Posts tagged "Cabinet Office"

Efficiency group founder Ian Watmore to leave government

Founder of cross-Whitehall cost-savings group joins ERG exodus

Ian Watmore, who helped establish the Cabinet Office’s cost-cutting Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG), is to leave the civil service.

Watmore, who besides his chief operating officer role within ERG was also permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, is leaving for an unspecified future at the end of June after a seven year career in the civil service. His departure raises question marks over who his ERG successor will be.

Watmore’s impending departure follows a string of recent ERG exits, including government CIO Joe Harley, deputy CIO Bill McLuggage and G-Cloud programme director Chris Chant.

Watmore helped create the ERG to ensure that departments across Whitehall adopted a new and ambitious approach to saving money and started working together to ensure the greatest economy of scale when buying goods and services, including ICT. ERG ensures departments work together to tackle waste and improve accountability across a range of areas.

Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “Ian has played an important role in establishing the Efficiency and Reform Group within the Cabinet Office. This group put in place tough cross-Whitehall controls on property, procurement and ICT in 2010. As a result we have helped departments deliver billions of pounds in cash savings for the taxpayer. He has assembled an enormously impressive team in ERG who will carry forward this crucial agenda.”

Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, said under Watmore’s leadership, the government had made “great strides in transparency, procurement and eradicating waste in public spending – putting the government on track to deliver £9bn in cash savings to date and double the amount of business going to SMEs, setting up the government’s Digital Service and launching the first government mutual joint venture. Ian has also led the creation of the Major Projects Authority that oversees projects worth in excess of £400bn and the new Major Projects Leadership Academy to build the skills of senior project leaders across government.”

Melanie Dawes, currently the director general running the Economic and Domestic Secretariat in the Cabinet Office will be acting permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office pending a competition to find Watmore’s successor.

Cabinet Office issues social media guidance for civil servants

Guidance on use of social media for civil servants published as part of the government’s ICT strategy

Have a clear idea of your objectives in using social media, learn the rules of each social media space before engaging, and don’t open a channel of communication you can’t maintain. These are some of the top tips outlined in the government’s newly released social media guidance for civil servants.

Authored by the Government Digital Service (GDS) and the Home Office, the guidelines come just over a year after the Cabinet Office first pledged in its ICT strategy to produce “practical guidelines on departmental access to the internet and social media channels”.

Talking about the six principles that make up the guidance, Emer Coleman, deputy director of digital engagement at the GDS and one of the authors of the advice, says in a blog post on the service’s website that when using social media the government should:

• Communicate with citizens in the places they already are.

• Use social media to consult and engage.

• Use social media to be more transparent and accountable.

• Be part of the conversation with all the benefits that brings.

• Understand that government cannot do everything alone, or in isolation.

• Expect civil servants to adhere to the civil service code (online as well as offline).

In part one of the guidance, the GDS stresses the importance of using social media to add a further level of transparency and accountability to the public.

“It allows citizens to input into decisions, to question them and for replies to be broadcast to many instead of one-to-one. So the government can hear direct from those affected by its decisions – the positive and negative – and explain and/or defend its decisions in response to questions or concerns,” says the document.

The guidance adds that using social media doesn’t mean that the government should answer all the queries and questions directed to it through social media channels, and says that common sense should be applied.

Part two of the guidance, authored by the Home Office, offers advice on how departments can overcome technical barriers that are currently hindering government employees from utilising social media.

In a foreward in the guidance, Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the civil service, touches on this point and acknowledges that not all government staff can easily access social media channels at this time at work due to restrictions that may be in place or other infrastructural issues.

He adds: “Keeping abreast of new technology and new ways of communicating in a digital era are crucial to our ability to attract a new generation of talented people into the service.”

The publication of the document signals a recognition within Whitehall that social media has become an increasingly important tool for engagement with citizens and for effectively getting departments’ messages across.

With access to social media restricted in certain spaces within the government, the next task will be to overcome technical barriers and ensure that social media tools are used safely and responsibly by staff – something the NHS has found problematic at times.

Speaking to Guardian Government Computing in March, Coleman said that the time was right for the government to start developing its online personality, but acknowledged that it would take time and that a big cultural change was needed to achieve this.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Guardian Government Computing network here.

Cabinet Office publishes identity assurance ‘good practice’ guidance

Government releases series of good practice guides for potential providers of identity assurance for government services

The Cabinet Office has published the first tranche of a series of guides which set out an approach for potential providers of the government’s identity assurance programme to securely deliver public services online to individuals and businesses.

