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Wednesday March 10

09.41am -

Communities and Local Government is fast gaining a reputation as Whitehall's most dysfunctional department.

We report in tonight's YEP how the department is unable to say how many jobs have been created by the government's £1.1bn coalfield regeneration scheme.

It cannot even say how many businesses are based on former pit sites or or how many people have benefited from the 13-year investment.

Meanwhile, the CLG's policy of streamlining England's 46 local control rooms into nine centres continues to swallow up ever greater sums of taxpayers' cash.

(It was recently disclosed that the new control centre at Wakefield's Paragon Business Park, which is not due to become operational until July 2012, is standing empty at a cost of £5,000 each day.)

The department last year went through a completely pointless rebranding exercise. A total of £24,765 was spent changing the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) into simply Communities and Local Government (which confusingly now sounds like a quango or pressure group, rather than a government department).

As if this wasn't all bad enough, civil war recently broke out between the Secretary of State John Denham and his permanent secretary Peter Housden over plans to create a new unitary authority in the South West.

Civil servants at the department are said to be demoralised and relations between ministers are believed to be increasingly tense. The joke among Whitehall-watchers is that CLG makes even Downing Street look like an appealing place to work.

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Tuesday March 9

3.20pm - An MP has just run me through how he thinks the key election dates will pan out over the next couple of months.

The widespread assumption is that Budget Day will be on March 24.

This MP (a former minister) thinks Gordon Brown will then announce the date of the election (which will be May 6) in the week before the Easter weekend (the most likely day for the announcement would be March 31, as the PM wouldn't want to call it on April Fools' Day).

The election campaign would effectively be underway over Easter but MPs would still come back to Westminster on April 6, 7 and 8 to finish up the government's remaining legislation (the period known as the 'wash up').

Parliament would then be dissolved on Thursday April 8 and the four week campaign-proper would be underway. It's obviously a bit of a stab in the dark but it seems to be a pretty reasonable guess.

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Thursday March 4

2.56pm - I've noted on this blog before the growing calls for a resident Parliamentary cat to rid the historic Palace of Westminster of its mice infestation.

It has now emerged that a mouse hotline has been established for people to report sightings and the issue has even been debated on the floor of the House of Lords.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff recalled how a previous Westminster cat caught up to 60 mice a night.

"The corpses were then swept up in the morning," she told her fellow peers.

She went on to warn of the consequences of mice eating through cables, saying: "it would be a tragedy for this beautiful Palace to burn down for lack of a cat."

Her appeal, however, did not persuade the Chairman of Committees, Lord Brabazon of Tara (yes, he is a real person), who warned that a hit squad of cats would be as much bother as the mice.

He replied: "...there would be nothing to keep them where they are needed or stop them walking around the House on desks in offices or on tables in restaurants and bars - and maybe even the Chamber itself."

Controversially, he then went on to blame the refined lunching tastes of their lordships for encouraging the vermin.

"If you were a mouse, you would rather eat the crumbs of a smoked salmon sandwich than the bait," he said.


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Thursday February 25

5.03pm - Leeds East MP George Mudie has scotched rumours that he is to stand down at the General Election.

There was a growing feeling that the 65-year-old was preparing to follow in the footsteps of fellow Labour MPs Paul Truswell (Pudsey) Colin Burgon (Elmet), Colin Challen (Morley) and John Battle (Leeds West) and quit Westminster.

However, he today made it clear that he does intend to fight again for the seat (which currently has whopping 14,131 Labour majority).

He told me: "I am selected and will be contesting the election because it is a great honour to represent the people of East Leeds."

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Tuesday 23 February

6.45pm - Business Secretary Lord Mandelson today hosted a summit at his Whitehall department to hail the work of regional quangos during the recession.

The heads of the country's regional development agencies, including the chairman of Yorkshire Forward, travelled down to London to hear how essential they are in promoting the "Going for Growth" policy agenda (nothing to do with the Henry Kelly TV gameshow).

Despite being an official government event, there was the distinct whiff of party politics about the whole thing.

The Tories want to abolish RDAs because of they loath regional government, however, many businesses in Yorkshire are quite complementary about Yorkshire Forward's performance and would prefer it be saved from the chop.

Lord Mandelson seems to have spotted a good opportunity and is praising RDAs to the rafters, while reminding business leaders that the Tories would axe them.

