28/10/2011 Daily Politics

Afternoon, folks, welcome to the Daily Politics on Friday.

David Cameron arrives in Australia for the Commonwealth summit with

women - but don't worry, not in a Berlusconi way - on his mind. This

morning he's won approval to change the rules for Royal succession.

Progress or unnecessary tinkering? Fancy an extra hour of daylight in

the evenings? Britain tried it back in the '60s and the Government is

considering trying it again, putting us in line with Central

European Time. We'll hear from the Tory MP behind the bill.

And with new figures showing our top bosses are getting 50% more in

pay and perks in the last year, are we really all in this together?

And it could be you. Though, let's be honest, it probably won't be.

But we'll hear the story of how one And with me today are Rowenna Davis

of the Guardian and Isabel Oakeshott of the Sunday Times.

David Cameron arrived at the Commonwealth summit in Perth this

morning announcing that he has won unanimous approval from the

Commonwealth realms for reform of the rules of Royal succession. The

change will allow the eldest child, whether a girl or a boy, to ascend

to the throne. The ban on the monarch being married to a Roman

Catholic was also lifted. The changes will require amendments to

legislation including the Bill of Rights of 1689, the Coronation Oath

Act of 1688 and the Act of Settlement 1701. Speaking a short

while ago, this is what the Prime Minister had to say. We will end

the male rule so that in future the order of succession should be

determined simply by the order of birth. And we have agreed to

introduce this for all descendants from the Prince of Wales. Put

simply, if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were to have a little

girl, that girl would one day be Queen. Or even if she would be a

big girl! I guess it is a change that had to come. It is an open

goal for Cameron at the moment. There are a lot of complicated

problems at the moment, but let's do this nice and easy thing. I am

massively in favour of it, telling you that as an older sister. If I

thought my younger brother would get on the throne before me, we

would not be having any of it. life could be in danger! Will

anybody oppose this? I really don't think so. What amazes me is how

long it has taken full pub I wrote to netbook -- an editorial in 1986.

That was how many years ago? You would have thought Harriet Harman

would have done it. This was something she would have backed. It

seems incredible it has taken so long. The anything funny about it

is we don't know what the Royal Family themselves think about it. -

- the only thing. We are told the Queen let it be known she did not

object. That is the way these things work. The argument against

it is that the monarchy is a special institution, it is a

hereditary principle. You don't hold it to the same rules. Please,

come on! If you are saying we are going to trump tradition for

equality and venues we hold deer, we have to question you have so

much political power on the basis of your birth. Does the Queen have

political power? She has political influence. We are not in the era of

Downton Abbey. If Kate Middleton was able to tell us, the Duchess of

Cambridge, and what she really thinks, I'm sure she will be fully

behind this. But she doesn't talk very much, it is mostly about her

outfits. But even that! Since I can't get involved in this argument,

we will move on. Two girls. Could we be about to start marching

to 'Berlin time'? The Government has announced this morning that

it's considering advancing time by one hour. That could mean the UK

adopting Central European Time, putting us in line with the rest of

Europe. Except Portugal and Ireland. Now, it's not the first time we've

fallen in with Berlin and Paris. In 1968, a three-year trial started

which kept the clocks in advance of GMT all year round. It meant darker

mornings for early risers like postmen, newspaper delivery people

and schoolchildren. And before that, Winston Churchill introduced single

and double summer time during the war. Why? To save fuel and let

people get home safely during the blackout. But while it might be

nice for those in the South of England to have longer, lighter

evenings, what about people in Scotland where some might not see

daylight until nine o'clock in the morning? Well, the Government plans

to consult all devolved parts of the UK before it decides to support

the plan and if there is clear opposition in any part of the UK,

the trial won't go ahead. So are we about to return to watching the sun

rise at nine o'clock in the morning? Is changing our time a

good idea? We are joined by two people who should know. You are the

MP proposing this. Peter Hitchens has written a cover story on the

Spectator revealing the government is now behind this. Explain to us,

before we get into the argument, tell us what will happen. If I get

my way, we will have a very comprehensive government review

across government departments to find out whether the people

enthusiastic about this are right or if there are compelling

arguments why Richard Nott. You are in favour of it? I am convinced

there are enough good arguments about creating jobs and saving

lives on roads. Supposing it became law today. Tell us what would

happen. The clocks are due to go back next weekend. He if the

government review it and found it was a good idea... Just assume it

is law now. We would not change the clocks this autumn and we would be

on British Summer Time in the winter. We would have an extra hour

of daylight throughout the year. if our clocks don't go back next

week, we would be on the same time as Europe. They would put their

clocks back? They are ahead at the moment. We would stay where we are,

they would bring their clocks back. We would then be in zinc and next

summer, we would go forward an hour in tune with the rest of Europe?