The identity assurance service will essentially be a market of competing private sector identity providers that will sell ID assurance services to the public sector, allowing organisations to identify who they are dealing with during government transactions. The service will heavily support the Department for Work and Pensions’ Universal Credit and the Personal Independence Payment, which is to replace its current benefit system in 2013.

The three new guides that are available cover:

• Requirements for secure delivery of online public services.

• Authentication credentials in support of government online services.

• Validating and verifying the identity of an individual in support of government online services.

The first guide on ‘requirements for secure delivery of online public services’ sets out a six-step process which aims to inform suppliers about the risk management of online public services. It also outlines the expectations of key stakeholders and the risks to the service on the basis of the transactions that take place.

According to a blog post by the Government Digital Service, this particular guide will be of relevance to suppliers responsible for service and system security including procurement, provisioning, accreditation, information governance and security management.

The second guide on ‘authentication credentials in support of government online services’ will provide guidance on the use of identity credentials to support citizen authentication to the government’s digital services. The guide says that this is an important area to consider as online public services may attract significant levels of risk as it may be targeted by fraudsters and other sources of threat.

The final guide on ‘validating and verifying the identity of an individual in support of the government’s online services’ aims to provide suppliers with guidance when considering the deployment of identity validation and verification services. This will be relevant to senior information risk owners, IT security officers, accreditors and information assurance practitioners within public sector organisations who intend to provide online access to their public services.

The Government Digital Service said that the guides will be refined if necessary as requirements, and the government’s understanding of the programme change.

In late December 2011 the government pulled back its tender for identity assurance services, put out by the DWP. The government then reissued the £25m tender with a number of mainly commercial changes. It also made the new tender a government-wide framework, so that it could benefit the whole of Whitehall, and not just one department as was previously the case.

Speaking to Guardian Government Computing in March, Mike Bracken, the government’s executive director for digital, acknowledged that the implementation of the identity assurance service was a controversial one.

He said that many people in government had shied away from it in the past because of similar issues around the now defunct identity card scheme. But he said he was confident that the amendments to the framework would be more beneficial to the government as a whole than the previous tender.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Guardian Government Computing network here.

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Survey and Reporting Tool for the Cabinet Office

Survey and Reporting Tool for the Cabinet Office

Provision of a survey and reporting tool for the National Capabilities Survey. Read more…

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Open standards consultation extended after conflict of interest emerges

‘Independent facilitator’ of government open standards roundtable was also directly advising Microsoft

The Cabinet Office has announced it is to extend its open standards consultation and rerun one of its discussion roundtables and after it found that an “independent facilitator” of one of its discussions was simultaneously advising Microsoft on the consultation.

The conflict of interest was announced by the government on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog. Dr Andy Hopkirk had failed to declare that he was advising Microsoft – a company that has lobbied for changes to the UK government’s policy on open standards – on the government’s open standards consultation, Liam Maxwell, the deputy government CIO and head of ICT futures, said on the blog.

Hopkirk had declared he represented the National Computing Centre on the Microsoft interoperability executive customer council, but he did not tell the Cabinet Office about his direct involvement with Microsoft.

When asked for an explanation by the government, Hopkirk, who was paid as an independent facilitator on a pro bono basis, said that he had “not been paid to specifically write their [Microsoft's] response to the open standards consultation, but he is engaged to help them tease out the issues”, according to the post.

As a result, his involvement could be seen as a clear conflict of interest, Maxwell said, and consequently findings from the discussion have been made void. The open standards consultation has also been extended for an additional month.

Hopkirk facilitated one of the Cabinet Office’s first discussions on competition and European interaction on 4 April as part of the government’s recently re-launched consultation. According to the Cabinet Office, he is well known in the open standards community as an advocate for the openness and interoperability of systems.

Any outcomes from the original roundtable discussion have now been discounted and the consultation responses and the session will be rerun, although no date has yet been set for the roundtable. The Cabinet Office said it will also run a teleconference as well as a meeting to ensure that all interested parties have a chance to participate.

The formal closing date for submissions to the consultation will now be 4 June.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Guardian Government Computing network here.

