Frank's Westminster Blog

Greenpeace irritated a number of MPs at the weekend by bombarding them to such an extent the parliamentary email server crashed. The targets were not those MPs voting in favour of the extension, but those who had suggested they might vote against. Frank, in this blog describes how he feels these actions may well have led to last night's vote going in the favour of the Government.

DWP publishes today a report showing how ineffective the Government's sanction regime is in smartening up claimants none too keen to find work. The report is released a day after the Commons debated the Government's new welfare reform bill. This bill was conceived for an age in which boom and bust had been abolished. Over the past ten years over three million new jobs have been created but the workless total has fallen by a mere 400,000 claimants. Nine out of ten of the new jobs have been...

DWP publishes today a report showing how in effect the Government’s sanction regime is in smartening up claimants none too keen to find work. The report is released a day after the Commons debated the Government’s new welfare reform bill. This bill was conceived for an age in which boom and bust had been abolished. Over the past ten years over three million new jobs have been created but the workless total has fallen by a mere 400,000 claimants. Nine out of ten of the new jobs...

Extending Heathrow is a really good example of how not to behave if you are the Government, but also how not to behave if you are a powerful and well-organised pressure group, like Greenpeace. The Government has said that Heathrow will be extended, but is fearful of having a vote here in the House of Commons, so, no surprises, the Tories have called a vote on Wednesday and 58 Labour members, knowing this is what the Tories are up to, have declared they are against an extension of...