However, this love affair with regional quangos is hard to square with the fact that Yorkshire Forward has had its budget raided by the government this year to the tune of £30 million. Further, and deeper, spending cuts are coming down the track.

This was Lord Mandelson's reaction when I asked him why, if Yorkshire Forward is so great, his government is cutting its funding.

"You may not have noticed that the public purse is just feeling a little squeezed.
"When you have had a hole in your balance sheet blown by the sort of crisis we have in the banks, it is going to make a difference."

Perhaps more surprising, was his reply when asked about the undemocratic nature of RDAs (they make major local decisions yet their boards are appointed by ministers in London).

"Of course they are accountable because the regional media ensures that they are.

"But sometimes you have got to get on with the job and when you are faced with the sorts of challenges that your region is, it is better to have a regional development agency, working with central government and local authorities but also able to get on with the job, deliver the decisions, deliver the business backing that people need sooner rather than later," he told me.

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Friday February 19

4.52pm - Just to update my last post......Labour are calling their high profile launch this weekend "Operation Fightback".

Party sources say Labour's footsoldiers will fight the election "street by street, hospital by hospital, school by school, Children's Centre by Children's Centre and workplace by workplace".

Those same sources say that Gordon Brown will declare that although behind in the polls and "clearly the underdog" his party can still win the General Election.

Labour activists in West Yorkshire are being sent Operation Fightback packs, which include magazines, stickers and "key doorstep messages for campaigning".

The four campaign themes for the election will be: securing the recovery; supporting new industries and future jobs; reducing the deficit while protecting and not cutting frontline services and standing "up for the many not the few".

Sources have also confirmed that the campaign's slogan will be unveiled tomorrow.

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2.17pm - Hold on to your hats - this weekend is going to be the first big political weekend of the election campaign (OK, it hasn't officially been called yet, but it might as well have been).

Gordon Brown will fire the starting gun tomorrow with a major speech laying out Labour's four key pledges to voters. It is said that he will also unveil the party's campaign slogan.

Cabinet ministers have already fanned out across the country and will be holding their own electioneering events to run alongside the PM's speech.

Critics say the aim is to overshadow another big political story which will break on Sunday, when the Observer starts serialising a new book on Gordon Brown by well-respected journalist Andrew Rawnsley.

Rawnsley's previous book, Servants of the People, lifted the lid on the simmering tensions and jealousies at the heart of the New Labour project. His new title is likely to be crammed with explosive stories of Prime Ministerial temper tantrums.

The shockwaves of this weekend are likely to rumble on for some time.

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Wednesday February 17

5.23pm - Tally Ho! Hilary Benn is leading the pack of Labour MPs seeking to embarrass the Tory Party over its addiction with fox hunting.

The Leeds Central MP and Environment Secretary has organised a mass letter to David Cameron, calling for the Conservative leader drop proposals to abolish the hunting ban and make clear if he also plans to repeal the ban on stag hunting and hare-coursing.

The letter has apparently already attracted 2,000 signatures in under 24 hours.

Labour spin-doctors have sent out a press release which highlights how Mr Benn's opposite number on the Tory frontbench, Nick Herbert, was master and huntsman of the Newmarket Beagles for 14 seasons.

Mr Benn is quoted as saying: "David Cameron's plan to repeal the hunting ban shows that beneath the gloss the Tories haven't changed.

"Five years ago, Labour banned fox hunting, stag hunting and hare coursing because there is no place for animal cruelty in a modern, civilised society. Making animals tear each other apart is cruelty, not sport."

Drink in the nostalgia, it's just like 1997 all over again.

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Tuesday February 16

3.59pm - It's official: the Commons authorities have hoisted up the white flag and abandoned their campaign to banish mice from the Palace of Westminster

With its numerous crooks and crannies, the 140-year-old Palace is the perfect home for furry rodents.

I got a shock a few years back when a plucky mouse ran out from under my desk in the press gallery while I was working at my computer.

Pendle MP Gordon Prentice recently called for the Commons to introduce a resident cat after he spotted a mouse scurrying around in the MPs' tearoom.

He said: "The mouse was in the tearoom for a good 10 minutes. Darting here and there. Bold as brass.
"There are traps all over the place but they are clearly ineffective."
"A cat in the tearoom would have a very enjoyable life."

