs with too much time on their hands in e-mail round-robin frenzy" »
Tonight's Hugo Young lecture on the Tory committment to poverty, given by David Cameron, will amongst other things apparently address the points in this article by Phil Collins, the Times leader writer and chair of Demos. Here it is reproduced below.
Progressive Tories must learn their own history; Cameron wants to help the poor and cut big government down to size. His party has never done both at the same time
Philip Collins
1144 words
28 October 2009
The Times
18
English
(c) 2009 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
The two impulses of modern Conservatism are on vivid display in Piccadilly Circus, London. The neon signs above flash out the message that the market is open for business. Down below, the Angel of Christian Charity, more commonly known as the statue of Eros, commemorates the Tory philanthropy of the Earl of Shaftesbury.
These are the components of what George Osborne and David Cameron have called "progressive conservatism". In his conference speech in Manchester this month, Mr Cameron made the intriguing claim that, in the very act of reducing the size of the State, a future Conservative government would improve the condition of the poor. When the State withdraws, he argued, the wounds of society heal over. The main problem of the poor, by this argument, is not that they have too little money but that they have too much government.
Well, it's a view. We will all somehow make ourselves better. The naivety would be touching if it wasn't so irritating. The Conservative conference was full of earnest young people pointing out that they had just discovered something called "the poor" that the Labour Government had shamefully failed.
For the record, inequality has never risen faster than during the Thatcher years. John Major reduced inequality through the genius expedient of arranging a recession. Over the past decade the salaries of the educated have risen quicker than the wages of the uneducated. The upshot of government action — the minimum wage and tax credits — has almost, but not quite, offset the growing income inequality.
Mr Cameron will have to undergo an extraordinary policy conversion if he is serious about meeting his pledge. It has to be said that he has made a rotten start. We know that the Tories are keen to lift the threshold for inheritance tax. They propose to abolish the Government's job guarantee for young people. They want to move incapacity claimants on to unemployment assistance and offer a handout to married couples for the virtue of marriage. Whatever else can be said for these policies, every one will have a detrimental effect on equality. It's harder than it looks, being a socialist.
With that off my chest, it's important to pour scorn on the argument, not the motive. The point is not that Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are insincere. It's that they don't know their own history. Culture change doesn't spring fully formed out of the ether. As a matter of historical record, pretty much every time that a Conservative Government has left a progressive legacy it has done so by adding to the functions of government rather than by subtracting from them.
In the 19th century the Tories were, quite rightly, keen for the State to regulate factory work. Lord Liverpool's Cotton Mills and Factories Act, 1819, prohibited the employment of children under 9 years of age. Shaftesbury's Factory Acts in the 1840s reduced working time for women and children and introduced the idea of state responsibility for health and safety. Disraeli's Factory Act of 1874 made education compulsory for children up to the age of 10. In 1901 Lord Salisbury raised the minimum working age to 12.
The Victorian Conservative Party also had a developed sense of the public realm and regulated without compunction. The Public Health Act of 1875 forced councils to clear refuse and sewage and to provide an adequate water supply. The same year the Artisans' Dwelling Act began the clearing of urban slums.
Since the turn of the 20th century, progressive conservatism has taken a bit of a breather. Once the great infrastructure projects had been completed, once the basic amenities had been catered for and egregious injustices countered, it all got very tricky. George Osborne claims Stanley Baldwin's extension of state pensions and R. A. Butler's Education Act for the progressive Tory side. They can be granted, with the observation that they, too, were acts of benign big government.
And it would be only accurate to note that the postwar welfare state gained very little from progressive conservatism, that Roy Jenkins, as a liberal Home Secretary, could rely on Tory opposition and that Mr Cameron has rather belatedly found that he did believe in Sure Start, the minimum wage and civil partnerships all along. There is little doubt that, in the progressive ledger, the Conservative Party is historically in deficit.
None of that means that a Tory Government is fated to fail the test that Mr Cameron has repeatedly set it — to make the country fairer and more equal. But there is a serious doubt as to whether his right-wing means are up to his left-wing ends. Decentralising power and responsibility and strengthening society are very good things — who wants the opposite — but they are not enough.
You can't simply move big government out and big voluntary sector in. A third of total voluntary sector funding now comes from the public purse and cuts are unavoidable. Unwinding the stealthy nationalisation of the third sector will cause howls of pain from people the Tories have embraced as their new best friends. Not that the embrace will last long anyway. Many schemes get worse as they get bigger.