Francis Maude | data is ‘the new raw material of the 21st century’

Cabinet Office minister says governments are at a ‘pivotal moment’ in their use of data, which will define future public policy

Data is “the new raw material of the 21st century”, according to Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

Speaking at the Open Government Partnership conference (OGP) in Brazil, which was formed in September 2011 by countries committed to open and transparent government, Maude said a more open world was forcing governments “out of their comfort zone” by allowing citizens to hold them to account on a day-to-day basis.

“I believe transparency will come to be the defining characteristic of future public policy,” he said. “In the past, governments tended to leave large tracts of public sector information unanalysed and under-used due to resource constraints and a cultural unwillingness to make it available.”

Maude said governments are now at a “pivotal moment” when they would have to consider how to use data effectively, creatively and responsibly. “Transparency is difficult, it’s risky, it’s uncomfortable at times – but it sticks, once you start you cannot go back. And we will meet the challenges and risks of transparency in these first formative years of the age of open data,” he said.

The UK, which will soon co-chair the OGP with Indonesia, has put the emphasis on creating an economic market through the use of public data. Maude pointed to 47 independent app developers working in the UK to give information to rail passengers through their smartphones.

But the Cabinet Office minister refused to be drawn on claims in a recent National Audit Office report that the government is not accurately measuring the value for money of its transparency initiatives. “We know we are spending less and buying less,” he said, adding that the government will look at an NAO recommendation to set up frameworks to evaluate the impact and value of its transparency projects.

He also acknowledged that UK departments need to improve the way they measure outcomes more generally, and improve their management information, as highlighted recently in an open letter from Peter Riddell, director of the Institute for Government, to the new head of the civil service and the cabinet secretary.

Maude also said there was a “healthy tension” between those defending the open nature of the internet and the legitimate concerns of those who own and wish to protect intellectual property copyright.

For all the latest from the Open Government Partnership conference, click here

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Offer may avert fuel tanker drivers’ strike

Possible petrol strike deal emerges from talks between Unite and fuel distributors at Acas

A possible deal is to be put to fuel tanker drivers, which could avert strikes threatening to bring Britain to a halt, it emerged on Friday.

Leaders of the Unite union concluded talks with representatives of six fuel distribution companies at the headquarters of the conciliation service Acas in London.

The details of the new offer were not revealed. Diana Holland, the assistant general secretary of Unite, said the talks had been intense and complex. “We have done as much as we can and we have a document we now can discuss. But we will keep the process confidential until the people who matter make the decision.”

Fears of fuel shortages caused panic buying before Easter, which led to queues and shortages at petrol stations. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, advised drivers to stock up on petrol and fill jerry cans – until the dangers of storing fuel at home were pointed out.

A woman in Yorkshire was badly burned when petrol she was transferring between two containers in her kitchen ignited.

Peter Harwood, the chief conciliator of Acas, said: “Over the past fortnight the six contractors have met with the Unite trade union through the Acas conciliation service. Acas has been shuttling between the parties and the process has been a challenging one, but we are pleased to announce that a set of proposals has been reached. The details of the proposals are confidential until the parties report back to their respective organisations. After that the details may be disclosed by the parties themselves.”

Unite is in dispute with the fuel distributors over safety and training standards. Unite members have voted for strikes at five companies. Friday was the last day on which the union could call a strike without having to reballot its 2,000 tanker driver members, but all parties agreed that the deadline could be extended to facilitate the talks. This means that Unite could call a strike without a new ballot if its members reject the offer.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy said: “The government welcomes the news that Unite plan to put a deal to their members. We hope that this will lead to the threat of strike action being lifted. The government continues to believe that any strike action is wrong and unnecessary. “We will continue to work on contingency plans to increase the country’s resilience in the event of a strike.”

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Cabinet Office Requirement for Regional Media Monitoring Services

Cabinet Office Requirement for Regional Media Monitoring Services

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Fuel talks adjourned after ‘constructive’ discussions

Tanker driver representatives and officials from petrol distribution firms to meet again next week

Talks aimed at averting a strike by fuel tanker drivers were adjourned on Thursday night and will resume after Easter following “constructive” discussions.

Leaders of the Unite union have spent the past two days meeting officials from six distribution firms to try to resolve a dispute over terms and conditions and health and safety.

Acas chief conciliator Peter Harwood said: “After 24 hours of discussions over two days between Unite and the six fuel distribution contractors, talks adjourned at 10pm this evening with the parties agreeing to meet again with Acas next Tuesday.

