Money is the immediate cause: the NHS falls over if denied a 2% real increase. Everyone – from Stephen Dorrell, head of the health select committee, to just about every health economist – warned David Cameron. Margaret Thatcher caused eruptions by cutting too hard, as did Tony Blair by spending too little in his frozen first two years – but neither tried such a squeeze as this alongside a tumultuous £3bn re-disorganisation.

Blaming Labour’s GP contract of a decade ago is an absurdity contested even by those who solidly support the government’s plan, such as the NHS Confederation. Alan Milburn, as Labour health secretary, did have the wool pulled over his eyes on the 2004 GP contract, and the BMA struck gold – winning pay for lucrative targets too easy to hit while letting GPs buy off out-of-hours duties too cheaply.

But escape from unsocial hours did solve the acute shortage of GP trainees. Contrary to Hunt’s claim, AE visits didn’t soar after the GP contract, only increasing by the 1% or 2% expected with an ageing population, according to the government’s own Emergency Care Review. Lest Hunt forgets, Labour left the NHS with virtually no waiting lists for operations or long AE waits, and patient satisfaction at the highest ever recorded. Hunt’s attempt to blame the GP contract is, even by his standards, an eye-watering, breathtaking economy with the truth.

AE pressure has risen sharply recently for obvious reasons. GPs are good value as gatekeepers to hospitals – a system envied by continental services where patients take themselves straight to costly specialists. But the government ignored warnings about giving professionals too much power over their own services. While most GPs were indignantly opposed to the privatising reforms, a few entrepreneurial types seized the chance to run care-commissioning groups: nothing stops them sending patients to private clinics that they have invested in. Some GPs never liked competition from Labour’s walk-in and urgent treatment centres, so these are being cut back, with 26 closing altogether – though they prevent far more expensive AE visits. Lord Darzi’s plan for polyclinics to ease pressure on hospital outpatients was abandoned: GPs prefer keeping their own premises.

Tony Blair, assailed by an angry patient in the 2005 election, obliged GPs to open on a Saturday or at least one evening, and three-quarters did. But this government, when it was wooing GPs, abandoned the monitoring of their hours, since when over half of surgeries have cut opening times. Last year the numbers offering evenings and Saturdays dropped by almost 6%. You may remember that Cameron promised in the Mail just before the election: “You will be able to see a GP in your area until 8pm, seven days a week“. Instead there are too few GPs to cope with a growing need, and many are overworked.

Labour’s successful NHS Direct staffed by nurses was recklessly replaced with 111′s clueless call-centre operators. That swelled numbers referred to AE by a third. “Teething problems”, says Hunt, but 111 may never win public trust, as 40% abandon their calls to it in some areas. South East Coast Ambulances Service staff say callouts have doubled as inept operators send them out to trivial complaints. Ambulances queue outside AE, and only half of hospitals hit the government’s lower waiting target: no surprise in the 50% drop-out rate for young doctors in emergency medicine. Patients wait on trolleys in AE partly because there are 6% fewer hospital beds than in 2010. Consultants warned the Commons this week that occupancy was dangerously near 100% .

Talk of getting people out of hospital and into the community is wildly unrealistic when social care is deeply cut. Last year there were 118,000 “bed-blockers”, people waiting in hospital for lack of community care or a home to go to. Protecting the NHS budget comes at the price of a massacre of local authority spending, so the frail getting inadequate 15-minute care visits end up in a crisis needing hospital treatment. Benefit cuts that shunt at least 660,000 families away from their GPs into distant temporary housing add to AE visits.

Sir David Nicholson, NHS England head, was the last glue holding together this organisational chaos, so losing him to the wolves of the Mail, Telegraph, Times and Sun should deeply alarm the government. He was hounded for the Mid Staffs scandal, though was not blamed in the Francis report. His real sin was to know (and almost say) that Lansley’s plan was a disaster in the making, but instead of blowing the whistle he tried to make it work. Fragmenting the service with private competition is no way to secure the NHS in hard times. The only hope is by binding health and social services budgets together, as Labour proposes. Easy to say, hard to do.

