PMQs live blog
Fraser Nelson 11:46amHarman v. Hague with Fraser Nelson from noon:
12:00 I’m still cross with William Hague for pitching up at that
12:05 Hague back again on Chapter 11, this time with FSB backing “would save thousands of jobs from going under”.
“Nor should he write our economy off” – Harman has obviously been briefed this line by No10 as a catch-all when Tories attack.
12:07 Moves on from insolvency to pensioners forced to buy annuity. Aye, the voting power of the grey electorate. This may be smarter territory if the annuities issue blows up.
12:10 Actually, Harman is using Brown jargon – meaningless guff. I hate to say it, but it sounds better coming from him. Harman is not nearly as accomplished a confidence trickster.
12:12 “We look forward to the action, Mr Speker” – Labour MPs moan, and rightly. You can say many things about the last few days, but there has been plenty action.
12:14 Darling shakes his head when Hague says nationalised banks can lend at 2007 levels. I have some inside info on this.
12:16 My God, Harman should be drawn back to the House to apologise – she repeated the Bronwie that debt went from 43% to 37%. There is no debt measure that says so. The ONS ruled in Feb that NR has to go on the accounts so it is 43.3%.
12:18 Hague finally on good form - boom and bust pledge “one of the most foolish, hubristic and irresponsible claims ever made by a UK prime minister.” Harman bleats on about not writing Britain off and meekly describes Brown as “man with a plan.”
12:20 Cable – seems to go on a Keynesian argument that the government shouldn’t be rationalising public sector staff in a downturn. Harman bleats on about 600,000 vacancies in the economy – as if that counteracts the soaring unemployment. That defence wont last long.
12:23 Cable has a good point on interest rates, and he looked genuinely angry as he delivered it. There is a good case to look again at BoE “independence” model – the last ten years led us to a horrible monetary explosion which fuelled the Brown boom. Its that kind of “out of the box” thinking I’d like to see the Tories do more of.
12:24 Now on to the Icelandic mess - 100% protection for charities who have money there. I wonder if she’d have frozen the assets if it had been the Bank of Texas doing all that cheap lending…
12:26 Labour backbenchers have not yet demanded that banks give away money to people with low credit ratings. Plenty of time for that, though.
12: 29 Crispin Blunt brings up Equitable Life.
Harman says that it is wrong to say Brown responsible for banking crisis when its origins were global. Well maybe he is because he drew up the regulation system that failed to spot we had the most over-extended banks outside of Iceland?
12: 30 Philip Davies (Con, Shipley) nails it – Brown’s tripartite system failed. Will the government take any responsibility? Harman goes back to her notes. “I do not think the crisis is the responsibility of the one million extra homeowners” (Brown used to say 1.8 million). And no, that’s not what he was suggesting. Please, Tories, keep going on this.
Jim Devine asks how many will benefit from minimum wage increase, and bashes the SNP (by-election coming up, anyone?) Harman said 90,000 people in Scotland would benefit. Tiny. That’s about the number on benefits in Glasgow.
Plaid’s Adam Price says Harman apologised for Iraq – why not the economy? Because Brown doesn’t do sorry. Harman reads out the answer she had been given on Iraq and withdrawal. The question was about economics.
Tom Levitt (Lab, High Peak) asks for assurance that target of abolishing child poverty by 2020 will remain in place. Yes, says Harman. We will have to sit back and watch poverty come back with a vengeance – social dislocation will be just one of the prices we may pay for the economic tsunami that is about to strike.
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Comments
TrevorsDen
October 15th, 2008 12:05pmWheres macavity
Kevyn Bodman
October 15th, 2008 12:11pmFraser,
You were put right on this on these pages last week.
Now, why haven't you ripped into Lord West for his gross misjudgment in the Lords last night 'revealing' (or claiming)that there is a complex terrorist plot that is being monitored.
I came here today expecting the noble Lord to have been shredded.
Get on with it.
Dalesman
October 15th, 2008 12:17pmHarman said, "we'll do whatever it takes" four times in that opening skirmish.