However, the House of Commons Commission, which runs the Palace, has rejected his suggestion.

The Commission's spokesman Nick Harvey MP has made clear that even the most cunning and ravenous of moggies would fail to get on top of the problem.

He said: "The clear advice we have is that all effective measures possible are being taken, but that in a building such as the Palace, pests such as mice can only be controlled rather than eradicated."

Jerry always was smart than Tom.

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Monday February 15

5.34pm - Ladbrokes has started publishing seat-by-seat betting odds for this year's General Election - and they confirm West Yorkshire's status as a key battleground

Despite the narrowing in the polls, the bookies still expect the Tories to win Elmet & Rothwell and Pudsey. In both seats the odds on a Tory victory are 1/3, while a Labour win is priced at 2/1.

Greg Mulholland is currently expected to retain Leeds North West for the Lib Dems. His odds on survival are 4/6. The Tories chances of victory currently stand at 7/4 and Labour's at 6/1.

Meanwhile, Ed Balls is still seen as having a big enough notional majority to fend off the Tory challenge in Morley and Outwood - Ladbrokes are offering odds of 2/5 that he will survive and 7/4 that he will lose to the Conservatives.

Other seats are really tight. The bookies are offering odds of 8/11 on the Tories taking Leeds North East, while Labour is at evens. That seems to be the bookmaker throwing up his hands saying "it's too close to call".

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5.10pm - Today is probably the first of the "phoney election campaign" in which the Tories have gone out of their way to target voters in Labour's northern heartlands.

The pledge to let public sector workers take charge of key health and education services is an attempt to repeat Thatcher's "right to buy" policy, which led to a generation of working class and lower middle class voters turning to the Conservatives.

The new policy was unveiled alongside a poster campaign designed to appeal to voters who previously backed Labour.

The images, which will be on billboards across the UK from today, depict three individuals explaining why concerns over the economy and social breakdown have made them opt to vote Conservative.

However, despite their big push, it doesn't feel as if the Tories have really pulled it off today.

They were derailed early on after it emerged that a Conservative document claimed that the conception rate among under-18 girls in the 10 most disadvantaged areas was 54 per cent. The real figure was 54 per 1,000.

Labour pointed out that even that figure had fallen from 60 per 1,000 in 1998.

This is damaging because it once again opens the Conservatives up to the accusation of being "out of touch" with deprived areas of the country.

Senior Tories seem all too willing to seize on an appalling crime or depressing social statistic and use it as evidence of a "broken society".

The anger provoked by David Cameron's remarks about the Shannon Matthews case back in December 2008 springs to mind.

The Tory leader described the area where Karen Matthews lived in Dewsbury Moor as "an estate where decency fights a losing battle against degradation and despair" and "a community whose pillars are crime, unemployment and addiction".

To his credit, he later visited the Moorside estate and admitted that he had "overreacted".

Nevertheless, it is probably going to take more than a complex policy about public sector co-operatives and a few posters to persuade people that the Tory leadership understands what it is like to live in areas where people for so long have refused to give them their vote.

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Tuesday February 9

5.57pm - Dewsbury MP and Fire Minister Shahid Malik was given a rough time when he appeared before the Commons Local Government Select Committee yesterday.

Mr Malik was answering questions on the long-delayed and hugely over-budget policy of establishing nine new regional fire control centres.

First, committee chairman Dr Phyllis Starkey revealed that Mr Malik's boss John Denham, had refused to hand over crucial documents demanded by MPs.

In her best impression of a school mistress, Dr Starkey described the situation as "unsatisfactory", before adding icily: "I would have though that members of this committee could be trusted with commercial information."

Mr Malik, who is the eighth fire minister in as many years, then endured a series of forensic questions from Tory MP Sir Paul Beresford about the contracts signed between the government and the main contractor for the control rooms.

The exchange ended with Sir Paul saying: "There is an Australian phrase...you don't know if you're Arthur or Martha, do you minister?"

Mr Malik, who appeared stumped at the bizarre comment, replied: "Yeah, it's well known in Lancashire and Yorkshire as well."

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Monday February 8

3.56pm - There is only one story in town today - the Prime Minister's banana-eating habits.