The great people in the voluntary sector cannot be cloned and the unreliable ones can be a proper nuisance.
The Tories will soon find out why decentralisation is the demand of opposition that governments forget. In the first phase of Sure Start, the scheme to help poor children, the title was no more than a badge. Under its banner, local activists did their own thing. Evaluations showed that most of it had no beneficial impact on children at all. Most of the things the voluntary sector was doing, with its fabled knowledge, turned out to be rubbish. A minority of schemes were excellent. So, what do you do? Spend more public money on things you know can't work, in the name of the small state? Or impose some conditions from the centre? The sane answer is that sometimes — literacy and numeracy policy is another example — command and control works. Not often, but sometimes. Ruling it out because "big government" is always the problem is barely serious.
There is certainly a noble Conservative tradition of social reform. But that history is not the tale of the market making the muck and charity spreading it around evenly. In Piccadilly Circus, between the neon and the nude archer, there is something missing. The avowed enemy, big government, is missing.Most fabled voluntary sector projects turned out to be rubbish
Sanity check from Anthony Wells here
From Benedict Brogan's column this morning
But I gather preparations are well advanced on legislation that will simplify the process at a stroke, by fast-tracking what are currently interminable boundary reviews, standardising seat sizes, and ending the tyranny of county borders. The work is being carried out by former MP and Tory psephologist Rob Hayward, under the supervision of party chairman Eric Pickles. Westminster – and incoming MPs – will be surprised to find that the election after next will be for a substantially smaller House.
Mike Freer, leader of Tory led Barnet council, writing in this morning's Times. Wonder how that all tallies with the parties' bin taxes position... Aside that aside, it's interesting that Freer is honest about the chances of success and failure of the EasyCouncil experiment, in a well-worth-reading article
We are examining how we can let residents prioritise how money is spent on maintaining their street. If they want the street cleaned less, but the pavement cleaned more often, that should be their choice. If they want to take over the running of some of the green spaces themselves and have savings returned to them, that might be another option.
Another example is how we might move from a waste disposal service to a waste minimisation service. Rising landfill tax will mean the cost of this service rise by 75 per cent over the coming five years. We could recycle more than twice what we do if residents sorted out more of their waste. But the rewards of doing so seem just too distant for busy people.
We could follow the lead of San Francisco. Waste disposal costs there are separate from other city taxes: residents who generate less waste get a rebate. Equally, if someone wants to pay the council to spend time sorting out their individual recycling items, they could pay us to do so.
From Daniel Finkelstein's column this morning - about the dangers of referenda
This means, as Mr Osborne has being particularly strong in arguing, that the policy has to be negotiable, and not one that will turn their first encounters with other European leaders in a shambles. They are quite sanguine about what they can achieve — they point to the concessions that Václav Klaus extracted in exchange for his signature on the treaty and to their own success in damaging Tony Blair’s presidential hopes. They believe that they can put a stop to what they term “the European ratchet”. Their policy will insist upon it. But they want to avoid issuing ultimatums with immediate deadlines. There is plenty of time. And many moments where there will be leverage. Europe has to agree a new budget in 2013, for instance.
There will be a second strand. In his recently republished memoirs, Time to Declare: Second Innings, the former Foreign Secretary David Owen argues that Lisbon can be clarified and guarantees against further integration embedded in British law. Since this can be done without permission from other governments, and with a mandate at an election rather than a referendum, it has obvious attractions for the Tories.
And the final strand? The Smith Square set want to win and to govern, not oppose and moan about their defeats. So they want to set out a strong positive European agenda. There will be initiatives on things such as climate change, free trade, energy security and Iranian nuclear policy. Why, after all, should the federalists have a monopoly on initiatives? You might even call this the cufflink policy.
I'm hearing the distant strains of Land of Hope and Glory as David Rennie, the Economists' man in Europe, tries to punt this idea with a straight face in an imaginary memo from Tory strategists to David Cameron.
Finally, we need a quick win that will grab headlines. Ask for the blue British passport back. Don't oversell this. Just give interviews to the tabloids, saying: "Europe has to stop doing things without asking the British people, like turning their passports red and sticking 'European Union' on the cover. Here is a test to see if they are willing to change." You could deliver this: nobody understands why we care, but other governments would give us dark blue passports.
