09/03/2014 Sunday Politics North East and Cumbria

Morning, folks. Welcome to the Sunday Politics.

He's a man on a mission. But is it mission impossible? Iain Duncan

Smith has started the radical reform of our welfare state. No tall order.

And not everything's going to plan. We'll be talking to the man himself.

Nick Clegg's hosting his party's spring conference in York. He's

getting pretty cosy with the party faithful. Not so cosy, though, with

his Coalition partners. In fact things are getting a wee bit nasty.

We'll be talking to his right-hand man, Danny Alexander.

And are all politicians self-obsessed? Don't all shout at

In the north`east and once. We'll be

biggest social housing landlords. Can Southwark Council really build

11,000 new homes in the next three decades?

And with me, as always, three of the best and the brightest political

panel in the business. At least that's what it says in the Sunday

Politics template. Back from the Oscars empty handed, Helen Lewis,

Janan Ganesh and Iain Martin. Yes, three camera-shy hacks, who've never

taken a selfie in their life. We'll be coming to that later. They just

like to tweet. And they'll be doing so throughout the programme.

Welcome. Now, first this morning, the Liberal

Democrat Spring Conference in York. I know you speak of nothing else!

The Yorkshire spring sunshine hasn't made the Lib Dems think any more

kindly of their Coalition partners. Indeed, Tory bashing is now the Lib

Dem default position. Here's Danny Alexander speaking yesterday.

Repairing the economy on its own isn't enough. We have to do it

fairly. isn't enough. We have to do it

the agenda a decision to cut taxes, income taxes, for working people.

Now, conference, note that word - forced. We have had to fight for

this at the last election and at every budget and at every Autumn

Statement since 2010 and what a fight it has been.

Danny Alexander joins us now. Are we going to have to suffer 14 months of

you and your colleagues desperately trying to distance yourself from the

Tories? It's not about distancing ourselves. It's about saying, " this

is what we as a party have achieved in government together with the

Conservatives". And saying, " this is what our agenda is for the

future" . It's not just about the fact that this April we reach that

?10,000 income tax allowance that we promised in our manifesto in 20 0

but also that we want to go further in the next parliament and live that

to ?12,500, getting that over a 2-term Liberal Democrat government.

It's very important for all parties to set out their own agenda, ideas

and vision for the future, whilst also celebrating what we're

achieving jointly in this Coalition, particularly around the fact that we

are, having taken very difficult decisions, seeing the economy

improving and seeing jobs creation in this country, which is something

I'm personally very proud and, as the Coalition, we have achieved and

wouldn't have if it hadn't been for the decisions of the Liberal

Democrats. Lets try and move on You've made that point about 50

times on this show alone. You now seem more interested in Rowling with

each other than running the country, don't you? -- rowing with each

other. I think we are making sure we take the decisions, particularly

about getting our economy on the right track. Of course, there are

lots of things where the Conservatives have one view of the

future and we have a different view and it's quite proper that we should

set those things out. There are big differences between the Liberal

Democrats and the Conservatives just as there were big differences

between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party. I believe we're

