Indy hack John Rentoul has today called Left Foot Forward “whining” Ed Miliband supporters in his latest hatchet job on the Labour leadership contender. This is not the first time Rentoul has accused Left Foot Forward of partiality in the race. At the very beginning of the campaign, on May 17, he wrote a blog asking whether we were “downplaying David Miliband” – and writing as fact that Will Straw “is a supporter of Ed Miliband”.

His evidence for this claim? That Will told the Evening Standard in January that “Ed Miliband, if he stands, could prove a popular leader”.

Rentoul, seeing his error, wrote: “I apologise to Will – I should have tried to contact him before posting.”

As regular readers of Left Foot Forward will know, on May 15 we made it clear that we would be “sitting on the fence” throughout the race.

This was not the first time that Rentoul had erroneously attributed a false position to Left Foot Forward. Shortly before, on May 13, Rentoul blogged:

“Will Straw, of Left Foot Forward, has just popped up on the BBC News Channel to tell us (after saying that his father was quite right not to contest the Labour leadership) that Labour had some truly marvellous results in England, but that there is a “doughnut” of seats round London where the party did not do so well.”

The word “marvellous” had not passed Will’s lips and Rentoul was again happy to issue a clarification including the line, “as Homer Simpson will tell you, a decent doughnut has a small hole and plenty of dough.”

D’oh!

Another day, another outraged Daily Mail ‘benefit scroungers’ story – one which, once again, is sensationalist, tells only half the story and features the obligatory quote from Tory work and pensions minister “Calamity” Chris Grayling. The headline screamed “More than £1BILLION lost to disability benefit fraud and error – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg” – that’s £1 billion over six years, the vast majority of it down to error, not fraud; not that you’d know it from the headline.

Independent fact-checking website FullFact.org today took the Mail to task and unearthed the real figures. Patrick Casey reports:

When we contacted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to find the relevant figures, we were directed to statistics, given nearly a month ago, in a written parliamentary answer to Labour MP, Phil Wilson. Given that concerns have previously been raised about the lumping of fraud and error together in news reports, it is worth checking how the two add up for the DLA.

Looking at the figures for the last year, which can also be found in Table 2.1 of the DWP statistics on benefit fraud and error (published 27 May), it can be seen that while £220 million was lost in fraud and error, only £60 million of this was actually fraud…

Underpayments through error for 2008/9 are estimated at £290 million – £70 million more than the amount overpaid through error and fraud. Looking back at previous years, a trend emerges, as the table below shows:

Year	Overpayments	Underpayments	Net
2006/7	£170 million	£230 million	+ £60 million
2007/8	£190 million	£250 million	+ £60 million
2008/9	£200 million	£260 million	+ £60 million
2009/10	£220 million	£290 million	+ £70 million

Such figures do not in any way make fraudulent claims any more permissible, they simply highlight a bigger picture, ignored by the report in the Daily Mail. The estimated amount lost to fraud for 2009/10 was £60 million, less than a quarter of the amount not paid to people through errors leading to underpayments.

Looking at the balance of payments caused by error, it can be seen that errors caused £160 million in overpayments, but amounted to £290 million in underpayments.

FullFact conclude that:

While there is nothing inaccurate about the statistics quoted in the Daily Mail report, the article completely ignores the other statistics that should go hand in hand with any record of overpayments. The large sums for both overpayments and underpayments, suggest room for improvement in efficiency when the Work and Pensions Secretary unveils his reforms to the system in the coming months.

But these figures show that if Iain Duncan Smith managed to create a system with all DLA claimants receiving the correct amount, the Government could actually stand to lose several million. Perhaps this is what the headline meant when it announced the figures represented, “the tip of the iceberg.”

Last week, Left Foot Forward exposed the secret briefings on workless households from the DWP, which led to several stories in the right-wing press about 250,000 households in the UK ‘where no one has ever had a job’, again accompanied by quotes from Mr Grayling; and the week before City AM reported that the DWP had claimed that the proportion of households in London where no-one has ever had a job was 23 per cent – the true figure is seven per cent.

For a full list of Grayling’s calamities this year see here.

Something odd has been happening at the Department of Work and Pensions. There have recently been a plethora of stories about the 250,000 households in the UK ‘where no one has ever had a job‘.

Yet the DWP have not made this analysis available to the general public via its website – as is the case for the vast majority of DWP’s statistics – despite the Coalition’s commitment to ‘throw open the doors‘ of public bodies.

But the DWP has confirmed to Left Foot Forward that they did brief the press, and have provided a copy of the press release (which is still not listed in the DWP’s newsroom). As well as being secret, the figures provided to journalists appear to contain errors.

Press reports make clear that the DWP said that adults in 250,000 households had never had a job. However, by the time Left Foot Forward recieved the figures the estimate had changed to 325,000 households, as a result of an ‘error’ in the original analysis.

This also means that DWP’s correction in City AM to Chris Grayling’s additional error (when he first stated that there were 71,000 households in London who had never worked, comprising 23 per cent of the population, which was then revised to 61,000 and 7 per cent of the London population) is also incorrect. The most recent figures provided by the DWP to Left Foot Forward suggest that they now believe there are 95,000 households in London in this position, who comprise 4 per cent of the population.

But the real problem goes beyond the secrecy and the statistical mistakes. It is beginning to look as if DWP ministers are insisting that officials put a party-political spin on what should be a straightforward release of statistical information.

Many of the households included in the analysis are likely to be made up of people the Government does not expect to work and has committed to protecting – severely disabled people and single parents with very young children. DWP statistics show that around 10 per cent of people who undergo the Work Capability Assessment are placed in the Employment and Support Allowance Support Group, which means that the Government does not expect them to seek work or undertake work-related activity.

Even using this contentious measure of severe disability, a minimum of 260,000 disabled people nationally are in this position – some will never have worked.

