18/03/2016 The Week in Parliament

Hello, and welcome to the Week In Parliament.

A budget for the next generation, said the Chancellor.

A lifetime savings plan, more time in school,

and a surprise move against childhood obesity.

So today I can announce that we will introduce a new sugar

levy on the soft drinks industry.

The Budget, a very traditional part of Parliament.

But are things changing around us in the political world,

driven by new media?

As more personalities speak out in the EU referendum battle,

Donald Trump continues to woo thousands of supporters

in the United Sates.

No one has ever run a campaign on that scale

that is based entirely

on one man saying whatever comes to his mind

and seeing how people react.

And back home, in the fight to defeat terrorism,

should the security services be able to track our movements

on the internet?

We must ensure that those charged with keeping us safe are able

to keep pace.

There are significant, significant weaknesses in this bill.

The powers authorised by this bill are

formidable and capable of misuse.

But first, George Osborne had plenty of announcements to make,

some more eye-catching than others, in his eighth Budget speech

to Parliament on Wednesday.

The day started in traditional fashion,

with the Chancellor parading his red box

outside 11 Downing Street

before making his short trip to the Commons.

The verdicts on his Budget next day

were almost as numerous as his measures.

For some watchers it lacked any theme.

Others dismissed it as too timid to galvanise the economy.

Was it a Chancellor trying not to rock the boat

ahead of the EU Referendum?

What was a gift to the headline writers

was George Osborne's decision

to use the tools of the Treasury

to help tackle childhood obesity.

We all know one of the biggest contributors to childhood obesity

is sugary drinks.

A can of cola typically has nine teaspoons of sugar in it.

Some popular drinks have as many as 13.

I'm not prepared to look back at my time here in this Parliament,

doing this job,

and say to my children's generation, I'm sorry.

"We knew there was a problem with sugary drinks.

"We knew it caused disease.

"But we ducked the difficult decisions and we did nothing."

So today I can announce that we will introduce a new sugar

levy on the soft drinks industry.

We are going to use the money from this new levy to double

the amount of funding we dedicate to sport in every primary school.

And for secondary schools,

we are going to fund longer school days

for those who want to offer their pupils

a wider range of activities,

including extra sport.

STUDIO: In terms of pensions...

..We have consulted widely on whether we should make compulsory

changes to the pension tax system, but it was clear there

was no consensus.

Indeed, the former Pensions Minister,

the Liberal Democrat Steve Webb,

said I was trying to abolish the lump sum.

Instead we are going to keep the lump sum

and abolish the Liberal Democrats.

LAUGHTER.

STUDIO: And the Chancellor came to his conclusion.

..This is a budget that gets the investors investing,

savers saving, businesses doing business, so that we build

for working people a low tax enterprise Britain,

secure at home, strong in the world.

I commend to the House

a Budget that puts the next generation first.

STUDIO: Labour's Jeremy Corbyn had a scathing reply.

It is a recovery built on sand on a Budget of failure.

He has failed on the Budget deficit, failed on debt, failed

on investment, failed on productivity, failed on trade

deficit, failed on the welfare cap, failed to tackle inequality

in this country.

This is all about political choices.

We said at the election, and we hold to it:

a very modest 0.5% real terms increase in expenditure

could have released money,

not just for investment,

but do make sure those on benefits

did not fall any further behind.

That would have been a sensible, inhumane and productive thing to do.

If we are going to have a tax base on sugar,

I wonder whether over the longer run

we shouldn't consider widening that base.

After all, it's not just sugar in drinks that are held

to be harmful.

So Britain is now at a crossroads.

The structural deficit will be gone next year,

so the Chancellor is choosing to make unnecessary cuts

to meet an unnecessary target.

It is his choice to remove support from people with disabilities.

It is his choice to cut universal credit.

It is his choice to stand by as child poverty increases.

Next day the Shadow Chancellor focused on changes to personal

independence payments claimed by disabled people.

Can I just say this across the House?

This is a very important issue.

We will not make party politics of this.

I say this sincerely,

as someone who has campaigned on disability issues in this House

for 18 years.

I urge you, I urge all members now,

to press the Chancellor to think again on this issue.

