Wednesday, 10 May 2017

The "This election will not be interrupted by court cases, I hope" election - day 23



Labour education day


Jeremy Corbyn addressed another friendly audience at Leeds City College on Labour's proposed National Education Service.  He namechecked the "brilliant" local MPs Richard Burgon (Labour, Leeds East, majority 12,533) and Hilary Benn (Labour, Leeds Central, majority 16,967) and hoped everybody in the hall and every student at the college was registered to vote.  "Use your democratic rights."

"The Conservative party looks after money and money looks after the Conservative party,"  he told them, while "the rigged system holds people back".  "Without an upgraded economy there can be no fairer Britain,"  he said, which sounds rather close to the Tories' "we can only provide the good services we want with a strong economy".

Today he was pledging to raise corporation tax to 26% over four years, which would still keep it the lowest in the G7 (not if Trump gets his proposals through it won't), which raised a lot of questions throughout the day.

Angela Rayner presented Labour's ideas for a National Education Service, from cradle to grave at the same meeting and in several media interviews in the morning.  The main points of the press release were:
  • Stop the cuts to school budgets with a real terms increase in funding
  • Reduce class sizes to under 30 for all five, six and seven year olds
  • Free school meals for all primary school children
  • Restore education maintenance allowance for college students
  • Restore student grants for university students
  • Scrap fees on courses for adult learners looking to re-train or upskill
She was confident that £6bn could be found for this by raising corporation tax, or rather for everything but the scrapping of tuition fees/restoration of grants.  For that we have to (all together now) wait for the manifesto.  That odd outlier suggests the party might still be fighting over a hot caculator.

Paul Johnson of the IFS judges that Labour's sums in this case add up (not including the tuition fees bit I think) so long as they don't spend it 11 times of course, which the Tories and Lib Dems are still teasing them for.  But he warned that such a large increase in corporation tax would have consequences, taking money out of investment:
Two important things about corporation tax – first, it’s not a victimless tax. This would increase taxes by about 1% of national income, so it would leave us all in the long run about 1% worse-off.

And of course, it is people in the end who pay it and it would reduce incentives for companies to invest in the UK ....

The risk is that whilst this would raise knocking on for £20bn in the short run, it’s probably going to raise rather less than that in the long run as companies invest less and take other opportunities to reduce the amount of tax they pay. So the long run behavioural effect of this tax would result in revenues being less than the immediate headline increase.
Even if you take it back it back up to 26%, as the Labour party are suggesting, it would not be particularly high by international standards.

But there have been other increases - not to the main rate of corporation tax, but to other elements of corporation tax - over the last few years and whilst we have a low headline rate, we have a very broad base. So the effective rate of corporation tax in the UK would start to look relatively higher by international standards. In a world where we are particularly worried about investment into the UK, and a Brexit situation, to significantly increase the rate of corporation you would have to say is taking some risk with the productivity and investment in the economy over the next decades.

Johnson's IFS put out briefing notes on education spending  ("it will make a positive difference") and corporation tax.

There are questions about the effects of the corporation tax changes on small businesses, as they have been told different things recently.  The Tories jumped on this, naturally.  The Federation of Small Businesses was "pressing Jeremy Corbyn to honour the commitment he made when he met with FSB members last month, for no increases to corporation tax for small businesses under a future Labour government."  The IFS puts it like this.


Labour had countered the IFS warnings by the end of the day, arguing that the stronger (and probably more stable) education and training their scheme would support would contribute to productivity improvements.

LibDems 

Tim Farron (Lib Dem, Westmorland and Lonsdale, majority 8,949) did the interview rounds in the morning, then was pictured in various southwestern locations, making jam tarts in a primary school among other things - always a great idea when wearing a dark suit.

It was striking that Farron was happy with his party's increase in vote share last week, despite their loss of 40 council seats.  He was also content to campaign to be (part of) a strong opposition, assuming that the Tories were on their way to a large majority.  I'm not sure that's a great tactic Timmy lad.

The Lib Dems propose to raise corporation tax as well, though only to 20%, and scrap the married couples' tax allowance to bolster the education budget.  Farron argued that the sums added up, not least because, "unlike Labour", they had only promised to spend this money once.

More controversial for some is the Lib Dem assumption that the UK will stay in the single market as the only way to keep the economy strong enough to guarantee the continuing tax take.


A policy announcement slipped out separately was to instruct the NHS to supply pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to those "at risk of HIV" as is already available in Scotland.  NHS England is reluctant to do this at present because of cost implications (and perhaps also concern that they will be accused of supplying "lifestyle drugs") but it should save money in the longer run. Prevention is cheaper than treatment and all that.



Tories


#MrsME was touring workplaces again, including Mansfield (pictured), delivering THAT speech.  She must be gaining in confidence, though, because real people were allowed to ask questions again, before the journalists.  Judging by the bits the TV will show before it all gets too boring and familiar, that confidence isn't really justified.  And she will keep on claiming to be out and about, meeting real people.

Captivated or captive

One question was on homelessness.  She quoted the spending promised by the current government and some vague ideas about preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place, but strangely neglected to mention the Homelessness Prevention Act, a private member's bill helped through by the government.