Similarly, there are around 1.9 million single parents with dependent children in the UK, of whom around 57 per cent are in employment.  It is likely that around 200,000 of those single parents who are not in work have very young children, and that a proportion of these people may never have had a job. The Government only believes that only single parents whose oldest children are over five should be in paid work, so using these people as evidence of persistent worklessness seems disingenuous.

In addition, the analysis published by DWP is not broken down by age – meaning that young unemployed people and student households are included in the analysis. However, ONS analysis suggests that around 39 per cent of households where no one has ever had a job are households aged 16-24. Workless student households are not a key government concern. On the other hand high levels of youth unemployment definitely are – but these young people need support, not criticism. With youth unemployment at 17.5 per cent, it seems hard to see how any Government could hold young workless households responsible for their predicament.

Of course, there are people included in the data who have never worked and are not young, disabled or parents with childcare responsibilities – yet this does not mean that they can all be written off as feckless.

While the Government states that: “the problem isn’t down to a lack of jobs” there are close to 2.5 million people who are unemployed,  2.3 million economically inactive people who want to work and less than 500,000 vacancies across the economy.

In addition, many of these vacancies are for posts that long-term unemployed people are unlikely to be qualified to undertake (for example 62,000 are in health and social work, 31,000 in financial services and 35,000 in professional and scientific activities) and positions are not spread evenly around the country – in many areas of the country where there are even fewer jobs than the national figures suggest.  Between June and July, the number of vacancies available fell.

Any objective analysis of these statistics would acknowledge these points, yet they have been presented in a way that encourages the media to blame those who are out of work for their predicament.

Long-term worklessness is not a lifestyle choice – it is a debilitating, stressful and difficult existence. Prolonged periods out of work have significant negative impacts on health and wellbeing for individuals as well as damaging the economy.

Research by the Prince’s Trust has recently shown the impact that growing up in a workless family can have for children. According to their report one in five (20 per cent) of young people living in workless households said that seeing their parents out of work made them anxious about finding a job, one in four (25 per cent) said their parents didn’t have the knowledge to help them find employment and two-fifths (39 per cent) of those living in communities with high levels of unemployment said they worried that they would never find a good job.

The Government are also wrong to imply that benefit levels are too high.  It cannot have escaped the DWP’s attention that Jobseeker’s Allowance levels in the UK are now worth less than they were in the 1980s. If households are receiving high benefit payments it will be a consequence of them being in significantly greater need – for example parents caring for disabled children or large families or families where adults are disabled are entitled to higher levels of state support.

We cannot even assume that everyone in the DWP’s analysis will be claiming benefits: the Labour Force Survey will include exceptionally wealthy people who do not have to work as well as workless households that are not entitled to welfare payments (e.g. students). In addition, households that are entitled to benefits but are not claiming them (unclaimed benefits save the Treasury around £16 billion a year) are counted in the Government’s workless household figures.

Of course the Government should be doing all that it can to support people who are out of work to move into jobs. But implying that everyone who is not in work should and could be in employment, that people facing long-term worklessness are somehow to blame for their position and that overly generous state support is preventing people from entering jobs is not borne out by the evidence. Of course there is nothing to stop politicians making those claims, but they should not expect DWP officials to do so on their behalf.

A couple of days ago, Guido Fawkes revealed the shock poll that George Osborne is the “most popular Tory Chancellor ever”. What he failed to tell his readers is that Osborne is some way behind the popularity reached by two of Labour’s three most recent Chancellors: Gordon Brown in Labour’s first and second terms or Denis Healey in the late-1970s.

Although carefully avoiding any mention of Labour’s Chancellors, the picture used by Guido liberally used photoshop to remove the Labour data points. Left Foot Forward has gone through Ipsos-MORI’s fascinating slide pack on the Coalition’s first 100 days to dig out the full chart.

Gordon Brown’s popularity dipped into unsatisfied territory on only two occasions – once around the time of the fuel protests in 2000 and again as prepared to become Prime Minister – but he never hit the depths reached by Norman Lamont or Ken Clarke. The surprise finding is that Denis Healey was so popular despite presiding over the Winter of Discontent.

Some will argue that Healey’s popularity bodes well for George Osborne since he also undertook a period of fiscal consolidation. The difference, of course, is that the cuts in the 1970s were demanded by the IMF shielding Healey from some of the blame. And while Healey reduced the level of public expenditure from 49.7 per cent of GDP to 45.1 per cent, George Osborne is attempting to go twice as far by reducing the public sector from 48.1 per cent of GDP to below 40 per cent.

The eyebrows and piano playing helped too.

Today’s ICM poll for the Guardian puts the Labour party on level terms with the Conservatives for the first time since October 2007. But as noted by UK Polling Report’s Anthony Wells, “the Guardian’s report concentrates upon the findings on the economy”. The topline number is buried on page seven of the paper and appears in the tenth paragraph of their online story.

In a blog titled “ICM show Labour and Tories neck and neck”, UK Polling Report observes:

“There is a new ICM poll in the Guardian tomorrow that probably isn’t what David Cameron hoped for on his 100th day in power. Topline voting intention figures are CON 37%(-1), LAB 37%(+3), LDEM 18%(-1). This is the first time an ICM poll has shown Labour catching the Conservatives since October 2007 and the election that never was.

“Despite this rather striking finding, the Guardian’s report concentrates upon the findings on the economy, which is rather more positive for the government.”

In mentioning the finding towards the bottom of their online piece, the Guardian’s Larry Elliot and Tom Clark write:

“But despite some reasonably strong personal numbers for the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, when it comes to voting intentions there are clear signs that the first peacetime coalition in the era of universal suffrage is serving his Liberal Democrats less well than the Tories. Where the Conservatives are holding on to the 37% vote share which achieved in the election, a quarter of those who backed the Lib Dems have since switched sides, leaving the third party on just 18% – down one point on the month, and six on the election. Many of these deserters have drifted towards Labour, taking its standing to 37%, and allowing a leaderless party to run the Tories level for the first time in three years.”