According to The Sun today, Mr Brown is "scoffing" up to nine bananas a day as he tries to shape up for the General Election.

Sarah Brown has apparently urged her husband to eat more fruit instead of his normal fix of three KitKats a day.

The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman was tackled on the issue at a briefing this morning.

Quizzed on how many bananas the PM was eating, the spokesman refused to be drawn, saying that it was simply "speculation".

But he added: "The Prime Minister has always taken the view that a balanced diet is very important.

"Portions of fruit and veg taken on a daily basis can only lead to good health and radiance."

It was pointed out that eating nine bananas a day is not exactly a balanced diet.

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Thursday February 4

5.23pm - Engulfed by yet another expenses firestorm, MPs abandoned any pretence of being legislators today, choosing instead to go into hiding.

The Palace of Westminster was like a ghost town and the Commons, remarkably, simply packed up at 3.11pm.

According to the Order Paper, the Commons should have been debating two pieces of tax legislation until 6.00pm.

MPs were then due to hold an adjournment debate on the East Coast Mainline until 6.30pm.

However, not enough bothered to turn up to allow the debates to continue.

Business finished and those few who had not done so already, scarpered off home.

The working week for MPs seems to be getting shorter and shorter.

Many will turn up at Westminster late on a Monday and then leave on Thursday morning, or, if they are lucky, Wednesday night.

Even on Tuesdays and Wednesdays the attendance in the Commons can be abysmal.

Yesterday, Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth made a Commons statement on the future of the armed forces (kind of important, wouldn't you think?)

As usual, an hour was allotted for the statement and subsequent questions.

Within 45 minutes, Labour (which has 349 MPs) had run out of backbenchers wanting to ask questions.

Isn't the country at war? Why could only six Labour MPs find the time to sit through the whole statement and questions?


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Tuesday February 2

09.23am - The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds believes that Gordon Brown's proposals for reforming the voting system do not go far enough.

The Rt Rev John Packer has said that Parliament could learn a few things from the Church of England when it comes to democracy.

Speaking during a little-noticed House of Lords debate, the Bishop highlighted how the vast majority of members of the Church's ruling body, the General Synod, have been elected by proportional representation since 1970.

Gordon Brown is expected today to offer MPs a vote on calling a referendum to ditch the traditional first-past-the-post voting system for Westminster elections in favour of the Alternative Vote system.

AV, as it is known, is seen as an improvement on the current system because it retains the constituency link and ensures MP have the backing of more than 50 per cent of their constituents.

However, it is not regarded as being truly proportional.

In contrast, the Bishop is an advocate of the Single Transferable Vote - which as well as General Synod elections is used in some elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

This involves the creation of large multi-member constituencies or regions. Voters number candidates in order of preference. All candidates achieving more than a set quota of first-preference votes are elected, and their votes redistributed.

The Bishop said that the current electoral system only "produced the appearance rather than the reality of democracy".

He added: "I strongly commend STV to your lordships as a proven system to express the democratic will and I hope that there will be a renewal of the determination to introduce it more widely in our national electoral system."

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Friday, January 29

09.19am - You have got to love Ken Clarke.

In an age of political spin and slick presentation, the Hush Puppy-clad Shadow Business Secretary is a joyful aberration.

In his wake follow a retinue of worried press officers, their fingers nervously hovering over the button on their Blackberry which lets HQ know that another one of Ken's hand grenades have gone off.

Clarke, a pro-European, once boasted that he had never even read the Maastricht Treaty, which he so passionately campaigned for.

He seems to still abide by the same detail-skipping philosophy.

He yesterday held a briefing with regional journalists in which he confirmed what most had suspected for sometime - that the Tory policy on regional development agencies is in chaos.

Now, I'm not pretending this is the end of the world for David Cameron's Conservatives.

After all, few people have heard of Yorkshire Forward and those who have are unlikely to be too bothered about what its future holds.

But for many businesses the issue is important.

There are hundreds of firms out there who have a high regard for the way the Yorkshire Forward and other regional development agencies have sought to minimise the impact of the recession.

The quango has directed business grants, spearheaded skills and training campaigns and helped coordinate major developments across the region.

However, the Conservatives are determined to have a bonfire of the quangos if they win power. This would see RDAs scrapped, or, at the very least, gutted of most of their powers.

