INSIDE: Caroline Flint writes to Eric Pickles over FoI refusal
29/10/2010, 12:21:08 PMINSIDE: Tom Watson’s anatomy of a Downing St spin day
29/10/2010, 12:05:43 PMYesterday, we were opaquely conned. Downing Street heralded a “forging ahead in the transparency agenda.” We were misled.
“This is the first time any government has proactively published information on special advisers’ gifts and hospitality. All this information is being published quarterly which will mean more regular and up to date information”, said Downing Street.
The rhetoric was soaring; the action was far more subterranean.
What actually happened was a cynical, but well executed spin exercise to kill the story and deflect attention on to the last Labour government – with Downing St spinners taking lobby journalists for patsies.
The statements were delayed – the first to be published was a statement on the cost of government cars for the last financial year of the Labour government. The next statement was not released for three hours.
Then the number 10 spin machine kicked into overdrive. The information about Labour special advisors for the last 12 months of the last Labour government was placed in the House of Commons library – great, transparent, easy to access. What about the statements on Tory and Lib Dem advisers, where were they? Well they were tucked away online, hidden from view, released in dribs and drabs.
PA led with the easy to find Labour information, comparing figures on the number of advisors. Cameron has reduced the number they say, or has he just moved the goal posts? How many lackeys from CCHQ have now found their way on to the civil service payroll?
GRASSROOTS: Another country, another campaign room: lessons from the US mid terms?
29/10/2010, 09:00:46 AMby Dave Roberts
I spent the spring working on Jim Knight’s valiant but ultimately doomed campaign to hold Dorset South for Labour. Then summer saw me on the Ed Balls leadership campaign. Equally valiant. Equally doomed. Now, with the US mid term elections only a few days away, I’ve taken flight from grey and damp Britain for the campaign trail in sunny South Florida. I am working in the area stretching along Florida’s south east coast from Fort Lauderdale northwards, where the incumbent Democratic Congressman, Ron Klein, is facing a huge challenge from former army Colonel and Tea Party favourite, Allen West.
I want to understand how the Democrats organise on the ground, and to see if there is anything that Labour could learn. Many in the UK have written about the Obama election. Yet few have looked at how the more humdrum mid-term elections are organised. In many ways, though, it is these elections – especially at a congressional district level – that have more in common with a British general election. These elections are numerous, local and personal. They are often contested against a backdrop of national issues and questions over the national leadership, for which the candidate has little or no responsibility, but will be held accountable. Read the rest of this entry »
UNBOUND: Friday News Review
29/10/2010, 08:34:17 AMBoris and Cameron at war, again
The two biggest beasts in the Tory jungle clashed yesterday over their own spending cuts. War broke out after Boris Johnson warned David Cameron he would not tolerate “Kosovo-style social cleansing” caused by axing housing benefits. The London mayor said: “The last thing we want is the less well-off pushed out to the suburbs. “I’ll emphatically resist any attempt to recreate a London where the rich and poor cannot live together. We will not see and we will not accept any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London. “On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots.” The extraordinarily provocative remarks echo the horrific “ethnic cleansing” of thousands of Albanians in the Balkan wars of the 90s. And they sent the Prime Minister – Mr Johnson’s old rival from Eton and Oxford – into a fury. – The Mirror
Boris Johnson provoked fury in Downing Street yesterday as he warned that Coalition reforms of housing benefit would lead to a ‘Kosovo-style social cleansing’ of the poor from city centres. The Tory London Mayor tore into ministers’ plans to cap housing benefit payments at £400 a week, insisting he would ‘emphatically resist any attempt to recreate a London where the rich and poor cannot live together’. ‘What we will not see and we will not accept [is] any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London. On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots,’ he declared on radio in the morning. – The Daily Mail
Make no mistake about it, Boris Johnson’s rhetorical assault on the coalition’s housing benefit plan is a direct challenge to David Cameron’s authority. The two best-known Conservatives in the country are now involved in a battle that only one of them can win. Boris told BBC London this morning: “What we will not see and we will not accept any kind of Kosovo-style social cleansing of London. “On my watch, you are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living and have put down roots.” What is infuriating the Tory machine is not only Boris’s criticisms, but the language that he is used—which makes Labour’s talk of social cleansing sound positively moderate. The mayor has clearly decided that he needs to be seen to be standing up for Londoners on this issue. I also suspect that he might have decided that there will have to be concessions to appease the Lib Dems and that he wants to be in a position to take credit for them. – The Spectator
HOME: Caption contest – Eric Pickles freedom of information special
28/10/2010, 03:06:19 PM
INSIDE: Tom Watson writes to Eric Pickles over FoI refusal
28/10/2010, 01:27:07 PMINSIDE: Tom Watson writes to Eric Pickles over FoI refusal
28/10/2010, 01:25:57 PMTom Watson MP
House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA
The Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP
Secretary of State
Communities and Local Government
Eland House
Bressenden Place
London
SW1E 5DU
28 October 2010
Dear Eric,
I refer to the story reported this morning on Labour Uncut and in the Local Government Chronicle about your refusal to comply with an extremely straightforward freedom of information request.
