Brown, Cameron, and Clegg are answering questions - although separately - on diversity in parliament.

Further Reading:

Live Guardian Blog of the Speaker’s Conference

Watch the conference at the parliament website

Nick Robinson on the need for debate

Gordon Brown has said gay MPs and peers should to be allowed to hold civil partnership ceremonies inside the Palace of Westminster.

a statement from Labour:

Sir Thomas Legg’s Provisional Conclusion on Mr Brown’s Expenses Sir Thomas Legg has assessed Mr Brown’s past expenses from 2004-05 to 2008-09.

Sir Thomas Legg’s provisional conclusions assess that, over the five year period, £12,415.10 is in excess of the criteria he is now applying, which Mr Brown will pay in full.

Sir Thomas Legg has deemed that for cleaning any claim in excess of £2000 in any one year warrants repayment. He has included domestic cleaning, window cleaning, dry-cleaning and laundry in this category and has assessed over the five year period this amounts to £10,716.60.

Sir Thomas Legg has deemed that any claim in excess of £1000 in any one year for gardening warrants repayment. He has assessed that over the five year period this amounts to £302.50.

The review also alerted Mr Brown to a bill for painting and decorating of £1,396 from April 2006 that was inadvertently assigned by error to two quarters. This was not spotted or adjusted by the House Authorities at the time. Mr Brown has apologised for this inadvertent error.

UPDATE

I’ve seen one of the letters sent out to all MPs (some didn’t arrive until after 6pm). It is signed off by Sir Thomas Legg KCB QC but the signature is a more chummy “Tom Legg”

A far cry from the heady days of 1997: Jim Pickard looks at the mood on the ground at this year’s Labour conference

Continue reading "FT video from the Labour party conference"

For those who care, Will Straw has a “word cloud” which shows which words cropped up the most.

3.33 Well, that’s it folks. The prime minister has kissed his wife. The delegates are on their feet. They’ve been told that their “abiding duty” is to “stand, and fight, and win, and serve”. They’ve been shown the sunny uplands and been told to “never stop believing in the good sense of the British people”. Because the task is difficult “the triumph will be even greater”, he promises. It seems to have all gone down well in the hall.

3.29 Brown is already nabbing ideas from Obama. Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Move On Up’, which was used in Brown’s introductory video, was part of the Obama campaign. Great tune though. There is also a bit of Nixonian campaigning in the speech where you wouldn’t expect it. The pledge to “cure cancer in a generation”. Vintage Nixon, 1971.

3.24 (Jim) Labour will put a referendum on Proportional Representation in its election manifesto (to be held early in the next Parliament). This is interesting. My sources had told me there would be a cabinet-level meeting next week to discuss the issue. Alan Johnson had been among those calling for the referendum to take place on the same day as the election itself. Some of his colleagues thought this was bonkers. Clearly the home secretary has been over-ruled.

3.20 (Jim) Brown promises to combine the National Health Service with local care provision to make a new “National Care Service”. Our public policy editor Nick Timmins looks utterly baffled: “Does it actually mean anything,” he asks plaintively.

3.10 (Jim) I’m wondering about food analogies for the Brown delivery. If Mandelson was lemon sorbet yesterday, is Brown porridge? It’s all very worthy and fact-filled but I’m not feeling the feelgood factor.

3.16 (Jim again) Brown makes the pre-announced policy about a new right for cancer patients to have diagnostic tests carried out and completed within a week. Incidentally, do normal people ever use the phrase “general practioner”?

3.09 (Jim again) Gordon is promising to preserve our security while “never undermining our liberties”. It sounds like he is making a new policy pledge (”I can say to you today….”) as he says there will be no compulsory ID card for British citizens in the next Parliament. Cry freedom! Except that this policy is old. The home secretary in March (Jacqui Smith) said that the ID card would be voluntary.

3.05 It looks like he has sought inspiration from his father’s classic sermons to the kirk. He’s announced U-turn on 24-hour drinking. He said “markets need morals”. He wants “tough love” for “chaotic families”. Let’s see what he says about cleaning up politics.

3.03 So far this is shaping up to be a policy greatest hits speech. Very little about Gordon the man. The policy shopping-list is quite Clintonesque — a nod to every micro-group of voters. But you have to wonder whether he needs to open up more.

3.00 (Jim again) I thought the recent row over whether the UK needed to cut public spending had been resolved. But this seems to have passed Gordon by. “These are not cuts they would make because they have to,” he says of the Tories. “These are spending cuts they are making because they want to. It is not inevitable.”

2.58 We’re intrigued by the words on schools spending. “We will not cut support to our schools. We will not invest less, but more.” Now this could be a significant move to increase the education budget in real terms, which has big knock on effects for other departments. Or it could mean ring-fencing the schools budget.Or he could just be increasing spending in cash terms, while making real-terms savings. We’ll have to wait and see.