It is cruel and it is unfortunately,

I believe, dangerous

for the well-being of disabled people.

The Shadow Chancellor proved today that he is incapable of answering

any of the questions put to him by my colleagues on the side.

But he is able to tell us a few things.

He has told us that he was to transform capital.

He has told us that his heroes are Lenin and Trotsky.

He has told us that he wants to borrow more.

In fact, had we carried on with the Labour Party's plans

when they were in Government from 2010, we would have borrowed

?930 billion more in the course of the past six years.

The reaction so far to Wednesday's Budget.

Still two more days of Budget debate to go in the Commons.

There is a presidential election going on, you may just possibly have

noticed, in the United States.

The frontrunner in the Republican nomination stakes

remains Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has been giving Hillary Clinton

a run for her money in the fight to win the Democrat nomination.

On this side of the pond, meanwhile, the In campaign and the Out campaign

are getting themselves into gear for the EU referendum,

with both camps attracting big personalities.

Joining me in the studio now to discuss the influence

of personalities in politics are three people in the know.

Dame Margaret Hodge is a Labour veteran of national

and London election campaigns.

Jim Waterson is the political editor of Buzzfeed.

As Kate Andrews is the news editor

of the Institute for Economic Affairs.

Welcome to The Week In Parliament.

Now, Jim, we are seeing in America Donald Trump dominating

the US presidential election.

It could be the case that Boris Johnson dominates

the EU referendum campaign.

Are we entering the new era of personality politics?

I think a big personality in politics has always

been an asset.

It has always been something we have looked to.

You think back even to Harold Wilson with his pipe and the way that he'd

go around with that just to make sure that people saw him.

But with Trump, you have got something else.

Trump is sort of breaking all the rules.

Trump is something that theoretically shouldn't work,

and yet is bigger than any candidate I have ever seen in any campaign.

You know, no one has ever run a campaign on that scale

that is based entirely on one man saying whatever comes to his mind

and seeing how people react.

Margaret Hodge, UK politics have always had plenty of

personalities, haven't we?

Yeah, but personalities always matter, and personality in a way

translates politics into ordinary language for people to relate to.

But it's about more than that.

I think it is about narrative, and I think it's about leadership.

So I don't think personality on its own - Farage,

personality actually got nowhere in the electoral

system here in the UK.

So I don't think personality on its own is enough.

It is great, and we are driven think more to personality politics.

I don't know if you guys agree with this because of 24/7,

it means that you have always got to have somebody up,

somebody to translate what is happening into a language

that people can relate to.

Kate, it seems to me that the American system -

we see these conventions and rallies and cheering crowds.

The American system almost seems to encourage personality politics.

It does, and it has for a while.

You can always look at who Americans said they wanted to have a beer

with, and very usually it will correlate to who has been

elected into office.

People want to feel friendly towards their candidates,

to feel like they can relate to them.

They want to feel like they can have fun with them.

It used to be said that people wanted to have a beer

with George W Bush more than they did with John Kerry,

for example.

Of course, George W Bush didn't drink.

But that wasn't the point.

The point was that they actually warmed to him despite that policy,

and despite things they might have had disagreements they wanted

to spend time with him.

And that has always been very important in American elections.

But Kate, is it enough?

I slightly worry about this cult of personality, because of course

personalities count, but it is about the narrative.

What worries you in particular about personalities?

Well, because...

Boris has got a great big personality, I'm not sure he's got

much of a narrative, and the idea that he might end up

as the leader of the Conservative Party or indeed Prime Minister

before the next general election without a narrative is a bit scary.

And I'm not sure, actually, that the British people at the end

of the day take it.

Maybe I am going back to far, but if you think of

Attlee and Churchill - Churchill was full of personality.

Attlee actually won the election.

So I think we should recognise personality counts and your ability

to relate with the media is hugely important, but I think it is sort

of necessary, not sufficient.

That is probably where I would put it.

The question that you ask is interesting.

Is it enough?

Well, of course just having a personality and a big personality

is not enough to lead a great nation or to implement policy.

You are completely right.

But is it enough to get elected?

It might be.

Jim Waterson, it is interesting, isn't it, the role of social media?