Jeremy Hunt takes a risk in gunning for GPs, walloping them with a “rigorous” new chief inspector. What chutzpah to talk of cutting their red tape so they can “care”, just as hefty commissioning duties are foisted on them. How will he give GPs back out-of-hours duties, just as clinical commissioning groups put them out to private tender? Hunt was put there to stop NHS noise and halt closures before the election, but this blundering blaming of GPs is bad politics. Who will the public trust? History is not on his side.

http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/politics/rss/~3/8D8Re98Qgsk/nhs-gps

• You report dissidents in Iran “have been denied adequate legal representation” (22 May). In the UK we are a long way from Iran’s repressive regime, but the present government’s proposals on reforming legal aid to allow Eddie Stobart and the like to turn a profit by supplying third-rate representation to people who are (to use Grayling’s analysis) “too thick to know better”, will have us catching up with the regime in Tehran in no time. Whatever one’s view of defence lawyers, the importance of ensuring that only those proved to the satisfaction of their peers are found guilty, is a matter of social, democratic and constitutional importance to us all.
Ben Summers
Legal aid barrister, London

http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/politics/rss/~3/Jq6MEQ4I6gs/orwellian-changes-legal-aid-provision

But perhaps McCluskey forgets that the integrity of Labour’s modern constitution is underwritten in the 1997 election-winning manifesto, which affirmed: “We have changed the way we make policy, and put our relations with the trade unions on a modern footing where they accept they can get fairness but no favours from a Labour government. Our MPs are all now selected by ordinary party members, not small committees or pressure groups.”

It is also significant that this was the first party manifesto to have been pre-ratified, under OMOV, by its then record 400,000 members. At the same time, the party rule book was updated to ensure union affiliates agreed to “accept the programme, policy and principles of the party”. This same obligation was placed on individual members, together with new restrictions on the operation of “factions” within the party.

I am sure McCluskey well knows that these “procedures” were introduced in order to avoid a repeat of the Militant-style entryism which almost destroyed our party during the 80s. It is precisely for this reason that the behaviour of parties-within-a-party (surely) has to be subjected to the closest scrutiny. It is the prime responsibility of Labour’s ruling national executive committee to provide a strategic direction for the party as a whole. It is they who will now presumably decide what constitutional implications exist, if any, for McCluskey’s version of local bloc voting.
Mike Allott
Eastleigh, Hampshire

• Perhaps Progress should be flattered by Len McCluskey’s ongoing attention, but perspective is required. We understand it is daunting, difficult and time-consuming for people putting themselves forward for parliamentary selection, particularly when they don’t come from the political class of advisers or full-time union officials. That is why our work around selections, overseen by our elected strategy board, remains focused on helping members, trade unionists and councillors across the country to understand Labour’s complicated process.

With our annual budget, just a fraction of Unite’s political fund, I struggle to understand how Progress shining a spotlight on the process and opening opportunities up to grassroots members is so threatening for Len McCluskey. Progress prefers an open and inclusive approach. At our recent annual conference featuring Peter Mandelson, we also welcomed the contribution of Steve Hart, political director of Unite, in a breakout session focused on delivering more people from working-class and other under-represented backgrounds into parliament.

Wherever people sit in the broad church of the Labour party, our collective goal must be to help Ed Miliband transform Britain. The principle underpins Progress’s new Campaign for a Labour Majority and, whatever our other differences with Len McCluskey, I hope we can all unite around that.
Robert Philpot
Director, Progress

http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/politics/rss/~3/SQprqL1bqfI/labour-uniting-miliband-transform-britain

While the event is sold out you can still follow what’s happening here, leave your comments below and feel free to send me your thoughts. Sadly, due to time constraints we will not be able to take any questions for the panel.
Emal: saptarshi.ray@guardian.co.uk
Twitter: @Saptarshi_Ray
And join the chat with #ObsWarOnDrugs

http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/politics/rss/~3/KKSjYyj_uLw/war-on-drugs-the-observer-debate-live

In a letter to the culture, media and sport select committee, which published its initial report on the game’s governance failings in July 2011 and then in January this year made clear its displeasure at football’s inadequate response, the sports minister, Hugh Robertson, reveals he has obtained permission from the Parliamentary Counsel to draw up the draft bill.

While successive sports ministers have attempted to threaten and cajole the Football Association and the game at large into action, Robertson is the first to begin working up a draft bill. The outgoing FA chairman, David Bernstein, forced to step down in July on account of his age, has recently expressed his own intense frustration at the slow pace of change.

