Westminster blog

There is a Parliamentary report out today into Jack Dromey, Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington, over his failure to register payments from Unite. Dromey is of course Mr Harriet Harman.

Dromey, former deputy general secretary of Unite, was paid by the union from May 2010 to October 2010 (while an MP) and failed to register the payments or on several times declare his interest in debates.

The report by the Committee on Standards and Privileges acknowledges the MPs’ co-operation and repeated apology. But it goes on to say that it might have ordered him to apologise to the Commons – in a personal statement – if he was not an inexperienced MP.

The committee accepts his written apology but add:

“We restrict ourselves to accepting Mr Dromey’s offer to apologise by way of a point of order on the floor of the House for his failure to declare interests…”

The FT splashed back on November 18 about the government’s new enthusiasm for a Thames estuary airport with ministers such as George Osborne taking the plans seriously for the first time.

We revealed that the proposal would be part of an interim report on aviation published this March*:

Submissions have already been made to the transport department for an aviation review, which should produce an interim report in March next year and a final report in the spring of 2013. “The concept of a Thames estuary airport forms a useful contribution to the debate and will be considered alongside all other responses,” the Department for Transport said.

The BBC is now all over the story, which has resurfaced on the front of the Daily Telegraph.

Key to the project is Steve Hilton, who shares Boris Johnson’s enthusiasm for the visionary plan to build a new airport hub in the estuary; it could either be at”Boris Island” or on the nearby Isle of Grain as suggested by Lord Foster, the architect.

We also wrote this analysis, which laid out some of the technical issues surrounding the plan. In theory the new hub would be applauded by business leaders, who are worried that Britain will run out of aviation capacity within the next two decades; Heathrow is almost full already. The coalition’s promise not to build a third runway at Heathrow is the reason why ministers are now casting around for more radical ideas.

The potential obstacles to an estuary airport include:

1] The cost: At around £50bn this is an awesome sum to be considering at a time of fiscal austerity – although it would be spread over many years.

2] Environmental issues. Would the new airport breach Britain’s future carbon pledges? Would geese pose a danger to jets by flying into engines?

3] What do you do with Heathrow? If it’s closed down BAA would require compensation estimated at £12bn. If it’s kept open then traffic to the new estuary hub could be slow at first. (This is what happened when a new Malpensa airport was built at Milan).

4] There are suggestions that Dutch or Belgian air authorities would not accept planes flying through their airspace en route to the hub.

One entirely separate obstacle which has emerged in today’s Telegraph is the hostility of the Lib Dems towards the estuary project.  It’s easy to forget but the party entered the general election with a commitment to no airport expansion at all in the south-east. And that remains their point of view. The Libs hope that HS2 could reduce future aviation demand – a theory which doesn’t really fit with the DfT’s predictions for where high-speed passengers will come from.

“The environmental and cost implications mean we don’t the estuary project is viable even in the long-term,” a senior Clegg aide tells me today. That sets up the coalition for a battle when this comes to a head; not necessarily this March but definitely in March 2013 when the final aviation report is published.

* If you’re interested in the technicalities: There was a scoping document last

This won’t come to a head until the summer; but rebellion is already in the air among Lib Dem MPs over coalition plans to regionalise public sector pay. Several have told us they believe the idea is “stupid” or “unsound” and “should be resisted” because it could accentuate the north-south divide.

George Osborne has written to six pay bodies to report back by July on how the idea might work; the Tory chancellor believes it could help the economy. (The theory is that if the state offers higher wages in poorer areas then companies have a smaller pool of available talent). Tory MPs – even in the north and south-west – seem to think it’s a great idea. But the Lib Dems fear it could have the reverse effect, causing a “race to the bottom” as companies follow suit and cut their pay to match the public sector.

There are also enormous difficulties in how you implement this idea; people in Downing Street and the Treasury fear a backlash if they immediately cut pay. There are also concerns about freezing pay in poor areas while lifting it in affluent areas. That may leave the much smaller option of only introducing the system for new hires; but even that would result in a two-tier labour market, which would also be controversial.

Here’s a link to our full story this morning.

I’m not entirely sure that the potential merger between PCS and Unite has been confirmed before by any senior figure from either union: until today. Mark Serwotka, head of the PCS, told us in an interview today that he wanted to deepen the “ever closer developing relationship” the pair had formed since signing a co-operation deal a year ago. He also pointed out that his union had a similar deal with Unison which had not gone so well.

There are wider political consequences. While both unions are not in formal merger talks, as Serwotka made clear, any future deal would be of great concern to the Labour party. Why? Because Unite, with about 1.5m members, is the party’s biggest donor. The PCS, with nearly 300,000 members, is a vocal critic of the party for its relatively centrist approach.

Some Labour MPs have already woken up to the possibility that Serwotka could be deputy general secretary of a merged union – and therefore a potential successor to current leader Len McCluskey. That would not necessarily mean an end to Unite’s donations to Labour (there are precedents for having separate political funds in merged unions). But it could make the uneasy relationship between the afiliated unions and Labour much more tense.

Meanwhile the PCS is mulling the idea of fielding election candidates in by-elections and general elections, although this would be limited to just a handful of people. Serwotka wants PCS people to be put up in instances where there are no other candidates from the left.

It’s a common assumption that without Scotland the Labour party would be eternally doomed, unable to ever get another majority in a Disunited Kingdom.

