Live highlights from David Cameron's 8am event

8am, Mr Cameron is due to be talking about the economy but my guess is that he'll be questioned on a certain other matter!  Highlights (not verbatim) follow:

8.07am: Begins with joke about host Policy Exchange. It's not always my favourite think tank!  He welcomes Neil O'Brien as new Head of PX.

8.08am: Economy speech begins with concern about banks' behaviour towards small businesses.

8,09am: Labour doesn't attempt to address real recession, only recession in its poll rating. It focus is politics, not policies.

8.11am: The Government is being distracted from the most important task: "Monetary activism".

8.12am: Monetary activism means lower interest rates and better credit lines to business.  Four-out-of-ten businesses are reporting poorer access to credit.  It was not for this that the Conservatives supported bank recapitalisation.  It is now clear that recapitalisation is failing.

8.15am: Labour's cut in VAT is the wrong solution. It may even make the recovery more difficult.

8.17am: Conservatives believe that there should be a new and temporary National Loan Guarantee Scheme to underwrite billions of facilities to business and require a commercial insurance fee, in return, to protect the taxpayer.  France has just introduced a similar scheme.

8.19am: These measures have been welcomed by the CBI and Federation of Small Businesses.

8.22am: Closing line; "We must act now to save the real economy."

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS:

8.23am: Damian Green has done a good job as immigration spokesman and I intend for him to stay in post. We now need to find out how much ministers knew of yesterday's developments and whether ministers approve of MPs being treated in this way.

8.26am: Loans made under the NLGS would be more expensive than commercial loans because in addition to the interest rate there would be an insurance fee.

8.28am: In answer to my question he said that Oliver Letwin was NOT - as has been reported - conducting a review into government waste. George Osborne is doing an "excellent" job and he is responsible for the party's efforts to find economies.

8.30am ENDS

Tim Montgomerie

Comments

[Mark]

Any live video feed?

[Matt Wright]

Not on BBC at present.

[Bexley Tory]

Expected more on the arrest to be honest

[Letters From A Tory]

No doubt the BBC would rather keep Damian Green on the front pages than David Cameron trying to sort this country out.

[Raj]

Expected more on the arrest to be honest

I think he has said enough - for the moment. The treatment of one MP can't push the problems of the country into the background.

[London Tory]

The UK police are one of last unreconstructed and unproductive state monoliths in this country.

In 2010 I hope David Cameron's Government finishes the work that Mrs Thatcher and Ken Clarke started decades earlier, and basically smashes their entire, complacent and target driven structure to pieces.

[Patsy Sergeant]

London Tory @ 09.17 - It is this Labour government that has turned the 'police', the NHS, education, AND everything else into 'target driven structures' - THIS GOVERNMENT - and if they had their way they would turn our households and lives into 'target driven structures'!!!

[Ian Bennett]

I fear DC is showing familiar bluster.

The facts are these,a junior Official at the Home Office was suspended around 2 weeks ago on suspicion of stealing key information and data.He was arrested and questioned and bailed to reappear.

As part of that investigation it is clear that he may have mentioned or indicated that some of the material he stole was passed on to amongst others Damian Green.It would be STANDARD police practice therefore to question someone implicated in this way.

The Police have 2 options,ask someone to appear at a Police Station and when they arrive question them under caution or to arrest them without prior notice and to take them under arrest to a Police Station to be questioned.

The nature of an inquiry like this means a charge was never an option at this stage - hence Damian has been bailed to reappear - presumably after the Police conduct further enquiries and pass a file to the CPS.

If the original suspect has named a specific individual the Police are duty bound to follow it up-there is absolutely no need or requirement for them to get Governmental approval-it is unusual for them to alert Boris!

Attend a station under caution would have been the softly softly approach - they must have had reason to believe a more formal arrrest was a more suitable method in this case to ensure no facts or factual evidence was removed prior to their meeting with Damian Green

We have to hope and expect that at worst there is no action taken and that DG has received information from a source who has broken the law in obtaining it.

What we must be very careful of is that DC does not create a mountain out of a molehill - until ALL the facts are known.

[SG]

Ian Bennett @ 09:49: So it is "standard practice" to use anti-terror police to investigate someone accused of receiving stolen information?

[Ian Bennett]

SG - I did'nt say it was standard practice to use "anti terror police" - what I did say is that if someone is arrested for an offence as the mole was and in the course of the investigation he or she indicates they have passed on material to a third party I would expect the police to investigate.

I am suprised anti terror police were used - the only logical explanation is that some of the material the mole has leaked is considered prejudicial to the nations security.

I am neither condoning nor attacking the action at this stage - my point was we should WAIT AND SEE! - in the unlikely event something terribly wrong has been done DC is going to look pretty stupid....

And call me nieve and I know it happens all the time but - in business if I was to receive stolen material outlining the plans or concerns of my competitors then I would expect if caught to be prosecuted in line with common theft or industrial espionage law - MP's of all parties who set themselves up as some form of moral crusader are open to the fact that they have to be VERY careful where theyr are getting information from - and how it is obtained...

To say this happens all the time x,y,z has done it-its in some way democratic is imho HOGWASH!...

If the law is an ass the law is an ass but if the law says its wrong ITS WRONG!

[SG]

Ian Bennett - I would argue that there is a fundamental difference between commercial information - which is essentially private - and information held by public bodies. I don't think your business analogy can be valid in these circumstances.

[Matt Wright]

Ians analogy is false. MPs are elected to serve the public interest.

[rugfish]

Searching an MP's home and offices under suspicion an act of "terror" may have occurred is one thing, but there can surely be no grounds for that and therefore the use of "terror cops" is way out of order.

If instead, two CID officers had turned up on his doorstep asking "would you mind if we searched your premises under our 'normal' investigatory procedures, and were able to gain a warrant if refused, then that is plainly different to ARRESTING the man whilst they 'sought' evidence.

Clearly the police have abused his 'normal rights' to be considered innocent by invoking a ridiculous terror law against him.

It is akin to looking for non-existent weapons of mass destruction, finding nothing there and still holding the guy guilty.

The bloke who ordered this should be sacked and the Minister at Home Office should be subject to scrutiny by parliament.

[Paul Marks]

"Cheaper money" or "easy credit" as a way of dealing with economic problems is one of the oldest economic fallacies - going back to John Law in the early 1700's (and indeed before him).

However, I do not blame Mr Cameron (not that he would be interested if a nobody like myself blamed him or not) for falling into this fallacy. After all it was he was taught at Oxford (and would have been taught at any other university in this country - bar Buckingham) and he would not have got a First if he had not taken note of what he was taught.

As for the state of the country:

Modern Britain (like so many nations now) considers it quite normal for private business enterprises to borrow money even to pay normal business expenses - such as meeting payroll.

It is difficult to stress too much what a bad state of affairs this is.

[Patsy Sergeant]

Ian Bennett - the 'police' or even terror police do not decide if a person, even an MP, is guilty of an offence, neither do they normally (at least supposedly,) go and take an innocent (until proved guilty by a jury!!!!) person and incarcerate them for nine hours, and question them - UNLESS they are a threat to national security!

AND, strictly speaking, until now, that is, no MP has shown himself to be 'a threat to national security', sufficient to be arrested with NO warning and questioned for NINE hours. AND, I do NOT think that even this sometimes morally questionable government, can state or demonstrate that Damian Green is a threat to National Security?????!!!!!!