Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen
Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy (pictured, left) has put out a statement in response to the MoD announcement on the cost of the Libya operations:
This is an important announcement by the government. Thanks to pressure from the opposition, ministers have now published figures revealing that the costs of the operation in Libya are higher than originally estimated.
We back the Nato-led operation and continue to offer the government our support wherever possible. Where the UK can it is right we take action to protect innocent civilians.
We support enforcing the mandate of UN resolution 1973, and we will also scrutinise Government action.
We want the Government to be clearer on what stresses and strains operations in Libya are making on the core defence budget, and whether our standing commitments are or will be affected by the ongoing conflict. In particular we will ensure the Government keeps to their guarantees that the mission in Afghanistan will not be affected. That is absolutely vital.
Following the concerns of the Service Chiefs, we also need to know what contingency plans are being made to ensure that our armed forces are sufficiently equipped and that the conflict is sustainable beyond September.
Being clear on the endgame – how and when our forces will return home – must be the Government's priority.
Hello. It's Lewis Williamson taking over the blog for the afternoon. Liam Fox has now confirmed that military action in Libya has so far cost the UK £260m. In a written statement to MPs, Fox said the projected cost of the six-month, Nato-led campaign was "in the region of £120m". Another £140m would have to be spent replacing missiles and other munitions if the mission continued at the same rate, he told MPs. "The Treasury has agreed to meet these costs from the reserve," he added.
Here's an early lunchtime summary.
• David Cameron has welcomed Barack Obama's announcement that the US will withdraw about a third of its forces from Afghanistan next year. "I have already said there will be no UK troops in combat roles in Afghanistan by 2015 and, where conditions on the ground allow, it is right that we bring troops home sooner," Cameron said. But James Arbuthnot, the Tory chairman of the Commons defence committee, said Obama was taking a gamble. "It is a gamble because White House officials have made quite clear that General Petraeus [the commander of US forces in Afghanistan] does not endorse this," Arbuthnot said. "David Cameron is right in saying that the surge has had a beneficial effect. The risk is whether it is being reduced too soon. There is a risk that if this surge, and the benefits it has produced, proves to be reversible and fragile, then we might begin to allow the Taliban or al Qaida to regroup."
• Liam Fox, the defence secretary, has said that the need to use expensive weaponry to minimise the prospect of civilian casualties partly explains the high cost of the war in Libya. The Ministry of Defence will put out a statement later which is expected to say that the Libyan operation has already cost more than £200m. Labour's Jim Murphy said the government should be "clearer on what stresses and strains operations in Libya are making on the core defence budget, and whether our standing commitments are or will be affected by the ongoing conflict".
• The Department of Energy and Climate Change has confirmed that eight sites which have been approved as suitable for new nuclear power stations by 2025. (See 11.16am.)
• Labour has urged the government to abandon its plans to close more than half of the UK's coastguard stations. Maria Eagles, the shadow transport secretary, said ministers should listen to the concerns raised in a report today from the Commons transport committee. "The Tory-led government should finally listen to coastguards up and down the country and abandon their dangerous and reckless plan to close more than half of Britain's coastguard stations," she said. "The cross-party transport select committee is clear that these plans will jeopardise safety along Britain's coastline and Ministers must now think again."
I'm off now to give a talk. My colleague Lewis Williamson will be taking over for the afternoon.
The MoD won't be putting its statement about the cost of the Libyan operation until 2pm, but Liam Fox, the defence secretary (left), has already been talking about it. He said that that when people saw the figure - £250m, reportedly - they would "have to take into account that we have used more expensive precision weaponry so that we minimise civilian casualties in Libya". He went on:
If we are going to fight operations in the future based on minimising civilian casualties there is clearly a financial price to pay. But I think that that shows that we are on the moral high ground and that we place a higher value on human life that the Gaddafi regime does.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change has named eight sites which have been approved as suitable for new nuclear power stations by 2025. The sites, which are all adjacent to existing nuclear plants, are: Bradwell, Essex; Hartlepool; Heysham, Lancashire; Hinkley Point, Somerset; Oldbury, South Gloucestershire; Sellafield, Cumbria; Sizewell, Suffolk; and Wylfa, Anglesey.
There are more details in an announcement saying the government has finalised its energy national policy statements. Charles Hendry, the energy minister, says these statements should give "certainty" to the nuclear industry.
Industry needs as much certainty as possible to make such big investments. These plans set out our energy need to help guide the planning process, so that if acceptable proposals come forward in appropriate places, they will not face unnecessary hold-ups.The coalition government is determined to make the UK a truly attractive market for investors, to give us secure, affordable, low-carbon energy. These national policy statements are an important milestone.
John Redwood, the Conservative rightwinger, has backed Nick Clegg's call for taxpayers to be given shares in the banks now part-owned by the state. (See 9.55am.) According to PoliticsHome, this is what Redwood told BBC News.
I want to get all the risk of the banks off the government's balance sheet. It is greatly distorting our government's balance sheet and these banks should be owned in the private sector. It would be great if every taxpayer were given a share, with the proviso that you give back to the state when you sell the amount the state paid for it, and you keep the profit.
You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.
As for the rest of the papers, here are some stories and articles that are particularly interesting.
• Robert Winnett in the Daily Telegraph says Eric Pickles and Caroline Spelman are no longer on speaking terms after a row about bin collections.
Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, and Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, had a telephone argument shortly before the Government announced an about-face on its plan to restore weekly bin collections.
Mr Pickles said to Mrs Spelman: "Why don't you spend less time speaking to your officials and more time listening to the electorate?" Mrs Spelman then hung up on her colleague and the pair are thought not to have spoken since, according to their parliamentary colleagues. A colleague said: "The whole thing is fairly unpleasant. They are both former chairmen of the Conservatives but they now appear to be daggers drawn on this issue, which Eric feels very passionately about."
• Greg Hurst in the Times (paywall) says Simon Hughes, the government's advocate for access to universities, wants Oxford and Cambridge to scrap their traditional admissions interviews.
In an interview with The Times he said interviews by tutors gave them a chance to "bond" on an intellectual level with candidates in a way that was unfair to other applicants. Tutors should be "absolutely removed" from admissions interviews, he said.
"All the advice I have received in doing the work is clearly recommending that there should not be interviews by people that are going to be doing the teaching and if there are interviews they should be by an admissions team professionally qualified to do the selection process and do admissions. And they should be absolutely removed from the people who do the teaching," he said.
"I haven't gone to university in the States but people who have [say], and the evidence we have had, shows that even in places like Harvard it isn't the professor that is going to teach you that does the admissions it is the university admissions team."
• Graeme Paton in the Daily Telegraph says the government has decided that grammar schools should be allowed to expand.
Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, said state grammars would be able to take advantage of new rules to admit extra students without seeking the permission of local authorities.
In a speech to head teachers, he praised the "world class" education provided by England's 164 academically selective schools and suggested they were a powerful driver of social mobility.
• Kiran Stacey in the Financial Times (subscription) says only a handful of British officials are working full-time on what will happen in Libya after Colonel Gaddafi is overthrown.
The Department for International Development has 12 officials working on plans to follow the military mission. But neither the Foreign Office nor the Ministry of Defence has anyone looking solely at subsequent reconstruction.
Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, called the revelation "startling and deeply worrying".
• Sue Cameron in the Financial Times (subscription) says Steve Hilton, David Cameron's policy guru, is getting the blame in Downing Street for "dud policies" like the Big Society and health reform.
Early on there seems to have been a row over the Big Society, Mr Hilton's pet project. "Many civil servants were full of goodwill for the Big Society," says one insider. "But they've been frustrated by Hilton's inability to put it forward in a way that is do-able. Officials aren't sure what it's about. Nor are ministers." He added that the Big Society idea was never tested on the public because of opposition from Mr Hilton. "Hilton's view," he explained in incredulous tones, "is that you don't test something you believe in."
Yet it was NHS reform, backed strongly by Mr Hilton at a big meeting in No 10 just before Christmas, that created real tension. Messrs Lansley and Hilton persuaded the government to persist with the plans, only to see them falter in the face of fierce public opposition. The arrival of [Andrew] Cooper, a pollster prepared to speak truth unto power and spell out the public's concern about NHS plans, was an admission that all was not well. (Word is that Mr Cooper privately describes the health reforms as insane and says the NHS should have been left alone.)
• Daniel Finkelstein in the Times (paywall) says a new biography of the former Liberal MP Richard Wainwright reveals something about the spirit that still survives in the Liberal Democrat party.
Wainwright was an intelligent, talented man, capable of holding high office. Instead, he dedicated his life to a force going nowhere. He adored Liberals and his party. It was them against the world. They were hardy, true survivors, pressing on regardless. And this is important to grasp when looking at the current political position of the party.
The first point is that 9 per cent in the polls may look like failure to the rest of the world, but it doesn't look the same to the party of Wainwright. They've seen worse, lived with worse. It didn't move them. They remained Liberals and true to their course. What others consider the realities of electoral politics don't count as realities in their world. This is a party that has, on many occasions, come close to extinction. It has grown very tough. Being in government and at 9 per cent looks much more like success to Lib Dems than failure.
• Paul Revoir in the Daily Mail says the Doctor Who screenwriter Russell T. Davies has described David Cameron and Nick Clegg as "evil".
'That Clegg and Cameron photo opportunity, at the bed, 'oh, we're all laughing' – they are savage and evil people underneath it all,' said the writer, thought to be a reference to the leaders' hospital visit last week.