As Peter Oborne wrote yesterday in an otherwise excellent Telegraph column about the union:

This discrepancy has become so marked and so permanent that most political scientists calculate that Labour could not form a government without Scotland, meaning that independence would open the way to Tory control at Westminster into the foreseeable future.

The reality is in fact rather different, according to psephologists I talked to earlier in the week. There is no doubt that the Tories would benefit, given that they have one solitary MP north of the border (David Mundell) – while Labour has 41 out of 59. You don’t have to be a maths genius to work out that it would be bad for Ed Miliband’s party.

The reshifting of the political techtonic plates is accentuated by boundary changes which will remove an estimated 28 Labour MPs and only 7 Tory MPs, according to Anthony Wells at YouGov.

And yet.

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, tells me that while it would be harder for Labour to win it would not be impossible. According to Professor Curtice, Labour would still have won in 1945, 1950, 1997, 2001 and 2005.

In February 1974 there would still have been no majority but the Tories would have nudged ahead of Labour. Eight months later, Harold Wilson’s majority of three would have been obliterated.

In 2005 Labour’s majority of 66, already down steeply from 167 at the previous election, would have been halved – but Tony Blair would have still edged it.

I’ll gloss over his cruel treatment by John Humphrys on Today, his 35-minute-late arrival at his own press conference and the hostile questioning by some journalists today.

On matters of substance, did Ed Miliband offer up any new policy?

There was a new idea; forcing energy companies to put elderly customers on their cheapest tariffs. This would apply to all over-75s, many of whom fail to shop around or don’t have internet access.

It’s quite a smart policy and wouldn’t cost the government anything. (Although energy companies are likely to complain that it could impact on their investment plans.) In practice it could also mean other people’s energy bills rising, but for now Miliband was able to deny that potential consequence.

The move follows on from plans, announced at conference, to limit the power of Britain’s “big six” energy companies by stopping them from producing gas and electricity and selling it themselves. (Instead, all their energy would go into a central pool, allowing supermarkets and others to enter the supply market.)

For those who thought that the keynote conference speech about “predators v producers” was too vague, this kind of detail should be welcomed. (We’ll ignore the point that Miliband did little to address these issues as energy secretary.)

There will be more “fleshing out” of the concept of responsible capitalism in the coming

This may sound counter-intuitive given the Tory focus on the “Big Society”. But charities are shedding jobs much faster than the public sector, according to a survey published today.

Analysis of the Labour Force Survey, collated from ONS data, suggest that the voluntary sector now* employs 723,000 people – a fall of 70,000 over the previous 12 months.

That drop equates to 8.7 per cent. In comparison public sector employment fell by 4.3 per cent while private sector employment rose by 1.5 per cent in the same period.

Most of the drop is among female employees, although my guess is this may reflect a large proportion of women in the sector. The figures also suggest a drop of 3 per cent in pay against small increases in the public and private sectors.

The findings were produced by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the Third Sector Research Centre and Skills – Third Sector.

They don’t entirely negate the idea of the Big Society, which was always more about people volunteering than being paid salaries by charities. But the survey offers a clear insight into the heavy impact on government cuts on charitable organisations, many of which have seen the financial rug pulled from beneath them in the last 18 months.

Gareth Thomas, the shadow minister for civil society, says the research as “underlines the gap between his (David Cameron’s) rhetoric and the reality for charities and community groups of funding cuts, job losses and reduced services.”

* Figures for the third quarter of 2011.

The FT splashes this morning with news that Cameron may be expected to increase Britain’s contributions to the International Monetary Fund – if other countries such as Japan and Brazil decide to increase their support for it to deal the eurozone crisis.

That would place the prime minister on another collision course with some of his most unruly backbenchers. Some 31 Tories rebelled by voting with Labour last July against plans to raise Britain’s potential contribution by £9bn from £10.7bn to £20bn. The country is now under pressure to increase this £9bn “headroom” to E30bn.

The vote in the House of Commons was close last time: 274 against 246. If the coalition is constrained from increasing its lending to the IMF there are implications for the UK’s international reputation.

Equally there are issues for Labour, given that Ed Balls has long been an advocate of IMF-style internationalism – as was his mentor Gordon Brown. The shadow chancellor wrote in the FT in November that he did not oppose higher IMF contributions per se but “there should be no IMF funding to plug the gap in the eurozone’s bail-out fund and do the job the ECB should be doing.” The coming weeks may see Balls having to make a tough decision on the issue.

For the full story you’ll need to read page 2 of today’s FT but I’ve been doing some calculations on Gordon Brown’s income based on the House of Commons register.

The total is £1.07m. This does not include the £123,429 which he has given to charity.

The former prime minister is paid up to £62,000 (though typically about half that) for speeches around the world. These have been to the likes of Visa International, Credit Suisse, Pimco and SkyBridge Capital. He has also received £181,468 to be “global leader in residence” at New York University and £86,324 to be chairman of the World Economic Forum policy co-ordination group.

Brown says he has not earned “one penny” for himself. Instead the money “funds Sarah’s and Mr Brown’s staff for continuing service”. The spokeswoman for the former prime minister won’t say how many staff the couple employ beyond those aides already employed in Fife and the Commons through MPs’ expenses.

Their website says: “We are budgeting to meet salaries, accommodation costs and staff expenses of around £550,000 a year.” I’m told there are a handful of staff working at Broadgate Tower in the offices of Reed Smith, whose partner David Boutcher is company secretary for the Browns’ organisation.

We’ve also had a look at the earnings of some other former cabinet ministers from the last Labour government, including David Miliband’s £470,000 for various roles.