“If we abandon our green commitments, it is our children and grandchildren who will pay the price. This Coalition Government has never pursued quick fixes today when they’ll hurt people tomorrow — and we’re not going to start now. So we are going to stick to these commitments but we are not going to ask you to pay for all of them through your bills.” – David Cameron and Nick Clegg, The Sun on Sunday (£)
>Today:
“David Cameron will today try to bring an end to weeks of wrangling over energy prices by promising handouts of £1,000 to new home-buyers…The £1,000 grant, which is to pay for ‘energy saving measures’, is a sop to Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, who resisted moves to axe the levies.” – Mail on Sunday
“BRITAIN’S growth rate has doubled and will improve again next year, official forecasts published with the autumn statement this week will say — but George Osborne will reject calls to ease austerity. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the fiscal watchdog, will make its biggest upgrade to Britain’s prospects for three years, saying growth has jumped from the 0.6% forecast in March to about 1.4%.” – Sunday Times (£)
“Middle-class Peter should not be robbed to pay working-class Paul. While the income tax collected from the basic rate has fallen ten per cent under the Coalition, the amount collected from the higher rate is up by a third. Anyone earning £20,000 a year has felt a rising tax burden.” – Dominic Raab MP, Mail on Sunday
“We must take back control over our immigration laws from unelected EU officials and foreign judges. We need our borders under the control of British Ministers, answerable to British laws, made by your democratically elected Parliament and adjudicated by British judges. That’s what democracy means: the right to make or unmake your own laws. King Canute was in fact a wise King. He wanted to demonstrate his power was limited. I trust David is wise too.” – Bernard Jenkin, Mail on Sunday
>Today: ToryDiary: Uber-modernisation is dead – but that must not mean a return to old, losing positions
“The former Tory minister Tim Yeo has been deselected by his constituency party despite being cleared of breaking parliamentary lobbying rules by an official inquiry of fellow MPs…The move came days after the House of Commons standards committee had cleared him of breaking rules and had attacked two stories about him in The Sunday Times.” – Sunday Times (£)
>Yesterday: MPsETC: Yeo, deselection, Select Committee chairmanships – and money
“In a radical proposal, the management of the 440 historical sites will be split into an independent charitable trust that will keep the name English Heritage. The body aims to be self-funded by 2023, saying charitable status would allow it more freedom than state-run organisations to raise and invest capital and attract other funding, while benefitting from the tax breaks the status brings. The rest of the operation will remain with the Government and is likely to take on the name “Historic England”.” – Independent on Sunday
“Unmarried couples account for more than half of all family breakdowns, even though they make up only one fifth of all couples with children. They are four times as likely to break up as married couples, with alarming implications for the wellbeing of their children, according to new research.” – Sunday Times (£)
“The son of a British corporate investigator held for more than five months in China has appealed to David Cameron to take up the case when he meets the country’s new generation of leaders in Beijing this week. It is the first opportunity for the prime minister to assess the changes in China after a key Communist party meeting last month that set out big economic reforms, pledged to keep the party in power and sounded a note of nationalist pride.” – Sunday Times (£)
“Another manifesto pledge to spend 0.7% of Britain’s gross national income will infuriate Tory rightwingers, who think the money would be better spent at home. However, Greening is adamant that the £10.5bn annual budget at the Department for International Development (DfID) is transforming lives.” – Sunday Times (£)
“The campaign to tear Scotland out of the United Kingdom has failed to gain any ground despite the launch of the Scottish National Party’s long-awaited prospectus for independence. An exclusive poll of more than 1100 Scots for The Mail on Sunday has revealed that only 27 per cent of voters plan to vote yes in next year’s referendum, while 56 per cent intend to vote no and 17 per cent still don’t know how they will vote.” – Mail on Sunday
“A brain-damaged father who was left to lay in urine-soaked sheets and covered in faeces in a NHS hospital in an ‘appalling’ case of neglect that was secretly filmed by his family. Grant Clarke’s wife Binny used a camera hidden in an iPod connector to record what happened while she was not there after he said he was being mistreated by carers.” – Mail on Sunday