Tory sources are indicating that they will make their announcement as soon as the Czech President says he will sign the Lisbon Treaty. They won't actually wait for him to put pen to paper - a promise to do so will be enough for them to press the button.
But will it be today - when the world is watching. Or tomorrow, when Westminster is once again gazing into its own navel with the Kelly report....
From today's TimesOnline
When things go wrong in a David Cameron and Andrew Lansley-led health service, who will carry the can?
Under David Cameron’s blueprint released yesterday, day-to-day responsibility will be removed from ministers and handed to a council of doctors and managers known as the NHS board. Elected Tory politicians will set “strategic objectives”, but it will be for this body, effectively a super-quango, to oversee its £100 billion budget and execute its powers in whatever way it sees fit.
To emphasise this shift, Tories will change the title of Health Secretary into Public Health Secretary — responsible for improving health service outcomes rather than every last element of its execution.
But what happens when the NHS faces a crisis, such as the one in Staffordshire, when about 400 patients died needlessly because of deficiencies in emergency care?
According to one shadow Cabinet member, accountability under a Tory government would work very differently.
“We want to challenge and change the media narrative — we are not responsible for every bedpan in every hospital. Just like there isn’t a postmaster general responsible for the installation of phone lines the consequence of devolving decision making is that others have to be accountable.”
The idea, Tories say, is to stop political reorganisations of the NHS and give doctors more certainty. “Yes, we do want to give more power to professionals. Much more power — and we think that’s a very good thing,” Mr Cameron told the Royal College of Pathologists yesterday.
But the history of passing responsibility from ministers to “independent bodies” is a chequered one.
One of the most successful was the 1997 decision by Gordon Brown to hand responsibility for interest rate decisions to the Bank of England. Today few oppose that move, seen as a brave and defining decision in the early days of the new Labour Government.
But cynics point out that the public accepted an independent Bank of England because interest rate decisions were, initially, largely uncontroversial. Had each monthly verdict been a battle between mortgage holders’ interests and the need for financial stability, it might have been very different.
Government-by-quango can go very wrong. Earlier this year it emerged that the Learning and Skills Council wasted hundreds of millions of pounds through “catastrophic mismanagement” of a flagship college building programme. Ministers appeared more than happy to let them carry the can, avoiding any responsibility themselves. Such a move would not be possible with the health service.
Experts are perplexed at the overall Tory approach. While George Osborne threatens to slash most quango budgets, reduce staff and clip their powers, Mr Lansley appears to be going in the opposite direction.
Niall Dixon, chief executive of the King’s Fund, the healthcare think tank, argues that politicians are unlikely to be able to properly transfer responsibility. “I can’t see how, in a system where we’re spending £100 billion plus of public money, politicians could distance themselves from decisions,” he says.
Mr Cameron’s speech contains inherent contradictions in the way the party wants both to control the NHS and let it run itself — calling for the NHS to run itself while also also calling for a moratorium of hospital closures which are decided locally by NHS trusts themselves.
The Tories say that in the event of a Staffordshire-style disaster, however, the Secretary of State will still, ultimately, be responsible to Parliament. The NHS board, they insist, will report to him. But will the new Secretary of State really be content to justify decisions he hasn’t taken? Or will the board members become high-profile figures who will take to the airwaves to defend such decisions?
In September 2006, Gordon Brown said he was considering the same plan — for an independent board to run the NHS — ministers’ roles would be limited to setting the NHS budget and strategic objectives. By the time Alan Johnson became Mr Brown’s first Health Secretary, this had been abandoned because it was judged politically impossible.
Whether a future Tory government is ever truly able to “devolve” power is yet to be seen.
Philip Webster in The Times this morning.
Mr Cameron will also pledge to write into law that no British government will ever again be able to push through a European treaty without a referendum.
Gary Gibbon on the Giblog writes:
Perhaps more important though, in the great scheme of things, is the [Tory] policy already announced in October 2007 but likely to be re-announced in the coming hours or days: the plan to make the UK, like Ireland and some other EU countries, a state that can only ratify an EU treaty after a referendum.
It’s hard to imagine how any treaty in the last 20 years would’ve got through a referendum in the UK. Could even a treaty that repatriated powers be sure of support in a referendum?
Irish referenda show how these popular votes can become hijacked by all sorts of unexpected or unrelated issues.
The move in Tory policy to a “compulsory referendum before ratification” country was unveiled at the 2007 Conference by William Hague but many eyes were elsewhere on the day – on the possible early election that hadn’t been ruled out.
A lot of the newspapers made it an inside page story…it doesn’t feel like an inside page story now.
According to Steve Richards:
Privately Brown was livid with Legg for exceeding his remit. Harriet Harman had her doubts as well. In public they had no choice but to smile and declare their full support.
Charles Walker, Tory MP and member of the Public Administration Committee, makes this good point on ConservativeHome this morning
The review, by widening the remuneration gap between a backbench MP and Minister, will provide an absolute coup to the Executive and Government Whips' Office. All but the most sainted MP will have one eye towards their family finances when the Whips come knocking with promises of preferment in return for moderated behaviour. Is yet more patronage healthy for our Parliamentary democracy?
Sir Peter Viggers' seat, Gosport, will be the second constituency where the Tories hold an all postal ballot.
Eric Pickles, the party chair, was delighted at the almost 25 per cent turnout in Totnes, and has decided to repeat the experiment.
The Tories say they would love to do much more of these, despite the cost - £38,000 in Totnes.
In practice, this tactic will be used in places where the local population may have fallen out of love with the Tory incumbent.
And Sir Peter will largely go down in history for his role in the expenses scandal - for the duck pond which he submitted a claim for (but never received the money).
Pickles says: "I hope this will build on the success of Totnes. It's vital that we continue to empower local people and allow them to have the final say."
"I hope this will encourage people in Gosport not previously interested in politics to get involved and get their voice heard."
David Cameron predicted there would be two more - so we await news of the second.
If you look at the train timetables, you could get as far afield as Milton Keynes, Stevenage and - at a push - Brighton within the 60 minutes limit that disqualifies them from a second (rented) home.
So just how many additional MPs will be banned from having a second home at all?
Ipsa will decide, so we don't know.
But Sir Christopher has looked at the train timetables himself and calculates just 12, I'm told - above and beyond those outer-London MPs who already can qualify for the London allowance.
General election night next year could be a big disappointment, as Jonathan Isaby from Conservative Home has been warning for some time.
Returning officers are insisting on holiding the count on Friday rather than Thursday in most parts of the country.
The Electoral Commission is privately sympathetic with this - because this will be the first general election with new anti-fraud rules in place for postal ballots.
The measures force local authorities to double check the signatures and birthdates of people voting.
The Electoral Commission is concerned because signatures and birthdates, known as "verifiers", are collected by local authorities - but a third of constituencies cross council boundaries.
Different authorities hold verifiers in different electronic formats, requiring different computer software to process. This means returning officers face the administrative nightmare of running simultaneous incompatible systems during the counting process.
A trial run was held in Wales in June, when the European elections were counted on a constituency basis rather than by local authority, and this round mixed results. It found a small number of complaints of problems reported by returning officers, including "late software patches and changes made by suppliers."
It warns that officers need to act now to avoid disaster. "Returning Officers and electoral administrators will need to give early consideration of the significant logistical issues involved in managing this process, well in advance of the election."
But, with the proper preparation, isn't this obstacle surmountable?
(PS they also found the largest single incident of fraud in the European elections in June involved 24 photocopies of a ballot paper returned in a single envelope)
Last night
I am today calling on the Treasury and the FSA to combine forces and stop retail banks paying out profits in significant cash bonuses. Full stop. Then the cash that would have been paid out should be put onto banks' balance sheets explicitly to support new lending.
This morning
I am today calling on the Treasury and the FSA to combine forces and stop retail banks – in other words the banks that lend directly to businesses and families – paying out profits in significant cash bonuses. Full stop. That includes their investment banking arms. Then the cash that would have been paid out should be put onto banks’ balance sheets explicitly to support new lending.
From last week's licensing debate, John Grogan speaks:
One of the few occasions that I have been asked on to “Newsnight” to defend Government policy was in 2005, when the Licensing Act 2003 was about to be implemented. The interviewer was Kirsty Wark. I was having rather the worst of the interview, it has to be said, and the clock was ticking towards 18 minutes past 11, when the programme ends. I thought that I would have one last try at making the case for the Licensing Act reforms. Obviously that was before the relaxation of licensing laws, and all pubs closed at 11 o’clock, so I looked at her and said, “Would it be the end of the world if, after the show finished, the pubs were still open and I was able to invite you out to have one drink at one of the local pubs?” She looked at me, and by the look on her face it would have been the end of the world, so my final argument failed.