Exactly. In perpetuity we would be an hour ahead. An extra hour of

daylight in the evening. Peter Hitchens, I can see a wry smile.

All of this stuff about extra hours, and the amount of sunshine you get,

you can shifted about from one place to another. Those of us who

get up early, almost everybody with a job, Mrs Harris may not have this

problem, but I was on my way to the station at 7:30am in twilight. If a

Bill were enforced, that would be a 30 -- 8:30am. So that is in October.

This is not a Scottish problem, it is an English problem. If we have

this imposed on us, we will be an hour different from us. We will

have darkness until very late in the morning. We would all have

breakfast in the dark. In the summer, you would be watching

Newsnight and it would be light outside. Who watches Newsnight?

That is another question. There would be more reasons not to do so

because it would be light outside. This is nothing to do with shifting

time to anyone's benefit. There's masses and masses of statistics

claiming we will be billionaires, but the truth is, and the reason

why Nick Clegg is pushing the Prime Minister, visited the European

Union project to put us on Central European Time? Absolutely ludicrous

and fanciful. It is nothing to do with the European Union, it is to

find out whether we are setting our clocks to the best time zone for

the way we live our lives. This is the 7th attempt to make this change.

Under European Union rules, we could not do the 1960 it experiment.

The European Union now main dates if... Are there as it meant --

there's an insecure -- interesting argument in Ireland this week. They

would like to be up to keep some time in Ireland. They were planing

they couldn't do it because Brussels and wouldn't let them. --

complaining. This is another interesting thing about the EU. We

are not allowed to decide whether or when to put our clocks back.

This Bill has been before Parliament seven times in the first

25 years, always put forward by Europhiles, never openly

acknowledged as being in the you measure because they know it is

associated with the European Union and people will spot it for what it

is. People have little imagination about what will happen. It is not

just Scottish people who will suffer, it is everybody. The last

time it was half tried in 1968 and 1971, road deaths rose considerably

during that period despite the fact it was the time when the

breathalyser was introduced and speed limits... Peter, you are a

superb journalist but when it comes to analysing road accidents I would

rather take the advice of the people whose job it is to do it.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of accidents have been

campaigning for this measure for 60 years. They know making the

afternoon rush-hour lighter will save lives. I lived in Scotland at

the time and it was very unpopular. And in the south. I can assure you

it was very unpopular in the north. What I don't understand are the

politics of this. You would think David Cameron had enough trouble

us on European time. It seems a bit of a sideshow at the moment. I grew

up about a mile away from the nearest street light in Scotland.

Which of us really likes getting up in the dark? The thought of having

to get up in the dark for longer, where I grew up, you would be

getting up in the dark even if you got out of bed at 10am. I think it

is pretty unappealing. I agree with Peter when he says we have a

limited amount of sunshine so we will be debating where we put it

and there are costs and benefits on both sides. Because those have been

reviewed over and over again in the past, I end up feeling a little bit

apathetic towards it. If you are going to introduce any motion into

Parliament, why are we talking about this now? We just had a whole

week wasted debating whether we should be reviewing whether we are

in or out of Europe. And the economy is tanking along the bottom.

Why are we doing it? The reason is it is a concession by

David Cameron to Nick Clegg. It establishes... It re-emerged having

been killed off by the relevant department in June. It emerged a

few weeks ago as a result of this. If Rebecca harasses right that it

is so beneficial, why are the people of Berlin not adopting Minsk

time? If it is so wonderful to be getting up in the dark? Minsk time?

In it would be the equivalent of Berlin time for us. It would mean

Berlin would do everything... you now have the backing of the

government for this motion. Otherwise you would not get the

time in Parliament. It comes from Nick Clegg. It is also part of the

parliamentary process. Does it have the backing of government? They are

minded to back it. Is that the same as backing it? What they said in

the press release is they are considering backing it.

The lobby groups for this have been doing quite a good job on pointing

out the potential economic benefits. The tourist industry in Britain

think it could give us an 80 -- an extra 80,000 jobs because it makes

us compete better with Europe in terms of attractions. It widens the

British tourist season. A will Rebecca Harris stake her salary on

these claims of economic advantage? David Cameron has told us on

numerous occasions that we are all in this together but the pay roll

figures show a different story with top director pate jumping by almost

50% in a year. That is based on an analysis of what the top 100 FTSE

companies take. These directors had an average income of �2.7 million

last year. That includes salary benefits and bonus payments, which

rose by 23%, from �737,000 in 2010, to �906,000 this year. The 49% rise

follows an increase of, wait for it, 55% in 2009-10. The report by

Income Data Services is based on averages. With the median figure

being used, it is a more modest 16%. Whichever way you calculate it, it

dwarfs the average 2.3% rise in average earnings across the economy.

