LeftWatch

Iain Dale has spotted an attempt to bury bad news on the day that the media is focusing on Tony Blair's evidence session at the Chilcot Inquiry.

The Government has this morning quietly released the latest NHS waiting time statistics for England which read as follows:

The wheels continue to fall off the Labour wagon...

Jonathan Isaby

One of the proposals in Gordon Brown's final Budget was to scrap stamp duty on any new property up to the value of £500,000 which is given a zero carbon rating.

Yet as today's Independent reports...

"Just 24 homebuyers have taken advantage of a high-profile scheme devised by Gordon Brown to encourage the construction of environmentally-friendly houses across the country... Mr Brown set aside £15m for the tax relief, which he hoped would “accelerate” the building of carbon-neutral homes as a key weapon in the fight against global warming."

So less than one person a month has benefitted from the scheme since October 2007 -  so few, it turns out, that details of the individual sums involved will not be disclosed by the Government lest it lead to the identification of individual properties.

Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps, who uncovered the information, has condemned the scheme as a "shocking failure":

“Gordon Brown just can’t seem to stop himself from announcing grand schemes designed to do little other than grab that day’s headline. Rather than Ministers putting all their efforts into announcing glitzy pledges in order to grab a few column inches, it would be better for them to sit down and seriously work out ways to slash the 27 per cent of carbon emissions that emanate from Britain’s homes.”

Jonathan Isaby

John Redwood suggested on his must-read blog yesterday afternoon that the Government should be asking itself that question: 

"Since 2005 the government has doubled central government borrowing (on its own understated figures ) from £469 billion to £922 billion – an injection of £452 billion.

"Since 2004-5 money supply (M4) has surged from £1,212 billion (£1.2tn) to £2,100bn (£2.1 tn) – it has also almost doubled. Notes and coin have gone up from £42 billion to £55 billion.

"And what has happened to real output? It is almost the same in Q4 2009 as it was in Q3 2005! No growth at all for 5 years."

Read the rest of his post here.

Jonathan Isaby

That's the headline coming from the splash in this morning's Independent:

"A series of botched IT projects has left taxpayers with a bill of more than £26bn for computer systems that have suffered severe delays, run millions of pounds over budget or have been cancelled altogether.

"An investigation by The Independent has found that the total cost of Labour's 10 most notorious IT failures is equivalent to more than half of the budget for Britain's schools last year. Parliament's spending watchdog has described the projects as "fundamentally flawed" and blamed ministers for "stupendous incompetence" in managing them.

"Further evidence has emerged over the failings of Labour's most costly programme, the mammoth £12.7bn IT scheme to revolutionise the NHS. The Independent has learnt that just 160 health organisations out of about 9,000 are using electronic patient records delivered under the scheme."

The paper lists the top ten most expensive government computer failures as:

• £12.7bn National Programme for IT (NHS)
• £7.1bn Defence Information Infrastructure (DII)
• £5bn National Identity Scheme
• £400m Libra system (for magistrates' courts)
• £350m Single Payment Scheme system (SPS)
• £300m GCHQ "box move" of technology
• £155m National Offender Management Information System (C-Nomis)
• £106m Benefit Processing Replacement Programme
• £88.5m Prism IT project
• £81m Shared Services Centre 

Click here to read the article in full.

Jonathan Isaby

PoliticsHome has this afternoon published the results of a poll of nearly 1,200 voters on the subject of manifesto pledges.

Its first finding is that only 47% of Labour voters - yes Labour voters, not the whole population - believe Labour is "fairly likely" or "very likely" to fulfill its manifesto pledges if returned to government. As the graphic shows, Conservatives are most confident of their party's ability to deliver.

Meanwhile, the survey also asked people to rate the Labour Government on how it delivered on its six pledges from the 2005 election.

Again, it is a far from ringing endorsement of its record:

Jonathan Isaby

This morning came news that Home Secretary Alan Johnson is proscribing Islam4UK and its associated cover organisations.

And about time too. But why did it take so long?

David Cameron asked why they hadn't been banned at PMQs no fewer than 48 days ago, on November 25th, when he pointed out that this organisation had described the 9/11 bombers as "magnificent" people and had called for "blood on the streets of London and New York".

Conservatives have made similar demands for proscription of Hizb ut-Tahrir and Hizbollah. Will the Government drag its feet on taking action against them too?

Jonathan Isaby

Shadow Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities, Caroline Spelman, warned on ConservativeHome this morning that the Government was woefully (and unnecessarily) ill-prepared for the severe weather we are experiencing.

The Times is now reporting the following development:

Britain’s salt supplies reached dangerously low levels today forcing the Highways Agency to stop gritting motorway hard shoulders in an attempt to eke out the dwindling stock, as the Transport Secretary ordered councils to cut grit spreading by 25 per cent... Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, said Town Halls must reduce gritting by a quarter until Tuesday and immediately halt treating hard shoulders to preserve stocks for other areas.

Caroline Spelman has described the move as "an admission of utter failure". She said:

"The lessons of last February's extreme weather have not been learnt. The Government has failed to build up a strategic Highways Agency reserve, and Labour Ministers have sat on their hands instead of putting measures in place to safeguard grit supplies.  Families will continue to suffer from the Government's incompetence. The consequence of Labour's grit crisis is that many roads will not be gritted and it will be dangerous and difficult to drive.

"The Government appears to be rapidly losing control of the situation. We need an urgent reassurance from them that they can keep Britain's roads open if the arctic weather continues."

Jonathan Isaby