the only party that can marry that commitment delivering a strong

economy, which Labour can't do, and that commitment to delivering a

fairer society, which the Tories can't be trusted to do by

themselves. You are going out of your way to pick fights with the

Tories at the moment. It's a bit like American wrestling. It is all

show. Nobody is really getting hurt. I've been compared to many things

but an American wrestler is a first! I don't see it like that It

is right for us as a party to set out what we've achieved and show

people that what we promised on 2010 on income tax cuts is what this

government is delivering. But nobody seems convinced by these

manufactured rows with the Tories. You've just come last in a council

by-election with 56 votes. You were even bitten by an Elvis

impersonator! Yes, that is true -- beaten. I could equally well quote

council by-elections that we've won recently, beating Conservatives the

Labour Party and UKIP. Our record on that is pretty good. You can always

pick one that shows one or other party in a poor light. Our party is

having real traction with the electric and the places where we

have a real chance of winning. If you're not an American wrestler

maybe you should be an Elvis impersonator! You told your spring

forum... You don't want to hear me sing! You want to raise the personal

allowance to ?12,500 in the next Parliament. Will you refuse to enter

into Coalition with any party that won't agree to that? What I said

yesterday is that this will be something which is a very high

priority for the Liberal Democrats. It's something that we will very

much seek to achieve if we are involved... We know that - will it

be a red line? If you are a number in 2010, on the front page of our

manifesto, we highlighted four policies... I know all that. Will it

be a red line? It will be something that is a very high priority for the

Liberal Democrats to deliver. For the fifth time, will it be a red

line? It will be, as I said, a very high priority for the Liberal

Democrats in the next Parliament. That's my language. We did that in

the next election. The number-1 promise on our manifesto with a

?10,000 threshold and we've delivered that in this Parliament.

People can see that when we say something is a top priority, we

deliver it. Is it your claim... Are you claiming that the Tories would

not have raised the starting point of income tax if it hadn't been for

the Liberal Democrats? If you remember back in the leaders'

debates in the 2010 election campaign, Nick Clegg was rightly

championing this idea and David Cameron said it couldn't be

afforded. Each step of the way in the Coalition negotiations within

government, we've had to fight for that. The covert overtures have

other priorities. -- the Conservatives. I don't want to go

back into history. I'd like to get to the present. Have the

Conservatives resisted every effort to raise the starting point of

income tax? As I said, we promised this in 2010, they said it couldn't

be done. We've made sure it was delivered in the Coalition. Have

they resisted it? We've argued for big steps along the way and forced

it on to the agenda. They've wanted to deliver other things are so we've

had to fight for our priority.. Did the Conservatives resist every

attempt? It has been resisted, overall the things I'm talking

about, by Conservatives, because they have wanted to deliver other

things and, of course, in a Coalition you negotiate. Both

parties have their priorities. Our priority has been a very consistent

one. Last year, they were arguing about tax breaks for married

couples. They were arguing in 2 10 for tax cuts for millionaires. Our

priority in all these discussions has been a consistent one, which is

to say we want cutbacks for working people. -- we want to cut tax for

working people. That has been delivered by both parties in the

Coalition government full top So what do you think when the Tories

take credit for it? I understand why they want to try to do that. Most

people understand what we have just said. Not if the polls are to be

believed... You're under 10%. This is one of the things, when I talk to

people, but I find they know that the Lib Dems have delivered in

government. People know we promised it in 2010 and we're the ones who

forced this idea onto the agenda in our election manifesto. You've said

that five times in this interview alone. The reality is, this is now a

squabbling, loveless marriage. We're getting bored with all your tests,

the voters. Why don't you just divorced? -- all your arguments I

don't accept that. On a lot of policy areas, the Coalition

government has worked very well together. We're delivering an awful

lot of things that matter to this country. Most importantly, the mess

that Labour made of the economy we are sorting out. We are getting our

finances on the right track, making our economy more competitive,

creating jobs up and down this country, supporting businesses to

invest in growth. That is what this Coalition was set up to do, what it

is delivering, and both myself and George Osborne are proud to have

worked together to deliver that record. Danny Alexander, thanks for

that. Enjoyed York. Helen, is anybody listening? I do worry that

another 40 months of this might drive voter apathy up to record

levels. There is a simple answer to why they don't divorced - it's the

agreement that Parliament will last until 2015. MPs are bouncing around

Westminster with very little to do. They are looking for things to put

in the Queen's Speech and we are going to have rocks basically the 40

months and very little substantial difference in policies. Do you

believe Danny Alexander when he says there would have been no rise in the

starting rate of income tax if not for the Lib Dems? He's gilding the

lily. If you look back at papers are written in 2001 suggesting precisely

this policy, written by a Tory peer, you see there are plenty of Tories

which suggest there would have been this kind of move. I can see why

Danny Alexander needs to do this and they need to show they've achieved

something in government because they are below 10% in the polls and

finding it incredibly difficult to get any traction at all. The other

leg of this Lib Dem repositioning is now to be explicitly the party of

Europe and to be the vanguard of the fight to be all things pro-Europe.