And we had sound bites 20, 30 years ago, but now we are down

to 140 characters on Twitter.

Well, Donald Trump has played the most astonishing game.

Traditionally in American politics you have got to spend a lot

of money on adverts, and what they do is,

the campaigns go and carefully hone an advert, get that will get

their personality out there.

Donald Trump, just armed with a Twitter account

and a willingness to send a load of abuse, has had so much free

coverage that he doesn't need to bother with that.

And I have just been out recently in America,

I went to a Donald Trump rally in New Hampshire,

and it is like nothing I have ever seen before.

5000 people in an ice hockey arena, chanting, pounding music,

people buying a hotdog.

It was like turning up to a gig.

It wasn't like a political event of any sort I've ever seen before.

That is exactly what it is, isn't it?

What he has done is brought to reality TV into politics.

It was moving in that direction, but very slowly.

Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney - this was not the stuff of a big

wrestling match, really.

And what he has done so successfully, but also

very much to my worry, is that he has taken it to such

an extreme people aren't resisting.

They are embracing it.

So how much further will they go?

OK, I am going to challenge you get again.

Because he has, I agree with all that, and he is probably

now unbeatable, unless you tell me otherwise.

I think it looks like he will be the nominee.

But is he electable?

So there is a difference between being unbeatable within

the political party framework.

Is he electable as president of the United States?

I wonder.

Let's bring it back for a moment to UK politics.

Of course, in your part of London, you faced a very serious

challenge at one point from the British National Party.

They had a simple anti-immigration message.

What did you do to counter that very simple message?

I think it's really interesting, because I also had Nick Griffin

against me, who was a big personality.

And actually, I completely changed my politics.

And I think a lot of these votes - you look around at what is happening

around the world, a lot of it is a protest vote

against the way the traditional politicians do their politics.

So I have just completely transformed what I do.

I no longer go to party meetings more than I need to -

very, very few.

I no longer cut ribbons in town hall ceremonies.

And everything I do has to pass this very simple test.

Would it help me reconnect with my voters?

So it is all about - you know, it is not great

rocket science stuff.

It is about communicating with people, listening to people,

responding to what they say where you can and rebuilding trust.

And I think it is that change of politics

which is being demanded for,

and that's why these crazy people

are emerging politics at the moment.

It's because people are angry with us lot, they are angry

with the traditional political class, they are protesting,

and the protest goes to these rather bizarre politicians.

Is it a question of a fightback, Jim?

Do you think traditional politicians need to fight back

against the personalities?

I think it is very hard, particularly online -

no one is going to put out a Facebook status going,

I believe in the moderate candidate who might be able to win over

the massive electorate.

You want to put, I'm a full socialist or I am a full

anti-immigration campaigner.

It is a stronger message, and it sort of makes sense.

You look purer and better for doing it.

Let me just wind things up now.

We have smashed the issue around very interestingly indeed.

Are you hopeful for the future?

You sound a little bit downbeat that personalities

are taking over politics.

Of

No, I think personalities matter, but I do think, go back to almost

No, I think personalities matter, but I do think, go back to almost

what I said at the beginning, I think leadership is important.

You can have personality without leadership.

And I think the narrative you tell is crucial.

And you need those three ingredients to be able to succeed in securing

power in Government.

Jim Waterson, are you hopeful for the future?

Yeah, always.

Otherwise we would be absolutely despairing and we wouldn't be

here discussing it.

I think personalities in politics are probably going to be

on the rise, but the system tends to find a way, and we will probably

end up just working around it, coming to some sort of solution.

Kate Andrews, final word?

I am hopeful and optimistic, although I think the future

is going to look very, very different.

I think if Donald Trump were to become the Republican

nominee, we could see that party below and other very,

very different in even a few years' time.

Similarly if Hillary Clinton were to lose to Donald Trump,

I am not saying she will, but if she did, that is going to be

a crisis within the Democratic Party as well.

So I am optimistic, but I think things will look very different.

We live in interesting times.

Kate Andrews, Jim Waterson and Dame Margaret Hodge,

thanks very much for joining me on the week in parliament.

Some thoughts on personalities with three personalities.