The ICM / Guardian General Election prediction poll put the Tories on 37 per cent, Labour on 28 per cent, and the Liberal Democrats on 26 per cent.

Update 2:15, Monday 16th August

Sarah’s full report -Immigration and Employment: Anatomy of a media story – iis now available to download from the ippr website – http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=769

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This week’s employment statistics provided an immigration bonanza for the right wing press: the Express (front page) went for “Foreigners get 77% of new jobs in Britain as too many of us live on benefits”; the Mail (page 2) went with “Foreign workers surge by 114,000… but the number of Britons with jobs falls”; and the Telegraph offered us “Record four out of five jobs going to foreigners between May and June” (sic – the data referred to are for April-June).

The Mail and the Express also reported a new study by Migration Watch which purports to show that immigration has led to reduced employment in the UK – but what do the stats actually show?

New ONS employment statistics show that 28,933,000 people in the UK were in work between April and June this year.

This is an increase of 188,000 (0.7%) on the previous quarter (though note that these statistics aren’t seasonally adjusted) and an increase of 101,000 (0.4%) on April-June 2009 (a comparison which should deal with seasonal variation). So far, so good – a positive sign of a recovering economy.

The breakdown by country of birth shows that 25,080,000 UK-born people were in employment in April-June. This is an increase of 41,000 (0.2%) on the previous quarter (again, not seasonally adjusted), but a decrease of 15,000 (-0.1%) compared to April-June 2009. In the same period, 3,846,000 non-UK born people were in employment – an increase of 145,000 (3.9%) on the previous quarter, and an increase of 114,000 (3.1%) on April-June 2009. Now you can see why people might be worried.

So, the Express’s ‘77%’ and the Telegraph’s ‘four out of five’ is taken from the quarter-on-quarter comparison (145,000 is 77% of 188,000). But these statistics aren’t seasonally adjusted, which means that year-on-year comparisons are more useful.

They are also more worrying for Express/Mail/Telegraph readers because they show an actual decline in the employment of UK-born people (expressed in the same terms as the Express/Telegraph headlines, the year-on-year figures show that 113% of new jobs went to non-UK born workers) – something that was no doubt not lost on the Mail when they chose to focus on the year-on-year figures.

So the papers are reporting real stats. However, there are two other sets of stats worth looking at – employment by nationality (rather than country of birth), and employment rates (rather than absolute numbers in employment).

Statistics broken down by country of birth disguise the fact that many non-UK born people are actually British nationals (e.g. the children of British servicemen born overseas, long-settled migrants who now hold British citizenship). Helpfully, the ONS also provide employment statistics broken down by nationality, though these don’t merit a mention in the papers (with the exception of a passing reference in the Express).

The same stats broken down by nationality show that 26,530,000 UK nationals and 2,401,00 non-UK nationals were in employment in the UK in April-June, i.e. almost 1.5m of the 3.8m non-UK born workers are actually UK nationals (as an aside, the Telegraph wrongly uses ‘British’ and ‘foreigners’ to describe country-of-birth data). This represented an increase of 4,000 (0.0%) in UK-national employment on April-June 2009, and an increase of 97,000 (4.2%) in non-UK national employment on April-June 2009.

So, employment data broken down by nationality confirms that there has been no decline in the employment levels of British nationals over the last year – the Mail are incorrect to say that ‘the number of Britons with jobs falls’. However, the overall trend pointed out by the papers stands – the vast majority of the increase in the number of people in employment over the last year is accounted for by an increase in the number of non-UK nationals in employment.

But this doesn’t necessarily tell us much about employment rates (i.e. the proportion of the population in work). It could be that the population of UK nationals is falling or steady, while the population of non-UK nationals is increasing (the UK has experienced net immigration in this period). This could mean that changes in the absolute numbers of each group in employment just reflect population, rather than telling us anything about employment rates.

In fact though, the stats on employment rates confirm the story – the 70.9% employment rate for UK nationals in April-June is 0.4 percentage points lower than in April-June 2009 (though note that the sampling variation is +/- 0.4%), while the 66.9% employment rate for non-UK nationals is 0.6 percentage points higher than in April-June 2009 (though note that the sampling variation is +/- 0.4%). In other words, non-UK nationals seem to have fared (very slightly) better in this period, in employment terms, than have UK nationals.

The final point about the statistics is about timeframes. Comparing employment rates between UK nationals and non-UK nationals between April-June 2009 and April-June 2010 shows rising non-UK national employment rates and falling UK national employment rates, but this hasn’t been true across the whole period of the recession.

The graph above (taken directly from yesterday’s ONS report) shows that in the last two quarters non-UK nationals have fared worse than UK nationals in terms of declining employment levels. Migrants have experienced a different recession to UK nationals, but not necessarily a ‘better’.

The papers (and some of the people they are quoting) seem to be using the employment data to make four points:

1. The vast majority of ‘new’ jobs are going to foreigners, not to British people;

2. Immigration has reduced employment and increased unemployment for British people;

3. The difference between UK nationals and migrants is that Brits would rather live on benefits than work;

4. The government must reduce immigration in order to get British people back to work.

What the statistics really tell us, however, is this:

• The number of jobs in the UK rose (very slightly) between the second quarter of 2009 and the second quarter of 2010;

• The employment rate of non-UK nationals rose slightly between the second quarter of 2009 and the second quarter of 2010 (by 0.6 percentage points); and

• At the same time, the employment rate of UK nationals fell slightly (by 0.4 percentage points), although the absolute number of UK nationals in work rose very slightly.

Not quite headline fodder, but true.

