Floods and fires and sinking plans

It was a subdued prime minister’s questions today. Not only had a serviceman, Captain Richard Holloway, been killed in Afghanistan just before Christmas, but only an hour or so earlier the death had been announced of the Labour member of parliament Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East). He had been very ill after collapsing while out running with his son.

MP after MP from both parties paid tribute to Paul Goggins. Ed Miliband called him ‘the kindest, most decent man in this house’ He spoke of how he was a man of deepest principle who had earned the respect, trust and affection of all.  Labour, said Miliband, had lost one of its their own and one of their best.

Goggins’ death at 60 seemed to have shattered everyone. Most MPs from every party paid tribute to him, his work with young people and the way he had carried through the peace process as Northern Ireland minister. David Cameron particularly dwelled on his passing and his tribute almost felt overdone.

Miliband was sober in his dark blue suit. His main thrust at first was on floods and how much was being done to stop them happening again. He asked about compensation and the slow response of the energy companies to restore people’s power.

Cameron was slippery on it all, like a slick eel wending its way through the flood plain, not the COBRA leader he purported to be. Everyone had done jolly well. The energy companies had not had enough people on call and some local authorities could have done better and ‘lessons will be learnt’.

There was no admission anywhere that getting rid of staff at the environment agency might have contributed to the failure of flood defences, nor that it might have been a hunger for profits that meant the energy companies didn’t have enough staff over the weekend. Cameron made it all sound like a minor planning problem.

That is, by the way, Cameron’s favourite catchphrase at the moment when asked about anything difficult. ‘We have a plan!’ Sometimes he adds ‘… and it is working.’  Neither assertion is wildly comforting.

Miliband did manage to extract a promise from him that he would bring the Defra report on flood defence capability back to the House of Commons but the promise was given unwillingly after lots of bluster and some meaningless figures. Miliband was less successful in getting Cameron to support a Labour motion to control the massive proliferation of fixed-odds betting terminals.

Labour MPs asked more questions today about welfare cuts and told how they were affecting their constituents. Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) highlighted the unfairness of housing benefit cuts which meant that hard-working families were faced with losing their homes. Cameron’s glib response about bringing down taxes and paying £60-70,000 out in housing benefit to some families was patronising and unsympathetic.

He was equally sneering to Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) who asked about the loophole that means agency workers are paid less than employees doing the same job. Again, this was Labour’s fault, Cameron said. His most triumphant point was that the Institute of Directors thought that if the law was tightened up on agency workers it would mean that ‘fewer people would be employed on higher wages.’

This really is the philosophy of the workhouse, but it was met with cheers from the Tory benches

John Mann highlighted policemen in his constituency of Bassetlaw travelling by bus to patrol local villages and Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) asked why his seriously ill constituent, who was having five dialysis sessions a week while waiting for a kidney transplant, had been judged fit to work.

Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) challenged Cameron on the low taxes foreign companies like Apple pay. They are, according to the Financial Times, paying even less tax this year than they did last and Cameron is doing little about it despite tough promises. Cameron conceded as much.

The most bizarre question of the day came from Liberal Democrat MP Alan Beith. There has been a carpet fire burning in his constituency of Berwick-upon- Tweed since 3 September last year and the fire brigade can’t put it out for fear of contaminating the water supply.

What with floods and fires, 2014 is shaping up to be the year where the elements are out of control and Cameron’s collection of plans may sink us all.