12/01/2014 Sunday Politics South

Good morning, welcome. 2014 is barely under way, and the

coalition is fighting over cuts. Nick Legg says Tory plans to balance

the books would hit the poorest hardest. He will not say what he

will cut. That is the top story. Chris Grayling called for a

completely new deal with Europe as he battles will rings from the

European Court of Human Rights. He joins me.

Labour promises to shift house-building up a gear, but how

will they get a In the South: Are we spending enough

on flood defences to stop a repetition of scenes like these, and

will council`tax payers be serious. Have cuts left to the

service being overstretched? With me for the duration, a top trio

of political pundits, Helen Lewis, Jan and Ganesh and Nick Watt. They

will be tweeting faster than France or long scoots through Paris. Nick

Clegg sticks to his New Year resolution to sock it to the Tories,

the is how he described Tory plans for another 12 billion of cuts on

welfare after the next election You cannot say, as the Conservatives

are, that we are all in it together and then say that the welfare will

not make any additional contributions from their taxes if

there is a Conservative government after 2015 in the ongoing effort to

balance the books. We are not even going to ask that very wealthy

people who have retired who have benefits, paid for by the

hard-pressed taxpayers, will make a sacrifice. The Conservatives appear

to be saying only the working age pork will be asked to make

additional sacrifices to fill the remaining buckle in the public

finances. Nick Legg eating up on the Tories

a, happens almost every day. I understand it is called aggressive

differentiation. Will it work for them? It has not for the past two

years. This began around the time of the AV referendum campaign, that is

what poisoned the relations between the parties. They have been trying

to differentiation since then, they are still at barely 10% in the

polls, Nick Clegg's personal ratings are horrendous, so I doubt they will

do much before the next election. It is interesting it has been combined

with aggressive flirtation with Ed Balls and the Labour Party. There

was always going to be some sort of rapprochement between them and the

Labour Party, it is in the Labour Party's interests, and it is intent

macro's interests, not to be defined as somebody who can only do deals

with the centre-right. A colleague of yours, Helen, told me there was

more talk behind closed doors in the Labour Party high command, they have

to think about winning the election in terms of being the largest party,

but not necessarily an overall majority. There is a feeling it was

foolish before the last election not to have any thought about what a

coalition might be, but the language has changed. Ed Miliband had said, I

cannot deal with this man, but now, I have to be prismatic, it is about

principles. Even Ed Balls. Nick Clegg had specifically said that Ed

Balls was the man in politics that he hated. He said that was just a

joke. Of course, it is about principles, not people! When Ed

Balls said those nice things about Nick Clegg, he said, I understood

the need to get a credible deficit reduction programme, although he

said Nick Clegg went too far. The thing about Nick Clegg, he feels

liberated, he bears the wounds from the early days of the coalition and

maybe those winds will haunt him all the way to the general election But

he feels liberated, he says, we will be the restraining influence on both

the Conservatives, who cannot insure that the recovery is fair, and the

Labour Party, that do not have economic red ability. He feels

relaxed, and that is why he is attacking the Tories and appearing

pretty relaxed. He could also be falling into a trap. The Tories

think what they suggesting on welfare cuts is possible. The more

he attacks it, the more Tories will say, if you gave us an overall

majority, he is the one it. He keeps taking these ostensibly on popular

positions and it only makes sense when you talk to them behind the

scenes, they are going after a tiny slice of the electorate, 20%, who

are open to the idea of voting Lib Dem, and their views are a bit more

left liberal than the bulk of the public. There is a perverse logic in

them aggressively targeting that section of voters. In the end, ten

macro's problem, if you do not like what this coalition has been doing,

you will not vote for somebody who was part of it, you will vote for

the Labour Party. The Tories are too nasty, Labour are to spendthrift,

Lib Dem, a quarter of their vote has gone to Labour, and that is what

could hand the largest party to Labour. That small number of voters,

soft Tory voters, the problem for the Liberal Democrats is, if you

fight, as they did, three general elections to the left of the Labour

Party, and at the end of the third, you find yourself in Colour Vision

with the Conservatives, you have a problem.