2.55 (Jim here) Brown claims that Britain is leading the charge on having a “green” economy. “We are already global leaders in wind power, green cars, clean coal and carbon capture”, he claims. The truth is somewhat different. Sorry to be difficult, but Britain is behind every other EU country on renewable energy - bar Malta, Cyprus and Belgium. Gordon has just promised to create “over a quarter of a million new green British jobs”. In previous months he has made similar pledges; for 100,000, 160,000 and 1m jobs. Which if any is true? Does the prime minister have the faintest clue?

2.54 Brown sings the virtues of a £1bn innovation fund. It’s not new.

2.53 “Any director of any banks who is negligent will be disqualified from holding any such post.” Seems stating the obvious. But how many bank directors have been disqualified?

2.51 (Jim here) I told you it was getting a tad Biblical. Gordon is now the Good Samaritan: “What the British people want to know is that their government will not pass by on the other side but will be on their side.”

2.48 Gordon is now lovebombing middle England. “Call them middle class values, call them traditional working class values, call them family values, call them all of these; these are the values of the mainstream majority; the anchor of Britain’s families, the best instincts of the British people, the soul of our party and the mission of our government.”

2.46 (Jim here) Gordon is moving into preacher territory with a string of parables. “Like the small businessman who came to see me when his credit dried up at the bank. He was crying with the shame of missing some payments, but so responsible was he, that he was determined that every penny he owed would be paid.” I myself have been having a few problems with my credit card - will the PM help me?

2.44 Tory government would bring back the cardboard shanty towns of the 1980s.

2.36 Oh how he loves big numbers. “A global deal that I can tell you will save 15m jobs!”

2.35 (Jim here). Brown praises his chancellor, Alistair Darling, saying “Alistair, you are doing an absolutely brilliant job.” Is this the same Darling that the PM tried to move out of the Treasury in June but was unable to because of his political weakness? Or another one.

2.34 This is a new Brown technique. He started with fighting talk — fight, fight, fight. Then he moves to a list of Labour’s achievements — but it’s deliberately long this time, rather than just poor speechwriting. The crowd love it. I can even hear whoops.

2.33 “My husband, my hero”. Groans in the press gallery.

2.32 This is so heavy with sugar it would rot your teeth. It moves seamlessly from herograms from Bono and Stiglitz to pics of kids in the playground. Labour aren’t pulling their punches.

2.31 The second propaganda video rolls. Younger people this time. And Curtis Mayfield, Move on Up…

2.30. “I know he loves our country”.

2.30 Sarah Brown is up. It’s her second turn at the Labour conference. The hot topic is already her dress.

2.28: Welcome to our live blog on the Gordon Brown speech. The queues for sandwiches have wound down and the faithfaul have taken their pews. Brown should be appearing soon. The propaganda video is rolling. Lots of shots of Sptifires and 1940s doctors. Oh, and Gordon smiling. This should be fun.

I paused before writing a blog in defence of Gordon Brown this morning; regular readers will know it doesn’t happen so often.

But now Channel 4 have interviewed the man who wrote the original blog starting the allegations about Brown’s health. “I still have no more proof than anyone else,” the blogger tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

In a new media world where rumours and news spread like wildfire through the internet it can pay to be cautious.

In the end it was a BBC interview which opened the floodgates; the newspapers were full of gleeful headlines this morning about Gordon Brown and whether or not he has been taking prescription drugs.

No matter that 10 Downing St has been denying it for weeks. Nor that there is no shred of public evidence to suggest that the prime minister has been using anti-depressants (as the rumour suggests).

The story has now got legs. And as James Forsyth points out, it could change public perceptions of the prime minister.

“I wonder if Brown should have been asked such a question without some more evidence for it to be based on. Even though Brown said that he wasn’t on any pills the mere fact of him being asked if he was will have an effect on how voters view him”.

The original rumour originated in an obscure corner of the blogosphere and has since been encouraged by the ever-popular Guido.

The prime minister’s response to Marr’s questions (he curtly replied ‘no’ and then went on to talk about his eyesight) was not exactly slick or confident. In his defence, however, it is possible that he was caught offside by the question. Perhaps no adviser had shown him any cuttings on the subject for fear of enraging him. If so, that would explain his response. Or maybe he was just furious about having to respond.

One cabinet minister today compared the situation with the smears on George Osborne earlier this year (cooked up by Damian McBride). Most media outlets didn’t feel the need to repeat them.

I think on this occasion Brown deserves our sympathy. He’s been caught in the classic “Do you beat your wife?” trap.