“I share the select committee’s frustration at the football authorities’ slow progress in implementing long promised and much needed reforms,” Robertson writes. There are, he says, “three key areas” where progress needs to be made urgently: a licensing system for clubs; “the introduction of a representative and balanced board” at the FA; and “improved supporter engagement at club level”. Without “significant progress” by the start of next season, Robertson warned: “We should seek to introduce legislation as soon as practicably possible.”

The select committee, withering in its assessment of football’s response to the original report, believed the game was too much in thrall to the influence of the Premier League. “Altogether … they fail to address the fundamental issue that the FA should exercise responsibility for all issues of major significance to the game through its main board and council,” it said.

It also called for an overhaul of the FA Council, which is supposed to be the game’s parliament but is frequently criticised for a lack of diversity, and concrete proposals for greater fan influence at every club. The FA Council has 118 members, many of whom have served for more than 20 years while two-thirds are aged 64 or over.

While the Premier League and the Football League have made progress in introducing more effective financial controls and greater transparency, the government wants to see an over-arching licensing system with the FA as the backstop regulator.

Whitehall sources stress that the legislation would not seek to exert government control over football but would seek to enable the transformation of the FA into a modern governing body. They point to the analogy of the BBC Trust, which replaced the outmoded BBC board of governors in the wake of the governance debate that followed the Hutton inquiry.

Ironically, Greg Dyke – the former BBC director general forced out in the wake of the Hutton report – takes over as chairman of the FA in July. Robertson is expected to meet with him before he starts in an attempt to obtain assurances that he plans to follow a reforming agenda.

Bernstein attempted to take a collegiate approach to reform and made some progress, securing the addition of two independent directors to the main board but hit the buffers when he attempted to put further changes before the FA Council.

Robertson also urged the football authorities to provide more detail on how they planned to engage with supporters’ groups and called for the process to be enshrined in any licensing system. He also reiterated the committee’s call for a long-term financial settlement for Supporters Direct, the organisation that supports and co-ordinates the efforts of supporters’ trusts.

“At the same time, I believe the football authorities should continue to consider ways to actively encourage and incentivise the inclusion of supporter representatives on the boards of clubs,” Robertson said.

http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/politics/rss/~3/cfV_FWvCDQ4/government-bill-football-reform

Here are eight things that I think we’ve learnt.

1. The coalition is very likely to last until the 2015 general election. Last week the Times ran a splash saying senior Tories were preparing for the break-up of the coalition and at the weekend the Mail on Sunday reported Cameron saying in an interview that “new circumstances” could lead to the Tories trying to govern alone. The reports created the impression that the collapse of the coalition was a realistic possibility. Today, I thought, Cameron and Clegg both kicked it back into the realm of very distant possibility. Asked he would continue to share power with Clegg until the day of the general election, Cameron said: “That is absolutely my intention and has always been.” Clegg said that he was “absolutely committed” to the coalition lasting until 2015. Clegg did not give an absolute guarantee that the coaltion would last (see 9.08am), but the Labour figures who are reading this as evidence that he is planning to pull out (like Chuka Umunna and the activist Paul Richards) are probably over-interpreting an understandable statement that you cannot be 100% certain about anything.

2. Cameron is not going to hold, or try to hold, a “mandate” referendum before he begins his EU renegotiation. Tories like David Davis have been demanding a “mandate” referendum that would allow Cameron to go into an EU renegotiation with public support for his position. A second in/out referendum would then be held after the renegotatiation was over. Today Cameron explicitly ruled that out.

Let me say, this policy [Cameron’s EU strategy] – it doesn’t matter the pressure I come under from outside the Conservative party or in Europe or inside the Conservative Party – this policy is not going to change. The question is not going to change, the number of referenda isn’t going to change, the date by which we hold this referendum isn’t going to change. The fact is it’s the right policy for the country.

Cameron also insisted that his party was united over Europe and that, even though Tories were disagreeing, they actually agreed.

The Conservative party managed to have a disagreement over the last couple of weeks about an issue that we actually agree about – that there should be a renegotiation, there should be a referendum. Now all we need to do is focus on the substance of the policy, and the substance of the policy – a renegotiation, a referendum – is backed by the overwhelming majority of the British people, because it’s the right thing to do.

This was particularly unconvincing (and one of the reason’s why Clegg won today’s episode of Apprentice Prime Minister). What the last fortnight has shown is that on Europe, although Tories are united over means (a referendum), they are fundamentally split over ends (whether Britain remains in or out).

3. Cameron is prepared to defend his gay marriage legislation – and can do it very well. Recently commentators like James Forsyth have been saying that Cameron should have been out and about defending gay marriage this week. This morning he did so quite eloquently.

I think we should think about it like this – that there will be young boys in schools today who are gay, who are worried about being bullied, who are worried about what society thinks of them, who can see that the highest parliament in the land has said that their love is worth the same as anybody else’s love and that we believe in equality. I think they will stand that bit taller today and I’m proud of the fact that that has happened …

Every country across the world is having to address this. In New Zealand a centre-right Government has just legalised gay marriage. Eleven or 12 states in the US have done the same thing …

I think marriage is a wonderful institution. It helps people to commit to each other. I think it’s such a good institution that it should be available to gay people as well as heterosexuals.

As I’ve said before, and as that final sentence shows, Cameron has found a way of being “pro gay, but also pro traditional family” that Tony Blair started searching for in the 1990s.

4. But he is not going to push through any more social legislation that might offend Tory traditionalists. Cameron made it clear that he is not going to try to get his party to swallow another piece of legislation like gay marriage.

If you are saying to me, ‘Is this [gay marriage] the first of many other issues like that?’, no it isn’t. The government now is going to be absolutely focused on the big picture, which is fixing our economy and reforming our welfare, making sure there are good schools for our children to go to.

5. Cameron believes that the Conservative party can survive and flourish as a “broad church”, encompassing traditionalists and modernisers. Some leaders try to succeed by taking on reactionary elements in their party. Today Cameron rejected this approach, and instead said that he wanted the Conservatives to remain “a broad church”.

I don’t think in any way that to oppose gay marriage is to be wrong-headed. This is a different point of view but we should respect each other and there is plenty of room in a modern party like the Conservative party to have people who are opponents of gay marriage and proponents of gay marriage. The Conservative party at its best has always been a broad church and that is exactly what it is and always will be.

6. Cameron does not accept that there is a “disconnect” between party activists and the people like himself leading the Conservatives. This is what Cameroon said about the claim that someone close to him described Tory activists as “mad, swivel-eyed loons”.

It is not what I think, it is not what the people around me think. I think sometimes the media have a view that there is a complete disconnect between the politicians who stand for election and the volunteers who support us. I think that is completely wrong. I think of the volunteers in my own constituency, they are not just my friends and my supporters, I feel I am one of them. If I wasn’t a member of parliament I would be with them, supporting their member of parliament.

This was another answer that was less convincing. All three major parties are led by Oxbridge graduates who worked as political advisers before becoming MPs and most commentators agree that there is a “disconnect” between the professional political class and the people who vote for them. Unfortunately James Naughtie did not press Cameron further on this. For example, it would have been nice to have heard him asked why, if he did not employ people how sneered at Tory activists, his friend and former strategist Steve Hilton reportedly used to talk about the used to talk about how the party needed to “replace the membership”.

7. Nick Clegg intends to remain Lib Dem leader after the election. At his press conference he said he intended to remain leader “up to, through and beyond the next election”. Leaders always say things like this, and the trick is to work out whether they really mean it. Today he sounded as if he did.

8. The Lib Dems are starting to get better than the Conservatives at presenting themselves as a party of government. I first saw the suggestion that the Lib Dems were better at looking like a better party of government than the Tories as a cheeky tweet from someone a week or so ago, but today Clegg managed to give that some substance. He delivered a lecture to the Tory rebels that at least sounded prime ministerial. He said that the Lib Dems were “the calmest, most resilient and united” of the three main parties (and it sounded at least plausible). And, interestingly, he sought to brand the government as a Lib Dem government. Often the Lib Dems have tried to assert their identity by saying the Lib Dems are different from the (by implication, Tory-led) government. But today Clegg was explicit about wanting to fight the next election as a party of government. (See 8.57am.) He gently patronised the Tories, saying that they were only now recognising a lesson already his party has already learnt.