Chris Grayling is a busy man, he has had to deal with aid riot at HM

Prison Oakwood, barristers on strike and unhappy probation officers

taking industrial action. Prison works. It ensures that we are

protected from murderers, muggers and rapists. It makes many who are

tempted to commit crime think twice. Traditional Tory policy on criminal

justice and prisons has been tough talking and tough dealing. Not only

have they tended to think what they are offering is right, but have had

the feeling, you thinking what they thinking. But nearly two decades

after Michael Howard's message, his party, in Colour Vision government,

is finding prison has to work like everything else within today's

financial realities. The Justice Secretary for two years after the

election had previous in this field. Ken Clarke. Early on, he signalled a

change of direction. Just binding up more and more people for longer

without actively seeking to change them is, in my opinion, what you

would expect of Victorian England. The key to keeping people out of

prison now, it seems, is giving them in a job, on release. Ironically,

Ken Clarke was released from his job 15 months ago and replaced by Chris

Grayling. But here, within HM Prison Liverpool, Timpson has been working

since 2009 with chosen offenders to offer training and the chance of a

job. Before you ask, they do not teach them keep cutting in a

category B prison. The Academy is deliberately meant to look like a

company store, not a prison. It helps. You forget where you are at

times, it feels weird, going back to a wing at the end of the day. It is

different. A different atmosphere. That is why people like it. Timpson

have six academies in prisons, training prisoners inside, and

outside they offer jobs to ex-offenders, who make up 8% of

their staff. It has been hard work persuading some governors that such

cooperation can work. I have seen a dramatic change positively, working

with prisoners, particularly in the last five years. They understand now

what business's expectation is. Timpson do not just employ

offenders, but as one ex-prisoner released in February and now

managing his own store says, the point is many others will not employ

offenders at all. From what I have experienced, on one hand, you have

somebody with a criminal conviction, on the other, somebody who does not

have one, so it is a case of favouring those who have a clean

record. Anybody with a criminal conviction is passed to one side and

overlooked. That, amongst myriad other changes to prison and how we

deal with prisoners, is on the desk of the man at the top. Ever since

Chris Grayling became Secretary of State for Justice, he has wanted to

signal a change of direction of policy, and he is in a hurry to make

radical reforms across the board, from size and types of prisons to

probation services, reoffending rates, legal aid services, and there

has been opposition to that from groups who do not agree with him.

But what might actually shackle him is none of that. It is the fact that

he is in government with a party that does not always agree with him,

he has to abide by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights,

and in those famous words, there is no money left. We would like to go

further and faster. I would like him too, but we are where we are. If the

Liberal Democrats want to be wiped out at the next election based on

what they believe, that is fair enough. We accept there has to be

savings, but there are areas where we feel that there is ideological

driven policy-making going on, and privatising may not save any money

at all, and so does not make any sense. The question is, we'll all of

that means some of Chris Grayling's reforms need closer inspection?

Chris Grayling joins me now. Welcome. We have a lot to cover If

you get your way, your own personal way, will be next Tory manifesto

promise to withdraw from the European Convention of human

rights? It will contain a promise for radical changes. We have to

curtail the role of the European court here, replace our human rights

act from the late 1990s, make our Supreme Court our Supreme Court

they can be no question of decisions over riding it elsewhere, and we

have to have a situation where our laws contain a balance of rights and

responsibilities. People talk about knowing their rights, but they do

not accept they have responsible it is. This is what you said last

September, I want to see our Supreme Court being supreme again... That is

clear, but let's be honest, the Supreme Court cannot be supreme as

long as its decisions can be referred to the European Court in

Strasbourg. There is clearly an issue, that was raised recency -

recently. We have been working on a detailed reform plan, we will

publish that in the not too distant future. What we will set out is a

direction of travel for a new Conservative government that will

mean wholesale change in this area. You already tried to reform the

European Court, who had this declaration in 2012, do you accept

that the reform is off the table? There is still a process of reform,

but it is not going fast enough and not delivering the kind of change we

need. That is why we will bring forward a package that for the

different from that and will set a different direction of travel. We

are clear across the coalition, we have a different view from our

colleagues. You cannot be half pregnant on this, either our

decisions from our Supreme Court are subject to the European Cup or not,

in which case, we are not part of the European court. I hope you will

see from our proposals we have come up with a sensible strategy that

deals with this issue once and for all. Can we be part of the

Strasbourg court and yet our Supreme Court be supreme? That is by point,

we have to curtail the role of the court in the UK. I am clear that is

what we will seek to do. It is what we will do for this country. But

how? I am not going to announce the package of policies today, but we

will go into the next election with a clear strategy that will curtail

the role of the European Court of Human Rights in the UK. The

decisions have to be taken in Parliament in this country. Are you

sure that you have got your own side on this? Look at what the Attorney

General says. I would be asking Strasberg a

different question to that. If the best in class, he is saying is

enough is enough, actually somebody in Strasberg should be asking if

this has gone the way it should have done. I would love to see wholesale

reform in the court tomorrow, I m not sure it is going to happen which

is why we are going to the election with a clear plan for this country.

Would you want that to be a red line in any coalition agreement? My

mission is to win the next election with a majority. But you have to say

where your red lines would be. We have been very clear it is an area

where we don't agree as parties but in my view the public in this

country are overwhelmingly behind the Conservative party. 95

Conservative MPs have written to the Prime Minister, demanding he gives

the House of Commons the authority to veto any aspect of European Union

law. Are you one of the people who wanted to sign that letter but you

couldn't because you are minister? I haven't been asked to sign the

letter. We need a red card system for European law. I'm not convinced

my colleagues... I don't think it is realistic to have a situation where

one parliament can veto laws across the European Union. I understand the

concerns of my colleagues, but when we set out to renegotiate our

membership, we have got to deliver renegotiation and deliver a system

which is viable, and I'm not convinced we can have a situation

where one Parliament can prevent laws across the whole European

Union. So you wouldn't have signed this letter? I'm not sure it is the

right approach. I support the system I just talked about. Iain Duncan

Smith has suggested EU migrants coming to work in this country

should have to wait for two years before they qualify for welfare

benefits, do you agree? Yes, I think there should be an assumption that

before you can move from one country to another, before you can start to

take back from that country's social welfare system, you should have made

a contribution to it. I spent two and a half years working in Brussels

trying to get the European Commission to accept the need for

change. There is a groundswell of opinion out there which is behind

Iain Duncan Smith in what he is saying. I think we should push for a

clear system that says people should be able to move from one country to

get a job, but to move to another country to live off the state is not

acceptable. You are planning a new 2000 capacity mega prison and other

smaller presence which will be run by private firms. After what has

happened with G4S, why would you do that? No decision has been made

about whether it will be public or private. What do you think it will

be? I'm not sure yet. There is no clear correlation over public and

private prisons and whether there are problems or otherwise. Oakwood

is in its early stages, it has had teething problems at the start, but

the rate of disturbance there is only typical for an average prison

of its category. If you take an example of Parc prison in Wales a

big private run prison, run by G4S, when it was first launched under the

last government it had teething problems of the same kind as Oakwood

and is now regarded as one of the best performing prisons. Why would

you give it to a private company then? We have only just got planning

permission for the so we will not be thinking about this for another few

years. Some of the companies who run prisons are under investigation with

dreadful track records. In the case of G4S, what we have experienced is

acceptable and they have not been able to go ahead with a number of

contracts they might have otherwise got. They are having to prove to the

Government they are fit to win contracts from the Government again.