Dalesman
October 15th, 2008 12:19pmHarman said,"We will do whatever it takes" four times during the opening skirmish.
She didn't answer the question on banks lending at 2007 levels.
Dalesman
October 15th, 2008 12:26pmHarman said, "we will do whatever is necessary" 4 times in the opening skirmish.
She never answered the question on banks lending at 2007 levels.
Fraser Nelson
October 15th, 2008 12:36pmKevyn, James and I discussed this yesterday but I reckoned after Lord West's claim to be "only a simple sailor" he destroyed any claim he may have had to take Lord West seriously.
Dalesman
October 15th, 2008 12:47pmHarman was floundering for most of the time. Hague and Cable both much better.
Harriet uttering Browns words, such as, "don't talk down our economy" just didn't work. She was awful.
Nicholas
October 15th, 2008 1:19pmHarmthenation's response to the question about Bomber Command (from a Labour MP too) was interesting and instructive. She did not give her personal support to the memorial, as requested, but answered the question equivocally and in a way that was more a general and slight acknowledgement of the sacrifice of all servicemen and women rather than specific to RAF Bomber Command (which was the point of the question).
On DP McNulty memorably pleaded that although he had been known to re-written history in a 1984 sense he was not doing so on this occasion. Ah, the rare truth from the habitual liar to be prized more.
I notice also that the latest Labour propaganda response to any criticism of their 11 year record and its impact on the country is to label that as "unpatriotic" as though running Britain down. Pure East German. We are all good patriots who love our country and the party - any criticism of the state of the nation is criticism of our Glorious Leader and is therefore counter-revolutionary.
How is it we let these conniving, cunning, disingenuous Marxist/Nazi mutants run our country?
mitch
October 15th, 2008 1:22pmFraser, Lord West may be simple, but he's also the security minister and presumably knows about these things. Either what he said is true or it isn't. If it isn't he would've been sacked.
Lucy
October 15th, 2008 1:24pmYes, Philip Davies'question is spot on. Osborne should already have been all over the media stressing the woeful tripartite financial governance over and over again, along with all the other amateur, short-termist, ill-conceived implementations that have been the architecture of the onsetting recession.
Tiberius
October 15th, 2008 1:26pmNicholas: "we" don't.
Chuck Unsworth
October 15th, 2008 2:04pm@ Mitch
Such charming naivety. Matched only by that of 'simple sailor' Lord West.
'Presumably knows about these things'? I wouldn't presume any such thing.
'If it isn't he would've been sacked'. Has this government ever sacked anyone? Name any Minister that has actually been sacked in the past decade.
jon
October 15th, 2008 2:21pmIf average wages decline during the coming recession then there will be less families earning or claiming benefits 60% of the average. Child poverty is solved!
TrevorsDen
October 15th, 2008 2:52pmIt took a statistician to unpick ythe lies about global warming and the doom sayers 'hockey stick' scenario.
I think it will need the same statistical forensic activity to debunk and debug Brown and his smoke and mirrors twisting and turning.
anthony a
October 15th, 2008 3:36pmwasn't harriet harman herself sacked in the first blair reshuffle? - struggling to name anyone since tho
Fergus Pickering
October 15th, 2008 6:12pmFrank Field was sacked, wasn't he? They then put it about that he was useless. He was the deputy to Harriet Harman but he never ran anything past her because he thought she was thick.
Phil
October 15th, 2008 7:23pmMy wife has an Equitable pension She is close to retirement and unfortunately has no gold plated MP and minister's or for that matter final salary public sector pension. So we were interested in hearing Harman's response to not just one but two questions specifically asking whether in light of bailing out bank depositors would the government compensate Equitable policy holders.
What a wasted space that woman is, she completely fudged the questions.
Chuck Unsworth
October 15th, 2008 7:41pmIs there no difference between resignation and being sacked?
There certainly is in the echelons lower down the feeding chain. You know, things like redundancy payments, references, periods of notice and all that other stuff.