Sir Thomas Legg will not be allowed to have the last word on individual MPs' expenses.
The party leaders, along with MPs on the Members' Estimates committee, have agreed to introduce an appeals process once Sir Thomas has decided how much individual MPs should pay back.
They will be allowed to appeal BEFORE the report is published by the MEC in December, meaning this will all happen in secret.
MPs will get a note tucked into their final letter from Legg telling them how to appeal against his findings.
MPs have not decided who will conduct the appeal - it's up to Harriet Harman's officials to work out who that will be.
But it wont be an insider. "We recognise that you couldn't have an internal appeals process for an external audit," says one mole
Bet Legg will be furious though....
Next week's main business
Two days of the Marine and Coastal Access Bill
A good day for the establishment, a bad day for transparency.
The Cabinet Office has comprehensively squashed any attempt to better regulate lobbying and lobbyists.
Some of the most important, and easily enforceable new rules suggested by Tony Wright's Public Administration committee involved forcing civil servants to be up front about their dealings with lobbyists.
We know the civil service is vital to the lobbying industry - why else would they spend so much wining and dining them.
But now lobbyists will continue to have free reign across Whitehall after the government backed away from imposing new regulations on the industry.
Details of meetings between civil servants and lobbyists will not to published, despite calls from MPs on the Public Administration Committee who made the recommendation following a six month inquiry into the industry.
A report by the Cabinet Office argued this “would involve collating a huge amount of information and divert significant resources within departments”.
It also argued that a register of interests for senior civil servants “would be a disproportionate requirement that would place a significant burden on departments and agencies while adding very little to the regulation of lobbying”.
This represents a huge victory for the Whitehall machine against further transparency for the senior civil service
On allegations that there is a huge “revolving door” culture, the Cabinet Office report says: “The level of transfer between government and particular sectors does not of itself mean there is a problem. Indeed the Government is happy to see interchange as a common feature of public sector life.”
Despite recent private sector appointments by former ministers such as John Hutton to EDF energy (he later turned it down) and Patricia Hewitt to Boots, the Cabinet Office argued this was not a problem either.
“The Government does not agree with the general assertion that former Ministers in particular are able to use improperly and with impunity contacts they have built up while in office.”
The report gives the lobbying industry a clean bill of health.
“The Government is encouraged by the efforts now being made by the industry to develop a single and credible regime of voluntary self-regulation. The industry has continually improved its disciplinary procedures over recent years, including through the greater use of independent figures of standing to consider and rule on possible breaches.”
John Grogan, Labour MP, comments:
“The Government’s response to the Public Administration Select Committee’s report on lobbying is rather weak and feeble. When Tom Watson was the minister responsible, before he stepped down from the Government in the summer, he appeared to be preparing a response which at the very least would have said that the public sector should only offer contracts to and deal with lobbyists who declared all their clients. The Government’s response to the report has been watered down to such an extent that I’m afraid Francis Maude and the Tories now have a more robust tone as regards lobbying than does the Government.”
Harriet Harman announced that they will go home for Christmas this year on December 16.
This is the earliest since 1979 when records begun.
Sir George Young says: “When Labour first came to power in 1997, we rose on December 22nd – but twelve years on, they’re depleted of leadership, devoid of ideas and desperate to escape for Christmas so they can avoid the scrutiny of Parliament. Our constituents will be working long after that date. After an 82 day summer recess, this is further evidence of a Government that has run out of steam.” The Tories will oppose it: the Government will table a motion on the Remaining Orders (on the Order Paper); if it is objected to – and the Conservative Party will object – then it will go to a vote, and we will vote against it. It’s unclear about when the Govt will table the motion.