They are having to pay compensation to the Government and the taxpayer.

What has happened is unacceptable. So why would you give them a 20 0

capacity mega prison? Or anyone like them? It cannot be said that every

private company is bad. In addition to problems at Oakwood, you are

quite unique now in your position that you have managed to get the

barristers out on strike the first time since history began. What

happens if the bar refuses to do work at your new rates of legal aid

and the courts grind to a halt? I don't believe that will happen. When

the barristers came out on strike, three quarters of Crown Courts were

operating normally, 95% of magistrates courts were operating

normally. We are having to take difficult decisions across

government, I have no desire to cut back lately but we are spending over

?2 billion on legal aid at the moment at a time when budgets are

becoming tougher. You issued misleading figures about criminal

barristers, you said that 25% of them earn over ?100,000 per year but

that is their turnover, including VAT. 33% of that money goes on their

expenses, they have to pay for their own pensions and insurance. People

are not getting wealthy out of doing this work. I don't publish figures,

our statisticians do, with caveats in place explaining the situation.

Where you have high-cost cases, where we have taken the most

difficult decisions, we have tried hard in taking difficult decisions

to focus the impact higher up the income scale. But do you accept

their take-home pay is not 100, 00? I accept they have to take out other

costs, although some things like travelling to the court, you and I

and everyone else has to pay for travelling to work. That is net of

VAT. We have had a variety of figures published, some are and some

are not. Let's be clear, the gross figures for fees from legal payments

include 20% VAT. On a week when even a cabinet minister can be fitted up

by the police, don't we all need well-financed legal aid? There is no

chance that as a result well-financed legal aid? There is no

changes people will end up in court unable to defend themselves. We have

said in exceptional circumstances, if you haven't got any money to pay,

we will support you, but there is no question of anyone ended up in

court, facing a criminal charge where they haven't got a lawyer to

defend them. Let's look at how so many dangerous criminals have

managed to avoid jail. Here are the figures for 2012. Half the people

for sexual assault found guilty not jailed. I thought you were meant to

be tough on crime? Those figures predate my time, but since 2010 the

number of those people going to jail has been increasing steadily. If you

put the figures for 2010 on there, you would see a significant change.

We will never be in a position where everybody who commits violence will

end up in jail. The courts will often decided to his more

appropriate to give a community sentence, but the trend is towards

longer sentences and more people going to jail. That maybe but it is

even quite hard to get sent to jail if you do these things a lot, again

and again. In 2012 one criminal avoided being sent to jail despite

having more than 300 offences to his name. 36,000 avoided going to jail

despite 15 previous offences. That is why we are taking steps to

toughen up the system. Last autumn we scrapped repeat cautions. You

could find people getting dozens. As of last autumn, we have scrapped

repeat cautions. If you commit the same offence twice within a two year

period you will go to court. You still might end up not going to

jail. More and more people are going to jail. I cannot just magic another

34,000 prison places. You haven t got room to put bad people in jail?

The courts will take the decisions, and it is for them to take the

decisions and not me, that two men in a bar fight do not merit a jail

sentence. These figures contain a huge amount of offences from the

most minor of offences to the most despicable. Something is wrong if

you can commit 300 offences and still not end up in jail. That's

right, and we are taking steps so this cannot happen any more. Nick

Clegg said this morning you are going to make 12 billion of welfare

cuts on the back of this, he is right, isn't he? People on the

lowest incomes are often not paying tax at all, the rich... But these

cuts will fall disproportionately on average earners, correct? Let's look

at the proposal to limit housing benefit for under 25s. Until today,

after people have left school or college, the live for a time with

their parents. For some, that is not possible and we will have to take

that into account, but we have said there is a strong case for saying

you will not get housing benefit until you are some years down the

road and have properly established yourselves in work. And by

definition these people are on lower than average salaries. Give me a

case in which those on the higher tax band will contribute to the

cuts. We have already put in place tax changes so that the highest tax

rate is already higher than it was in every year of the last

government. The amount of tax.. There is no more expected of the

rich. We will clearly look at future policy and work out how best to

distribute the tax burden in this country and it is not for me to

second-guess George Osborne's future plans, but we need to look at for

example housing benefit for the under 25s. Is it right for those who

are not working for the state to provide accommodation for them?

