‘I might have nightmares about the prime minister modelling Speedos on his world tour’, was Labour MP Pamela Nash’s reaction to David Cameron today who was on bumptious form, boasting about his trade trip to China, where he had been pushing said Speedos to the Chinese market. Cameron assured her that Speedos came as shorts as well. Still the stuff of nightmares I am afraid.
It was a boisterous PMQs. The speaker, like any good headteacher, had been thinking about putdowns over the recess. To a particularly loud Mr Campbell who was shouting, he said: ‘When you are eating curry in the Kennington Tandoori, you don’t yell across the restaurant.’ Or: ‘Mr Lucas, you do have to go on some sort of training course for the level of statesmanship to which you aspire.’ Labour’s streetfighters were on top form.
It was a particularly galling PMQs. The Tory whips had been busy. One after another Conservative MPs (and they were noticeably all male) stood up to say how pleased they were the long-term economic plan was working, that two million jobs had been created in the private sector and what wonderful work they had done setting up job fairs. The real question the Tories ignored time after time was whether those jobs allow a family to live a life free from poverty.
Labour’s Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) was moved to real anger: ‘Shockingly, one out of three children in the north-east is now living in poverty and two-thirds of young people in poverty live in a working household.’ Cameron’s only response was to say that 47,000 jobs had been created there.
Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields), went further and asked why in the north-east full-time workers were £36 a week less well-off than they were a year ago. She was just told that employment was a route out of poverty.
Ed Miliband’s questions were not about employment, which was Cameron’s favourite subject today. He asked about schools and the thorny question of passports, which are taking weeks longer to process than they should do, and which is making people miss holidays.
Cameron’s answers were inadequate on both.
When Miliband asked where parents should go if there was a problem with their school, Cameron said they should go and see the headteacher and then the chair of governors. It was an odd answer, but Cameron is maybe a stickler for following the right complaints procedure. What, asked Miliband, if they could not deal with the problem? Ofsted then, said Cameron, who might do a spot inspection. In a swipe – and Cameron always enjoys swipes – he suggested that Birmingham city council should have done something about the schools in Birmingham and it was only when the Department for Education found out about Islamic extremism – and Cameron was keen to call it that – that action had been taken.
Ah, said Miliband, who had been looking for this answer (sort of), but ‘No one believes 20,000 schools can be run from Whitehall.’
Miliband was warming to the theme of incompetence. The Home Office was failing to process thousands of passports. When did the government find out about this and what were they doing? Cameron blamed the 300,000 extra applications and said that 10 per cent of applications had not been processed in the three-week period. Ten per cent, as Miliband pointed out, was tens of thousands and people were being told that they needed to pay £55 for their passport to be processed within the target time. We never found out who the 300,000 extra applicants were and why they suddenly wanted passports now.
It was an inconclusive PMQs. The theme of government incompetence which Miliband started did not quite have traction in the chamber, and employment figures dominated, because of a heavily managed operation by the Tories.
The Tories had clearly been afraid. The Home Office and the Department for Education are in open warfare, and, despite the fillip of Newark, there remains a strong challenge from the United Kingdom Independence party. They were determined today not to let Labour take advantage.
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Sally Gimson is a journalist, a Labour councillor, and reviews PMQs on Progress
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