The evidence on migration and employment in the UK is ably summed up in a paper by my colleagues Maria Latorre and Howard Reed:

“In short, the best available UK microeconomic evidence on the effects of migration on employment finds either no effect at all, or very small negative effects.”

This conclusion is also supported by a wide range of research in other OECD countries.

The data on migration and employment in the UK certainly raise questions about welfare policies, but they also suggest that the problem of worklessness in the UK is complex, and unlikely to be solved by welfare reform alone.

The most convincing link between migration and employment is a political one, and for the Government to reduce immigration in order to give itself an incentive to deal with unemployment seems like backward logic. Similarly, reducing immigration to give employers an incentive to invest in training seems like a roundabout way to address the problem.

These data on immigration and employment are important, and contain important lessons for policymakers; they just aren’t the lessons which the papers suggest – and they aren’t just for the Home Office.

Sarah’s full report -Immigration and Employment: Anatomy of a media story – in which she explores each of the papers’ four points in detail, can be downloaded from the ippr website here.

The Daily Mail today tried a different approach to attacking David Miliband’s mansion tax proposal after its Associated Press colleagues the Evening Standard called the progressive measure a “tax blow”. Perhaps embarrassed concerned that the Standard’s line was at odds with their Dispossessed campaign that highlights income disparities in the capital, the Mail implied the policy was hypocritical. But the idea, first proposed when Vince Cable suggested a £1 million cap, is popular with voters.

In today’s paper, the Daily Mail outline that Miliband’s proposal would exclude his own £1.5 million home from the tax and turn to the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s Matthew Elliott for a quote:

“It’s too convenient to be a coincidence that David Miliband has proposed a mansion tax that his very own palatial home would be exempt from.”

Perhaps the Mail and Mr Elliott have a point and Miliband could be bolder. After all – as yesterday’s Evening Standard was keen to the show – the policy will only affect a meagre 34,000 Londoners and just 6,000 other homes so capturing a few more can hardly hurt.

Indeed, although the policy originally proposed by Vince Cable – to introduce a ‘Mansion tax’ on properties worth more than £1 million – provoked a backlash at Lib Dem conference last year, it turned out to be extremely popular. As Financial Website of the year, This Is Money reported last September:

“An overwhelming majority of voters support Vince Cable’s ‘mansion tax’ - the policy that was dismissed by delegates at the Liberal Democrat conference as ‘electoral suicide’.

“A poll in today’s Mail on Sunday has found that, by a margin of more than two to one, voters back the plan under which the owners of homes worth more than £1m would be charged an average levy of £4,000 each.

“A total of 57% are in favour of the policy, with just 27% against. Even among Conservative voters, the most likely to oppose such ’soak the rich’ policies, 44% were against the idea compared to 38% for it.”

The Labour leadership contender would be liable for £5,000 if a tax of 1 per cent were levied on properties worth more than £1 million cap – perhaps a price worth paying for a significant £2.2 billion tax windfall*, a popular policy, and calling the Mail’s bluff.

* The Liberal Democrats estimated that £1.1 billion would be raised from a 0.5 per cent levy on properties worth over £1 million.

Spectator editor Fraser Nelson has been caught out being cute with the stats in a piece on immigration and employment for a right-wing mouthpiece. Again.

You may remember during the election campaign Left Foot Forward’s debunking of Fraser’s claim that “98 per cent of jobs created in the UK since 1997 have been taken by migrant workers” – now he’s claiming “there were 243,000 fewer UK-born workers between January and March” and “the number of Eastern Europeans working grew by 25,000 over the same period”.

And the source for his claims, made in his latest News of the World column? “Official figures, seen by yours truly”; or, as independent fact-checking website Full Fact managed to tease out of him, “an unpublished source that he was reluctant to reveal” – needless to say, he doesn’t link to or publish the full figures.

Full Fact go on to explain:

“…the main difference between Mr Nelson’s figures and those published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) is that the published data includes people over 65 while Mr Nelson’s do not.”

Yet, in his embarrassing u-turn over his ‘98 per cent’ claim, he acknowledged that it was fair to include pensioners:

“…my original post had both working-age (99 percent of new jobs to foreign-born) and another version of all ages over 16 (including pensioners). This reduces it to 72 percent as there have been fewer pension-age immigrants.”

Of the claim about A8 workers, the quarter-on-quarter rise to January was 27,000, with the number of UK workers down 220,000, stats Full Fact concede are “broadly in line with the findings set out in the News of the World” – but the Office for National Statistics makes clear that the figures are not seasonally adjusted, adding it they do not comment on quarterly comparisons of non-adjusted data, as they “could potentially be distorted by seasonal movements”.

Cue the killer blow from the fact checkers:

“We were instead advised to consider annual comparisons between the same quarters of different years. Such an approach indicates a different trend to the one suggested by the Spectator Editor.

“For the period January to March 2010 the number of UK nationals in employment was 25,039,000 down 244,000 from the same period the previous year. But comparing employment levels for A8-born workers over the same period, rather than a rise, there was a fall of 13,000.

“This means that from 2009 to 2010, the number of UK-born people in work fell by one per cent, while A8-born workers declined by 2.5 per cent.“

Lies, damned lies and Speccie-tistics…

Every single newspaper saw a fall in circulation year-on-year for the month of May – with the Telegraph suffering the biggest slump, down 16.49 per cent to under 700,000 copies a day – while the Times is down 12.82%, the Guardian 10.47%, the Express 7.79%, the Mirror 6.57%, the Indy 4.85%, the Mail 3.86% and the FT 2.69%. Even the papers which have slashed their cover price, the Star and the Sun, are also down, by 2.11 and 1.61 per cent respectively.

The latest circulation figures come as Trinity Mirror announced the axing of 200 more staff, on top of the loss of 1,700 jobs, one in five of all jobs, from the group last year. Labour MP Austin Mitchell has submitted an early day motion, backed by 24 MPs, contesting the job cuts.