Thank you for being with us. All three major parties at

Westminster agree there's an urgent need to build more homes for

Britain's growing population. But how they get built, and where, looks

set to become a major battle ground in the run-up to the next general

election. Although 16% more house-builds were

started in 2012/13 than the previous year, the number actually completed

fell by 8% - the lowest level in peacetime since 1920. The Office for

National Statistics estimates that between now and 2021 we should

expect 220,000 new households to be created every year. At his party's

conference last autumn, Ed Miliband promised a Labour government would

massively increase house-building. I will have a clear aim but by the end

of the parliament, Britain will be building 200,000 homes per year

more than at any time for a generation. That is how we make

Britain better than this. The Labour leader also says he'd give urban

councils a "right to grow" so rural neighbours can't block expansion and

force developers with unused land to use it or lose it. The Government

has been pursuing its own ideas including loan guarantees for

developers and a new homes bonus to boost new house-building. But David

Cameron could have trouble keeping his supporters on side - this week

the senior backbencher Nadhim Zahawi criticised planning reforms for

causing "physical harm" to the countryside. Nick Clegg meanwhile

prefers a radical solution - brand new garden cities in the south east

of England. In a speech tomorrow, Labour's shadow housing minister

Emma Reynolds will give more details of how Labour would boost

house-building, and she joins me now. It is not the politicians to

blame, it is the lack of house-builders? We want a vibrant

building industry, and at the moment that industry is dominated by big

house-builders. I want to see a more diverse and competitive industry,

where self build plays a greater role. In France over 60% of new

homes are built by self builders, but small builders build more homes

as well. 25 years ago they were building two thirds of new homes,

now they are not building even a third of new homes. That's because

land policies have been so restrictive that it is only the big

companies who can afford to buy the land, so little land is being

released for house building. I agree, there are some fundamental

structural problems with the land market and that is why we have said

there doesn't just need to be tinkering around the edges, there

needs to be real reforms to make sure that small builders and self

build and custom-built have access to land. They are saying they have

problems with access to land and finance. At the end of the day it

will not be self, small builders who reach your target, it will be big

builders. I think it is pretty shameful that in Western Europe the

new houses built in the UK are smaller than our neighbours. But

isn't not the land problem? France is 2.8 times bigger in land mass and

we are and that is not a problem for them. There is a perception we are

going to build on the countryside, but not even 10% is on the

countryside. There is enough for us to have our golf courses. There is

enough other land for us to build on that is not golf courses. The

planning minister has said he wants to build our National Parks, I am

not suggesting that. The single biggest land border is the public

sector. It is not. There are great opportunities for releasing public

land, that is why I have been asking the government, they say they are

going to release and of public land for tens of thousands of new homes

to be built, but they say they are not monitoring how many houses are

being built on the site. When your leader says to landowners, housing

development owners, either use the land or lose it, in what way will

they lose it? Will you confiscated? This is about strengthening the hand

of local authorities, and they say to us that in some cases,

house-builders are sitting on land. In those cases, we would give the

power to local authorities to escalate fees. This would be the

compulsory purchase orders, a matter of last resort, and you would hope

that by strengthening the hand of local authorities, you could get the

house-builders to start building the homes that people want. Would you

compulsory purchase it? We would give the local authority as a last

resort, after escalating the fees, the possibility and flexible it is

to use the compulsory purchase orders to sell the land on to a

house builder who wants to build houses that we need. Can you name

one report that has come back in recent years that shows that

hoarding of land by house-builders is a major problem? The IMF, the

Conservative mayor of London and the Local Government Association are

telling us that there is a problem with land hoarding. Therefore, we

have said, where there is land with planning permission, and if plots

are being sat on... Boris Johnson says there are 180,000 plots in

London being sat on. We need to make sure the house-builders are building

the homes that young families need. They get planning permission and

sell it on to the developer. There is a whole degree of complicity but

there is another problem before that. That is around transparency

about land options. There is agricultural land that

house-builders have land options on, and we do not know where that is.

Where there is a need for housing, and the biggest demand is in the

south-east of England, that is where many local authorities are most

reluctant to do it, will you in central government take powers to

force these authorities to give it? We have talked about the right to

grow, we were in Stevenage recently. What we have said is we

want to strengthen the hand of local authorities like Stevenage so they

are not blocked every step of the way. They need 16,000 new homes but

they do not have the land supply. What about the authorities that do

not want to do it? They should be forced to sit down and agree with

the neighbouring authority. In Stevenage, it is estimated at

?500,000 has been spent on legal fees because North Hertfordshire is

blocking Stevenage every step of the way. Michael Lyons says the national

interest will have to take President over local interest. Voice cannot

mean a veto. The local community in Stevenage is crying out for new

homes. Do you agree? There has to be land available for new homes to be

built, and in areas like Oxford, Luton and Stevenage... Do you agree

with Michael Lyons? The national interest does have to be served,

will put the five new towns? We have asked him to look at how we can

incentivise local authorities to come forward with sites for new

towns. You cannot tell us where they are going to be? I cannot. We will

have to wait for him. When you look at the historic figures overall, not

at the moment, Private Housing building is only just beginning to

recover, but it has been pretty steady for a while. The big

difference between house-building now and in the past, since Mrs

Thatcher came to power a and including the Tony Blair government,

we did not build council houses. Almost none. Will the next Labour

government embark on a major council has programme? We inherited housing

stock back in 1997... This is important. Will the next Labour

government embark on a major council has programme? We have called on

this government to bring forward investment in social housing. We

want to see an investment programme in social housing, I cannot give you

the figures now. We are 18 months away from the election. Will the

next Labour government embark on a major council house Northern

programme? I want to see a council house building programme, because

there is a big shortage of council homes. That is a guess? Yes. We got

there in the end. -- that is a yes? We will be talking to Patrick homes

in the West Midlands in a moment. You are watching the Sunday

Politics. Coming up in just over 20 minutes, I will look at the week

ahead with our political panel and Jacob

Welcome to Sunday Politics South. My name's Peter Henley. On today's show

it's been water, water everywhere this week. But why do so many places

keep on flooding? Is the Environment Agency getting the funds it needs

for flood prevention, and are councils being properly compensated

for clearing up the aftermath? More on that in a moment. First, let's

meet our two guests of the day. Rowenna Davis is Labour's 2015

parliamentary candidate for Southampton Itchen. Chris Chope is

the Conservative MP for Christchurch. You were campaigning

on rail fares this week, Rowenna Davis, saying it costs ?5,000 a

season ticket, do you say the increase is unreasonable? The price

is already too high for people in Southampton and the South East.