Now a look at some of the other stories in Parliament

in the last few days.

The Government suffered a string of defeats in the Lords on Wednesday

night on the issue of trade unions and their funding

of the political parties.

Rebel Conservatives joined with Opposition peers to support

a proposal that would mean only new union members having to opt

in to paying the political levy, not all members,

as the Government had wished.

The measures proposed by the Government to bring

in the opt in go far beyond any transparency

requirements.

They are highly unreasonable.

In turn, that will, as now evidenced by the committee report,

have a major impact on Labour Party funding.

I do not wish to be party to a move that would seriously

disadvantage one of the great parties of this country,

particularly at a time when it is going through its own

special problems, which I hope will soon be over.

It is not acceptable in many areas of daily life to automatically

deduct payment for a cause that has not been actively consented to.

Still a robust campaigner.

The former Labour MP Clare Short, who famously resigned

from Tony Blair's Cabinet over the war in Iraq,

returns to Westminster to talk about the difficulties facing

Muslim charities.

I should say, because after 9/11, anything with Islam or Muslims

in its title gets sniffed at, I did ask our security services

to have a look at Islamic Relief, and they said, perfect.

So I mean, that is not there.

The return to home base that not many expected.

When President Putin announces a surprise withdrawal

of Russian forces from Syria, the reaction of Westminster

politicians is decidedly mixed.

Decisions are made apparently arbitrarily without any advanced

signalling, and as we are now seeing, can be an made

just as quickly.

This is not a recipe for enhancing stability and predictability

on the international scene.

It makes the world a more dangerous place, not a less dangerous place.

He has retained the military base at Lattakia and the Port of Tartus,

and there can be no settlement of the Syrian question

without the endorsement of Russia.

It may not be game, set and match to Mr Putin,

but it is most certainly game and set.

Remembering the many thousands killed and injured

in the First World War.

It's nearly 100 years since the horrors of

the Battle of the Somme.

Peers reflect on how to mark the grim anniversary.

When the war was over, there were many more words.

They were inscribed on the tombstones visible today

from every road on the approaches to the Somme.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains more than 60

cemeteries of haunting beauty on the Somme battlefield.

Above them tower the great memorials, dominated

by the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, the largest war

memorial ever built,

recording the names of 73,335 soldiers who have no known grave.

The Battle of the Somme is, for many people, the symbol

of the horrors of warfare.

But it is important that the commemorations also

extend our understanding of the impact these battles had

on our national outlook.

Is it a storm in a coffee cup?

The cups can't be re-cycled, it would seem, because the paper

is combined with plastic.

A Minister is urged to wake up and smell the coffee.

Could the Government have a look at the problem of the wretched

number of plastic lined paper takeaway coffee cups?

The overwhelming majority of which never get recycled

because of the difficulties of ripping out the plastic lining

of the paper.

It is a huge problem.

would agree, the plastic bag tax has been a success,

coffee cups seems to be a very good thing to look at next.

And a dead heat at this place.

A vote at the National Assembly for Wales is tied 26-26 on a move

to ban e-cigarettes in most public places in Wales.

The presiding officer follows the rules to cast her vote

against the measure.

I call for a vote on the motion, tabled in the name

of Mark Drakeford.

Open the vote.

Close the vote.

26 for.

No abstentions.

26 against.

Therefore I have to cast my vote, against.

Resolving a moment of deadlock in Cardiff.

Striking the balance between fighting terrorism

while maintaining liberty was centre-stage once again

in the Commons on Tuesday.

The bill that will allow the security services to intercept

and store communications data won the initial approval of MPs

by a margin of 251.

Critics of the Investigatory Powers Bill, widely nick-named

the Snoopers' Charter, say it gives the authorities

too much power to access where we go on the internet.

the

Today terrorists and criminals the operating online with a reach

and scale that never existed before.

They are exploiting the technological benefits

of the modern age for their own twisted ends, and they will continue

to do so

as long as it gives them a perceived advantage.

We must ensure that those charged with keeping us safe

are able to keep pace.

Internet connection records do not provide

access to a person's full web browsing history.

An Internet connection record is a record of

what Internet services a device or a person has connected to,

not every web page they have visited.