Mr Clegg is going to debate Nigel Farage in the run-up to the European

elections. If, despite that, the Lib Dems come last of the major parties,

doesn't it show how out of touch different. They are targeting a

section of the electorate who are a bit more amenable to their views

than the rest. They wouldn't get 20% of the vote. They are targeting that

one section. They have to do disproportionately well amongst

those and it will payoff and they will end up with something like 15%.

How many seats will the Lib Dems losing the next election? Ten. 0.

15. Triangulation! We'll keep that on tape and see what actually

happens! The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain

Duncan Smith is a man on a mission. He's undertaken the biggest overhaul

in our welfare state since it was invented way back in the

black-and-white days of the late 1940s. A committed Roman Catholic,

he's said he has a moral vision to reverse the previous welfare system,

which he believes didn't create enough incentive for people to work.

But are his reforms working? Are they fair? As he bitten off more

than he can chew? In a moment, we'll speak to the man himself but first,

here's Adam. Hackney in north London and we're on

the road with the man who might just be the most ambitious welfare

secretary there's ever been. It s a journey that started in the wind and

rain on a Glasgow council estate 12 years ago when he was Tory leader.

He came face-to-face with what it meant to be poor. A selection of

teddy bears. It's where he discovered his recipe for reform,

according to one of the advisers who was with him. There are things that

if you do get a job, keep your family together, stay off drugs and

alcohol, make sure you have a proper skill - that's what keeps you of

poverty. He, very ambitiously, wants to redefine the nature of what it

means to be poor and how you get away from poverty. Back in north

London, he's come to congratulate the troops on some good news. In

this borough, the number of people on job-seeker's allowance has gone

down by 29% in the last year, up from around 1700 to around 1200 But

the picture in his wider changes to the welfare state is a bit more

mixed. A cap on the total amount of benefits a family can get, of

?26,000 a year, is hugely popular but there have been howls of protest

over cuts to housing benefit, labelled the bedroom tax by some.

Protests, too, about assessments for people on disability benefits,

inherited from the previous government. Iain Duncan Smith has

been accused of being heartless and the company doing them, Atos, has

pulled out. And then the big one - and universal credit, a plan to roll

six benefits into one monthly payment, in a way designed to ensure

that work always pays. Some of the IT has been written off and the

timetable seems to be slipping. Outside the bubble of the

stage-managed ministerial trip, a local Labour MP reckons he's bitten

off more than he can chew. The great desire is to say, " let's have one

simple one size fits all approach" . And there isn't one size of person

or family out there. People need to change and they can challenge on the

turn of a penny almost. One minute they are doing the right thing,

working hard. Next minute, they need a level of support and if this

simple system doesn't deliver that for them, they're in a difficult

position. And that's the flying visit to the front line finished. He

does not like to hang about and just as well do - his overhaul of the

entire benefits system still has quite a long way to go. And Iain

Duncan Smith joins me now. Before I come onto the interview on welfare

reform, is Danny Alexander right when he claims the Lib Dems had to

fight to get the Tories to raise the income tax threshold? That is not my

recollection of what happened. These debates took place in the

Coalition. The Conservatives are in favour of reducing the overall

burden of taxation, so the question was how best do we do it? The

conversation took place, they were keen on raising the threshold, there

were also other ways of doing it but it is clear from the Conservatives

that we always wanted to improve the quality of life of those at the

bottom so raising the threshold fit within the overall plan. If it was a

row, it was the kind of row you have over a cup of tea round the

breakfast table. We have got a lot to cover. There are two criticisms

mainly of what you are doing - will they work, and will they be fair?