“The discussions have been constructive with the parties positively engaged and committed to the process. We are pleased that they have agreed to continue their discussions with Acas next week.

“Of course, everyone will be respecting the confidentiality of the process. Therefore, no further comment will be made by any of the parties involved.”

The dispute over terms and conditions and health and safety has been brewing for more than a year but flared up last month when Unite announced that workers in five firms had voted to strike.

The government advised motorists to top up with fuel, leading to chaotic scenes at garages across the country as people queued for petrol.

There was much criticism of the way the government handled the prospect of a strike and Labour led calls for the resignation of Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude for advising motorists to store jerry cans of fuel in their garages.

Unite has previously announced it would not strike over Easter following the panic buying.

The union will have to give seven days’ notice of any industrial action.

Ed Miliband launches Labour’s 2012 local election campaign

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen, including Ed Miliband launching Labour’s 2012 local election campaign

12.20pm: Here are the main points from the lobby briefing.

• The prime minister’s spokesman confirmed that the government was no longer telling drivers to stock up with extra fuel. The government’s official advice was now set out on the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s website, he said. That advice says: “There is no need to queue at petrol forecourts.” Asked to explain why the advice had change, the spokesman said Unite’s announcement that it would not be holding a strike before Easter changed the situation.

• He suggested that Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, would no longer be the government’s lead spokesman on this issue. Asked if Maude was in charge, the spokesman said: “Francis Maude is in charge of the bit of the Cabinet Office that deals with civil contingencies. This is a fuel issue. DECC [the Department for Energy and Climate Change] are the lead department.” Asked if the prime minister still had confidence in Maude, the spokesman said he had.

• He denied a report claiming that Cameron told colleagues last week that “a bit of petrol panic may be no bad thing”. Asked if Cameron had used these words, the spokesman said: “That is not the case.”

• He rejected claims that Cameron saw the fuel strike as an opportunity to have a “Thatcher moment”. Charles Moore made this claim in his Telegraph column on Saturday, saying that ministers thought that defeating the tanker drivers (partly as a result of having petrol stockpiled in tanks) would be like defeating the miners in the 1980s (partly as a result of having coal stockpiled at power stations). Asked if Cameron saw the situation like this, the spokesman said: “No.”

• He played down the significance of reports saying that some garages could be short of petrol all week. “Clearly there was some increase in demands last week,” he said. “The fuel companies are working to ensure that petrol stations are replenished and restocked.”

• He refused to say whether David Cameron’s thought that Francis Maude’s comments about keeping petrol at home were in any way responsible what happened to the woman who burnt herself decanting fuel in York. “I do not have anything to add to what the prime minister has already said [about this],” the spokesman said. He said that, as far as he knew, the government has not had any contact with Diane Hill, the woman injured in the fire.

• He said legislation was needed to allow the government’s ability to monitor communications to keep pace with technological change. “Twenty years ago all this data was held by BT,” said the spokesman, when asked about reports detailing the government’s plans to allow the police and security services to extend their monitoring of email and social media. The spokesman refused to comment on the detail of the plans. But he said that 95% of serious crime and terrorism investigations involved the use of communications data.

11.47am: That went on a bit. It would be fun to be able to report the prime minister’s spokesman as saying: “Last week we really messed up over the fuel strike. This week we’re trying to calm things down.” But unfortunately, despite us all trying our best for half an hour, we could not get him to cooperate. Number 10 has certainly changed its tone on fuel since last week, but the spokesman was wary about saying this explicitly. I’ll post a full summary shortly.

10.56am: I’m off to the Number 10 lobby briefing. I’ll post again after 11.30am.

10.49am: And here is some more Twitter comment on Ed Miliband’s speech and the Labour local election launch.

From Sky’s Niall Paterson

Not exactly a barn-stormer, was it? Curiously delivered. I wasnt there, can anyone tell me if he was using an autocue?

It looked like he was – constant glances left and right – but it didnt sound like it. Speech markedly different from embargoed copy I’ve got

From the Economist’s Janan Ganesh

EdM attacking coalition from the right on crime. It’s where Labour should always be: in line with their voters not their commentariat.

From Tory HQ (aka Ric Holden)

Ed Miliband all over the place on “Tax Avoidance”, which is different from Tax Evasion. He spent last week backing “Tax Avoidance” #pastytax

Labour to end ISAs??? Ed Miliband wants to end “Tax Avoidance” a quite different thing to “Tax Evasion” – would like to know what he means..