Making compromises; doing things you find uncomfortable; challenging some of your traditional support – these are the dilemmas the Conservatives are coming to terms with, just as my party has had to.

He also insisted the government was a centre-ground government. (See 9am.) In his speech to his spring conference, Clegg said the Lib Dems were the party of the centre ground. Now he seeking to apply that label to the government as a whole. In branding terms, you could see it as an attempt at a reverse take-over.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2013/may/22/cameron-clegg-miliband-google-live-blog

PUBLISHED:

23:24, 22 May 2013

|

UPDATED:

23:24, 22 May 2013

There was no Prime Minister’s Questions, MPs having adjourned to their constituencies (or Marbella) for a few days. If you see someone lurching down the road, raging about gay marriage, discrimination and all that, it may well be your esteemed parliamentary tribune.

In the absence of PMQs I went to BMQs, Boris Mayoral Questions. London Mayor Boris Johnson does ten of these a year. He sits in the middle of his assembly chamber in a big black leather chair and chats to assembly members about the woes of the day. 

It is all markedly more relaxed than the Commons, which Mr Johnson never mastered when he was an MP. 

Westminster would not indulge him and he is more than anything a man who yearns to be indulged, both in politics and in the legover department. On entering, he realised that his hair was tidy. He ruffled it, yanked it, scraped it off his fringe and generally did to it what toddlers’ fingers will do to a banana. Once the custard barnet’s untidiness satisfied him, he sat in his swanky executive chair and leaned back with rather too much force. The chair reclined and we almost had a ‘mayor tips out of chair’ moment. Whoaa.

Mr Johnson never mastered the Commons when he was an MP. Westminster would not indulge him and he is more than anything a man who yearns to be indulged, both in politics and in the legover department

Assembly chairman Darren Johnson (Green, but greyish) voiced a welcome to various school and college groups in  the public gallery. The 25  assembly members round the horsehoe table turned in their chairs and gave gameshow waves to the visitors.

The mayor gave an opening spiel about how swimmingly everything was going – including a £400million contract just signed for redevelopment in Battersea. 

Then we reached ‘Priority Order Questions’ about such things as London pay rates, the budget for the Crossrail project, spare-room subsidies and Tube strikes. Questioners were sometimes addressed by Christian names. One, confusingly, was called Tracey, but was in fact a man – Richard Tracey.

It was all pretty chummy. Boris has taken to wearing glasses and has perfected a grandee-ish habit of whipping off his specs and sucking one end of the frames.

Much of the time, he was slightly less Right-wing than David Cameron. He was strongly in favour of the ‘Living Wage’ campaign to get higher wages for unskilled staff in the private sector. The Green Party’s Jenny Jones tried to overtake him on the Left but she did not succeed.

Private companies should pay more, said the mayor. ‘It doesn’t really hurt them much on their bottom line. I’d expect them to do so.’

Boris, fluent in politics-speak, kept going on about what ‘tough times’ these were and his worry about ‘the growing gap between rich and poor’

He showed himself fluent in politics-speak, talking about ‘spending envelopes’ and ‘descoping’. He kept going on about what ‘tough times’ these were and his worry about ‘the growing gap between rich and poor’. 

His opponents, desperate for him to say something outrageously Right-wing, slumped in dejection.

Labour assembly member John Biggs could bear no more. He started interrupting, attacking Boris about the Coalition’s ‘bedroom tax’ (the reduction in state handouts to people with spare rooms in their council houses). 

The mayor came over all soapy in defending this strong Right-wing policy, waffling about ‘resolving a painful imbalance in precious resources’. 

Why not come out and say it is wrong for the poor to subsidise spare rooms for a lucky few? But that, if viewed from a certain light, might sound unkind. Boris loves to be loved.

Mr Biggs eventually told him to ‘shut up’ and ‘quieten himself’. The chairman in turn told Mr Biggs to shut up. Both he and Boris should ‘behave themselves’, said the chairman. Members of the public tutted, taking Boris’s side against the peppery Biggs. ‘Intellectual poverty!’ snorted Mr Biggs at the mayor. Boris, amiably: ‘I think you’re resorting to common abuse.’