Leslie Roberts, one of our viewers, wants to know why so much has

already been written off due to failures of the universal credit

system even though it has been barely introduced. Relatively it has

been a ?2 billion investment project, in the private sector

programmes are written off regularly at 30, 40%. The IT is working, we

are improving as we go along, the key thing is to keep your eye on the

parts that don't work and make sure they don't create a problem for the

programme. 140 million has been wasted! The 40 million that was

written off was just do with security IT, and I took that

decision over a year and a half ago so the programme continued to roll

out. Those figures include the standard right down, the aggregation

of cost over a period of time. The computers were written down years

ago but they continue to work now. Universal credit is rolling out we

are doing the Pathfinders and learning a lot but I will not ever

do this again like the last government, big band launches, you

should do it phrase by phrase. Even your colleague Francis Maude says

the implementation of universal credit has been pretty lamentable.

He was referring back to the time when I stopped that element of the

process and I agreed with that. I intervened to make the changes. The

key point is that it is rolling out and I invite anyone to look at where

it is being rolled out to. You were predicting that a million people

would be an universal credit, this is the new welfare credit which

rolls up six existing welfare benefits and you were predicting a

million people would be on it by April, well it is March and only

3200 are on it. I changed the way we rolled it out and there was a reason

for that. Under the advice of someone we brought from outside he

said that you are better rolling it out slower and gaining momentum

later on. On the timetables for rolling out we are pretty clear that

it will roll out within the timescale is originally set. We will

roll it out into the Northwest so that we replicate the north and the

Northwest, recognise how it works properly. You will not hit 1 million

by April. I have no intention of claiming that, and it is quite

deliberate because that is the wrong thing to do. We want to roll it out

carefully so we make sure everything about it works. There are lots of

variables in this process but if you do it that way, you will not end up

with the kind of debacle where in the past something like ?28 billion

worth of IT programmes were written off. ?38 billion of net benefits,

which is exactly what the N a O Z, so it is worth getting it right

William Grant wants to know, when will the universal credit cover the

whole country? By 2016, everybody who is claiming one of those six

benefits will be claiming universal credit. Some and sickness benefits

will take longer to come on because it is more difficult. Many of them

have no work expectations on them, but for those on working tax

credits, on things like job-seeker's allowance, they will be making

claims on universal credit. Many of them are already doing that now

there are 200,000 people around the country already on universal credit.

You cannot give me a date as to when everybody will be on it? 2016 is

when everybody claiming this benefit will be on, then you have to bring

others and take them slower. Universal credit is a big and

important reform, not an IT reform. The important point is that it will

be a massive cultural reform. Right now somebody has to go to work and

there is a small job out there. They won't take that because the way

their benefits are withdrawn, it will mean it is not worth doing it.

Under the way we have got it in the Pathfinders, the change is

dramatic. A job-seeker can take a small part time job while they are

looking for work and it means flexibility for business so it is a

big change. Lets see if that is true because universal credit is meant to

make work pay, that is your mantra. Let me show you a quote Minister in

the last -- in the last Tory conference. It

has only come down to 76%. Actually form own parents, before they get to

the tax bracket it is well below that. That is a decision the

Government takes about the withdrawal rate so you can lower

that rate or raise it. And do your reforms, some of the poorest

people, if they burn an extra pound, will pay a marginal rate of

76%. -- if they earn an extra pound. The 98% he is talking about is a

specific area to do with lone parents but there are specific

compound areas in the process that mean people are better off staying

at home then going to work. They will be able to identify how much

they are better off without needing to have a maths degree to figure it

out. They are all taken away at different rates at the moment, it is

complex and chaotic. Under universal credit that won't happen, and they

will always be better off than they are now. Would you work that bit

harder if the Government was going to take away that portion of what

you learned? At the moment you are going to tax poor people at the same

rate the French government taxes billionaires. Millions will be

better off under this system of universal credit, I promise you and

that level of withdrawal then becomes something governments have

to publicly discussed as to whether they lower or raise it. But George

Osborne wouldn't give you the extra money to allow for the taper, is

that right? The moment somebody crosses into work under the present

system, there are huge cliff edges, in other words the immediate

withdrawal makes it worse for them to go into work than otherwise. If

he had given you more money, you could have tapered it more gently?