?5,200 to go to London for an annual ticket. What it means to many people

we spoke to is they cannot afford to continue working in the capital or

not looking for jobs there in the first place, which is bad for the

economy because people cannot take the work that is there and it is bad

for individual suffering already with the high cost of living. The

coalition have realised this is a problem because they capped

increases? They capped some of them so they would not go up as much as

otherwise would have been. It is holding the economy back, huge fare

rises? Who else will pay? We need to invest in the railway. People look

at the improvements between Southampton and London, they are

amazing, compared to when I went to Parkway station. It is an enormous

station with massive investment and likewise the rolling stock. The

question is, who will pay for it? The people he use the railways were

smacked the people who are not? 1990, when Chris Chope was transport

Minister, John Prescott grumbled in the House of Commons that the cost

of a standard return ticket from London to Brighton had gone from 565

up to ?16 20 in 1990, compared to the first in 1978. ?16 20 in 1990.

It must be about ?30 now. But, for 20p more, you can get the off`peak

return which is ?16 40. Flexible fares? If we talk about the problem

of people not being able to work, those off`peak tickets are not

available to those working. We were told that privatisation would bring

prices down and they never have. And we still have companies making

millions and expecting to make more profits this year if you look at the

South West trains report. That is unacceptable when people are

suffering and the economy is suffering. Why should commuters pay

for this only? We all want good railways. Likewise, why should we

pay for the roads? Why should it just be rail users who are

privileged. You may be forgiven this week to feel it has been chucking it

down for 40 days and 40 nights already. It has seemed like an

endless cycle of high winds, high tides and rising floodwaters. And as

our Oxford political reporter Helen Catt now reports, there's hardly a

place in our region that has escaped a soaking.

It started with high winds and waves battering our stretch of the coast.

In Dorset, this home Park was evacuated for the second time in a

fortnight and the residents' plight was mentioned in the House of

Commons by a Bournemouth MP. Given the changing weather patterns, what

more could be done in the long term towards improved river and sea

defences? As my honourable friend knows in Bournemouth and Dorset we

had 290 homes flooded. I agree with him that the worst `` the work of

the emergency services and Environment Agency has been

excellent. Local authorities have had good plans and put them into

place competently, but not every local authority does as well and

lessons will be learned. In Christchurch, it was a similar

story. The properties may become impossible to live in. People might

be thrown out of their homes. Many of the residents are elderly. It

might fall to the local council to house these people, maybe at

considerable cost. Inland, the rain kept falling and the water kept

rising, and even getting to the shops was a major effort. The

majority of houses on this stretch of the River Thames are adapted to

cope with something like these conditions, they are raised on

stilts. For those that are not, this is a disaster. Just getting in and

out. The currents are pulling along the road and getting dangerous you

feel that you will get swept over. In Purley near Reading there was

anger as residents used paddle power to get around. Promised work on

flood defences which they say could have saved houses has not been done.

It is precarious, but it seems to be levelling out. We have been worried.

How about getting to school? This is the first day trying to get them

out. We did not have the boat before. As the week closed, concern

was on the River Thames South of Oxford, where two people died. Seven

days of alerts, warnings and severe warnings have left councils, the

Environment Agency and home owners contemplating the cost of that

water. Joining me now is a member of the

Loddon Valley Residents' Association. Long Valley is working.

How has it been? It has been terrible, but we were fortunate ``

Lord and Valley. It is not as bad as 2007, but it has been hairy for

people over the Christmas period with people woken up at 5:30am, with

a warning saying water was coming there day and spending Christmas Day

worrying about whether the house would remain dry. The report from

2007 when we had a lot of flooding, it said warnings were important,

have they been better? In principle, warnings are fantastic because it

allows people to protect their property. Not once the warnings have

happened and the floodwaters have abated, you have people who have

their lives decimated, trying to put it back together. So having the

upfront stuff is fantastic, it is what happens afterwards that is the

problem, having things in place which might prevent flooding in

future, maintenance, those things. We heard about people getting

together to get diggers to clear culverts. Is it self`help that is

important in this situation, with help from the experts, or are there

people who cannot do things? It is a mix. We have a group in Swallowfield

who are fantastic in doing self`help. It is not always the

case, and not always safe to do that. Often, it is expertise.

Self`help might be putting up a barrier, but where does the water go

if you do? You could cause problems downstream. And it is so

unpredictable. The experts look at it and you do not know if your

individual house you may have bought recently is liable or not, do you

think we need more information? Or do you just accept the rain will

fall where it falls? We need to have the flood assets, more preparation,

ditches, culverts, they have to be cleared. You have to make sure the

river is maintained. You do not want points along the river occurring and

spilling out the water. The key is preparation. What is your feeling

about Environment Agency cuts? The cuts are worrying. I have had phone

calls and conversations with residents who are worried. Going

back to the river and the idea it has to be maintained to make sure it

does not choke up and cause flooding, will the cuts impact

that? Think of cuts with local authorities, who have to maintain

flood assets, the being prepared type of thing which we are worrying

about going. If you think further afield, you have hard engineering.

Morpeth. The big capital investments. You will maintain that

after the Environment Agency cuts? Thanks very much. Although heavy

floods seem to be almost an annual event now, they are hardly something

that anyone can budget for. So who exactly pays for the clear up?

