“David Cameron is prepared to use special constitutional powers to ensure that plans for an EU referendum become law before the next election. … The Prime Minister has pledged to use the Parliament Act to overpower the House of Lords and get the EU Referendum Bill onto the statute book before 2015, it is understood. … The Act, which has been used only seven times in the past century, is sometimes described as the ‘nuclear’ option of parliamentary process to break stalemates between the Commons and the Lords.” – Daily Telegraph
“David Cameron is under massive pressure to use a crunch EU summit to tell Eurocrats that Brits want to call a halt to EU immigration. … Tory MPs said the PM must act after a bombshell YouGov poll for The Sun which showed Brits want him to win back control over our borders. … Clacton MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘The Prime Minister should listen to the views of the people.'” – The Sun (£)
“David Cameron will block any attempts to set up a Europe-wide defence force, Downing Street said last night. .. The issue is top of the agenda at an EU summit in Brussels today and tomorrow. … Among the proposals are the introduction of EU drones, as well as closer ties between member states on satellite communications and cyber defence.” – The Sun (£)
“On my visit to the Menin Gate on Thursday, I will be looking for the name of my great, great uncle. Capt John Geddes died in the second battle at Ypres in 1915 – the first of five members of my family to be killed in the First World War. Of course no one alive in my family today knew him. … Yet like many across Britain, I feel a strong connection with all the members of my family who gave their lives in the war. … This means a great deal to me and I want my children to feel the same way.” – David Cameron, Daily Telegraph
“Britain’s military will become a ‘hollow force’ with state of the art equipment but no one to operate it unless manpower budgets increase, the head of the Armed Forces has warned. … Gen Sir Nick Houghton, chief of the defence staff, said the Royal Navy was already ‘perilously close to its critical mass’ after cuts to the numbers of sailors.” – Daily Telegraph
> Today, by Justin Forsyth on Comment: Where children aren’t dreaming of a White Christmas
“More than 30 million people are in work for the first time in British history after a further fall in unemployment was revealed yesterday. … David Cameron claimed that the Government’s economic plan ‘is working’ as unemployment fell by 99,000 in the three months to October, reducing the jobless rate from 7.6 per cent to 7.4 per cent, the lowest level since 2009.” – Daily Mail “David Cameron has mocked the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, for being a ‘turkey’ after anonymous briefings against the latter by Labour sources.” – The Guardian
“No wonder the Prime Minister looks aghast. He is standing inside a squalid shed in the back garden of a suburban London house. … Yet yesterday it emerged that the shack, with one of its four walls missing and covered instead by a blue cotton sheet, is home to a number of Indian immigrants living illegally in Britain. … In total 14 people were living a three-bedroom home and the shack built in the garden.” – Daily Mail
“Maria Miller has slammed Labour for involving the lobby group Hacked Off in political negotiations on Press regulation, saying its presence had been a destructive force creating lasting damage. … She said: ‘I think it made some lasting damage. We had managed to get to a stage where we were on the verge of agreement. Some of the interventions over that weekend created a great deal of bad will.’” – Daily Mail
“The education secretary has unveiled a further £2.3bn in funding for new classrooms to head off a looming shortage of school places illustrated by forecasts released on Wednesday showing the numbers of primary-age pupils in Manchester, Bristol and parts of London will rise by more than a fifth in coming years. … In a statement to parliament, Michael Gove said the extra £2.3bn would enable councils to budget up to 2017, providing more stability and certainty for planners.” – The Guardian
“Councils could be banned from using the phrase ‘bedroom tax’ under moves to give Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, the power to veto contentious language in local authority newsletters, leaflets and online publicity, critics claimed on Wednesday night. … The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents 370 councils, said the moves posed a ‘real threat to local democracy’, potentially preventing councils from campaigning on HS2, cuts to services and hospital closures.” – The Independent
“Ministers have rejected calls to reinstate patients’ right to see their GP within 48 hours as a way of relieving the pressure on overcrowded A&E units. … The coalition scrapped the guarantee, introduced by Labour in 2000, as part of a scaling back of NHS targets soon after it took power in 2010.” – The Guardian
“A Downing Street inquiry into allegations against the cabinet minister Theresa Villiers has cleared her of wrongdoing over an undeclared lunch with a lobbyist while a transport minister. But the finding was denounced as a “complete and utter whitewash” by the Conservative MP Anne Main, who complained to No 10 after learning that the 2011 lunch included discussion of a controversial planning application by the developers Helioslough for a rail freight depot on green belt land in her St Albans constituency.” – The Guardian