Of course, but the Chancellor can always ultimately make that

decision. These decisions are made by chancellors like tax rates, but

it would be much easier under this system for the public to see what

the Government chooses as its priorities. At the moment nobody has

any idea but in the future it will be. Under the Pathfinders, we are

finding people are going to work faster, doing more job searches and

more likely to take work under universal credit. Public Accounts

Committee said this programme has been worse than doing nothing, for

the long-term credit. It has not been a glorious success, has it

That is wrong. Right now the work programme is succeeding, more people

are going to work, somewhere in the order of 500,000 people have gone

back into work as a result of the programme. Around 280,000 people are

in a sustained work over six months. Many companies are well

above it, and the whole point about the work programme is that it is

setup so that we make the private sector, two things that are

important, there is competition in every area so that people can be

sucked out of the programme and others can move in. The important

point here as well is this, that actually they don't get paid unless

they sustain somebody for six months of employment. Under previous

programmes under the last government, they wasted millions

paying companies who took the money and didn't do enough to get people

into work. The best performing provider only moved 5% of people off

benefit into work, the worst managed only 2%. It is young people. That

report was on the early first months of the work programme, it is a

two-year point we are now and I can give you the figures for this. They

are above the line, the improvement has been dramatic and the work

programme is better than any other back to work programme under the

last government. So why is long term unemployment rising? It is falling.

We have the largest number of people back in work, there is more women in

work than ever before, more jobs being created, 1.6 million new jobs

being created. The work programme is working, our back to work programmes

are incredibly successful at below cost so we are doing better than the

last government ever did, and it will continue to improve because

this process is very important. The competition is what drives up

performance. We want the best performers to take the biggest

numbers of people. You are practising Catholic, Archbishop

Vincent Nichols has attached your reforms -- attack to your reforms,

saying they are becoming more punitive to the most vulnerable in

the land. What do you say? I don't agree. It would have been good if

you called me before making these attacks because most are not

correct. For the poorest temper sent in their

society, they are now spending, as a percentage of their income, less

than they did before. I'm not quite sure what he thinks welfare is

about. Welfare is about stabilising people but most of all making sure

that households can achieve what they need through work. The number

of workless households under previous governments arose

consistently. It has fallen for the first time in 30 years by nearly

18%. Something like a quarter of a million children were growing up in

workless households and are now in households with work and they are

three times more likely to grow up with work than they would have been

in workless households. Let me come into something that he may have had

in mind as being punitive - some other housing benefit changes. A

year ago, the Prime Minister announced that people with severely

disabled children would be exempt from the changes but that was only

after your department fought a High from the changes but that was only

Court battle over children who couldn't share a bedroom because of

severe disabilities. Isn't that what couldn't share a bedroom because of

the Archbishop means by punitive or, some may describe it, heartless We

the Archbishop means by punitive or, were originally going to appeal that

and I said no. You put it up for an appeal and I said no. We're talking

about families with disabled children. There are good reasons for

about families with disabled this. Children with conditions like

that don't make decisions about their household - their parents do -

so I said we would exempt them. But for adults with disabilities the

courts have upheld all of our decisions against complaints. But

courts have upheld all of our you did appeal it. It's just that,

having lost in the appeal court you didn't then go to the Supreme Court.

You make decisions about this. My view was that it was right to exempt

them at that time. I made that decision, not the Prime Minister.