Here's Helen again. Local authorities often pick up the

bill for dealing with this kind of unexpected event. There is a

government programme to provide compensation that says that once a

local authority has spent 0.2% of its annual budget on eligible

mopping up arrangements, it will be reimbursed from central government.

The government even has a table for how much authorities have dispensed

before they trigger the grant, so in Bournemouth, if the council spends

just over 400,000, it can claim of the extra and in West Berkshire it

is the same. In Wiltshire, with the flooding around Salisbury, it is

just over 1 million. Oxfordshire County Council, it is almost 1.5

million. It is not all good news, the government only hands over 85%

of what they say is eligible, so councils might have to dip into

reserves kept for a rainy day. And thanks to all South Today

viewers who provided those amazing photos. Joining us from our Oxford

studio is Rodney Rose, who's the deputy leader of Oxfordshire County

Council. Facing quite a clear`up bill from the looks of it. Are you

going to have to pay for it out of that rainy`day money you have saved?

We certainly are, the formula is totally unfair to big county council

's like us. It will not give you enough money? It will not give us

any money, it did not in 2007, anyway. We have to get above the 1.5

million which is extra spend on the emergency before we can claim. Do

you feel it is a lottery because of the size of the authority, when

others get help? The bigger problem is it is based on the revenue budget

of the local authority. We have so many extra miles of river and road,

but also we have bills such as 34 million for school transport, adult

services and the children's budget, which create a cut`off point for

this scheme. So you feel it is unfair in that some get help and you

will not, but what would be a better way of doing it? I think it's

somehow relates back to the number of people employed in the highways

and local fire service, which in Oxfordshire is county council run,

it should not relate to other budgets we are involved in. And

places, such as Oxfordshire, which is more susceptible with the Thames

Valley, to having these problems where other authorities might not

have these issues? We have a longer length of the River Thames. We have

3000 miles of roads which have problems with flooding and that adds

to the cost. Coastal communities, Christchurch, Chris Chope, facing

more problems with the high tides this time. Do you think there should

be a better way of ensuring central government supports individual

authorities? Nobody has found a better way than the formula. Which

Rodney Rose says does not work. It might not work for him because he

does not benefit, but it is an insurance policy with the government

saying the national taxpayer will intervene if your losses are more

than a particular percentage of the budget. If I have an insurance

policy, I know what I will get for the premium. It is not quite the

same, but there is no certainty. He knows that his outgoings will not be

sufficient to qualify for the formula money, which shows that the

costs in Oxfordshire as a percentage of the budget will be below the

threshold. That seems, to me, a perfectly reasonable way of having a

policy sharing expense sharing between national taxpayers and local

taxpayers. That is what the formula was designed to achieve. Do you

think it is working? Know, and it does not deal with preventative work

the local authorities have to do `` no. It is about clearing up the mess

and national government has an incentive to get involved if a local

region is effective because press attention is there and they need to

be seen to be doing something. But more dangerously, they are removing

the preventative work and we know about the cuts to the Environment

Agency and job cuts, and that is doing damage to particular areas. If

I take Southhampton, it would be fantastic if we could develop the

west side of the river itching, which is honourable to flooding, but

we cannot do it because the money for flood defences has not been put

in place and as a result the investment and insurance costs are

too high for businesses and local people lose out on jobs and homes.

Are there things you would like to do in Oxfordshire that you do not

get money for? More important is stopping gridlock in the city, when

roots in our blocked due to flooding, which leaves me trying to

find 120 million, one scheme in mind, and I do not know with deficit

reduction where the money is coming from. For the tax payer, it makes

economic sense to put this investment in, because there are not

the costs of the community has to bear? Yes I would not like to think

of the economic cost to Oxford city in the past days. That is something

we have to face and we have to raise that money, and at the moment, and I

certainly support deficit reduction, but we have to keep those aspects of

public spending going. And you can see more on how the floods have hit

the South in tomorrow night's Inside Out on BBC One at 7:30pm, including

Jon Cuthill making milk deliveries in a kayak to cut off households.

The Prime Minister began the New Year with a trip to the South Coast.

He came to promote the Help To Buy scheme, but his visit included a

photocall that some felt had rather backfired.

Sharon was the 30`year`old single mother chosen for David Cameron to

visit. Just before Christmas she exchanged contracts on a ?135,000

two`bedroom flat in Southhampton. We are not helping people to buy homes

they cannot afford, we help people who do not have wealthy parents that

cannot get a big deposit together, and we are helping them to realise

their dreams, which is good for them and the economy. I would not have

been able to afford childcare and to save at the same time, so it has

helps me to get onto the ladder. Sharon's two`year`old was on hand as

David Cameron had a tour, standard publicity stuff, even the pose with

a cup of tea. But press coverage and online comments made huge play of

personal details picked up from Sharon's Twitter account, that she

had bought a BMW convertible and was sales director of the estate agency

that sold the flat. It became a witchhunt. People were

saying this is an estate agent, why does she deserve... She has a flash

car, why do she have help from the scheme? I do not want to continue

the victimisation of her and it really was, I think she has recently

divorced and has gone through a lot and seems to work hard, and she was

not deserving of that criticism because she was picking up on the

policy available to her, she was not breaking rules. There might be a

deeper question about the nature of the policy and who it is open to,

but that is the government's responsibility. Do you think she

should get help with her mortgage? I am saying nobody should blame her

for applying for a benefit open to her. She did not break any rules.