10.44am: BBC News have now given up on the Miliband Q&A. But Twitter is still on the case. Here are some posts from my colleague Nicholas Watt.

Ed Miliband looking healthy at launch of Lab local election campaign. Not a grey hair in sight

Harriet Harman arrives for launch of Lab local election campaign just as Ed Miliband winds up speech

Harriet Harman (niece of an Earl) + Hilary Benn (son of a Viscount) appear together to say Tories out of touch

Ed Miliband: Labour councils are last line of defence against #NHS bill which he would repeal

10.31am: BBC News have returned to Birmingham. Ed Miliband is taking questions from non-journalists (or “real people”, as we call them in the trade – they seem to be party activists) alongside Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary.

Q: Will you make fair taxation a campaign theme? [The questioner complains she is not hearing this from Labour.]

Miliband says tax avoidance is a terrible thing.

He says he does not accept that Labour is quibbling about small things. The abolition of the 50p rate is not a small measure, he says. It will cost £3bn. The government claims it will recover £2.9bn because people will then behave better.

But the government does not use this argument when it cuts benefits for the low paid, he says.

Q: Would Labour reverse the privatisation introduced by the coalition?

Yvette Cooper says Labour would stop certain police activities being privatised. For example, private companies should not be doing frontline patrols.

Q: What will Labour do to stop private firms cherry picking the easy, cheap contracts from the NHS?

Miliband says the way the government rammed the health bill through parliament was “a disgrace”. Labour did all it could to stop this.

Labour councils are now “the last line of defence” against the bill, he says. They can stand up for the right principles.

Labour will repeal “the free-market free-for-all in this bill”, he says. It is “incredibly damaging” to the whole ethos of the NHS.

Q: What is Labour’s vision for the future of policing? [This was from a former police officer who was "compulsorily retired"]

Cooper says the scale of police jobs being lost is “shocking”. It is bad for morale. The police service does need some reform. But the government should be supporting the police, he says. The coalition is “in denial” because it claims the frontline is not being affected. But it is, she says.

10.27am: Here’s the full text of Miliband’s speech.

Miliband is doing a Q&A with journalists, but BBC News and Sky have given up their live coverage, and I can’t find a live feed, so I’m going to have to rely on Twitter and other sources for further updates.

10.22am: Miliband concludes his opening speech by saying the Tories have “abandoned Middle Britain” and “abandoned any pretence that they can govern for the whole country”.

Labour would govern for the whole country, not just the wealthy few.

10.18am: Miliband turns to crime.

Labour would have more police on the streets and keep anti-social behaviour orders, he says.

And Labour would force criminals to repair the damage they cause.

Instead of just giving people a caution knowing they will commit further offences, those who do the wrong thing should be forced to make it up to the victim.

Make good on the damage they have caused, help rebuild the community project, clean up the graffiti, fix a wrecked garden.

Of course, it won’t be appropriate in all circumstances and should only happen if the victim wants it to happen.

When offenders have to confront the consquences of their crimes and meet their victims, they can come to understand what they have done and the damage they have caused.

This has made some less likely to commit further offences: it puts them back onto the right path.

Here in the West Midlands, the police are already working with local authorities to try out this approach.

And it is working.

But the problem is less than one in thirty victims across the country sees this kind of approach being employed.

10.16am: On jobs, Miliband says Labour would tax bank bonuses and use the money to create jobs for young people.

On the NHS, he says Labour councils will “act as the last line of defence against the fragmentation of the NHS”.

10.11am: Miliband says the government is out of touch.

Labour would make a difference on living standards, jobs, the NHS and crime, he says.

On living standards, he says Labour councils are showing what can be done.

In Manchester, despite having their budgets cut, the council are keepin every Sure Start centre open which helps keen childcare affordable.

In Newcastle, Labour councillors have kept libraries open, so families can afford to find a book to read to their children.

And just up the M42 in Gedling, the council is helping keep mortgages and parking affordable.

If Labour was in government in Westminster, we would end rail rip-offs by capping fare increases on every route.

We would force the energy firms to give pensioners over the age of 75 the lowest possible tariff.

10.07am: Ed Miliband is speaking now.

He says Labour cannot just rely on the unpopularity of the government to get elected.

10.04am: Ed Miliband will be launching Labour’s election campaign shortly. My colleague Nicholas Watt is at the event in Birmingham and he’s just sent me this.