The Government's bill is not yet worthy

of support, because there are significant weaknesses

in this bill.

So I am not prepared, I'm sorry, to go through the lobby tonight

and give him and his Government a blank

-- and give him and his Government a blank cheque.

I want to hold them to account.

I want to see changes in this bill, to strengthen this bill,

and when they listen, then they will earn our support.

And that seems to me to be entirely appropriate and responsible

for an opposition party to do.

The bill is a rushed job, in my opinion, coming on the back

of a draft bill which didn't go far enough to protect civil liberties

and lacked clarity.

This bill, or something like it, is absolutely necessary.

It replaces 66 plus other pieces of statutory mechanism.

So we have got to have, in the interest of transparency,

something to do it in its place.

But it grants sweeping powers, in my view so far,

insufficient safeguards, and not enough consideration for privacy.

The powers authorised by this bill

are formidable and capable of misuse.

In the absence of a written constitution, it is only

the subjective tests of necessity and

proportionality that stand in the way of that misuse.

The bill should be far, far more explicit than it currently

is that these powers are the exception from standing

principles of privacy and must never become the norm.

There is a fundamental challenge at the heart

of this legislation between the idea that it is possible to separate out

somebody's contact online from their content.

It is the definition that many of the Internet companies have

raised and said there is a concern with, and it is a definition

that is yet this legislation has not completely grappled with.

Let's have no illusion.

This is retaining information for that period of time

of those, the overwhelming the majority, needless to say,

who are in no way under suspicion of any criminal

activity at all.

Is that desirable?

Does anybody really believe that that will help

the fight against terrorism?

The ability to collect bulk data is essential.

The new bill will help to mean there is no

credibility gap in the balance between keeping us safe

and protecting our rights to privacy.

And at the end of that debate, the Investigatory Powers Bill

won the approval of MPs, 266 votes to 15.

Labour and the SNP abstained.

Plenty more stages of consideration to go.

Now with a look at some of the slightly more off-beat

stories around Westminster and beyond,

here's Duncan Smith.

A countdown to another countdown.

Yes, this Tuesday marked just 100 days to go until the EU referendum.

Plenty of time to get your hands on some campaign merchandise.

Maybe a veteran of the Palace of Westminster, but this week,

the Beast of Bolsover revealed he has

never visited Buckingham Palace, and he doesn't fancy his chances.

Wales' First Minister Carl Wynne Jones

faced his last question time before the Welsh Assembly dissolved

for the May elections.

After clocking up nearly 200 question sessions,

the Labour leader was in a reflective mood.

This might be theatre.

He and I know that this has an element of

theatre, but it has a serious element, and that is to test

forensically what the Government does.

If party leaders felt a little nervous on Tuesday,

it may have been with good reason.

The 15th was the legendary Ides of March - fateful

The 15th was the legendary Ides of March,

fateful for Julius Caesar, but this year,

the banks of the Thames did not run red.

Backbench business committee chair Ian Mearns s discoveries his power

stretches beyond Westminster.

Last week, when I spoke, in my exasperation about

Newcastle United, within 24 hours, there was a change

of management.

Well, they do say a week is a long time in politics.

# Five, four, three, two, one.

Duncan Smith reporting.

Thursday brought the sad news of the death of one of BBC

Television's best known faces in the 1960s and 70s,

Cliff Michelmore.

Among a huge range of TV programmes he presented,

Cliff Michelmore fronted the general election night programme

when Harold Wilson won his second election victory for Labour

in March 1966.

The very first result of the night is just coming in.

We are loading it into this very special machine,

which will bring to you and to ask the results as fast as they possibly

can be brought to you.

And there is the first result of the night,

Hull City 1, Chelsea 3.

I think that will have more electoral repercussions in Hull

than it will certainly have in Chelsea.

And you can see the whole of that 1966 election night programme,

from beginning to end, on its 50th anniversary

on BBC Parliament.

It'll run on Easter Monday, starting at 8:20

in the morning.

Four more days of Parliament to go before the Westminster Easter break.

Do join me for the best of the day in the Commons and the Lords

at 11pm on Monday night.

Until then, from me, Keith Macdougall, goodbye.