Posts tagged "Nick Clegg"

Nick Clegg dismisses regional public sector pay plans

Deputy PM says no plans for regional pay bargaining are in place and he will not allow north-south divide to be exacerbated

Nick Clegg has poured cold water on plans to impose regional pay bargaining in the public sector, saying he would reject any action that exacerbated the north-south divide.

Speaking at an event in north London to set out his plans to help disadvantaged children, the deputy prime minister said: “Nothing has been decided, and I feel very, very strongly, as an MP in South Yorkshire with a lot of people in public services, we are not going to be able simply, willy-nilly, to exacerbate a north-south divide. There has been ludicrous scaremongering, particularly by the trade unions, when there is no proposal on the table at all, and in very specific cases it was done by a previous government.”

He said the government was looking only at some localised bargaining in the public sector, along the lines of the previous Labour government’s reforms in the courts service.

He added: “I think people should be reassured we are not going to rush headlong in imposing a system from above, which if it was done in the way sometimes described would be totally unjust because it would penalise some of the people working in some of the most difficult areas.”

George Osborne, the chancellor, has suggested local pay bargaining should become a major part of public sector pay, and pay review bodies have been asked to draw up proposals for localised pay markets. Clegg’s remarks suggest, however, thast there would be resistance to proposals that could lead to long-term pay freezes in the north.

Clegg was speaking at an event to highlight his plans to implement the pupil premium, aimed at narrowing the attainment gap between rich and poor children. One of his proposals has been to allow schools that are not academies to pay more to teachers working in challenging areas and schools, a freedom so far given only to academies.

He said he wanted schools to become engines of social mobility, and that the pupil premium was one of the policies that would define his time in office.

His goal was “a more socially mobile Britain where ability trumps privilege, where effort trumps connections, where sharp elbows don’t automatically get you to the front”, he said.

The pupil premium, which the National Union of Teachers has denounced as unfair and ad hoc, is additional funding given to schools on the basis of the number of children on its rolls that have been on free school meals in the past six years. It is worth £600 for each child on free school meals, and by the end of the parliament will cost £2.5bn a year.

Clegg denied it was cash given to schools to plug gaps left by other spending cuts.

In his speech, Clegg tried to balance the need to make sure schools were accountable for how they spent the extra cash with allowing them freedom from narrow goals. He said he wanted to show that teachers do best when Whitehall steps out of the way. “We won’t be telling you what to do, but we will be watching what you achieve,” he said.

All schools receiving the pupil premium will from this autumn be required to set out the progress they are making to narrow the attainment gap. Clegg said they were more likely to be labelled a failing school by Ofsted, the school inspection body, if the gap was not narrowing.

He warned: “Schools need to know that in assessing their performance Ofsted will be looking forensically at how well their pupil-premium pupils do.”

He said that if the school’s pupil-premium population was failing, more probably than not the whole school would be judged to be failing. “There is only one freedom we are not giving schools,” he said: “the freedom to fail.”

He claimed success against the odds could be achieved, saying: “There are now 440 secondary schools – one in five – where disadvantaged pupils are doing better in their GCSEs than the national average for all children.”

He announced new funding for summer schools as well as sabbaticals for teachers to develop successful academic projects that narrow the attainment gap. He claimed the summer school concept was already proving popular, with as many as 70,000 11-year-olds attending, or seven out of every eligible 10.

Clegg also announced extra cash would be available to support pupil-premium pupils who left primary school without the expected level-four literacy skills. The cash is designed to help children suffering at the point of transition from primary to secondary school, seen as a point when some children fall behind their peers. He said he expected schools would want to use the money for small catch-up classes or one-to-one tuition or vouchers for literacy tuition, which parents could spend.

In a shift from some coalition rhetoric, Clegg went out of his way to praise teachers, saying he was disturbed at the weekend by a survey showing a third of teachers felt undervalued.

“When all the odds are stacked against a child – hardship, low confidence, parents who can’t cope – it is teachers who step in and make the difference, teachers who go above and beyond the call of duty, day in, day out to give those families hope, teachers who help these children unlock the doors that otherwise hold them back,” he said.

Politics live blog: Monday 14 May

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political devlopments as they happen

12.30pm: A Conservative MP has claimed that his party will fight the next election promising a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. Mark Reckless made the comment at a press conference organised by People’s Pledge, the cross-party group campaigning for a referendum.