A ‘Save The Mirror’ Facebook group has also been established, with more than 1,500 members, many of whom them well known and respected journalists and MPs; you can join the group here and tweet @savethemirror and #savethemirror.

Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, called the redundancies “neanderthal”, adding:

“It’s disgraceful that against a background of making more than £70 million in profit last year and of paying millions in remuneration to a handful of Trinity Mirror execs, the company should now throw more than a quarter of its talented, hardworking workforce onto the scrap heap.”

Over at News International, meanwhile, the Times paywall has been dubbed an “empty world”, with only 15,000 people signing up and agreeing to pay money to access the Times’s content, and 12,500 paying for the seperate iPad application.

Michael Wolff, respected US journalist and commentator, writes of the dismal figures:

“He [Murdoch] is not reporting on himself because even less than most news outlets, Murdoch outlets have no objective sense when it comes to their own interests (or the boss’s interests), or willingness to ask questions which the boss might find uncomfortable, or penchant for anything but the party line. The news from News Corp. is always snarlingly good—even when it is very bad.

“My sources say that not only is nobody subscribing to the website, but subscribers to the paper itself—who have free access to the site—are not going beyond the registration page. It’s an empty world…

“It’s a big story—but you won’t read about it in the papers that know it best.”

When interviewing Ed Balls on the Today programme this morning, John Humphreys cited a McKinsey study to claim the UK’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 469 per cent – “the highest in the world”, yet fails to clarify the full meaning of this figure nor put it into context.

The report in question, ‘Debt and deleveraging: The global credit bubble and its economic consequences’ in fact shows the 469% figure to be the debt ratio for “domestic private and public secor debt” (exhibit 1, page 10); when broken down into different sectors, however, government debt is 52 per cent (exhibit 20, page 7) – lower than Japan (188%), Italy (101%), France (73%), Germany (69%), Brazil (66%), India (66%), Canada (60%) and the USA (60%).

The report also says (page 14):

Many historic examples, from the US in the 1930s to Japan in 1997, show the danger of withdrawing support of the economy too soon.

Listen to the interview in full here, and read a transcript of the key lines below:

John Humphreys: “You dismissed entirely the question of how much we are now in debt and you say that I got it from a book [Rawnsley's book] I didn’t, I got it from a McKinsey study, an outfit that you respect hugely, of debts of the world’s major economies, and on that basis I’ll give you a quick figure here, the UK’s debt to GDP ratio was 469%, the highest in the world, 459% for Japan…”

Ed Balls: “What debts do you include in that?”

JH: “All of them, the whole lot, your debts, public debts, family debts, mortgage debts, the whole lot, you encouraged a huge amount of spending…”

EB: “You’re making me rather more powerful than I thought, I didn’t realise I could be responsible for the debts not just of the government but every company, every household…”

JH: “The Government encouraged massive borrowing and never said hold on a moment.”

EB: “Absolute nonsense John, the fact is we had low interest rates, the fact is we had low inflation, an people were borrowing, we had a million more home owners and that was a good thing, what happened was a huge financial crisis which put deficits and debt up round the world, it’s on a scale of 1929, but the question is, do we learn the lessons of history?

“And the fact is, the last person to say we’ve got to cut spending and deficits now immediately before Margaret Thatcher was Ramsey MacDonald in 1931, and in my view David Cameron and Nick Clegg are repeating the MacDonald mistake of 1931, I fear that we’re gonna go into a period of profoundly lower growth and higher unemployment. This is a very, very dangerous time, and what you need from Labour is a candidate who actually understands the economy and can take the argument to the Conservatives.”

Nearly 20,000 38 Degrees members have signed a petition demanding a proper investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s plans to buy the remainder of BSkyB. He currently owns 40 per cent of the broadcaster and aims to become the sole owner. News of the deal came hot on the heels of Murdoch’s recent purchase of several other channels from Virgin Media.

38 Degrees members have been challenging Rupert Murdoch’s ambitions in the UK for months. Last year we fought his attacks on the BBC.

During the election we spoke out against his scaremongering about a hung parliament and voting reform. Sky News’ Kay Burley told us during the election that we should just “go home and watch it on Sky News”.

Now, 38 Degrees’ members are worried that the UK is in danger of moving towards the sort of biased, right-wing news reporting associated with Fox News in the US. It’s likely that Murdoch is counting on the favours he earned with support for the Tories at the election to ensure the deal is ‘waved through’ with few questions.

But the 38 Degrees petition targets Vince Cable who, as business secretary and one of the most senior Lib Dem members of the coalition, has the power to order a proper investigation into the deal and what it means for media freedom and independence in the UK.

He has just under three weeks to start the review process and thousands of 38 Degrees members are planning to keep the pressure on until Cable take steps to make sure Murdoch’s plans are thoroughly examined. There’s no doubt that the huge pressure from Murdoch’s existing media empire will be urging him not to demand a review, but a huge, people-powered movement telling Cable to stand firm could tip the balance in favour of media independence

Media barons and media moguls are descriptions of bygone days, neither of which adequately fit Rupert Murdoch and son James. For the Murdochs are all-powerful global giants, and they have struck at precisely the right time. An economic liberalising coalition government will not step in to put a halt to News Corporation’s plans for total control of BSkyB.

As Professor James Curran recently wrote on the Open Democracy website:

“One consequence of the current quiescence is that media conglomerates have been able to persuade governments around the world to ease monopoly controls. In the 1980s, lobbyists argued that these were redundant since the advent of new communication technology would lead to the break-up of media empires.

“Now the argument is more frequently heard that media ‘consolidation’ is necessary for success in the competitive global marketplace. This shift symbolises the way in which successful media giants have so far weathered the storm of increased competition, and won increased acceptance in the era of market liberalism.”