What I have concerns about is the policy itself, and why it is open to

those people. We know it is open to buying houses up to ?600,000 in

value, a huge amount. In Southhampton we have a waiting list

of 14,004 council homes and it will never be open to those people to

apply this scheme. It does nothing to solve the problem of a shortage

of houses. If you want to tackle this, look at supply. Why does

taxpayers' money goes to help people with decent incomes, rather than

those suffering without appropriate housing? I would like to see a

system that gets the housing market moving, which means reducing the tax

on transactions. That is why I think it is better to invest in reducing

stamp duty on all house purchases and sales in the lower range. Less

than 600,000, presumably? That would help everybody and get the market

moving. The trouble with this policy is that it picks a few winners and a

lot of other people do not benefit. I have argued that levels of stamp

duty are too high on relatively modest house purchase transactions

and reducing that would be a better thing. Do you agree we need to get

the market moving, not just those at the bottom, but to get confidence?

This policy artificially inflate house prices and gives us another

bubble when prices rose by 11% in Southhampton already, and it does

not deal with supply. People build more houses. Prices are rising

massively already. It only helps a small proportion of people. Do you

think we will have a housing bubble? I hope we do not. There is a

danger but I think the Chancellor is watching that. Now our regular

round`up of the political week in the South in 60 seconds.

Diving in the deep end. Portsmouth MP's political opponents thought she

was in hot water after signing up for a reality TV programme splash.

She said she gave the ?10,000 fee to charity. I work hard for Portsmouth,

like me or loathe me. Too much water was the excuse of Gatwick for

cancelling flights on Christmas Eve, telling MPs that flooding led

to power cuts and police were called to call order. The chief constable

of the Thames Valley said they were not fiddling crime figures. We need

the public to trust the police to tell the truth. Criminal lawyers in

Oxford protested about plans to cut legal aid, with fees potentially

being cut by 30%. The unions at Bournemouth University are insulted

by a 19% increase in the Vice Chancellor's salary when staff who

are teachers were offered a 1% rise. A variation on who is getting an

increase in salary and most people are not. Lawyers getting less money,

the legal aid budget, does that concern you? It is a serious

concern. There are so many people who do not have access to justice

because they feel they cannot afford it. The system must be based on the

righteousness of your case and not power and I am worried that is no

longer going to be happening. But when money is tight, surely saving

money given to lawyers has to be a good thing? You have to make a

distinction between legal aid lawyers who work for little money

and lawyers who work in other sectors. To cut those who are giving

up time for legal aid cases is criminal. You are a barrister. Have

people always complained about the money available on legal aid? A cut

of 30% seems huge. There is an issue about the quality of the advocacy.

We have two encourage good quality advocates to litigate on behalf of

the people. If we cut it too much, we might end up with inferior

quality advocates which will have a knock`on effect in taking longer in

court and be counter`productive, so I am sympathetic with the case. It

is fantastic, he disagrees with the Conservative party on so much!

That's the Sunday will not be revoked. And I wouldn't

want it to go. Thank you, back to Andrew.

Can David Cameron get his way on EU migration? Will he ever be able to

satisfy his backbenchers on Europe? Is Ed Miliband trying to change the

tone of PMQ 's? More questions for the week ahead.

We are joined by Jacob Rees Mogg from his constituency in Somerset.

Welcome to the programme. You one of the 95 Tory backbenchers who signed

this letter? Suddenly. Laws should be made by our democratically

elected representatives, not from Brussels. How could Europe work with

a pick and mix in which each national parliament can decide what

Brussels can be in charge of? The European Union is a supernatural

body that is there for the cooperation amongst member states to

do things that they jointly want to do. It ought not be there to force

-- to enforce uniform rules on countries that do not want to

participate. It is the vision of Europe that people joined when we

signed up to it and came in in 973. It has accreted powers to itself

without having the support of the public of the member states. This is

just a way of preparing the ground for you to get out of Europe

altogether, isn't it? I do not big so. There is a role for an

organisation that does some coordination and that has trade

agreements within it, I do not think there is a role for a federal state.

Europe seems to be dominating the. I remember your leader telling you not

to bang on about Europe, your backbench colleagues seem to have

ignored that. Would you like to restrict the flow of EU migrants to

come to work in this country? Yes. I think we should have control of our

own borders, so we can decide who we want to admit for the whole world.

What we have at the moment is a restrictive control of people coming

from anywhere other than the EU There is a big decrease in the

number of New Zealanders who came in the last quarter for which figures

are available, but a huge increase in people coming from the continent.

Does it really make sense to stop our second cousins coming so that we

can allow people freely to come from the continent? I do not think so, we

need to have domestic control of our borders in the interests of the

United Kingdom. There are still lots more people coming from the rest of

the world than from the European Union. That has been changing. But

there are still more. A lot more. The permanent residence coming from

the European Union are extremely high. In the period when the Labour

Party was in charge, we had to put 5 million people coming here, of whom

about 1 billion were from Poland. -- we had 2.5 million people coming

here. We have no control over them. Like the clock behind you, you are

behind the times on these figures. I have stopped the clock for your

benefit, because it was going to chime otherwise! I thought that

might be distracting! Only a Tory backbencher could stop a clock!