'There is a great intelligence behind the Tory party that says let's appear slightly bumbling and slightly buffoonish, while they are lethal as a laser underneath it all,' he told Radio 4.
For the record, here are the latest YouGov GB polling figures.
Labour: 42% (up 12 since the general election)
Conservatives: 36% (down 1)
Lib Dems: 9% (down 15)
Labour lead: 6 points
Government approval: -25
Nick Clegg has called for taxpayers to be given shares in the government-owned banks when the time comes to privatise them again. But the idea has been knocking around for a while.
The Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams proposed the idea in a pamphlet he wrote for the Centre Forum thinktank (pdf) in March. "There is a danger that when the banks return to the private sector, it is business as usual. There is a general feeling in this country that we need to get something positive in return for the bail-out," he said.
But the Centre for Policy Studies, a Conservative thinktank, is also taking credit. It published a paper on this last month. "The deputy prime minister's announcement that he is writing to the Chancellor asking him to consider the CPS proposals on reprivatising the banks is most welcome", Tim Knox, the CPS's acting director, said in a statement this morning.
There are only about 39 wild animals used in British circuses, but their plight arouses strong feelings and this afternoon MPs will vote on a backbench motion tabled by the Tory MP Mark Pritchard "directing" the government ban the use of wild animals in circuses by July 2012. But, according to Labour's Denis MacShane (who's just given me a ring), Downing Street is not at all keen and some Tories MPs have received calls telling them that, if they value their careers, they will be well advised to vote against the ban. MacShane called because Tory MPs have been bending his ear. "It's a mystery why David Cameron is so keen to defend cruelty to lions and tigers," MacShane says.
In the Commons last month James Paice, the environment minister, tried to defend the government's refusal to impose a ban. As my colleague Damian Carrington reported at the time, Paice wasn't particularly convincing.
Ipsos MORI have published their June political monitor (a report on public opinion). Their state of the parties figures (based on the views of respondents who say they are absolutely certain to vote) show Labour on 39 points (down 3 from last month), the Tories on 37 points (up 2) and the Lib Dems on 11 (up 1). But some of the other figures are more interesting.
• Labour has its largest lead on healthcare since 2002. When people are asked which party has the best policies on health, Labour is on 37 points and the Tories 21 - giving Labour a 16 point lead. In March last year Labour's lead on this was 9 points. The fieldwork was done at the end of last week, after the government announced its climbdown on the health bill, suggesting that David Cameron's concessions have not stopped NHS reform damaging the reputation of his party.
• Voters support unions. Asked if unions have too much power, 52% said they disagreed, and only 35% agreed. Some 76% agreed that unions are "essential to protect workers' interests".
• But voters are split on the forthcoming strikes. Asked if they supported the decision by some unions to strike this summer, 48% said they did support the unions and 48% said they didn't.
"Bold, but risky." Lord Dannatt, the former head of the army, has just been on the Today programme commenting on President Obama's decision to withdraw 33,000 American troops from Afghanistan by next year.
Overnight we've also had reaction from David Cameron and General Sir David Richards, the chief of the defence staff, who have both welcomed Obama's decision.
Here's what Cameron said.
The surge by the US and international partners, supported by an increase in the number of Afghan army and police, has reversed the momentum of the insurgency and created the right conditions for security responsibility to begin to transfer to the Afghans from July. We will keep UK force levels in Afghanistan under constant review. I have already said there will be no UK troops in combat roles in Afghanistan by 2015 and, where conditions on the ground allow, it is right that we bring troops home sooner.
And here's what Richards said.
I welcome President Obama's statement which has been made possible by the surge of US and ISAF forces, coupled with the ever growing numbers and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces.
Across the country, the insurgency is under real and sustained pressure. Their momentum has been halted and in some areas reversed. This summer will see the continuation of this process with Afghan forces beginning to take the lead for security in a number of areas
including Lashkar Gah, the headquarters for British forces.The Afghan Army and Police are increasingly able to plan, direct and execute operations to provide security for their own people. But our collective military efforts need to continue until Afghan security forces are able to assume responsibility for security across
Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Otherwise, it's a patchy day.
At 10am Lord Bew is publishing his review of Sats tests. He is calling for more use of teacher assessment in English.
And at 11am Cameron is holding a press conference with Petr Necas, the prime minister of the Czech Republic. Cameron is visiting Prague before going to the EU summit in Brussels.
There is a debate in the Commons this afternoon on a backbench motion ordering the government to ban the use of wild animals in circuses, although it is not clear when we'll get the vote.
And there are 16 written ministerial statements, including one about the operation in Libya. According to government sources, the Ministry of Defence is going to say the mission has already cost £250m.
I'm giving a talk at lunchtime so I'll post a summary at 12pm, earlier than usual. After that my colleague Lewis Williamson will be taking charge of the blog.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/jun/23/politics-live-blog
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