This bid of BSkyB comes only two weeks after Virgin TV channels were bought. We now have huge swathes of communications – newspapers, television, broadband - under the control of the Murdoch empire. Those early battles against cross party ownership and the unfair advantage that would ensue appear almost quaint.

So who is left to hold News Corporation to account? The prime minister has already promised an Ofcom where its remit will be restricted to its narrow technical and enforcement roles; it will no longer play a role in making policy.

So will it be the culture, media and sport select committee whose chair, John Whittingdale, said after James Murdoch’s infamous Edinburgh speech attacking the BBC and Ofcom that much of what he said was “natural Conservative territory“?

Maybe each of the Labour leadership candidates could be asked:

“Will you put a halt to this concentration of power?”

It is often said that ownership doesn’t matter, but having this media information control does matter. And as we know Rupert Murdoch wants to introduce Fox-style news here. Thus far he has been thwarted by our impartiality rules, but how long might it be before a Glen Beck is denigrating the airwaves?

Our guest writer is Nigel Stanley, head of campaigns and communications at the TUC

First Nick Clegg and now today’s papers have launched a fresh onslaught on ‘gold-plated’ public sector pensions on the back of yesterdays’ Office of Budget Responsibility report – even though the OBR small print shows that the forward costs of public sector pensions are sustainable. The focus of today’s attacks are the “pay-as-you-go” (PAYG) public sector pensions run by central government (and not the Local Government scheme).

PAYG pensions do not have a pension fund invested in shares and other assets as private sector schemes do. Instead employee and employer pension contributions are kept by the Treasury and pensions are similarly paid out of current public spending.

But in other ways they are run like a private sector scheme. There is a notional pension fund for each scheme within the public accounts. It is valued on the same basis, and the contributions that employees and employers have to make are calculated by actuaries in a similar way to those in other schemes.

Much of today’s outrage is about a figure called the net cost of public sector pensions. This is the difference each year between the cost of pensions in payment and the income from contributions. There is no reason, however, why in any one year these should balance: contributions are paid by staff and their employer to fund their pension when they retire, while pensions in payment have been funded by previous contributions.

There is also a contribution from the Treasury because the tax-payer has enjoyed the benefit of earlier contributions. If public sector pensions were funded in the same way as the private sector, contributions would have been put in a separate fund and invested.

Instead these public sector contributions are kept by the Treasury and provide funds that would otherwise need to have been raised through tax or borrowing. It is only right that pension savers should receive some return on their savings in return. Of course both pensions in payment and contributions are both very big numbers, so a small change in either can make a big difference in the net cost figure from year to year.

This is what the government has done by freezing public sector pay – and cutting future public servant numbers. The income from contributions depends on the numbers of public sector staff, their pay levels and contribution rates. Cuts to the public sector therefore hav the effect of reducing future pension contributions as fewer people will get smaller salaries.

This has the perverse effect of increasing the figure for the net cost of public sector pensions. Spending stays the same but income goes down – even though the state is spending less on the public sector workforce. On the other hand if the pay of every public servant was to go up by 10 per cent, there would be a big fall in the net cost of pensions as contributions would increase  even though the wages bill would have grown dramatically.

So how can you accurately measure the cost of public sector pensions into the future? The Treasury, the National Audit Office and even the OBR report agree that the most useful figure is the proportion of GDP expected to be taken by pension payments.

The OBR have a new  projection of the future cost of public sector pensions on this basis, which has been ignored today. Here are its projected  figures taken from para 5.26 of the costs of paying public  sector pensions (ignoring contributions) as a % of GDP. This figure looks to me as if it has been has been revised downwards from previous HMT estimates:

% of GDP	2010	2020	2030	2040	2050
Public service pensions	1.8	1.9	1.9	1.8	1.7

This is of course only the latest onslaught on public sector pensions. There have been many in the past yet as the NAO report shows public sector pensions are modest and affordable:

• Employee contributions to these schemes have increased faster (56%) than pension payments (38%) since 2000;

• There has only been a 2% real terms increase in the average pension in payment since 2000 – the average teachers’ pension has actually fallen by 4% over that period and the NHS average pension is unchanged;

• The vast majority of pensions in payment are modest. Most pensions paid in both the NHS and civil service are below £110 a week – and a quarter of NHS pensions are less than £40 a week and a quarter of civil service pensions are less than £60 a week. The biggest number of both NHS and civil service schemes is between £1,000 and £2,000. 14% of NHS pensions lie in this range.  These pensions then drop away from this early peak; and

• Fewer than 0.2% of teacher pensioners, 1.8% of civil service pensioners and 2.5% of NHS pensioners get pensions of more than £40,000.

Migration Watch are plain wrong to suggest that the introduction of the Points-Based System for managing immigration has led to an increase in the number of economic migrants entering the UK. A number of papers – including the Daily Mail – report the publication of a Migration Watch briefing that purports to show that migration to the UK from outside the EU for work has increased by 20 per cent since the introduction of the Points-Based System in 2008.

But this claim is false.  In fact, the Home Office statistics that Migration Watch cite show that the total number of visas issued through the parts of the Points-Based System that deal with migration for work (Tiers 1 and 2) was 97,280 in 2009 (including dependents).  This is 15 per cent fewer than the 114,850 visas issued (including dependents) in 2007 through the Work Permit and Highly Skilled Migrant routes that the PBS replaced.  This downward trend is continuing – visas (including dependents) granted through Tiers 1 and 2 were down 15 per cent in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the first quarter of 2009.

Migration Watch can claim an ‘increase’ in economic migration from outside the EU only by including in their figures not only new arrivals but also extensions of leave to remain for those who have already come to the UK through Tier 1 and 2 or predecessor schemes in previous years.  It is misleading to describe this as immigration.  It is also difficult to compare these numbers over time – changes in the immigration rules can mean that more or fewer people need to apply for extensions in any given year, regardless of the underlying levels of immigration (individuals can also make more than one application for extension in a year, so there is some double counting).