Some of these powers would be handed to so-called Local Enterprise Partnerships, which sound, look and smell very much like.....quangos.

This has caused quite a bit of confusion. If you speak to three different senior Tories you will get three different interpretations of the policy.

Clarke, himself, sounded a bit confused yesterday: "We're trying to add some detail to the policies. If you look at something like that it isn't crystal clear we're going to scrap them."

This is all a bit embarrassing for Caroline Spelman, the shadow Communities Secretary who drew up the plan.

"I've been debating with my colleagues very recently. What we're trying to do is clarify this," Clarke added.


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Thursday, January 28

08.46am - New figures have revealed that MPs sat for the lowest number of hours in 30 years in 2008/09

Westminster politicians spent just 139 days working in the Commons chamber during the parliamentary year.

The average length of the sitting day was only seven hours and 35 minutes, according to the official figures.

It's something to bear in mind next time you hear an MP whinge that his or her job isn't just nine-to-five - it's more likely to be nine-to-4.35.

Funnily enough, separate statistics show that Bellamy's Bar, one of the favourite watering hole for backbenchers in Parliament, made a cool £216,000 last year.

Surely just a coincidence?

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Wednesday, January 27

09.30am - Peter Mandelson intriguingly used an interview in The Mirror today to name-check Labour's current crop of cabinet young Turks.

He listed Ed Balls, David Miliband, Ed Miliband, and Andy Burnham as the party's next generation of stars (although most of them are already pretty prominent now). He then added the older Alan Johnson to the list, who he said was "no less first rate".

The arch strategist would have know that these comments will increase speculation about possible contenders for the leadership contest which would follow a Labour election defeat.

It is obvious that Mandy sees himself as Labour's "king-maker". After all, he has already performed that duty once - it was his backing of Blair after John Smith's death which torpedoed Gordon Brown's ambitions.

However, Brown might not allow his Business Secretary to enjoy such influence for a second time.

I have talked to a few Labour MPs who think that, should Labour be defeated, Brown will actually hang-on to the leadership for say six months in a bid to ensure that one of "his own" gets the job (Ed Balls or Ed Miliband).

Not quitting immediately after his 2005 defeat was one of the few things Tory leader Michael Howard got right. He reshuffled his shadow cabinet, which boosted the prominence of David Cameron and George Osborne and paved the way for their effective take-over of the party.


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Thursday, January 22

3.55pm - Labour might still be getting a battering in the polls but Leeds MP John Battle told me this week that he believes the days of the Lib/Con alliance which controls Leeds Councils are numbered.

Labour strategists increasingly believe they can win back control of the council at the local elections in May.

The bitter bin strike has particularly inflicted damage on local Lib Dems.

Morley and Rothwell Labour MP Colin Challen picked up the baton and ran with it during a parliamentary debate this week.

He said: "We could indeed make a start on more democracy by having the largest party on the council taking control of it.

"That would be a good step away from its present problematic leadership.

"People in the business community have told me that the Tweedle-Tweeldedum leadership arrangement in Leeds does the city no good at all."

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9.47am - "Record number of patients starving on NHS wards" screams the headline on a Conservative press release which dropped into my inbox yesterday.

Wow, I thought, this sounds like quite a story.

New figures "uncovered" by the Tories show how the number of patients leaving hospital malnourished has risen by "record levels" in the last year, it claimed.

Not only that, but a hospital-by-hospital breakdown showed that 1,946 patients were discharged from either the LGI or St James's Hospital with either "malnutrition, nutritional anaemias or other nutritional deficiencies" in 2008/09.

Clear the front page, this was a walk-on splash.

Except it wasn't.

Statistics are always subject to a degree of interpretation - as the saying goes, 'there are lies, damn lies and statistics'.

And in this case, a closer look at the figures showed a much more complex picture.

Firstly, 1,760 of those 1,946 patients at Leeds Teaching Hospital had nutritional anaemia, compared to 47 with full blown malnutrition.

Of course, nutritional anaemia is serious but I wonder how many doctors would agree that it can accurately be equated to "starving".

Also, 1,754 patients had actually been diagnosed with nutritional problems when they were admitted to the hospitals, including 38 who were diagnosed with malnutrition.

So this leaves a difference of 192 Leeds patients who, on the bald face of things, could be said to have developed nutritional problems during their stay on the wards.