We're all used to the way #MrsME (and many other politicians) answers questions by not really answering the question but spouting a half-relevant formula.  If enough people see her doing it to real people that might eventually tell against her.


Earlier in the day #MrsME met Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO, in Downing St as he requested extra troops for Afghanistan.  I bet the other NATO members were contacted by phone. Perhaps #MrsME invited him over for the cameras.  It's always good for a prime minister seeking re-election to be seen doing the big, important things.

When I saw Andrea Leadsom's name I wondered whether she had actually been allowed out, but no, she'd just written a letter to reassure fishing leaders that the UK will “look to disapply” the most unpopular parts of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) when the UK exits the European Union.  The Press Association reported:

"In a private letter to the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation (SFF), Leadsom said 'no decision has yet been made' on the extent to which the CFP would be incorporated into British law post-Brexit.

"She pledged that as the UK leaves the EU 'we will look to disapply the key elements of the CFP that are most unpopular and unworkable for the UK as a coastal state' - with this including the EU quota-setting regime and the right of European boats to fish in UK waters.

"'It is essential that we take the opportunity to develop a fisheries regime that is better-suited to our seas and industries,' the environment secretary said.


SNP and UKIP spokespeople, from different viewpoints, both predicted a "gigantic sell-out".  Eilidh Whiteford (SNP, Banff and Buchan, majority 14,339) said:

"The letter couldn’t be clearer - for all their rhetoric, the Tories are planning to incorporate key parts of the CFP ‘into domestic law’.

"They are also ‘committed to ongoing co-operation with other countries over the management of shared stocks’.

"That means that they are planning to use Scottish waters and our fishing industry as a Brexit bargaining chip.

"In doing so, they are also taking an enormous gamble with the livelihoods of those fish processors that depend on European exports by jeopardising our position within the single market."

Not being in either party I'm not as frightened of cooperating on managing shared stocks, but one day some actual proposals will emerge.
 


Not so presidential today?


But another one of those "we have no plans to..." answers sparked a lot of concern.



Court news

The CPS put out a statement on the year-long election expenses investigation.  Apart from one case which was still being considered, there would be no prosecutions.  That case concerns Craig Mackinlay (Conservative, South Thanet, majority 2,812) and is larger and more complex.

Official responses started with Patrick McLoughlin:

"After a very thorough investigation, we are pleased that the legal authorities have confirmed what we believed was the case all along: that these Conservative candidates did nothing wrong. These were politically motivated and unfounded complaints that have wasted police time. We are glad that this matter is finally resolved.

"A number of false and malicious claims continue to be spread on the internet. People should be aware that making false claims about a candidate’s personal character and conduct is an electoral offence, as well as being defamatory.

"Notwithstanding these false claims, Conservatives want to strengthen election rules to safeguard electoral integrity – in light of the real and proven cases of electoral fraud exposed in Tower Hamlets in 2015."

The "Conservative candidates did nothing wrong" theme was the baseline of all Tory responses. Not all of them repeated McLoughlin's apparent threat to tweeters and others who might make the #ToryElectionFraud theme more personal, but some turned the heat up higher.


Corbyn was "interested and surprised" by the decision but strongly supported electoral law and the independence of the electoral commission and CPS.  Farron said:  "The observation I would make of the Conservative party is it appears to have stayed on the right side of the law by the letter of it, but has driven a battlebus and horses right the way through the spirit of it.   It’s a shame.  In one sense, it would appear there is a cloud hanging over British politics."

The Electoral Commission has already fined the national Conservative party £70,000 for failing to properly declare £275,000 of election spending.  Much of this wrongdoing concerned incorrect classification of spending as national rather than local.  Many payments should have been reported by the local candidate and agent but were recorded centrally or not at all.

But the way UK election law works means that local cases have to be reported to the police and evaluated against a strict, criminal test of knowing dishonesty.  Each local party was supplied with a "comfort letter" stating that the payments in question were not their responsibility.  This seems to have resulted in the CPS's decision that, though constituency spending declarations “may have been inaccurate”, there was insufficient evidence to prove dishonesty.

The account by Morecambe and Lunesdale MP David Morris is illustrative.

 





Last summer David Allen Green, the FT’s legal commentator, posted a lengthy blog explaining why he thought prosecutions relating to the election over-spending allegations were unlikely.
And today he posted a series of tweets in response to the CPS decision

To quote an extract:  "That there was wrongdoing was beyond doubt - but this fell to the Electoral commission to deal with by fines. Which it did.  This would leave the police/CPS to deal with offences which required proof of dishonesty.  As election law is a muddle (even to election lawyers) it was going to be difficult to have sufficient evidence to show dishonest intent."

#MrsME's repeated line that the candidates have done nothing wrong and that the Conservative party has paid its fines is, shall we say, disingenous.  They played the system, paid the fine (=cost of doing business) and supplied each local party with a letter telling them that the battle bus expenditure would be declared on the central party returns.

Now all they need is the Thanet case to be decided on.  Oh, and the treasurer at the time of the 2015 election is still being investigated by the Metropolitan Police.

Another public lawyer put it quite simply.





Stop press, er... blog


The Labour manifesto has been leaked to theTelegraph and Mirror. That'll be tomorrow's story.
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