Let's get this right - the context of this is quite important. Housing

benefit under the last government doubled under the last ten years to

?20 billion. It was set to rise to another 25 billion, the fastest

rising of the benefits, it was out of control. We had to get it into

control. It wasn't easy but we haven't cut the overall rise in

housing. We've lowered it but we haven't cut housing benefit and

we've tried to do it carefully so that people get a fair crack. On the

spare room subsidy, which is what this complaint was about, the

reality is that there are a quarter of a million people living in

overcrowded accommodation. The last government left us with 1 million

people on a waiting list for housing and there were half a million people

sitting in houses with spare and there were half a million people

bedrooms they weren't using. As we build more houses, yes we need more,

others have to use their others have to use their

accommodation carefully so that they actually improve the lot of those

accommodation carefully so that they living in desperate situations in

overcrowded accommodation, and taxpayers are paying a lot of

money. This will help people get back to work. They're more likely to

go to work and more likely, therefore, to end up in the right

go to work and more likely, sort of housing. We've not got much

time left. A centre-right think tank that you've been associated with, on

job-seeker's allowance, says 70 000 job-seekers' benefits were withdrawn

unfairly. A viewer wants to know, are these reforms too harsh and

punitive? Those figures are not correct. The Policy Exchange is

wrong? Those figures are not correct and we will be publishing corrected

figures. The reality is... Some people have lost their job-seeker

benefits and been forced to go to food backs and they shouldn't have.

No, they're not. What he is referring to is that we allowed an

adviser to make a decision if some but it is not cooperating. We now

make people sign a contract, where they agree these things. These are

things we do for you and if you don't do these things, you are

likely to have your benefit withdrawn on job-seeker's allowance.

Some of this was an fairly withdrawn. There are millions of

these things that go through. This is a very small subset. But if you

lose your job-seeker benefit unfairly, you have no cash flow

lose your job-seeker benefit There is an immediate review within

seven days of that decision. Within seven days, that decision is

reviewed. They are able to get a seven days, that decision is

hardship fund straightaway if there is a problem. We have nearly ?1

billion setup to help people, through crisis, hardship funds and

in many other ways. We've given more than ?200 million to authorities to

do face-to-face checks. This is not a nasty, vicious system but a system

that says, "look, we ask you to do that says, "look, we ask you to do

certain things. Taxpayers pay this money. You are out of work but you

have obligations to seek work. We simply ask that you stick to doing

those. Those sanctions are therefore be but he will not cooperate" . I

think it is only fair to say to those people that they make choices

throughout their life and if they choose not to cooperate, this is

what happens. Is child poverty rising? No, it is actually falling

in the last figures. 300,000 it fell in the last... Let me show you these

figures. That is a projection by the Institute of fiscal studies. It also

shows that it has gone up every year and will rise by 400,000 in this

Parliament, and your government and will continue to rise. But never

mind the projection. It may be right, may be wrong. It would be

400,000 up compared to when -- what you inherited when this Parliament

ends. That isn't a projection but you inherited when this Parliament

the actual figures. But the last figures show that child poverty has

fallen by some 300,000. The important point is... Can I just

finished this point of? Child poverty is measured against 60% of

median income so this is an issue about how we measure child poverty.

You want to change the measure. I made the decision not to publish our

change figures at this point because we've still got a bit more work to

do on them but there is a big consensus that the way we measure

child poverty right now does not measure exactly what requires to be

done. For example, a family with an individual parent who may be drug

addicted and gets what we think is enough money to be just over the

line, their children may be living in poverty but they won't be

measured so we need to get a measurement that looks at poverty in

measured so we need to get a terms of how people live, not just

in terms of the income levels they have. You can see on that chart -

400,000 rising by the end of this Parliament - you are deciding over

an increase. Speedier I want to change it because under the last

government child poverty rose consistently from 2004 and they

ended up chucking huge sums of money into things like tax credits. In tax

credits, in six years before the credits, in six years before the

last election, the last government spent ?175 billion chasing a poverty

target and they didn't achieve what they set out to achieve. We don t

want to continue down that line where you simply put money into a

welfare system to alter a marginal income line. It doesn't make any

welfare system to alter a marginal sense. That's why we want to change

it, not because some projection says it might be going up. I will point

out again it isn't a projection up to 2013-14. You want it to make work

pay but more people in poverty are now in working families than in

workless families. For them, workers not paying. Those figures referred

to the last government's time in government. What is interesting

to the last government's time in about it is that until 2010, under

the last government, those in working families - poverty in

working families rose by half a working families rose by half a

million. For the two years up to the end of those figures, it has been

flat, under this government. These are figures at the last

government... You inherited and it hasn't changed. The truth is, even

if you are in poverty in a working family, your children, if they are

in workless families, are three times more likely to be out of work

and to suffer real hardship. So in other words, moving people up the

scale, into work and then on is important. The problem with the last

government system with working tax credit is it locks them into certain

hours and they didn't progress. We're changing that so that you

progress on up and go out of poverty through work and beyond it. But

those figures you're referring to refer to the last government's

tenure and they spent ?175 billion on a tax credit which still left

people in work in poverty. Even 20 minutes isn't enough to go through

people in work in poverty. Even 20 all this. A lot more I'd like to

talk about. I hope you will come back. I will definitely come back.

Thank you for joining us. You're watching the Sunday

Politics. We say goodbye to viewers in Scotland, who leave us now for

Sunday Politics Scotland. Gove is right to focus. We've run

out of time. Thanks for being here. Andrew, back to you.

Now, without further ado, more from our political panel. Iain Martin,

what did you make of Iain Duncan Smith's response to the Danny

Alexander point I'd put to him? I thought it was a cheekily put

response but actually, on Twitter, people have been tweeting while on

air that there are lots of examples where the Tories have demanded the

raising of the threshold. The 2 06 Forsyth tax omission is another

example. Helen, on the bigger issue of welfare reforms, is welfare

reform, as we head into the election, despite all the

criticisms, still a plus for the government? I don't think so.

Whatever the opposite of a Midas touch is, Iain Duncan Smith has got

it. David Cameron never talks about universal credit any more. The

record on personal independence payment, for example... We didn t

get onto that. Only one in six of those notes have been paid. A toss

pulling out of their condiment has been a nightmare. It's a very big

minus point for the Secretary of State. -- Atos pulling out of bed

contract. Welfare cuts are an unambiguous point for the government

but other points more ambiguous I don't think it's technical

complexity that makes IDS's reform a problem. The IT gets moved out with

time. But even if it's in fermented perfectly, what it will achieve has

been slightly oversold, I think and simplified incredibly. All it does

is improve incentives to work for one section of the income scale and

diminishes it at another. Basically, you are encouraged to go from

working zero hours to 16 hours but your incentive to work beyond 1

goes down. That's not because it's a horrendous policy but because in

work benefits systems are imperceptible. Most countries do

worse than we do. -- benefits systems cannot be perfected. They

need to tone down how much this can achieve even if it all goes

flawlessly. There are clearly problems, particularly within

limitation, but Labour is still wary of welfare reform. -- with

implementation. Polls suggest it is rather popular. People may not know

what's involved were like the sound of it. I think Janan is right to

mark out the differences between welfare cuts and welfare reforms.

They are related but distinct. Are we saying cuts are more popular than

reform? They clearly are. The numbers, when you present people

numbers on benefit reductions, are off the scale. Reform, for the

reasons you explored in your interview, is incredibly

compensated. What's interesting is that Labour haven't really

definitively said what their position is on this. I think they

like - despite what they may see in public occasionally - some of what

universal credit might produce but they don't want to be associated

with it. We probably won't know until if Ed Miliband is Prime

Minister precisely what direction Labour will go. Immigration is still

a hot topic in Westminster and throughout the country. This new

Home Office minister, James Brokenshire, made an intervention.

Let's see what he had to say. For too long, the benefits of

immigration went to employers who wanted an easy supply of cheap

labour or to the wealthy metropolitan elite who wanted cheap

tradesmen and services, but not to the ordinary hard-working people of

this country. With the result that the Prime Minister and everyone else

has to tell us all whether they ve now got Portuguese or whatever it is

Nanny is. Is this the most cack-handed intervention on an

immigration issue in a long list? I think it is and when I saw this

being trailed the night before, I worried for him. As soon as a

minister of the Crown uses the phrase "wealthy metropolitan elite"

more likely we see it in recession. We've just had the worst recession

in several decades. It's no small problem but compared to what

ministers like James Brokenshire has been saying for the past few years

and also the reluctance to issue the report earlier, I thought that,

combined with the speech, made it quite a bad week for the department.