Helen, when you at this up, it is preparing to get out, is it not We

have had this one bill about a referendum that seems to have tied

us up in knots for months on end. If Parliament could scrutinise every

piece of EU legislation, we would never get anything else done. It

would be incredible. Even Chris Grayling said earlier that you can

not have a national veto on anything that the EU proposes. I am surprised

that Jacob Rees Mogg is talking about dismantling one of Margaret

Thatcher's most important legacies, the creation of the single market,

and the person sent there to dream it up under Margaret Thatcher said

the only way you can run this sensibly is by not having national

vetoes, because if you have that, guess what will happen? The French

will impose lots of protectionist measures. It was Margaret

Thatcher's idea that national parliaments should never veto. How

could you fly in the face of the lady? Even the great lady makes

mistakes. Excuse me, Jacob Rees Mogg says even Margaret Thatcher makes

mistakes! No wonder the clock has stopped! Even be near divine

Margaret made a mistake! But on the single market, it has been used as

an excuse for massive origination of domestic affairs. We should be

interested in free trade in Europe and allowing people to export and

import freely, not to have uniform regulations, as per the single

market, because what that allows is thought unelected bureaucrats to

determine the regular vision. We want the British people to decide

the rules for themselves. If this makes the single market not work,

that is not the problem, because we can still have free trade, which is

more important. If David Cameron is watching this, I am sure he is, it

will be nice for you to come on and give us an interview, he must be

worried. He is beginning to think, I am losing control. It is a clever

letter, the tone is ingratiating and pleasant, every time, you have stood

up to Brussels, you have achieved something, but the content is

dramatic. If you want Parliament to have a veto, you want to leave the

EU, because the definition is accepting the primacy of European

law. The MPs should be clear about that. It is almost a year since the

Europe speech in which David Cameron committed to the referendum. The

political objective was to put that issue to bed until the next

election. It has failed. David Cameron is going to have to pull off

a major miracle in any renegotiations to satisfy all of

this. Yes, it makes me think how much luckier he has been in

coalition with the Liberal Democrats, because there is a bit of

the Tory party that is irreconcilable to what he wants to

do. The Conservative MPs are making these demands just as David Cameron

is seeing the debate goes his way in Europe. Angela Merkel has looked

over the cliff and said, do I want the UK out? No, they are a

counterbalance to France. France one the UK to leave, but they do not,

because they do not want to lose the only realistic military power Tom

other than themselves. Just when the debate is going David Cameron's way,

Jacob Rees Mogg would take us out. Let me move on to another subject.

That is nonsense. The debate is not beginning to go David Cameron's way.

We are having before us on Monday a bill about European citizenship and

spending British taxpayers money so that Europe can go and say we are

all EU citizens, but we signed up to being a part of a multinational

organisation. The spin that it is going the way of the leader of a

political party is one that has been used before, it was said of John

Major, it was untrue then and it is now. It is, for the continuing

deeper integration of the European Union. I want to ask a quick

question. Chris Grayling said to us that the Tories would devise a way

in which the British Supreme Court would be supreme in the proper

meaning of that, but we could still be within the European Court of

Human Rights. Can that circle be squared? I have no idea, the Lord

Chancellor is an able man, and I am sure he is good at squaring circles.

I am not worried about whether we remain in the convention or not PMQ

's, we saw a bit about this week, Paul Gorgons had died, so the house

was more subdued, but he wants a more subdued and serious prime

ministers questions. Let's remind ourselves what it was like until

now. What is clear is that he is

floundering around and he has no answer to the Labour Party's energy

price freeze. The difference is John Major is a good man, the Right

Honourable gentleman is acting like a conman. Across the medical

profession, they say there is a crisis in accident and emergency,

and we have a Prime Minister saying, crisis, what crisis? How out of

touch can hate the? You do not need it to be Christmas to know when you

are sitting next to a turkey. It is not a bad line. Is Ed Miliband

trying to change the tone of prime ministers questions? Is he right to

do so? The important point is this was a special prime ministers

questions, because everybody was really sad and by the death of Paul

Goggins and in the country, the legacy of the floods. That was the

first question that Ed Miliband asked about, so that cast a pall

over proceedings. When it suits him, Ed Miliband would like to take a

more statesman-like stance, but will it last? That is how David Cameron

started. His first prime ministers questions, he said to Tony Blair, I

would like to support you on education, and he did in a vote

which meant Tony Blair could see off a naughty operation from Gordon

Brown. But it did not last, they are parties with different visions.

Jacob Rees Mogg, would you like to see it more subdued? I like a bit of

Punch and Judy. You need to have fierce debate and people putting

their views passionately, it is excellent. I am not good at it, I

sit there quite quietly, but it is great fun, very exciting, and it is

the most watched bit of the House of Commons each week. If it got as dull

as ditchwater, nobody would pay attention. Three cheers for Punch

and Judy. Ed Miliband is going to make a major speech on the economy

this week. You can now define the general approach. We had it from

Emma Reynolds, we have seen it over energy prices, this market is bust,

the market is not working properly, and that will therefore justify

substantial government intervention. Intervention which does not

necessarily cost money. It is the deletion and reorganising

industries. It constitutes an answer to the question which has been

hounding him, what is the point of the Labour Party when there is no

money left? He says, you do not spend a huge amount fiscally, but

you arrange markets to achieve socially just outcomes without

expenditure. It is quite serious stance. I am not sure it will

survive the rigours of an election campaign, but it is an answer. Is

that an approach, to use broken markets, to justify substantial

state intervention? Yes, and the other big plank is infrastructure

spending. The Lib Dems would not be against capital investment for info

structure will stop Emma Reynolds talking about house-building, the

idea of pumping money into the economy through infrastructure is

something that the Labour Party will look at. Jacob Rees Mogg, you once

thought Somerset should have its own time zone, and today, you have

delivered on that promise! Live on the Sunday Politics! I try to

deliver on my promises! That is all for today, the Daily

Politics is on BBC Two every day this week, just before lunch. I

aren't back next Sunday here on BBC One at 11am. -- I am back. If it is

Sunday, it is the Sunday Politics.