Category: UK economy

Is there any evidence for Cameron idea that more women execs would curb high pay?

November 3, 2011 12:20 pm by Jim Pickard

David Cameron made his claim again yesterday during PMQs that having more women on the boardroom would lead to more restraint.

He made a similar comment on Friday while in Australia, saying more female directors would have a “beneficial effect” on boards and lead to less disproportionate remuneration.

(Income Data Services found a 49 per cent jump in the total earnings of all FTSE 100 directors, taking their average package to just under £2.7m. This followed an increase of 55 per cent in the previous year.)

But the idea that a heavier female presence in the boardroom would act as a curb on lavish pay has been met with some scepticism from experts.

Deborah Hargreaves, chair of the independent High Pay Commission, told me

Continue reading: “Is there any evidence for Cameron idea that more women execs would curb high pay?”

Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

Lord Green’s matchmaking finally revealed

November 2, 2011 3:40 pm by Elizabeth Rigby

After painful months of matchmaking UKTI have officially announced which ministers will be paired with whom as the trade promotion body looks to inject a litle more commerical prowess into Whitehall.

The scheme pairs top exporters and inward investors with key ministers to make sure that special companies are well looked after. So far six ministers – spread between business, energy and media departments – have been appointed abassadorial roles with 38 companies between them. Jeremy Hunt is getting Microsoft, Google and Facebook, while Vince Cable with look after manufacturer Tata and the oil giants.

The scheme is designed to give key companies a “seamless ‘one-stop’ service in their dealings with Whitehall. It would well be worth an audit in a few months time to see if Lord Green’s scheme lives up to the billing. Expect more ministers and companies to get involved in the coming months as Lord Green extends the scheme.

Continue reading: “Lord Green’s matchmaking finally revealed”

Tags: Lord Green
Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

PMQs: Cameron forced to the left

November 2, 2011 1:29 pm by Kiran Stacey

It was an intriguing PMQs today. As I have previously noted, Ed Miliband has begun to find his feet on the economy, and once again used this as his main attack line.

As he has done at previous sessions he chose an obscure policy that has achieved little so far (this time the “business growth fund”, which was set up using money from the Merlin agreement), and used it to embarrass the PM.

As has happened before, Cameron didn’t know what the policy was (in fact at the end, he started talking about the Regional Growth Fund – a different fund altogether). So when asked how many businesses the fund had invested in, he was unable to answer.

Continue reading: “PMQs: Cameron forced to the left”

Tags: pmqs
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Labour, Recession, Tax, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

BBC issues extraordinary apology to Andrew Tyrie

November 1, 2011 6:56 pm by Kiran Stacey

During party conferences, the BBC broadcast a piece of footage showing Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the Treasury select committee, talking in hushed tones to Steve Hilton and Craig Oliver before being interviewed by one of their reporters. The Beeb noted that after meeting the pair, Tyrie gave a much more positive assessment of George Osborne’s economic strategy than he had done just a few days before. We noted the encounter here on the blog, as did a number of other media outlets.

The coverage infuriated Tyrie, who says his independence was being called into question unfairly. Well now the BBC has issued a fairly extraordinary on-air apology, stating:

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Tags: Andrew Tyire, BBC
Posted in Conservatives, Treasury, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

Cameron: reduce executive pay by appointing more women

October 28, 2011 11:16 am by Kiran Stacey

I revealed this morning that despite David Cameron’s promises to cut down on civil service pay, the total Whitehall bonus pot went up last year from £136m to over £140m. Much more shocking than that, however, is the news that in the same financial year, directors of FTSE 100 companies have seen their pay rise by nearly 50 per cent. That follows a 50 per cent rise the year before.

David Cameron was asked about this issue at his press conference in Perth on Friday morning. What can we do to stop directors paying themselves so much money?

Although his answer included the usual messages on the importance of transparency and accountability, he also had a more intriguing suggestion:

We have to make sure there are more women executives on boards. Increasing the number of women in boardrooms – that will have a beneficial effect.

I can understand why having more women on boards is a good idea, but is there any evidence that it would result in less inflationary pay?

Tags: Executive pay
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

Cameron’s dodgy job figures

October 19, 2011 6:10 pm by Kiran Stacey

Cathy Newman over at Channel 4′s Fact Check has been saying for a while that David Cameron’s figures on private sector job creation are wrong. And he repeated the claim again today:

There are half a million more private sector jobs compared with the time of the last election.

So is Cameron right? Almost certainly not. The truth is that more than half a million private sector jobs have been created since the beginning of April 2010. But that was before the last election.

Continue reading: “Cameron’s dodgy job figures”

Tags: Private sector jobs
Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, David Cameron, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

PMQs may have been a turning point for Miliband on the economy

October 12, 2011 3:20 pm by Kiran Stacey

At today’s PMQs, we saw a first: it was the first time that Ed Miliband attacked Cameron on the economy, and won – well almost.