I believe my party will go into the next election committed to an in/out referendum on Europe … [That's because of] the shift of mood among colleagues, the need to differentiate the Conservative party from the Coalition and basically to enthuse our members, our activists, our supporters, and indeed, backbench Conservative MPs. I think there has been some considerable effort in recent months to think what you could have as a referendum, what’s the way to do this, how could you renegotiate that, and I think that work has failed to come up with a credible and coherent alternative to an in/out referendum. That’s why I believe we are likely to go in that direction.

Reckless may have been reading this article by James Forsyth in the Spectator, which includes the line: “One source intimately involved in Tory electoral strategy told me recently that a referendum in the next manifesto was ‘basically a certainty’.”

The press conference was held to announce that the People’s Pledge will be holding polls in three constituencies towards the end of July asking people if they want a referendum. They have already had one in Thurrock, in which 90% of people said yes on a 30% turnout.

12.23pm: Ed Miliband has issed a tribute to Peter Hain following his resignation from the shadow cabinet. (See 8.50am.) He says that Hain has made “an enormous contribution from the front bench over the past 16 years” and that he has been “an exceptional colleague and trusted friend”.

11.43am: Here are the main points from the Number 10 lobby briefing.

• Number 10 played down speculation that Britain will contribute to a rescue fund if Greece is ejected from the euro. Asked about a story in the Daily Telegraph saying that Germany wants all 27 members of the EU to contribute to a fund that would deal with the consequences of a Greek exit, the prime minister’s spokesman said: “We have been very clear all along that it’s up to the Eurozone countries to support their currency.” When it was put to him that, in the event of a Greek withdrawal, it would no longer be a member of the Eurozone, the spokesman repeated the point about the need for the Eurozone countries to support their own currency. He also pointed out that the EU-wide bail out fund is being wound up (although journalists pointed out that that has not happened yet).

• Number 10 hinted that Britain would be willing to contribute £1bn to a European growth plan. Asked about a story in the Financial Times saying that David Cameron was considering contributing £1bn to the European Investment Bank as part of a plan to recapitalise the bank championed by new French president, François Hollande, the spokesman said:

There are no proposals on the table at the moment. We will obviously consider proposals that are made on their merit. We are open-minded about how the European Investment Bank can support infrastructure investment.

• Number 10 refused to endorse Philip Hammond’s call for businesses to stop “whingeing” about the economy. Asked whether or not David Cameron agreed with what Hammond said (see 10.51am), the prime minister’s spokesman repeatedly sidestepped the question and just stressed the measures the government was taking to encourage growth. He also said that he would not be briefing on the outcome of Cameron’s meeting with his business advisory council this afternoon.

• Cameron will meet François Hollande, at the G8 summit in the US at the end of this week, the spokesman said.

• Number 10 rejected claims from the Royal College of Nursing that 61,000 health workers face the sack. “We do not recognise their figures,” said the spokesman.

• Cameron and Nick Clegg have a joint meeting today with the Dalai Lama.

• Number 10 did not deny an FT story suggesting Cameron will meet Mitt Romney in London this summer. (See 10.51am.) “There will be lots of people in town during the Olympics,” the spokesman said. “We have not confirmed meetings yet.”

• Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, has announced measures to encourage overseas investment in UK film production.

11.37am: I’m just back from the Number 10 lobby, where Europe and relations with business were the main themes. Full summary coming up soon.

10.51am: 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.

• Iain Duncan Smith tells the Daily Telegraph in an interview that half a million people could lose disability benefits under his plans.

In an interview with today’s Daily Telegraph, the Work and Pensions Secretary says that he is determined to introduce radical reforms to disability benefits which will see more than two million claimants reassessed in the next four years.

Iain Duncan Smith says that the number of claimants has risen by 30 percent in recent years “rising well ahead of any other gauge you might make about illness, sickness, disability”. Losing a limb should not automatically entitle people to a pay-out, he suggests.

The cost of disability living allowance, which is intended to help people meet the extra costs of mobility and care associated with their conditions, now outstrips unemployment benefit and will soon be £13 billion annually.

Under the reform plans, the existing benefit will be replaced with a simpler “more focused” allowance and only those medically assessed to be in genuine need of support will continue to qualify.