“The Prime Minister has promised Tory MPs a vote on whether to join a second coalition after the next election, Graham Brady the chairman of the influential 1922 committee has said. … Mr Brady told Conservative Home that while he wanted the party to focus on winning a majority there was a need for “proper consultation” in the event of another coalition.” – Daily Telegraph
> Yesterday:
“If left-wing columnists really want to know who is endangering the welfare state they should look in the mirror. In the most competitive ever global environment it is simply unsustainable for five million British people to be on out-of-work benefits. Getting many more people into work is the only way we can save the welfare system for the people who will always need and deserve society’s help. We all must hope IDS can succeed.” – Tim Montgomerie, The Times (£)
“Employers could be banned from preventing staff on zero-hours contracts from working elsewhere as part of a crackdown on abuse of the controversial deals, Vince Cable will announce on Wednesday. … A government consultation on zero-hours contracts, designed to prevent misuse by employers, will seek views on whether legislation should be introduced to ban so-called ‘exclusivity clauses’.” – The Guardian
“Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, has won a surprise promotion to his first Government post. … He was appointed a minister of state in the Ministry of Justice, replacing Lord McNally, who is becoming the chairman of the Youth Justice Board.” – The Independent
> Yesterday on LeftWatch: First, Norman Baker. Now Simon Hughes.
“Ed Balls will on Thursday instruct colleagues to start identifying spending cuts in a “zero-based spending review” which he says will help a Labour government put Britain’s budget back into surplus. … The shadow chancellor insists that the exercise will be ‘tough’ and look at spending in every department, including the NHS, as he tries to counter Conservative claims that Labour lacks the discipline to eliminate the deficit.” – Financial Times
“Harriet Harman ‘went crazy’ at Douglas Alexander, Labour’s election chief, over his running of the party’s campaign and the role given to women, Labour sources have revealed. … The Labour deputy leader also attacked Mr Alexander over plans to limit the party’s efforts in the European elections next May, in the face of scant resources and the expectation of a poor performance.” – The Times (£)
“There is no glee to take, even for deficit hawks like myself, in the disastrous French experiment with plan B. It has inflicted the huge human cost of yet another downturn, yet more unemployment, and yet more debt on a country which could instead be on the road to recovery. … But there is a lesson to learn. When someone promises that you can get out of a serious debt problem by borrowing more, they are lying or they have been lied to.” – Mark Wallace, Comment is Free
“A report by MPs highlights the failure of HM Revenue and Customs to get more from firms such as Google and Amazon. … Allowing American internet giants to get away with paying little or nothing in the UK is ‘at odds with HMRC’s stance on pursuing tax debt from small and medium-sized businesses’, the report by the public accounts committee says.” – Daily Mail
“Research for the National Trust has found that 51 per cent of English authorities with green belt land were ‘likely or very likely’ to allocate it for development within the next five years. … More than half of the 147 local authorities that responded to the survey said they had brownfield sites available that could help meet housing targets, but developers did not see them as viable locations for projects.” – Daily Mail
“British spies were aware of the mistreatment and torture of up to 40 terrorist suspects in the aftermath of September 11, a report will reveal today. … An inquiry by High Court judge Sir Peter Gibson concludes that spy chiefs and politicians – including Jack Straw – have further questions to answer over what they knew about the CIA’s rendition of terror suspects.” – Daily Mail
“The stock market had a swift and clear reaction to the Federal Reserve’s decision to trim its stimulus efforts as stocks surged Wednesday. … The Federal Reserve announced today that it decided to reduce its stimulus efforts next month because the job market has shown steady improvement, opting to only buy $75billion in bonds as opposed to the scheduled $85billion.” – Daily Mail
> Yesterday, by Andrew Lilico on Comment: Bailing out the banks did not prevent a Depression
“I can’t say I’ve always had a deep longing to have a tattoo, but neither have I ever been vehemently against them, as some people are. … And I did have a henna one done for my 60th birthday. My husband, Michael, and I were on holiday in Zanzibar when a lovely lady approached us on the beach and asked whether I’d like one. … ‘Why not?’ I said. So she settled down right then and there and gave me an ornamental design on my shoulder. Michael, meanwhile, had a massage.” – Sandra Howard, wife of Michael Howard, writes in the Daily Mail