Was this a cack-handed attempt to appeal to the UKIP voters? I think

so and he's predecessor had to leave the job because of having a foreign

cleaner. It drew attention to the Tories' biggest problem, the out of

touch problem. Most people around the country probably don't have a

Portuguese nanny and you've just put a big sign over David Cameron

saying, this man can afford a Portuguese Nanny. It is not the

finest political operation ever conducted and the speech was

definitely given by the Home Office to Number Ten but did Number Ten

bother to read it? It was a complete shambles. The basic argument that

there is a divide between a wealthy metropolitan elite and large parts

of Middle Britain or the rest of the country I think is basically sound.

It is but they are on the wrong side of it. What do you mean by that The

Tory government is on the wrong side. This is appealing to UKIP

voters and we know that UKIP is appealing to working-class voters

who have previously voted Labour and Tory. If you set up that divide

make sure you are on the right side stop When you talk about

metropolitan members of the media class, they say that it is rubbish

and everyone has a Polish cleaner. No, they don't. I do not have a

clean! I don't clean behind the fridge, either! Most people in the

country don't have a cleaner. The problem for the Tories on this is,

why play that game? You can't out-UKIP UKIP. After two or three

years of sustained Tory effort to do that, they will probably finish

behind UKIP. Do we really want a political system where it becomes an

issue of where your nanny or your cleaner is from, if you've got one?

Unless, of course, they're illegal. But Portuguese or Italian or

Scottish... And intervention was from Nick Clegg who said his wife

was Dutch -- his mum was Dutch and his wife was Spanish. Not communism

but who your cleaner is! It's the McCarthy question! Where does your

cleaner come from. A lot of people will say are lucky to have a

cleaner. I want to move onto selfies but first, on the Nigel Farage

Nick Clegg debate, let's stick with the TV one. Who do you think will

win? Nigel Farage. Clegg. He is a surprisingly good in debates and

people have forgotten. I think Clegg is going to win. I think Farage has

peaked. We're going to keep that on tape as well! Two 214 Clegg there.

Selfies. Politicians are attempting to show they're down with the kids.

Let's look at some that we've seen in recent days.

Why are they doing this, Helen? I'm so embarrassed you call me reading

the SNP manifesto, as I do every Saturday! They do it because it

makes them seem authentic and that's the big Lie that social media tells

you - that you're seeing the real person. You're not, you're seeing a

very carefully manicured, more witty person. That doesn't work for

politicians. It looks so fake and I'm still suffering the cringe I see

every time I see Cameronserious phone face. Does Mr Cameron really

think it big Sim up because he's on the phone to President Obama? Obama

is not the personality he once was. There is an international crisis in

Ukraine - of course we are expecting to be speaking to Obama! And if you

were in any doubt about what a man talking on the telephone looks like,

here's a photo. I must confess, I didn't take my own selfie. Did your

nanny? My father-in-law took it Where is your father-in-law from?

Scotland. Just checking. Janan, I think we've got one of you. The 1%!

What a great telephone! Where did you get that telephone? It looks

like Wolf Of Wall Street! That's what I go to bed in. It showed how

excited Cameron was to be on the phone to Obama. All our politicians

think they are living a mini version of US politics. President Obama goes

on a big plane and we complain when George Osborne goes first class on

first Great Western. They want to be big and important like American

politics but it doesn't work. We'll see your top at next week!

That's it for this week. Faxed all our guests. The Daily Politics is on

all this week at lunchtime on BBC Two. We'll be back here same time,

same place next week. Remember, if it's Sunday, it is the Sunday

Politics.