An official impact assessment of the plans, released this month, reveals the scheme will cut benefit payments by £2.24 billion annually – and lead to about 500,000 fewer claimants.

• George Parker and Helen Thomas in the Financial Times (subscription) say Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, told business leaders yesterday to stop whingeing.

In a sign of deteriorating relations between the coalition and business, Philip Hammond, defence secretary, said some large companies were sitting on large piles of cash and urged them to start investing it to meet future demand.

Asked by the BBC’s John Pienaar about whether some in business were complaining excessively about the government’s approach, he said: “Yes, I suppose they are in a way whingeing about it.”

Earlier William Hague fuelled an increasingly tense relationship when he said: “I think we should be getting on with the task of creating more of those jobs and more of those exports, rather than complaining about it.”

Mr Hague, interviewed in the Sunday Telegraph, added: “There’s only one growth strategy: work hard.”

• George Parker and Jim Pickard in the Financial Times (subscription) say Tony Blair is expected to support calls for more emphasis on growth.

Tony Blair and Lord Mandelson are to add their weight to Labour’s calls for a renewed emphasis on growth in a sign that the big beasts of the New Labour era are returning to the cause to help make the party’s case on the economy.

Mr Blair has been holding regular talks with Ed Miliband, Labour leader, and is understood to share the view that austerity has become self-defeating and that a growth strategy – including at a European level – is vital.

The former prime minister has also been meeting Labour MPs and is expected to use the fifth anniversary of his departure from Downing St this summer to put down markers of his views on the economy.

A foretaste of that message is expected to come on Monday when Lord Mandelson appears alongside his one-time political foe Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, at a Centre for European Reform event.

Mandelson’s views on this are set out in a piece that he’s written for the Guardian jointly with Ed Balls.

• The Financial Times (subscription) says David Cameron is hoping to meet Mitt Romney in London in the summer.

David Cameron is hoping to meet Mitt Romney, the US presidential hopeful, in London this summer, as Downing Street draws up plans to avoid a repeat of this year’s diplomatic snub of François Hollande.

By putting out the welcome mat for Mr Romney, Mr Cameron would be sending out a very different signal to that delivered to Mr Hollande in February, when the prime minister refused to meet the Socialist presidential candidate on a visit to London.

• Tom Newton Dunn in the Sun says Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, has banned military chiefs from giving speeches or interviews without permission.

The move has been branded “insulting” and “paranoid” by senior sources.

It shows how the bitter spat between Tory Ministers and Forces’ commanders is worsening.

David Cameron lost his temper with generals last year for criticising swingeing cuts and the Afghan withdrawal policy. The PM fumed: “You do the fighting — and I’ll do the talking.”

A senior source told The Sun last night: “Slapping a gag on the chiefs just goes to show how much trust has been lost on both sides.

“We’re still fighting a war — now with even less resources — but the Government no longer trusts us to explain why.”

• Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph says the government should appoint a Tory to run the BBC.

If you are funded by the taxpayer, you are less likely to understand and sympathise with the difficulties of business; you are less likely to celebrate enterprise. I have sometimes wondered why BBC London never carries stories about dynamic start-ups or amazing London exports – and then concluded gloomily that it just not in the nature of that show. It’s not in their DNA. Fully 75 per cent of the London economy is private sector – and yet it is almost completely ignored by our state broadcaster.

Well, folks, we have a potential solution. In a short while we must appoint a new director-general, to succeed Mark Thompson. If we are really going ahead with Lords reform (why?), then the Lib Dems should allow the Government to appoint someone to run the BBC who is free-market, pro-business and understands the depths of the problems this country faces. We need someone who knows about the work ethic, and cutting costs. We need a Tory, and no mucking around. If we can’t change the Beeb, we can’t change the country.

• John Kampfner in the Independent says political journalism is too binary.

Political journalism is notoriously fickle. It is also, with some exceptions, conformist, following the narrative established at the time. That narrative is invariably binary. Someone is either up or down. The advent of the Coalition produced a new ingredient, the Liberal Democrats, previously largely ignored. The cycle of eulogising and kicking had to be divided into three. First in the stocks was Nick Clegg, in the autumn of 2010, after the tuition fees U-turn. From then it was open season and the man could do nothing right.