A large, predominantly elderly, group of Labour supporters have crowded into a community hall in Birmingham Selly Oak for the launch of the party’s local election campaign by Ed Miliband. The Labour leader hopes to focus the launch around his plans, outlined in a piece in this morning’s Daily Mirror, for the use of more restorative justice. But it is Miliband’s first public appearance since Labour’s heavy loss in the Bradford West byelection last Thursday. In the key section in his speech on crime Miliband will criticise the Tories for wanting to do away with Asbos altogether and say that some criminals should be encouraged to make a contribution to their community:

“Instead of just giving people a caution knowing they will commit further offences, those who do the wrong thing should be forced to make it up to the victim. Make good on the damage they have caused, help rebuild the community project, clean up the graffiti, fix a wrecked garden. Of course, it won’t be appropriate in all circumstances and should only happen if the victim wants it to happen. When offenders have to confront the consquences of their crimes and meet their victims, they can come to understand what they have done and the damage they have caused. This has made some less likely to commit further offences: it puts them back onto the right path.”

9.58am: You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here.

As for the rest of the papers, here are some stories and articles that are particularly interesting.

• James Kirkup and Holly Watt in the Daily Telegraph say Conservative MPs have warned David Cameron that he needs to make major changes to the way he runs his government and party to reconnect with the voters.

Speaking both publicly and privately, MPs have identified four areas where they say Mr Cameron should make changes:

•The Downing Street machine should be overhauled amid widespread concern that Government policies are being poorly explained to voters, especially those in key marginal seats.

• Mr Osborne is under mounting pressure to end his dual role as both Chancellor and head of Conservative political strategy.

• A senior MP should be appointed as full-time Conservative Party chairman, ending the current arrangement where job is shared by two peers.

• This year’s ministerial reshuffle should be used to promote more MPs from working-class and northern backgrounds, to counter the perception of a Government dominated by privileged public schoolboys.

• Lord Tebbit in the Times (paywall) says Tories begin to think we’re being ruled by “government by chums”.

After another week of hasty, ill-thought-through policy initiatives and the calls to hoard petrol, many Conservatives are questioning this style of government by chums. Those doubts now extend to whether Mr Cameron still has the intellectual quality, grit and determination to lead the country through difficult times.

Mrs Thatcher was dumped by her party after she had steered the country out of danger and it then concluded that her character was too abrasive for easier times. Mr Cameron’s task now is to show that, regardless of his pedigree, he also has the qualities needed in our hard times today.

• Iain Martin in the Daily Telegraph says the Conservatives should prepare for life after Cameron.

The Conservatives need to prepare for life after Mr Cameron. He is not going anywhere in a hurry. But he is now easily at least half?way through his time as Tory leader. By this autumn he will have been in the post seven years, and once he has fought the next election he has no desire to go on and on, believing that staying too long in office did the reputation of his predecessors considerable harm. He will not seek a Blair-style peripatetic existence in retirement – in five years or so, he will probably want to retreat into rural England to enjoy seeing his children grow up.

In the interim, those waiting for him to have an epiphany on Europe, the economy or tax are destined for disappointment. Mr Cameron is highly competitive and pragmatic, pleased to have got the top job but not gripped with a desire to take the country in a particular direction.

• Richard Ford in the Times (paywall) says police chiefs have told the government that its plan to ban so-called “legal highs” won’t work.

The substances, which mimic the effects of controlled drugs such as cannabis, cannot be tackled by declaring them illegal, chief constables say in a document seen by The Times. They also say that they will treat leniently anyone found with one of the substances, meaning that the holder could be cautioned instead of having to go to court.

Their intervention is an embarrassment for the Home Office, which is preparing to use new powers to deal with an explosion in the drugs’ use. The Home Affairs Select Committee, to which the police submission was sent, is inquiring into drug policy.

• Louise Gray in the Daily Telegraph says Boris Johnson has been accused of “public health fraud” for ordering the use of “dust suppressants” to keep down pollution where official monitoring is carried out and thereby avoid millions of pounds in EU fines.

A report by the Mayor’s office recommends the use of a sticky salt spray along busy streets to reduce the amount of dust in the air, especially during the Olympic Games.

The biodegradable saline solution is sprayed by trucks usually used for salting the roads in winter. It acts like a glue attracting particles of dirt to stick to the ground rather than make dust.

Already so-called “dust suppressants” are being used in 15 sites around London, including on Upper Thames Street, Marylebone and in Neasden Lane.

However, Simon Birkett, Director of Clean Air London, has pointed out that all of the sites are close official air quality monitoring stations to measure the level of pollution in London.

9.29am: And here’s some more reaction to the government’s plans to extend email surveillance.

From Lord Carlile, the Lib Dem peer and former independent reviewer of terrorist legislation

There is nothing new about this. The previous government intended to take similar steps and they were heavily criticised by the coalition parties. But having come into government, the coalition parties have realised this kind of material has potential for saving lives, preventing serious crime and helping people to avoid becoming victims of serious crime …

When I was independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, I looked at this issue for the last government and I suggested there should be an independent board which scrutinised all this activity and ensured it was not simply the police or the security services that makes these decisions but they were properly, independently monitored – and that is what I expect parliament to demand.

There is actually very little, if any, evidence known to me to show current powers have been used improperly. I agree we do need to ensure there is proper independent scrutiny, maybe of a much more substantial kind than exists at the moment to ensure these powers, when they are used, they are used proportionately.

From Isabella Sankey, Liberty’s director of policy

Whoever is in government, the grand snooping ambitions of security agencies don’t change. Proposals to stockpile our web, phone and texting records were shelved by Labour. Now we see plans to recycle this chilling proposal leaking into the press.

The coalition agreement explicitly promised to ‘end unnecessary data retention’ and restore our civil liberties. At the very least we need less secret briefing and more public consultation if this promise is to be abandoned.

From Nick Pickles, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group

No amount of scare-mongering can hide the fact that this policy is being condemned by MPs in all political parties. The government has offered no justification for what is unprecedented intrusion into our lives, nor explained why promises made about civil liberties are being casually junked.

The silence from Home Office ministers has been deafening. It is remarkable that they wish to pry into everything we do online but seem intent on avoiding any public discussion.

9.18am: David Davis (pictured), the Conservative backbencher, sounded like an Irish Republican when he appeared on the Today programme this morning criticising the government’s plans to allow the police and security services to extend their monitoring of email and social media. He talked about the “securocrats”. In the past, I think I’ve only ever heard the word being used by Sinn Fein.

This needs to be done because it can be done – that’s been the attitude of many ‘securocrats’ over the ages … The simple truth is this is not necessary. If we have a warrantary arrangement, whereby any agency that wants to intercept needs to get content or addresses, then that is the way to do it – simply go through the law … What is proposed is completely unfettered access to every single communication you make. This argument it doesn’t cover content – it doesn’t cover content for telephone calls, but your web address is content. If you access a web (site), that is content. I’m afraid it is a very, very big widening of powers, which I’m afraid will be very much resented by many, many citizens who do not like the idea.

9.00am: For my money, there was only one really important political fact that emerged at the weekend. It was near the bottom of the press notice that ComRes sent out about their poll for the Independent on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror and it was about economic trust. Labour have been well ahead of the Tories in most polls for some time. But, on the key indicator relating to which party is trusted most on the economy, the Tories have been comfortably ahead ever since the election.

Not any more. ComRes asked people if they trusted David Cameron and George Osborne to make the right decisions about the economy, and if they trusted Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to make the right decisions about the economy. The results suggest the budget has been a political disaster.

Here are the figures.

Tories

Trust: 25% (down 4 since mid-March)
Don’t trust: 60% (up 11)

Rating: -35 (down 15)

Labour:

Trust: 21% (up 6)
Don’t trust: 60% (up 1)

Rating: -39 (up 5)

And here’s the key figure. In mid-March the gap between the two parties was 25 points. Now it’s just four points.

Ed Miliband is launching Labour’s local election campaign this morning. Bradford West was dreadful for Labour, but there’s only one George Galloway and overall, as the ComRes figures show, Miliband has grounds to be feeling optimistic. I’ll be covering the launch in as much detail as I can.

Otherwise, parliament is not sitting and there’s not much in the diary, as you can see.

10am: Neil Wallis, the former News of the World executive, is giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry for the second time. Other witnesses include Stewart Gull, the detective who led the hunt for the “Suffolk Strangler” who murdered five women working as prostitutes in Ipswich in 2006.

10.15am: Ed Miliband launches Labour’s local election campaign at an event in Birmingham.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers is holding its conference in Manchester. And events are being held to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the start of the Falklands War.

As usual, I’ll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and another in the afternoon.

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