But even this is probably an assertion too far.

This is because although the figures show the last diagnosis made before a patient is discharged, it does not actually mean the patient left the hospital with that problem.

For instance, a patient has an operation to remove a stomach ulcer, which is 100% successful.

For obvious reasons, he then has a nutritional problem immediately after the operation, which is diagnosed by his doctor.

He is then discharged a couple of days later, when he has recovered his strength. However, his nutritional problem still shows up in the official figures.

Even if he was discharged before a full nutritional recovery, the problem has been spotted and he will have a care plan in place to follow at home.

There are more problems with these stats, which I will not bore you with. Together they explain why the Department of Health attach a huge health warning to the figures.

It clearly states: "Whilst data shows a greater number of discharge episodes with malnutrition diagnoses than admission episodes, this does not imply that patients are becoming malnourished during their time in hospital and direct comparisons should not be made."

Funnily enough, this important qualification does not make its way into the Conservative press release.

I don't want to let the NHS completely off the hook. Many patients do complain about the quality of hospital food. Many elderly people do not receive the help with eating their food that they need. Maybe some are starving on the wards - but these figures do not prove that.

It also begs the question: what would the Tories do? Would they hire more nurses and build new hospital wings? No - their solution is to free up nurses by reducing the burden of red tape.

The Conservatives do point out that the government is sitting on a report by the Nutritional Action Plan, which has 21 recommendations to reduce malnourishment in hospitals.

Officials have had the report since July but have still not published it. What has the DoH got to hide?

The Tories should concentrate on bashing the government about this, instead of stretching statistics to breaking point.






Wednesday January 21

9.16am - Schools Secretary Ed Balls was on combative form on Radio Four's Today programme earlier.

He attempted to portray the Tory party as returning to its nasty party past.
He said David Cameron's pledge to recognise marriage in the tax system was unfair on lone parents, widows or women who have been thrown out of their homes by abusive husbands.

Pretty tough stuff and he left a wonky David Willets floundering. This kind of attack which will again strike a chord with Labour's "core vote"....but what about those Daily Mail-reading Middle Englanders?


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Thursday January 14

4.59pm - Word has belatedly reached me that Elmet MP Colin Burgon ripped into the government's flaky cabinet during Monday night's Parliamentary Labour Party.

Mr Burgon was one of two Labour MPs who angrily condemned the plot to unseat Gordon Brown. He particularly vented his fury at those senior ministers who delayed their support for the Prime Minister in a bid to wring out policy concessions.

Addressing the culprits directly, he told them they were obsessed about their own positions and not what is good for Labour.

He then widened his attack and criticised the party's lack of radical thinking.
I'm told he quoted Harold Wilson's famous line "the Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing".

Mr Burgon, who is standing down at the next election, was speaking out on behalf of a growing number of Labour MPs who despise the Blairite rump of the party and regard most of the cabinet as intellectual lightweights.

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3.17pm - It was back to Downing Street last night night for a reception for the regional press. Almost the entire cabinet were out in force to meet editors and political reporters (there must be an election on the way).

But cabinet harmony doesn't seem to have been restored since last week's failed coup attempt.

One cabinet minister looked at his watch and asked what time the Prime Minister was turning up. When he was told Mr Brown would be there any minute, he replied "right, well I'm going before Gordon arrives."

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2.39pm - Headteachers are normally not averse to giving the government a rough time. Ministers are used to enduring a litany of complaints about endless Whitehall initiatives, testing and league tables.

So, it was strange on Monday night to see 150 members of this normally bolshy profession rendered starstruck during a visit to Downing Street.

Heads from improving schools across the country had been invited to No.10 to celebrate their school's success. They first formed a huge queue to have their picture taken outside the famous black door.

Once indoors, they mobbed by the Prime Minister like adoring groupies and gave a speech he delivered two standing ovations. Even Mr Brown's aides were taken aback at the love-in.

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Tuesday January 12

4.15pm - Britain's salt shortage appears to have reached crisis levels this afternoon.

Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has just released in a statement in which he reveals that he has ordered councils to slash the amount of salt being used to grit roads in a desperate bid to conserve dwindling supplies.

They were already told on Friday to reduce the amount being used by 25% but now Lord Adonis has demanded that they cut salt spreading by between 40% and 50%.