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

10.34am: The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is holding a public consulation on the subject of how much MPs should be paid. And, to coincide with this, it has launched something called the Month of Ideas. It does not seem to be generating many ideas – we’re half way through the month, and the first submission on the Month of Ideas blog has only just gone up – but the first contribution is quite interesting. It’s from Alastair Campbell. Here’s an extract.

I worry about the attitude that says being an MP is a privilege as well as public service because, though that statement is true, taken to its logical conclusion, we go down the road to a Parliament open only to the wealthy.

Parliament should attract a wide variety of people, among them the best and brightest in the country. The relentless negativity which surrounds politics puts many people off the idea of a political career. Talented people can earn more and with less pressure and opprobrium elsewhere. If we also decide they should not get a salary that befits a challenging and important job, then I fear we will narrow the field of talent willing to enter Parliament even further.

10.24am: The Scottish government has announced its plans to set 50p as the minimum price for a unit of alcohol. Full details are on the Scottish government news release. Here’s a statement from Nicola Sturgeon (pictured), the Scottish health secretary.

Too many Scots are drinking themselves to death. The problem affects people of all walks of life.

It’s no coincidence that as affordability has increased, alcohol-related hospital admissions have quadrupled, and it is shocking that half of our prisoners now say they were drunk when they committed the offence. It’s time for this to stop.

Introducing a minimum price per unit will enable us to tackle these problems, given the clear link between affordability and consumption.

There is now a groundswell of support for the policy across the medical profession, police forces, alcohol charities and from significant parts of the drinks and licensed trade industry who recognise the benefits minimum pricing can bring – saving lives and reducing crime.

Since 45p was first proposed as the minimum price 18 months ago, we have seen inflation of around five per cent. A minimum price of 50p takes this into account and will achieve a similar level of public health benefits to what 45p would have achieved in 2010.

10.08am: The Leveson inquiry has started. Alastair Campbell and Lord O’Donnell are up today. You can follow the proceedings on our live blog.

9.35am: Les Hinton (pictured), the former News International boss who was accused by the Commons culture committee of misleading parliament about phone hacking, has hit back. Hinton disputed the committee’s findings when its report was published earlier this month but he has now sent a more detailed response to the committee’s chairman, John Whittingdale. Here’s an extract from the story filed by the Press Association.

[Hinton] says of the committee’s findings: “They are based on a misreading of evidence, and on a selective and misleading analysis of my testimonies to your committee.”
He goes on to the claim that the report’s conclusions “rest on a highly selective reading of the record, and unsupportable leaps in logic and inference”.
And he insists “there is nothing credible … to suggest that I was anything but candid with the committee”.
The report concluded that Rupert Murdoch’s News International had misled the hacking inquiry in a “blatant fashion”.
Opposition MPs on the committee also branded Murdoch as unfit to be in charge of a major media firm, although Tory members refused to support this …
In the robust rebuttal letter, Hinton questions the impartiality of the committee, which was deeply divided over elements of the report, and claims that “matters have gone seriously awry”.
“It is hard to avoid the view that the committee has sometimes allowed preconceived judgments to cloud its objectivity and sense of fairness.”
The committee accused Hinton of selective amnesia after he replied he could not remember 72 times during questioning.
But he insisted that number had been inflated by grouping together answers to the same or similar questions …
Hinton added: “I have apologised publicly for the misconduct at the News of the World when I was executive chairman of News International. As a consequence, I resigned from News Corporation last year after a career that began 52 years before.
“My criticism of the report should in no way be taken as an effort to minimise the harm that has occurred as a result of the events at News of the World.
“But if this committee is going to accuse me of misleading parliament or being complicit in a cover-up, it should get its facts right and conduct a fair process. The committee has done neither.”

9.03am: Nick Clegg has done a round of interviews this morning to publicise his pupil premium initiative. PoliticsHome have been monitoring them all.

Here are the key points.

• Clegg said the pupil premium would help all pupils, not just the ones from poor families who are intended to be the main beneficiaries.

I do want to stress is that focusing as much attention and money as we are on the children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds doesn’t just help them. It helps all children from all backgrounds, because we know that the most successful schools are where classrooms and classes can move together as one, where you don’t have a small number of children at the back messing around or completely switched off, which then holds everybody else back.

• He said the pupil premium was better than some Labour initiatives because it was not ring-fenced.