In fact, it seems likely that the change to the Points-Based system in 2008 might well explain part of the increase in the number of extensions issued between 2007 and 2009 as people already in the UK ‘transitioned’ from one scheme to another.  The increase is also in part a lagged result of high levels of immigration for work before 2007 (well before the introduction of the PBS).  That there is no upward trend in these grants of extension is borne out by more recent figures showing that employment-related grants of an extension of leave to remain fell by 15 per cent from 122,105 in the year to March 2008 to 103,500 in the year to March 2009.

Migration Watch are right when they claim that there was a significant increase in the number of student visas issued between 2007 and 2009 (and indeed student numbers continue to rise).  However, it is wrong to infer from this that the introduction of the PBS for managing student immigration has meant a loosening of the rules.  While there is no doubt some abuse of the student visa regime, the introduction of the PBS (and further changes planned by the last government) mean that the system is being significantly tightened up.

The increase in the numbers of foreign students in the UK is a reflection of a range of other factors, not least the success of the UK higher education sector and the weakening of sterling (which has made study in the UK more affordable).  It is also important to note that student visas do not confer a right to settle in the UK, and that most student migration is temporary – increases in student migration have only a limited impact on the long-term rate of net migration to the UK.

Migration Watch are desperate to show that immigration is increasing in order to pressure the Government into imposing restrictions on immigration that could damage the UK economy and public services. 

In fact, net immigration to the UK (the surplus of people immigrating over people emigrating) in the year to September 2009 was 11 per cent lower than in the year to September 2008.  Declining net emigration by British citizens included in the total figure disguises an even more dramatic fall in net non-British immigration, which was down almost 27 per cent in the year to September 2009 compared to the year to 2008. Net migration from the EU fell by a massive 66 per cent in this period, but net migration from outside the EU is also falling – down 10 per cent in the year to September 2009 compared with the year to September 2008.

David Cameron has said repeatedly that he wants annual net immigration down to ‘tens of thousands, rather than hundreds of thousands’. The economic crisis, the natural cycles of migration flows and the tougher polices of the last government have already turned the tide – and at this rate we will see net immigration fall below 100,000 without the introduction for the much trumpeted cap on immigration.

• Ippr yesterday published a full briefing which analyses last week’s migration statistics.

Our guest writer is Richard Pope, editor of The Straight Choice

TheStraightChoice.org crowd sources photographs and details of election leaflets in real-time. During the general election campaign they collected more than 5,000 leaflets. Election leaflets are designed to do something very simple – get a message over you, the voter, in the time it takes to get from the front door to the recycling bin. They are targeted, effective and (occasionally) nasty tools in the fight for votes.

The trouble is they are normally pretty well hidden from public scrutiny. We setup TheStraightChoice.org to provide a bit of transparency to the ‘ground war’, catch candidates who are misbehaving and close the loop on what candidates say they will do, and how they actually behave in Parliament.

Here’s a few of the things we discovered:

Targeted and personalised

This may not have been the much sort-after ‘internet election’ but it certainly was the first digital-print and database election. Leaflets targeted at old people, home owners, families – even those with concerns about civil liberties – were printed on demand, often with the name of the voter integrated in the design of the leaflet and could be send out to fit with the news cycle.

Leaflets follow the fights

There are huge differences in the number of leaflets dished out in different areas of the country, with marginals like Islington South and Finsbury and Oxford East being deluged. This makes perfect sense from the point of view of the parties, it’s a simple case of preservation of resources, but what impression does it leave with voters living in the not-spots?

The nasties

It’s often claimed, without much evidence, that the Lib Dems are the nastiest campaigners. Sadly we found candidates from all parties putting out some very shameful literature, making claims that are unfair or untrue and deliberatly trying to scare voters. So long as there are no untrue personal smears PPCs can say what they like, and often do, without any recrimination.

This Labour leaflet from Birmingham Hall Green is probably the classic from this election, but there are examples form the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats too.

We are Borg

The leaflets of the Conservatives, and to a lesser extent Labour, revealed how centrally controlled their campaigns were. The Conservatives brought out a new leaflet design about once a week, all printed centrally in Guildford (always amusing when the candidate is pimping their commitment to local business), with the candidates just filling in a few local details and photos.

This combined with the relunctance of Tories to complete the TheyWorkForYou.com questionnaire raises some interesting questions about how the new intake will behave in parliament.

Follow the leader

With the exception of his own leaflets, Gordon Brown was almost entirely absent from the Labour print campaign. In short, Brown was seen as toxic to the electorate so Labour focused on their local candidates, past achivements and attacking the Tories instead. The opposite was true of the Conservatives where David Cameron was often more prominent than both the candiate and the Conservative brand.

The Liberal Democrats arguably went further with leaflets being delivered at 9:00 am the morning after the first debate proclaiming Nick Clegg the winner and referring to the party as “Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats” later in the campaign.

Those graphs

Finally, it seems all parties are involved in an a deliberate attempt to de-educate voters about the local political landscape. Each party will use the poll or election result that says they will win, or failing that just make up some data. This example from Lambeth ignores the Green Party (who were actually second in the previous local election) and makes no mention of where the data comes from. Whilst this Lib Dem leaflet skews the scale to give the result they want.

Changes to the law

There are a couple of very simple changes to the law that would help clean up this little corner of politics and hopefully improve people’s respect for the process. Firstly, if all candidates had to log a digital copy of every leaflet they put out with the Electoral Comission then there would be much more transparency and hopefully less misbehaving.

Secondly, we need a Political Advertising Standards law - any claims made on leaflets or posters should spell out the source for the claim. If we require it of anti-aging cream, we should require it of our politicians. The data collected by The Straight Choice will be made avalible to anyone who wants it, and the website will remains open after the election – the next campaign begins now.