UNCUT: Labour’s secret weapon: an angry army of SDNVs
28/10/2010, 11:00:52 AMby Kevin Meagher
WE’VE all been there. You are out canvassing. You pass by that council estate or block of flats because hardly anyone there bothers to vote and precious few are even registered. Yet these are the same people to crowd the local MP’s surgery. Who rely on public services. The welfare state. The sort who benefit most from a Labour government.
But the arithmetic of politics is hard. If you don’t vote, you don’t count. And he who shouts loudest wins. That is why the poor are usually ignored. They do not pipe up. And there is not enough electoral mileage in putting their concerns centre stage.
But might this government’s attack on the welfare state have the perverse effect of politicising people at the bottom of the pile? After all, they are the ones losing out the most with regressive budgets, tabloid witch-hunts and their restoration as the undeserving poor. Read the rest of this entry »
INSIDE: Eric Pickles the ‘transparency champion’ refuses FoI request
28/10/2010, 07:59:59 AMEric Pickles talks about transparency. A lot. In fact it is one of his departments ‘watchwords’. He has been hailed as a transparency champion by the taxpayers’ alliance, and his efforts to make local government more transparent have gained support from some unlikely places.
But it seems Big E has one rule for councils and another for himself.
The Local Government Chronicle reports today that DCLG officials have refused to answer a freedom of information request about whether Mr Pickles took legal advice in the in the wake of adversely critical comments about the electoral commission chair, Jenny Watson. Ministers declined to renew her position as a board member of the audit commission in September.
A senior DCLG ‘source’ was quoted in The Times earlier this year saying that Jenny Watson had “built her career on incompetence”, “milked the taxpayer” and was “not fit for the role”. The Local Government Chronicle reports that following the publication of the comments Pickles sought internal legal advice as to whether the comments could be considered defamatory and whether there were grounds for legal action.
A source close to the department said that DCLG’s lawyers gave Pickles advice that the comments (which LGC says did not come from a departmental official or a press officer) could be considered defamatory. Pickles then allegedly sought external legal advice.
Pickles has previously talked about the vital importance of transparency, and stated that it is key to allowing the public to hold politicians to account saying:
People should be able to hold politicians and public bodies to account over how their hard earned cash is being spent and decisions made on their behalf. They can only do that effectively if they have the information they need at their fingertips.
But it appears the rules don’t apply to the man himself. DCLG officials have refused to answer the FoI, saying that they are “unable to either confirm nor deny” that it holds the information requested. However, guidance from the information commissioner on FoI requests says that departments have a duty to confirm or deny whether the information requested is held.
His department’s refusal stands in contrast with Pickles’ own campaign for transparency, in which he’s said:
Being open about how taxpayers’ money is spent will push central and local government into rooting out waste and duplication. That’s why we’re throwing open the shutters and bringing the full glare of the public’s eye onto spending. This new transparent era means a new way of thinking for councils but I’m showing them it’s possible by publishing more of my department’s spending online.
Come on, Eric. We thought this was the new transparent era? What have you got to hide? Who made the comments? And how much did legal advice about this gaffe cost the taxpayer?
UNBOUND: Thursday News Review
28/10/2010, 07:59:36 AMPMQs
MPs ask each other: “How’s Ed Miliband doing?” “Better than we expected,” says a worldly Tory. “So far I’ve not heard a single moan about him, though there is no Blair-like adoration either,” admits one Labour ex-minister. “He’s not doing spectacularly, but he’s certainly holding his own,” reports a nationalist. It could have been a bad moment for the new Labour leader. One month into the job, he faced his third session of PMQs with an advisory memo from party HQ (“mocking humour is particularly useful here“) leaked to the Times to embarrass him. Up to that point Miliband hadn’t actually read it properly, but privately told colleagues later that it was rather good. He duly held his own again against David Cameron, focusing on one policy theme (housing benefit cuts) and showing sufficient brevity and spontaneity – real or contrived – to persuade sceptical Labour colleagues they picked the right brother after all. Most think Miliband has won two out of three PMQs so far – not last week’s on the economy. Polished performer though he is, Cameron has sounded a bit rattled. Miliband’s voice still lacks weight. – The Guardian
Ed Miliband decided to preach to the converted at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He asked about housing benefit. And he won the debating-society points. He had better jokes, an old line about why he asks the questions (“the clue’s in the title”) and won on the substance. David Cameron replied to repeated questions about whether it was right to cut housing benefit by 10 per cent for people who have been out of work for a year by saying that it was fair to limit housing benefit claims to £20,000 a year. – The Independent
