Robert Hampton

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17th July 2014

Choose Your Words
Posted by at 6.42pm | Politics | No responses

Prime Minister’s Questions never shows British democracy at its best. It’s supposed to be a weekly opportunity to hold the PM to account, but it rarely lives up to that hype. Instead, it’s usually an undignified affair, with Cameron and Miliband shouting playground insults at each other while the rest of the MPs whoop and cheer like the studio audience of Married… with Children.

Something happened on Wednesday, however, that deserves closer scrutiny. Responding to a question from Ed Miliband, the Prime Minister said:

The deputy leader of the Labour party said on the radio, and I want to quote her very precisely:

“I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes.”

And then, a bit later:

On the subject of taxes and middle income people, when will we get an answer from Labour about what the deputy Leader of the party meant when she said—let me repeat it again for the record:

“I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes”

As we go into the summer, there is one party in this House with a big tax problem, and I am looking at it.

Here is the Hansard transcript.

Harriet Harman did say this, on an LBC phone-in show on Monday. However, the Guardian has the full transcript of what she said (scroll to 12.42pm). She was responding to a caller who felt that “the middle class contribute the most and take out the least.”

Well I think that is a very interesting point actually Henry because sometimes people feel that they pay in a lot over a long period of time working hard but when they suddenly need unemployment benefit if they lose their job that actually it is nowhere near enough to actually make them feel that it was worth it for them to contribute. And one of the things that we are talking about is making a higher rate the longer you’ve worked to recognise the contributions you’ve paid in if you lose your job.

But I would say Henry one of the things that I would argue that might, should probably make a really big difference to you is having a really good health service. Because you don’t want to have to pay for health insurance.You don’t want to have to pay to go private to get really good healthcare system. And I think that is not just for working class people it’s for middle class people as well. And the same with education, you know, really good school system that helps people from lower income families and middle income families as well so I think that actually the idea that there are some things that help people on low incomes and other that help people on middle incomes. Yes I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes. But actually they need those public services like the transport system.

Harman has accused Cameron of “twisting her words”.

I do think it’s a bit of a reach to claim, as Cameron did, that what she said amounts to a call for higher taxes on middle class families. Most people listening would have known what she meant. Cameron (or rather, whoever writes his PMQs notes) certainly would have known. It’s very cheeky for him to choose one sentence out of a longer response and say that he’s quoting her “very precisely”.

In fact, it appears that Harman was simply expressing the not particularly controversial view that people in different income groups should pay different rates of tax. This is the system we have now, and it is supported by all three main parties.

The Guardian goes on to say:

But, of course, the actual wording is ambiguous, which is why Cameron was able to exploit it.

You could argue that Harman should have chosen her words more carefully, but isn’t that the real problem here? Politicians are constantly criticised for sticking rigidly to the script, not uttering anything in public that hasn’t been vetted and pre-approved by a thousand focus groups. But, if a politician goes the other way and speaks spontaneously, as Harman did on that phone-in, it is immediately pounced on by opponents, taken out of context and used for point-scoring.

I want real human beings, not PR robots, in government. So let’s have some proper debate on this issues, rather than some desperate attacks based on one out-of-context sentence.

18th July 2013

La Reyne le veult
Posted by at 11.27pm | Gay, In the News | No responses

Rainbow flag fluttering in sunlight50 years ago, homosexuality was illegal. In an amazing turnaround, by the middle of next year, gay relationships will be on an (almost) equal footing to heterosexual ones, as the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill 2013 is now the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, after Royal Assent was received on Wednesday afternoon.

I’ll be honest – there were times when I didn’t think it would happen. From the minute the plans were announced back in 2011, a formidable campaign against same-sex marriage was launched, unleashing old-school attitudes and opinions that I naively thought had disappeared from public discourse. Certain sections of society are not nearly as tolerant and accepting as we thought they were.

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland (or, as he is now known, the disgraced former leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland), Cardinal Keith O’Brien, launched an astonishing diatribe, describing same-sex marriage as a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”. The Telegraph and the Daily Mail were vociferous in their opposition.

The Coalition for Marriage – which described itself as a “grass roots” campaign despite being launched by luminaries such as the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, and reality TV star Anne Widdecombe – set up a petition which, at the time of writing, has a rather pleasing 666,493 signatures. The Government’s own consultation ignored the organised petitions and form letter campaigns, but still revealed widespread opposition.

The cynical view was that this bill was David Cameron’s attempt to “modernise” the Tory party image. If that was his goal, it failed – more Conservative MPs voted against the bill than for it, and Tory MPs have been the most vociferous in their criticism of the bill. Political commentators talked of divisions in the Tory party and rumours swirled of leadership challenges to the Prime Minister. The very real lives and loves of LGBT people were rather lost amongst all the punditry.

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