Provided with the ammunition of some terrible employment figures, Miliband had an ideal quote with which to bash the prime minister:

The prime minister justified his economic policy by saying unemployment would fall this year, next year and the year after. Isn’t it time he admitted his plan isn’t working?

Continue reading: “PMQs may have been a turning point for Miliband on the economy”

Tags: pmqs, prime minister's questions
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Labour, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

Has Andrew Tyrie been silenced?

October 4, 2011 3:42 pm by Kiran Stacey

Last week Andrew Tyrie told The Times the government’s growth strategy was not coherent or consistent. In remarkably outspoken comments, the chairman of the Treasury select committee said policies such as the Big Society or the green agenda were “at best irrelevant to the task in hand, if not downright contradictory to it”.

His reaction to George Osborne’s speech on Monday however had a very different flavour:

You can see some consistency in this speech and I think it will be widely welcomed not only by the party but by people across the country, who also need a growth strategy to help them move forward.

Was Osborne’s speech so dramatic that it completely changed Tyrie’s mind, or did his comments have more to do with this incident, caught by the BBC, when Tyrie was led briskly away by those two Number 10 heavies, Steve Hilton and Craig Oliver?

Tyrie unsurprisingly denied being “nobbled” by Number 10, but it is telling that he didn’t attend a fringe event on growth this afternoon at which he was billed to attend. In his place, rising Tory star and Osborne uber loyalist, Matthew Hancock.

Tags: Andrew Tyrie
Posted in Conservatives, Deficit, Treasury, UK economy | Permalink

How much will Balls’ growth plan cost?

September 26, 2011 4:38 pm by Kiran Stacey

Ed Balls’s flagship announcement at his party conference speech was a “five-point plan for growth”. Some of the policies were old, some were new. He said that if Labour was in power it would:

Repeat last year’s bank bonus tax, using the money to build 25,000 affordable homes and guarantee a job for 100,000 young people;
Bring forward long-term investment projects, such as schools, roads and transport;
Reverse the VAT rise now for a temporary period;
An immediate one-year cut in VAT to 5 per cent on home improvements, repairs and maintenance;
A one year national insurance tax break for every small firm which takes on extra workers.

Continue reading: “How much will Balls’ growth plan cost?”

Tags: Ed Balls
Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

£12bn deficit increase puts Osborne’s plans in doubt

September 19, 2011 7:55 pm by Helen Warrell

Number 10 may have been reluctant to comment this morning on revelations by the FT’s Chris Giles about a £12bn ‘black hole’ in the public finances but Lib Dems, cornered at their conference in Birmingham, were more open.

Senior Lib Dem MPs quizzed on Monday suggested they were not entirely surprised by the 25 per cent increase in the structural deficit, but not surprisingly, are still not in any mood to back further cuts to bring it under control.

As other commentators have mentioned, the FT’s estimates of a £61bn structural deficit in 2011/12, as opposed to the £49bn forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, will cause a major headache for chancellor George Osborne.

Having repeatedly insisted that there is no need for a Plan B to bolster the Treasury’s existing deficit reduction plans, Mr Osborne is unlikely to change his mind even if he now has less spare capacity than the OBR predicted.

However, in the face of sluggish economic growth and slippages in deficit reduction, his chances of bringing the budget into surplus by 2015/16, as promised, are looking ever more unlikely.

Posted in Deficit, UK economy | Permalink

Ed Miliband needs to create his own economic narrative

September 14, 2011 12:32 pm by Kiran Stacey

Today’s unemployment figures gave Ed Miliband another opportunity to go after David Cameron at PMQs over the economy. Last week, he clearly felt blunted by the publication of Alistair Darling’s book, which said his own pre-budget report in 2009, the broad outline of which Labour still follows, lacked credibility.

This week, the attack worked reasonably well – Cameron only mentioned Darling once, and it didn’t elicit much of a response.

But Miliband’s wider problem is that while he is trying to create a narrative of a Tory prime minister out of touch with the country and indifferent to people losing their jobs, support for the cuts, while falling, remains positive. David Cameron’s response that the government had no option but to cut public spending to pay down the deficit still chimes with most people.

Continue reading: “Ed Miliband needs to create his own economic narrative”

Posted in Ed Miliband, UK economy | Permalink

Eurozone turmoil is politically convenient for the coalition

August 8, 2011 1:55 pm by Kiran Stacey

It never looks good for a politician to gloat in the middle of the turmoil, and George Osborne isn’t doing that. But he is pointing out, unsurprisingly, that the swift cuts to eliminate the deficit have made bond traders less likely to turn their sights onto the UK.

In the Telegraph today, he writes:

In retrospect, the use of political capital to implement immediate efficiency savings, pass the emergency Budget, agree the most difficult Spending Review for generations and put in place long-term fiscal reforms to pensions was an excellent investment in our country’s economic stability. Thanks to these decisions, the credit rating agency Standard & Poors took the UK off negative outlook and reaffirmed our AAA rating.

Continue reading: “Eurozone turmoil is politically convenient for the coalition”

Tags: George Osborne
Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, Deficit, Treasury, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink