David Cameron faces more opposition to pensioner perks. For once, let’s hope he gives in

By Peter Hoskin
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We don’t normally start ToryDiary posts by highlighting the words of a Labour frontbencher. That stuff’s generally reserved for LeftWatch. But there was a fairly striking moment in Harriet Harman’s Today Programme interview earlier – and it probably caught the ears of No.10, too.

It was her admission that Labour will review their policy on pensioner benefits ahead of the next election. Ed Miliband, you’ll remember, said last week that the current set-up, by which wealthy pensioners receive benefits such as Winter Fuel Allowance and free TV licences, “needs to be looked at” – before his party’s spokespeople swarmed out to reassure folk that no decisions had yet been made, that their leader didn’t like the idea of means-testing, etc, etc. But, listening to Mrs Harman, it seems as though something really is afoot. “You always have to look at everything,” is how she put it, “to make sure the provision is right for the income distribution at the time.”  

As the Telegraph’s Benedict Brogan suggests, there could be a strong dose of politics in Mrs Harman’s remarks. She’ll know that the Lib Dems are opposed to these universal benefits, and that – as Nick Clegg implied yesterday – it’s likely to be one of the sorest points of intra-Coalition discussion ahead of this summer’s Spending Review. Perhaps Labour are hoping to line up with the Lib Dems against the Tories, in this case.

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Cameron lowers the Downing Street drawbridge and invites new voices into his bunker

By Tim Montgomerie
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Is David Cameron finally getting his machine into shape? There are signs that he might be.

There has been the skilful and sensitive management of the sad death of Margaret Thatcher. The PM has used the period to reconnect with some of his MPs - dining with key Thatcherites and writing handwritten notes to every one of his colleagues who spoke in the Commons debate to mark her death. He was at Tuesday night's launch of Charles Moore's biography of the Iron Lady, meeting and talking with key members of her Cabinets.

Overnight he did two things that I've long recommended: (1) He set up a policy unit of Tory MPs and (2) he rehabilitated... Some of the new members of his policy unit are people who have rebelled against his authority, notably Jesse Norman and Peter Lilley. Yesterday the Downing Street drawbridge came down. Light was let into the Number 10 bunker and new thinking was invited into the Prime Minister's operation.

Jo Johnson is an able enough individual but it is regrettable that yet another Old Etonian occupies yet another key position at the heart of the party. Overall, however, we're seeing a Prime Minister who is finally getting serious about party management. Many people are correctly crediting Lynton Crosby with improvements to the operation, but the real driving force of better personnel relations is John Hayes MP – appointed as the PM's parliamentary adviser a few days before Lady Thatcher's death.

While the PM is in a forgiving and healing mood he should warn uber-loyalist colleagues to end their briefing against Theresa May. He should also restore the whip to Nadine Dorries. The whips want this to happen but Numbers 10 and 11 are resisting.

Will the press feel that it can ever rely on Cameron again?

                                                    Graphic above from today's Daily Mail

By Paul Goodman
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Towards the end of last week, David Cameron broke off talks with Nick Clegg and David Miliband over press regulation.  Over the weekend, he resumed them.  Yesterday, he joined the two other party leaders to propose a scheme to the Commons.  There are only two ways of intepreting his actions.  The first is that the Prime Minister always intended to cut a deal with Clegg and Miliband, that his main aim throughout the talks has been to avoid defeat in the Commons, and that his ending of them was a gambit which sought to squeeze as many concessions out of them as possible.  The second is that he braced himself to go down to defeat last week, exasperated by Clegg and Miliband's behaviour, but changed his mind over the weekend.

He had reasons to take either course.  Sticking to his guns and going down to defeat in the Commons could have won him the praise of the centre-right papers, and of the part of his party that has always been uneasy about statutory regulation.  However, there was a risk that any goodwill won from those papers would be short-lived, and that being beaten in the lobbies would have weakened his position further.  Restarting the talks and agreeing a deal instead has avoided that Commons defeat - a mere fourteen Conservative MPs rebelled - and enabled Mr Cameron to claim, truthfully enough, that the regulation he agreed with Clegg and Miliband was less restrictive than that they'd have proposed (and seen passed) if left to their own devices.

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Cameron risks the revenge of "the elderly of the earth"

By Paul Goodman
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Not so long ago, people were both more free and more orderly.  For example, there were no race relations laws: you could say what you liked about ethnic minorities (as they usually weren't called then).  The English always drank: "He gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can be filled".  But - again by way of example - fewer illegal drugs were available, so the policing and health and social costs of substance abuse were far lower.  And since there was no internet, it followed that there was no online porn.  Although the churches were emptying, Christianity was woven deep into the nation's culture, like the threads on the Bayeaux Tapestry.

Today, people are less free but more disorderly, or at least more diverse.  You must watch what you say about ethnic minorities or gay people.  But illegal drugs, once consumed only by the elites, are available to the masses. And you can say pretty much what you like about Christians, or at least people with socially conservative views.  (Though Nick Clegg thought it prudent to claim that he doesn't believe that those who oppose same-sex marriage are "bigots).  Where once the presence of the Church of England floated like some universal fog, today there lumbers health and safety...or the European Union.