The report comes as Vince Cable, the bad man's favoured man, has

been consulting on proposals to climb down on the escalation of

awards. Mark Field is a member of Parliament for the City of London

and a former recruitment consultant so he knows about salaries. When

top businessmen, and they are mainly men, and getting a rise of

50% two years ago and 50% this year, we are not all in it together.

would all agree we are living in a global market and we want to get

the brightest and best people from across the globe into our top

companies. But I do accept that this does not look like a free

market at all, it looks like a club that goes on with committees made

of the same people being recycled. The furore about Cedric Brown from

British Gas, when he had that package of �300,000, the current

going rate would now be 10 times that. Let's look at the global

market argument. I can understand that the chief executive of BP

needs to be paid a lot because Chevron might come and get him and

he is very good. But this survey shows that the biggest rises were

the lower down directors, not the very top. Not the rock star

managers. And also, for your argument to work, you would have to

show me that the top pay in Germany, France and Italy went up by 50%.

Ilott and it did not. It did not. - - I have looked. I do not entirely

disagree, obviously. But I do not think we should just look at the

issue of globalisation. We do need to get the best boat around.

have just agreed with me. I think there is a more genuine concern

here, which is the sense that capitalism, well, global capitalism

now seems to be an unfair bargain in recent years. People are

campaigning about this. What is interesting about St Paul's, and I

have been down that this week, it is not just the usual suspects, the

people on the left of politics, but increasing unease from middle-class

people that capitalism is skewed against them. I have been told that

the Corporation of London, the governing area they your

constituency, is going to take legal action to get rid of the

encampment. What do you think? is interesting that we have a

Conservative MP on the show acknowledging that there are

serious problems with bonuses in the City and something needs to be

changed. And that it is not just immoral but economically unsound.

The question I ask is why do we have David Cameron consistently

coming out, as he did this morning, saying that City bankers are

continuously being bashed in an unfair way, and offended those

practices. He is not defending the salaries, but he says we do not

want more regulation in the financial services industry,

without whom we would be in trouble. Like now? If we lost the banking

income then we would be in more trouble. I find that argument naive.

We are negotiating to millions of pounds of banking bail-out so again

and you are sitting there saying we do not need more regulation. You

have just acknowledged it a second ago that we do. I do not want to

see Vince Cable spending an inordinate amount of time in his

comfort zone, utilising the idea of how we control industry. He should

be spending his time making sure that we deal with unemployment and

growth that has stalled, and the message that this country is open

for business. What do you make of this? Vince Cable looked at this

question this summer. The question is what can the Government do and

is it right for them to intervene in the market in something like

this? Vince Cable said he was surprised at the number of round

table discussions with private companies and he was surprised at

their willingness to move on this. With 50% pay rises? I want to get

your reaction to the statement from the Corporation of London. We have

had endless discussions about this and every time we talk about it,

nothing happens but their pay continues to rise and rise and rise.

It is way ahead, so that the gap now between the top paid in a

company and the average is 10 times bigger than it was in the 1950s.

What are you going to do about it? Well, I think transparency is

important. What we need, therefore, within public companies is more

activist shareholders. Government is trying to do that.

think we have a tipping point. What is happening in Wall Street and St

Paul's, it is not just the usual suspects. They are middle-class,

Tory-voting people that feel they have done the right thing and they

have got savings and they are losing out. Vince Cable jumping on

this particular bandwagon and spending an inordinate amount of

time solving what he regards as a problem makes some sense but we

have to make sure the country is open for business. Our economy is

bumping along the bottom and still we have companies awarding

themselves 50% extra this year compared to last year. That is

phenomenal to me. It is not economically sound. It is rewarding

failure. Shares have not gone up by 43% in the past year. The people

that own the companies do not get that, the dividends do not rise,

the pension funds do not go up. We have run out of time, but what is

your reaction to the news that has just come through that the

Corporation of London will begin legal action to remove the protest?