This means that only the "essential" roads will be gritted, leaving thousands of smaller roads iced up and some communities cut off.

He said: "It is essential that we all work together to keep Britain moving through the worst period of cold weather we have experienced for 29 years.

"This is a time for subsuming individual interest in our overall national interest in keeping open the essential road network in all parts of the country."

The Highways Agency has also been told to conserve "the maximum possible salt usage each day" and go further than last week's 25%reduction.

The Transport Secretary added: "We will strive to keep the strategic road network open as we have done throughout the snow and freezing conditions since late December."


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Wednesday December 23

3.56pm - Phew, thank goodness 2009 is almost over.

The last 12 months have been pretty grim. The war in Afghanistan went from bad to worse. Thousands of jobs were lost. Businesses went to the wall.

And as if that was not bad enough, the reputation of politics scraped new lows.

The revelation that duck houses, bell towers and moat cleaning had all been claimed courtesy of the taxpayer did not exactly amount to a banana republic-style scandal.

And yet in many ways it was the perfect British political controversy because it was rooted in the issue of class. It shone a light on an elite who saw it as their right to fleece the system, while many of their constituents wondered whether it was too optimistic to iron five shirts on a Sunday night.

This blog is now going into hibernation until the New Year but before I go - and for what it's worth - here are my five predictions for 2010...

1) Labour's vote holds up much better than expected in the north with fewer seats changing hands than expected at the General Election. The Tories, however, just squeeze in to power.

2) Little-known Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband becomes the next leader of the Labour Party

3) New Prime Minister David Cameron confirms that the top rate of income tax will stay at 50p

4) Tony Blair's remaining credibility is destroyed following a series of damning evidence sessions at the Iraq war inquiry

5) Hunting is back as a massive issue with demonstrators on the street and new battle lines drawn in Parliament.

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Tuesday December 22

5.01pm - Former Europe minister Caroline Flint has revealed how she went to extreme lengths to keep the media at bay when she stormed out of the cabinet last summer.

She apparently climbed over a wall and cut through a neighbour's garden to escape having to answer any tricky questions.

According to Total Politics magazine, Ms Flint, who had accused the Prime Minister of using her as "window dressing", asked her bemused neighbour: "Do you mind if I just nip through your house?"

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10.23am - The historic 'prime ministerial' debates will make next year's General Election one of the most compelling for a generation.

The way the polls have been fluctuating over the last month was already an indication that - despite a consistent Tory lead - voting intentions remain volatile.

Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg certainly have the most to gain but then for David Cameron the debates also represent a golden opportunity to 'seal the deal'.

What is completely unknown is whether the three broadcasts will add a sizeable "swing" factor to the election.

In last year's US elections the presidential debates were not crucial and were certainly not a defining moment for Obama.

But this is partly because US politicians are used to this format.


Their preparation is immaculate and they have learnt the lessons from politicians like Nixon, Dukakis and Carter who crashed and burned.

British political leaders are not used to televised debating. Neither they or their spin-doctors have had a chance to learn which kind of debating style will come across best with viewers.

The tribal Punch and Judy style of Prime Minister's Questions would certainly not work.

What will also be fascinating is whether this will transform the election in individual constituencies.

You can bet that charismatic candidates will soon start laying down the gauntlet to their opponents and challenging them to a string of head-to-head contests.

Candidates who refuse will look as if they are running scared.

However, the appetite for local debates from voters is likely to be small and those candidates who expect to win anyway are unlikely to want to risk it.


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Monday December 21

4.26pm - It's perhaps not surprising that reporters in the press gallery have received fewer Christmas cards from MPs this year, after a bruising 12 months of expenses-related scandals.

I'm still waiting for a few from Yorkshire MPs, which I'm sure are just delayed in the post somewhere.

At least the Lib Dem press office have provided some cheer to those of us wondering whether the gaps on our mantelpiece indicate a year of lost contacts.

Their festive card has been wittily 'redacted' to read Merry Chris*** and a **** New Year.

The bottom of the card has a "declaration" which states: "I confirm that I incurred these greetings wholly, exclusively and necessarily to enable me to maintain **** relations with ******** in the media."

Even one of the signatures inside the card has had the ominous black felt tip pen put through it.


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