In the past, when these announcements were made, new pots of money were allocated by governments to schools and teachers, it would come with endless strings attached and a great, big instruction manual telling teachers what to do with the money. What we’re saying is: “Here’s the money, it’s an unprecedented amount – £2.5bn by the end of this parliament – you are free to do with it what you will as along as you work hard to close that gap between children from different backgrounds.”

• He said the way schools were funded needed to be reformed.

The way in which school funding is very idiosyncratic. It’s built up layer upon layer over years and we are moving towards making announcements on a more rational division of the pot. It’s a very controversial thing to do because, just as much as there might be winner in Dorset, there might be losers in East London, so it’s a very controversial thing to do. It’s not something we’re going to rush into.

• He said he supported Iain Duncan’s Smith’s plans to cut the number of receiving disability living allowance. Duncan Smith has talks about this in an interview in the Daily Telegraph today. Clegg said: “I support reform because many people have received DLA, as it’s known, without any personal, face-to-face tests for year upon year upon year without any assessment about whether their circumstances have changed.”

8.54am: Peter Hain, the shadow Welsh secretary, has announced that he is leaving the shadow cabinet. There’s expected to be a limited shadow cabinet reshuffle soon.

As Hain told BBC Wales this morning, he is leaving partly so that he can concentrate on campaigning for a Severn Barrage.

8.50am: It’s quite a busy day at Westminster, but nothing is probably quite as important as the crisis in the Eurozone, which is back at the top of the headlines again today. Greece’s departure from the euro looks increasingly likely and, in early trading this morning, the FTSE 100 fell 70 points. My colleague Graeme Wearden has all the details in his Eurozone debt crisis live blog. Nick Clegg has been giving interviews this morning in advance of a speech on the pupil premium and he has reiterated the government’s determination not to contribute to a Eurozone bailout.

Here’s the full agenda for the day.

10am: Nick Clegg delivers a speech on the pupil premium. As Rajeev Syal reports, he will announce that prizes will be awarded to schools that come up with the best ways of spending the pupil premium.

10am: The People’s Pledge, the group campaigning for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, announces the constitutuencies where it is going to ballot voters on whether they want an EU referendum.

10am: Alastair Campbell and Lord O’Donnell, the former cabinet secretary, are giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

10am: Ed Vaizey, the cuture minister, publishes the government’s response to Lord Smith’s film review.

2.30pm: Philip Hammond, the defene secretary, makes a statement in the Commons about the Ministry of Defence budget. He is expected to say that the MoD has balanced its budget for the first time in about a decade.

3.15pm: Dame Helen Ghosh, permanent secretary at Home Office, Lin Homer, the HM Revenue & Customs chief executive and Robert Whiteman, chief executive of the Border Agency, give evidence to the Commons public accounts committee about student immigration.

At some point today David Cameron has also got a meeting with business leaders. Given that William Hague and other ministers have been telling business leaders to stop complaining about the economy and to just work harder, it could be an edgy encounter.

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 at about 4pm.

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Lords reform low priority, say senior Tories

Defence secretary Philip Hammond and Lady Warsi say changes to upper house should not be government’s focus

Two senior Tories have increased tensions on the coalition government after they suggested reform of the House of Lords was a low priority.

Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, warned on Sunday that the reform should not be a central issue for the coalition’s legislative programme. And, in what appeared to be a co-ordinated attack, Lady Warsi, the Conservative party co-chair, said changes to the upper house should not be the government’s focus.

Their comments will not be received warmly by Liberal Democrat colleagues, who have made clear that they expect the constitutional reform to be pushed through. It is a flagship project of the party’s leader, Nick Clegg.

Although a bill for Lords reform featured in last week’s Queen’s speech, there are signs the appetite for it in Downing Street is waning amid backbench opposition.

Appearing on BBC1′s The Andrew Marr show, Hammond warned that the public would want the government to focus on “the things that matter”, rather than Lords reform. He said: “Legislation on the House of Lords is in the Queen’s speech. It will be introduced, and it will proceed. The question will be to what extent the government should be prepared to clear the decks of everything else in order to possibly deal with a lengthy and very complex war of attrition over this particular piece of legislation.”

Asked on Sky News’s Murnaghan programme about the reform, Warsi said: “Do I feel that the House of Lords reform is an absolute priority right now? No I don’t. I have knocked on many, many doors recently and not one person has said that it is their priority.”