The only policy on which he sounded like a Thatcherite was reform of strike ballot rules. Otherwise this would-be Tory leader was neo-Cameroon. He clearly feels that is where London’s political centre is. It is certainly not where the Batey Brians of UKIP are. 

Mr Cameron, as ever, is somewhere in between.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329184/QUENTIN-LETTS-Boris-yearns-indulged--politics-elsewhere.html

One of the most shocking things about the brutal attack in Woolwich yesterday was the arrogance with which one of the bloodied knifemen claimed to be acting on behalf of all Muslims. In what sounded like a South London accent, this British-seeming, casually dressed young man bizarrely spoke as if he were a representative of the ummah. He talked about “our lands” and what “our people” have to go through every day. He presumably meant Iraqis and Afghanis, or perhaps the broader global “Muslim family”.

How can a couple of men so thoroughly convince themselves that they speak for all Muslims, to the extent that they seriously believe their savage and psychotic attack on a man in the street is some kind of glorious act of Islamic resistance? Perhaps because they live in a country in which claiming to speak “on behalf of” a community, even if you’ve never been elected by or even seriously talked to that community, is taken seriously. A country where one’s identity, one’s racial or religious or cultural make-up, now counts for everything, certainly for more than what one does or what one believes. A country in which the politics of identity, the narrow and deeply divisive communal politics of shared cultural traits, has been privileged over all other kinds of politics.

The Woolwich murderer’s impromptu claim to be acting on behalf of the grievances of Muslims everywhere echoes the statements made by the 7/7 bombers. “Your democratically elected governments continue to perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world”, said chief bomber Mohammad Siddique Khan. “My people” – what extraordinary arrogance and self-righteousness. Did Khan ever talk to “his people” or win a mandate from them? Of course not, no more than the knife-wielding nutter in Woolwich engaged with the inhabitants of what he thinks of as “his lands”. Rather, in this era in which any old fool can claim to be a “community spokesperson”, and can be treated seriously as such, these murderous loners seem to be trying a psychotic version of the same trick – claiming that by dint of shared skin colour or common religious sentiment they have the authority to speak on behalf of millions of people they have never met or whose lands they have never visited.

Sadly, observers and even politicians have tended to treat seriously homegrown Islamic terrorists’ claims to represent Muslim grievance. Certainly after 7/7, there was a discussion about needing to change British foreign policy lest more angry British Muslims launch terror attacks at home. That is, the bombers’ claims to be expressing some kind of natural Muslim anger, some deeply ingrained, culturally derived fury about the “persecution” of their “fellow Muslims abroad”, as the Observer put it, was taken seriously. Their bloody attack was denounced, but their presumed moral authority to launch the attack was implicitly accepted. As Muslims, they were presumed to have some special insight into the grievance felt by “fellow Muslims”, some kind of identity connection with the ummah. Identity politics allows one to circumvent the pesky business of actually thinking or engaging with people and grants one the automatic authority to speak for anyone who has the same cultural or ethnic origins.

Identity politics breeds narcissism and arrogance, a belief that one is special because of where one comes from or looks like. It fosters petty grievances, too, inviting people to think of themselves as a threatened little cultural corner, being walked over by the ignorant, culture-lacking mainstream. In some cases, these feelings, it seems, can become completely unhinged, to the extent that we have recently seen horrific acts of violence carried out by people who really, passionately believe that they are global community spokespeople.

Read more by Brendan O’Neill on Telegraph Blogs
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http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100218364/woolwich-attack-the-savagery-of-identity-politics/

After a fortnight’s fact-finding mission in London, the Washington-based lender warned that the planned package of spending cuts and tax rises would “pose headwinds” to growth, which could jeopardise the “tepid” economic recovery.

Asked whether that meant the government should slow the pace of deficit-reduction, David Lipton, the IMF’s first deputy managing director, said it did.

He urged the government to bring forward spending plans: “Within the credible medium-term objectives it’s useful for the economy for some infrastructure and other measures to be brought towards the present. That would reduce the drag in this year and in the coming years.”

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, seized on the IMF’s analysis, sayingresponded: “This is the call for action on jobs and growth that the IMF has been threatening to deliver for many months and a stark warning of the consequences if the chancellor refuses to listen.”

As well as questioning the chancellor’s fiscal plans, the IMF used its annual health-check of the UK economy, known as an Article IV report, to warn that the UK was still a long way from a strong and sustainable recovery.