A culture of fear has gripped News International’s newsrooms as the prospect of a hung parliament suggests that their endorsement of the Conservatives has not “had the impact that they wanted”, according to a senior source. Insiders are concerned that after The Sun’s early endorsement of David Cameron failed to guarante victory, The Times’ election coverage has been politically motivated.

After The Times spiked a story about Baroness Warsi’s remarks that Muslim MPs “don’t have any principles”, a News International executive told Left Foot Forward:

“There’s been alarm at the prospect that their endorsement of the Conservatives may not have had the impact that they wanted.

“Tom Newton-Dunn [The Sun's political editor] is going around the News of the World saying that they have to get more fully on board as Rebekah [Brooks, chief executive of News International] wants to deliver.

“James Harding [The Times' editor] – having been widely blamed by Murdoch for failing to land the expenses story - has been weakened and less able to resist pressure from Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch over the political direction of the paper.”

There are also rumoured to have been meetings in the News International canteen where members of staff were told not to take the Liberal Democrats seriously. The remarks are consistent with other accounts of News International’s behaviour in the run up to the general election. Respected Vanity Fair journalist, Michael Wolff, reported that Mr Newton-Dunn told a group of journalists, “It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street”. Meanwhile, The Independent last week reported that:

“Gillian Duffy, the Rochdale pensioner whom Gordon Brown described as “a sort of bigoted woman”, turned down the chance to make a small fortune from selling her story to The Sun because the newspaper wanted her to say things she did not believe.”

On the eve of the general election, The Times has spiked a story that would have caused embarrassment to David Cameron. According to Next Left, an article filed by Andrew Norfolk, Tom Baldwin and Richard Ford reported remarks by Baroness Warsi on the lack of “morals or principles” of Muslim MPs. It has not made today’s paper.

Speaking at an event in South Yorkshire in English and Urdu, Sayeeda Waarsi – David Cameron’s handpicked Community Cohesion Shadow Minister – is understood to have been responding to comments by an earlier speaker who urged more Muslims to become involved in politics. She said:

“[He] says we need more Muslim MPs, more Muslims in the House of Lords. I would actually disagree with that because one of the lessons we have learnt in the last five years in politics is that Muslims that go to Parliament don’t have any morals or principles.”

The spiked article, which Left Foot Forward has also seen, contained outraged remarks from Labour and Conservative politicians:

A prominent Conservative businessman, who asked not to be named, said her words were “a disgusting insult to all Muslims at a time when we need to play a bigger and more positive role in British society”.

Sadiq Khan, defending Tooting for Labour, was not at the reception but reacted with anger to Lady Warsi’s attack. “These comments will cause huge offence to every single candidate of Muslim faith standing for any party at this election, as well as the tens of thousands of people of all faiths and none who have voted or will be voting for us,” he said.

Baroness Warsi claims that her remarks had been mis-translated but in the spiked article, The Times reports that the party acknowledged “this may not have been the best way of making her point”. A Sheffield paper, ILM, confirmed to Left Foot Forward this morning that they had a recording of the remarks.

UPDATE 17.23:

I’ve just seen this Guardian report which provides a different transcript to that seen by Next Left and myself:

“I would actually disagree with that because one of the lessons we have learned in the last five years in politics is that Muslims that go to parliament don’t have any morals or principles. Not everyone is [former Labour peer] Lord Ahmed, not everyone puts their community before their own career.”

I can only assume that this is the Conservative party’s transcript which they said they would send me earlier but which failed to materialise. I received a call from a Tory press officer this morning who disputed the translation of the Urdu word “asool”. It did not, she asserted, translate as “morals” but rather as “principles”. UrduWord.com confirms that this is correct so at her suggestion, I am happy to amend the headline.

The Guardian also report that, “Another website, Left Foot Forward, said it had seen the Times article. The website initially reported that the Sheffield Urdu and English newspaper Mahana ILM had confirmed it held a recording of Warsi’s comments. But when contacted by the Guardian, Mahana ILM denied any knowledge of Warsi’s comment, and the reference to the recording was subsequently removed from the Left Foot Forward story.” This is patently wrong as I stand by my conversation earlier today and have not changed the story.

Twitter is rife with speculation tonight as to which right-wing paper might buy the rights to Gillian Duffy’s story, the woman at the centre of “bigot-gate”. If true, it would be in keeping with other recent rumours of the tabloid’s spending patterns.

Earlier this evening politician, Tom Watson, tweeted, “The Sun have paid 50k+ for an exclusive interview with Mrs Duffy. Murdoch turning this election into a farce”. This was swiftly followed by a denial from The Sun’s twitter account saying, “wrong again Tom. We haven’t done any ‘deal’ with Mrs Duffy, or paid her any money.” Then shortly after 9pm the Guardian’s general election editor Matthew Wells tweeted, “Andrew Porter dropping hints on BBC Campaign Show that Telegraph have got the Duffy story”.

But Mr Watson can be excused for thinking this might be in keeping with The Sun’s line of attack during the election campaign. The paper projected its bile on Nick Clegg last week – a move which appears to be backfiring. And unreported by the entire mainstream media, The Sun’s political editor Tom Newton-Dunn, was – according to Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff – caught telling colleagues, “It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street”.

Meanwhile, writer and academic John Naughton blogged today about an “intriguing email which dropped into my inbox”. It appeared to commission information for The Sun’s Jenna Sloan and said:

“I’m looking for a teacher and a nurse to be case studies in The Sun next week.

“This is for a political, election feature and both must be willing to say why they feel let down by the Labour Government, and why they are thinking about voting Conservative.

“We’ll need to picture them, and also have a chat about their political opinions. We can pay the case studies £100 for their time.”

Naughton cautions that the email may not be genuine. We’ll certainly know one way or another before the election is over.