According to Tory research, previous dates have been:
2008 – 18th Dec
2007 – 18th Dec
2006 – 19th Dec
2005 – 20th Dec
2004 – 21st Dec
2003 – 18th Dec
2002 – 19th Dec
2001 – 19th Dec
2000 – 21st Dec
1999 – 21st Dec
1998 – 17th Dec
1997 – 22nd Dec
1996 – 18th Dec
1995 – 20th Dec
1994 – 20th Dec
1993 – 17th Dec
1992 – 17th Dec
1991 – 20th Dec
1990 – 20th Dec
1989 – 21st Dec
1988 – 22nd Dec
1987 – 18th Dec
1986 – 19th Dec
1985 – 20th Dec
1984 – 21st Dec
1983 – 22nd Dec
1982 – 23rd Dec
1981 – 23rd Dec
1980 – 19th Dec
1979 – 21st Dec
[update - nailed by David Boothroyd
Who on earth got the idea that 'records began' in 1979? Records began in 1547. FWIW the 'new year break' has on occasion begun in August. Take 1901 as an example: Parliament last sat on 17 August 1901, and then not until 16 January 1902. The dates of Christmas recess in full, which the Tories won't tell you because it shows they don't have a point: 1979: 21 December - 14 January 1980 1980: 19 December - 12 January 1981 1981: 23 December - 18 January 1982 1982: 23 December - 17 January 1983 1983: 22 December - 16 January 1984 1984: 21 December - 9 January 1985 1985: 20 December - 13 January 1986 1986: 19 December - 12 January 1987 1987: 18 December - 11 January 1988 1988: 22 December - 10 January 1989 1989: 21 December - 8 January 1990 1990: 20 December - 14 January 1991 1991: 20 December - 9 January 1992 1992: 17 December - 11 January 1993 1993: 17 December - 10 January 1994 1994: 20 December - 9 January 1995 1995: 20 December - 9 January 1996 1996: 19 December - 13 January 1997 1997: 22 December - 12 January 1998 1998: 17 December - 11 January 1999 1999: 21 December - 10 January 2000 2000: 21 December - 8 January 2001 2001: 20 December - 8 January 2002 2002: 19 December - 6 January 2003 2003: 18 December - 5 January 2004 2004: 21 December - 10 January 2005 2005: 20 December - 9 January 2006 2006: 19 December - 8 January 2007 2007: 18 December - 7 January 2008 2008: 18 December - 12 January 2009 2009: 16 December - 5 January 2010]
Can't believe I didn't spot this before - and long after David Grossman and Guido.
Perhaps the reason the Standards and Privileges report let Jacqui Smith off scot free was because Sir George Young was absent, having been appointed to the Tory frontbench, and the session was chaired by Kevin Barron, a Labour tribalist.
Lord Rennard has been cleared of wrongly claiming his Eastbourne house is his "main home". See PA:
1 POLITICS Rennard
LIB DEM PEER CLEARED OF EXPENSES WRONGDOING
By Andrew Woodcock, Press Association Chief Political Correspondent
Former Liberal Democrat chief executive Lord Rennard was cleared of wrongdoing in relation to his expenses.
House of Lords authorities investigated the peer after receiving a complaint that he claimed £41,000 for staying overnight in London to attend Parliament when he owns a house just two miles from Westminster.
Lord Rennard announced in May that he was stepping down as the Lib Dems’ elections supremo, following press allegations that he spent little time at the Eastbourne flat which he designates his main address. He insisted at the time that his resignation was not due to the expenses row.
Clerk of the Parliaments Michael Pownall published a ruling yesterday in which he found that Lord Rennard’s claims for overnight subsistence allowance were “in accordance with the rules and guidance on Members’ expenses applicable at the time”.
He rejected allegations that Lord Rennard claimed overnight subsistence for days when he did not attend the Lords. And he did not uphold claims that the peer’s main home was in London.
Mr Pownall carries out initial investigations into allegations against peers and refers those where he suspects wrongdoing to the Lords Committee on Privileges.
In a letter setting out his findings, he said Lord Rennard had indicated that since buying the Eastbourne property after his wife’s retirement in 2007, he spent most of his time there when Parliament was not sitting. The peer’s claim forms also showed he travels to the East Sussex resort town “quite regularly” at weekends.
In view of the assurances by Lord Rennard about the change in his circumstances and the time he spends in Eastbourne, and in the absence of any definition of ’main address’ in the current guidance to the House of Lords’ Members Expenses Scheme, I have come to the conclusion that I should not uphold the complaint,” wrote Mr Pownall.
The Red Box
Sam Coates is Chief Political Correspondent for The Times, based in the Houses of Parliament. Red Box is a rolling insider guide to Westminster.
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