I think it has been absolute pantomime over the past couple of

weeks. It is like a Third World shanty town outside St Paul's,

which is a world heritage site. We have Remembrance Sunday, the Lord

Mayor's Show within a fortnight, and on that basis I think they are

doing the right thing to try to remove these people but it will be

a long process. They will be lucky if they can remove them for that.

and a parrot to they are Tory voters! -- and apparently they are

Tory voters! Parliament Square has been there for 10 years, so do not

hold your breath. We are grateful that Mark Field has

come on the programme. What do you think when I say John

Major? Do not fall asleep! Traffic cones hotline, Black Wednesday, or

positively maybe the National Lottery. The former Conservative

Prime Minister did indeed introduce the national lottery in the 1990s.

The original idea was promoted by a far more obscure politician. We

The National Lottery, it feels like it has been with us forever. The

irony is that the man that actually got those big-money balls rolling

is not the man that a credit for it when they finally dropped. -- that

took credit for it. The lottery was only in his mind because he won the

parliamentary version of the lottery, the ballot for Private

Members' bills. I was not there. The first I knew about it was when

the phones rang and people kept saying to me, what is your subject?

I am from this newspaper, the TV, and I said I had not thought about

it. Colleagues loaded him with options but the two that he steered

away were the National Lottery and a Government hand-me-down that

would please the shipping industry but few else. The bill of carriage

of Goods by Sea was not going to up the credibility of somebody that

had been in Parliament for 18 years without making much of a hit. But

the National Lottery is another matter. What was the opposition to

this? It all stretches back to Margaret Thatcher. She was very

puritanical. Actually, I think she did believe that the feckless might

be trapped into more feckless behaviour with the lottery. So she

was very far from enthusiastic. Then the real reason was the

Treasury had done the deal with the Football pools. That is why when we

have the second reading vote, the Government was kept out of the

lobby. After the debate, a journalist came up to you and what

did he say? He said, that is it then, it is finished. I asked why

and he said that Number 10 had told him. I said that Number 10 had

better think again. I said we are going places with this. This will

be immensely, immensely popular in the country, because it will bring

lot of pleasure and report to thousands of people every week.

after adopting it in the manifesto, pulling a surprise jackpot victory

out of the bag in 92, John Major did indeed launch the National

Lottery, but he would not keep his fingers crossed. I know exactly

what you will do with that! name is now attached to its

creation but not everybody has forgotten the man that first put it

in the public and the Prime Minister's mind. People still come

up to me. I was on the Queen Mary during a speaking tour recently and

somebody came up to me to thank main. He said he would not be on

the Queen Mary but form what I had done because he had won the lottery.

-- but for what I had done. They still do it. Europe has dominated

the news agenda this week in more ways than one. It is time to look

back at the events over the seven days of the week. David Cameron

endured the biggest Tory rebellion over Europe ever this week, with 81

of his MPs defying him by voting in favour of a referendum on British

membership of the EU. I have to say to the front bench tonight, shame

on you. After that, the Prime Minister cleared his schedule and

headed to the EU summit. But it was left to the leaders of the 17

eurozone countries to secure a deal. Vince Cable found himself in a spot

of bother over an unpaid tax bill. The Business Secretary was forced

to pay a �500 penalty for late payment on earnings from media work.

An embarrassed by the fact that an honest mistake was not spotted.

However I make it absolutely clear that I did not avoid paying tax.

And Ken Clarke was forced to changed his sentencing bill

conceding to demands that 16 and 17 year olds who commit knife crimes

should go to prison. Asked if he and the government were running

scared over the threat of another backbench rebellion, he said: That

Honest Ken Clarke. Now it turns out that this trillion pound bail-out

fund, the money does not exist. So the eurozone is cap-in-hand to

China. What will the Chinese ask for in return? That is the key

question. The art of politics over the next 40 years will be how we

learn to negotiate with the rising powers like China and India. Let's

face it, Europe is not what it used to be. We will have to learn how to

do that, but the question is how we can do that while also keeping true

to our moral standards and not being beholden to powers that we

disagree with. As they say, it shut up! They will say that about human

rights in Tibet. No doubt. I find this situation and embarrassment.

It is the direction that things are going in and we will have to get

used to it. We are not going there. Not Britain, but the eurozone.

Chinese could come up with some money but they are very smart

people. They will exact a price. They will love the idea of being

centre-stage and being brought in, and complaining about their

currency being too weak. True, but there are lots of opportunities

that come with that process. It is just about being very clear what

your boundaries are and what you will work with and what you will

not. David Cameron is meeting with members of the Commonwealth today

and you should also be talking about building better links with

our Commonwealth partners. Thank you very much for being with us.

That is it for this week. Jo will be here on Monday and you can join

Jon Sopel for the Politics Show on Sunday. In the meantime, we leave

you with images from the Brussels summit, which eurozone leaders hope