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Jeremy Hunt aims to be angrier than any voter at NHS failures

By Tim Montgomerie
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I suspect there would be little argument with the proposition that George Osborne is the most important member of David Cameron's ministerial team but who has the second most important job? You could argue it was IDS. He's making landmark reforms to welfare and is responsible for delivering the biggest cuts of the deficit reduction programme. There is an argument for Michael Gove because of the scale and reach of his education reforms. Or what about Theresa May? She is responsible for flagship immigration, police commissioner and security policies. My argument, however, would be that Jeremy Hunt can probably claim to have the second most important and difficult job in the current government.

The first reason is that he leads the NHS at a time when it faces the most difficult financial settlement in its history. Throughout nearly all of its life it has received inflation-busting increases in its budget. Those increases have helped it to keep pace with the cost of caring for Britain's ageing population, the growth of lifestyle-related diseases and the higher-than-average rising costs of new drugs and other medical technologies. During this period of austerity the NHS is going to have to cope with inflation-only increases in its resource allocation. Not for one or two years but for perhaps five or six. It will only cope if it makes unprecedented economies including the amalgamation of certain facilities and greater specialisation. A report in today's FT (£) underlines the scale of the task. Reporter Chris Cook notes that the Nuffield Trust believes that "Britain’s ageing population, salary pressures and drug price rises could cost the NHS a further £34bn by the start of the next decade".

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Has Tory support of Leveson-style regulation softened?

By Matthew Barrett
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The Sunday Telegraph were able to reach about half of the 42 MPs, and say that several now back the Prime Minister. This might well indicate a less bruising time for Mr Cameron as he attempts to debate and pass legislation on the press in 2013.

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Ding dong! The report is dead. Report is dead. Report is dead. Ding dong! The wicked report is dead...

By Paul Goodman
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...That, at any rate, is pretty much the unanimous verdict of Fleet Street this morning.  And it is hard to see why it should be wrong, at least as far as statutory regulation is concerned.

After all, statutory regulation needs a statute.  Which means that the Government would have to introduce one.

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Boris points in all directions at once

By Tim Montgomerie
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Boris has been in India but he's also been displaying some topsy turvy positioning.

The last three days have not been Boris Johnson's finest. First came his flip flop on an In/Out referendum. Earlier this year - ahead of his re-election bid - he signed the People's Pledge and its call for a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. On Sunday he appeared to back-track. I've sought clarification from team Boris but received none.

On Monday he questioned Theresa May's immigration policies even though her clampdown on student numbers is essential to meeting the Tory manifesto commitment to bring net immigration to under 100,000. Few of the government's policies are more popular or more essential to ensure working class Britons are protected from low-skilled immigration. There is certainly a case for Britain's immigration procedures to be less bureaucratic but it is also a fact that last year's Home Office quota for higher skilled immigrants was not filled. Don't therefore believe stories about top firms being denied the talented people they need.

Yesterday Boris Johnson made his third wrong turn. For the last few days the arts establishment has been up in arms about government cuts. Rather than standing with the Government Boris has sided with the luvvies. In London's Evening Standard he warned about the danger off "choking off" creative and cultural London. "One of the key reasons that people come to London is for its arts and culture," he said, continuing: "Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”

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If anyone believes that it can be business as usual in Fleet Street, there's shurely shome mishtake

By Paul Goodman
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Four MPs went to prison after the expenses scandal.  Voters would not have put up for a moment with self-regulation continuing for the rest.  Journalists will surely go to jail, too, in the wake of Hackgate.  But some seem to believe that Fleet Street can eventually return to business as usual.  As one its greatest-ever operators used to say: shurely shome mishtake.

Now I'm not claiming that the Commons and newspapers, or that MPs and journalists, are horses of the same colour - having first been one and now being the other, I appreciate that they're not.  MPs are public servants and responsible to their constituents.  Furthermore, they are, increasingly, financed by them, and by the taxpayer more broadly.  Newspapers are private businesses, accountable not to voters - or even their readers - but to their owners and shareholders.  Furthermore, MPs are charged with running the country, while even the mightiest Editor is not (though there are always some who believe otherwise, at least from time to time).

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Cameron will not agree to statutory regulation of the press when Leveson reports next week

By Matthew Barrett
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The Leveson Inquiry reports next week, and the Prime Minister's response has, understandably, been of keen interest to those in Westminster and on Fleet Street. This morning's newspapers will please those in Fleet Street: the Prime Minister is apparently of a mind to reject the prospect of statutory regulation of the press, which Lord Justice Leveson is widely expected to recommend.

The Prime Minister will instead favour some level of tighter regulation to make the press more responsible. The leading proposal that protects the independence of the press while enforcing higher standards is that of Lord Hunt, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, and Lord Black, of the Telegraph Media Group. Their proposal, which has been found acceptable by all newspapers, would establish an independent regulator able to administer heavy fines.

The Independent on Sunday suggests another proposal for compromise would be the introduction of statutory regulation but with a "sunset clause" in the Bill that Parliament would consider, meaning that the legislation would have to be renewed by fresh parliamentary consent and would expire if deemed to be a failure. If this proposal were to be explored, the timing of the "sunset" period would be of particular interest to anti-statutory-regulators, since not all parties are as committed to press freedom, and whoever wins a majority at the next election could decide the permanent fate of any such Bill.

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