The IMF called for the chancellor to set out a clear strategy on returning the bailed-out banks Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds to the private sector, and argued that a prolonged period of weak growth risked doing permanent damage to the economy.

Osborne’s much vaunted reform of financial regulation also came in for criticism, with the IMF urging him to hand stronger powers to the new financial policy committee (FPC), which will be given the job of reining in asset booms.

The IMF would like to see the FPC given the right to limit loan-to-value and loan-to-income ratios on mortgages, to prevent a housing bubble inflating.

IMF experts also questioned the wisdom of the chancellor’s controversial Help to Buy scheme for those trying to get on and up the housing ladder, which formed the centrepiece of March’s budget. It said that without more houses being built it could just drive up prices.

“This measure may temporarily help boost confidence in the housing market, but there is a risk that, in the absence of an adequate supply response, the result would ultimately be mostly house price increases that would work against the aim of boosting access to housing.”

Help to Buy has also been criticised by the Treasury select committee, and the Bank of England governor, Sir Mervyn King, who has warned that it strays too close to state support for the mortgage sector.

After facing pointed criticism from the IMF chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, who warned Osborne in Washington last month that he was “playing with fire”, the chancellor had hoped that recent signs of life in the economy, including news that GDP expanded by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2013, would persuade the IMF to soften its verdict.

But despite acknowledging the “nascent signs of momentum” in the economy, the IMF said the long-term benefits of bringing forward spending on infrastructure would outweigh the costs of a short-term increase in borrowing.

Frances O’Grady, the TUC’s general secretary, said: “The IMF prognosis on the UK economy is damning – this is the weakest economic recovery in recent history. Worse still, much of this pain is self-inflicted. Capital investment, the best way to lift countries out of recession, is now at its lowest level since the second world war.”

In a prepared statement, the chancellor – who left the press conference before Lipton answered press questions – hinted that he would focus on infrastructure spending in his forthcoming spending review.

“I agree that it is right to prioritise infrastructure investment where we can … and that’s why it will be a focus of the spending round next month.”

However, John Cridland, director-general of the CBI, used a speech on Wednesday to argue that the government had failed to live up to its past promises on restoring the UK’s crumbling transport and power networks.

“After two years of encouraging policy announcements, we’re simply not seeing the expected flow of projects materialise. Despite some progress, too often businesses and investors, and indeed government, are caught in still caught in a frustrating cycle of waiting on each other,” he said, in a speech to the Association for Consultancy and Engineering annual conference.

The IMF’s renewed onslaught on the UK’s policies came amid fresh evidence of the fragile state of the economy. Official figures showed that UK retail sales fell by a far-worse-than-expected 1.3% in April, as shoppers struggled to cope with rising food prices.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/may/22/george-osborne-imf-cuts-headwinds

The rate of the fall suggests David Cameron could achieve, or be close to, his promise to reduce net migration to tens of thousands by the time of the next general election due in May 2015.

Numbers of foreign students were down by 56,000 and numbers of people coming on family visas were down by 18,000.

Overall the number of new arrivals dropped from 581,000 to 500,000 and the number of people leaving the country rose slightly from 339,000 to 347,000.

Net migration has now dropped by more than one-third from a high in mid-2010 and is now at its lowest level for a decade.

Mark Harper, the Immigration Minister, said the statistics demonstrated the Government was “continuing to bring immigration back under control”.

He added: “They show we have cut out abuse while encouraging the brightest and best migrants who contribute to economic growth, with a five per cent increase in the number of sponsored student visa applications for our world-class universities and a five per cent increase in the number of visas issued to skilled workers.”

Sarah Mulley, an associate director at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said: “The Government’s progress towards its target of reducing net migration to less than 100,000 by 2015 is still in large part being driven by falling numbers of international students.

“This decline in international student numbers comes at considerable economic cost to the UK at a time when we can ill afford it.

“In any case, falling student numbers will not help the Government meet its target in the medium term.

“Because most students stay in the UK only for a short time, reduced immigration now will mean reduced emigration in the future, which by 2015 could partially reverse the falls in net migration we are seeing now.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-immigration-continuing-to-fall-as-overseas-student-numbers-shrink-8628822.html