“The British prime minister will on Friday throw his weight behind a drive to capitalise on the small but growing trend of “reshoring”, the return of production to the UK from overseas. David Cameron, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, will announce the creation of a government advisory service to help companies that want to reshore” – Financial Times
>Yesterday: Stuart Coster on Comment: The EU referendum bill – dodgy arguments from devious peers
‘Last year take-home pay grew faster than inflation for every group of earners except the top 10 per cent. For those in the middle, squeezed by the great recession, take home pay rose by 4 percent. The top tenth were the only group who saw their take home pay grow by less than prices. So the bottom 90 per cent of earners saw the wages they took home rise faster than consumer inflation last year. The geography is interesting too. Take-home pay has grown fastest in the North and Midlands.’ – Matt Hancock MP, The Times (£)
“Mark Carney, Bank of England governor, has signalled that his policy of linking interest rates to the unemployment rate will be buried less than six months after its birth. He said the British economy was ‘in a different place’ from last summer. Mr Carney flagged the U-turn at the World Economic Forum in Davos, letting the news emerge in a series of television interviews” – Financial Times
>Yesterday: ToryDiary: The question about forward guidance is this: how long can Carney stand the embarrassment?
“The pressure on David Cameron to allow hundreds of Syrian refugees to come to Britain is increasing, with 55 members of the House of Lords urging him to sign up to a United Nations programme. In an open letter…a cross-party alliance of peers urges the Prime Minister to ‘heed the call’ for Britain to accept its share of Syria’s most vulnerable refugees” – Independent
>Yesterday: Tom Tugendhat on Comment: If Ban Ki-moon wants peace in Syria, he should remove all the other countries from these talks
“The league tables, published today, show that the changes we have made to the education system are starting to work. The figures show that almost 250,000 fewer children are now being taught in underperforming secondary schools compared to when this government came to office. Unlike previous improvements, this has been achieved at a time when grade inflation has been checked and pass rates at GCSE have stabilized” – Michael Gove, Daily Telegraph
“Iain Duncan Smith has said that the Tories need to stop their ‘finger-wagging’ and be more positive about what they stand for. The Work and Pensions Secretary went on to say he agreed with Treasury minister Nicky Morgan who has argued that the Conservatives should be less ‘hateful’ and more ‘aspirational’ when speaking to voters. And he insisted his benefits cuts were not about bashing the poor, but prompting a ‘positive life change’” – Daily Mail
>Yesterday: WATCH: “Our welfare system has become distorted,” says IDS
“I carry no flag for the Green party. It is the Ukip of the left, pawn of the tycoons of Big Renewables. But it runs a minority administration in Brighton, and wants to hold a ballot on a council tax rise of 4.75 per cent… Someone, somewhere, must stand up to the bullying, hectoring hypocrisy of Cameron’s ‘localism’ act and his henchman, Pickles, in full ‘screw democracy’ mode” – Simon Jenkins, Guardian
“Pensioners with cancer are being written off as too old to treat, campaigners said yesterday. They cited figures showing survival rates for British patients aged 75 and over are among the worst in Europe. Young lung cancer sufferers are only 10 per cent more likely to die within five years than their continental counterparts. But pensioners with the disease have 44 per cent less chance of survival” – Daily Mail
“The number of married couples with children has reached a record low, official figures show. There are around four million such families, census data for the whole of the UK shows. That is 15.2 per cent of families, or 300,000 fewer than a decade ago” – Daily Mail
“Boris Johnson has agreed to put £30m towards construction of a garden bridge across the Thames, sparking criticism that the public money would be better spent on conventional river crossings east of Tower Bridge. Transport for London…confirmed this week that it would put £30m towards the £150m estimated cost” – Financial Times
“A Liberal Democrat council will go to court today in an attempt to suppress a report detailing allegations of sexual misconduct against an MP. Mike Hancock was suspended by the Lib Dems yesterday, but there was evidence that the party had been warned years ago about the MP’s alleged advances towards a vulnerable constituent” – The Times (£)
“Nigel Farage has said that he will not commit UKIP to any policies until after the European elections in May. During a blundering television interview…he disowned past party pledges, including a flat tax, compulsory uniforms for taxi drivers, repainting British trains in ‘traditional’ colours and regular deployment of the Army on the streets” – The Times (£)
>Today:
>Yesterday:
“Labour scored a thumping victory in the Cowdenbeath by-election early today, easily defending the Fife seat held by the late Helen Eadie with an 11% swing from the SNP. They claimed the scale of the victory dealt a serious blow to the Nationalists’ cause in the first major contest of a momentous political year which builds towards the independence referendum in September” – Glasgow Herald