Lord Owen, a former foreign secretary and co-founder of the Social Democratic party, attacked the reforms as “cack-handed” and a “farce”. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, he called for change but criticised the “childish” way in which the Tories and Lib Dems have used the issue as a bargaining tool between them. He fears the reforms will descend into a “monumental Lord Ashdown, a former Lib Dem leader, hit back at the weekend, declaring that it should be a priority to make the Lords partially elected. “Lets make this clear. We expect to see it through,” he told Sky.

The chancellor, George Osborne, has previously hinted that the government would be willing to compromise on Lords reform if the bill started to clog up the parliamentary timetable.

“Parliament can discuss these issues. Parliament’s very good at discussing constitutional issues,” he said. “But it is not going to be occupying the bulk of the time of people like myself, David Cameron, and indeed Nick Clegg.”

Queen’s speech puts ‘growth, justice and constitutional reform’ at its heart

Lords reform takes centre stage in legislative agenda, alongside measures to support families, change employment law and reform pensions

The government intends to plough ahead with reforming the House of Lords as part of a legislative programme for the year ahead that puts “economic growth, justice and constitutional reform” at the heart of its agenda.

Outlining the government’s legislative plans for the next session of parliament, the Queen also announced a package of measures to support families and children, break up the banks to prevent a repeat of the financial crash and legislation to remove the UK from any liability for future EU bailouts.

In a speech delivered in the House of Lords amid the traditional pomp and ceremony of the state opening of parliament, the Queen set out 19 government bills, including four in draft form, reflecting the respective priorities of the coalition parties.

The legislative programme was unveiled the day after David Cameron and Nick Clegg chose a factory in Essex to reaffirm the coalition’s mission to tackle the deficit and boost economic growth in the wake of grim local election results for their parties.

Opening her speech, the Queen said reducing the deficit and restoring economic stability was “my ministers’ first priority” as she unveiled the enterprise and regulatory bill. The legislation was designed to create “the right conditions for economic recovery” by reducing regulatory burdens, introducing changes to employment law that weaken workers’ rights to give employers “more confidence to hire new staff” and “strengthening the framework for setting directors’ pay”.

Others include a pensions bill to modernise the pension system and reform the state pension, legislation to move towards the introduction of televising court proceedings “in limited circumstances” to help demystify the justice system, and a new offence of driving under the influence of drugs.

But David Cameron’s refusal to pay heed to Tory calls to ditch controversial plans to reform the House of Lords – a key Liberal Democrat demand in the coalition deal – is likely to provoke the greatest resistance from sections of the Tory backbenches, as well as peers, in the coming year.

Legislating for a mainly elected second chamber raises the spectre of heated battles between opponents and supporters of reform which could consume weeks of parliamentary time.

The controversial measures could result in an 80% elected upper house using a PR voting system, with numbers of peers cut “substantially” from 800.

The prime minister and his Liberal Democrat deputy said that while constitutional reform was not their government’s top priority, it was right to press ahead with the controversial reforms, which featured in the manifestos of all three major parties in the 2010 general election.

In a joint statement prefacing the Queen’s speech, they said: “We believe that power should be passed from the politicians at Westminster back to the people of Britain, which is why we will keep the promise in our parties’ manifestos and reform the House of Lords, because those who make laws for the people should answer to the people.”

Cameron and Clegg stressed that the government’s main focus over the coming year would remain bringing down the state deficit and promoting economic growth.

“The primary task of the government remains ensuring that we deal with the deficit and stretch every sinew to return growth to the economy, providing jobs and opportunities to hard-working people across Britain who want to get on.”

On justice, the crime and courts bill outlines plans for a US-style National Crime Agency to take on serious, organised and complex crime, enhance border security, and tackle the sexual abuse and exploitation of children as well as cybercrime. The agency has already been announced as a replacement for the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which was heralded as “Britain’s FBI” when it was launched by Labour in 2006.

Powers will also be brought in to enable magistrates to dispense summary neighbourhood justice, and the system for paying fines will be changed so offenders, not taxpayers, incur the cost of delaying payment.

Plans to strengthen the law to allow children to enjoy a relationship with both parents if families break up – as long as it is in the child’s best interests – are outlined in the children and families bill. The government will consult on legal options.

The bill also sets out plans to speed up adoption and care proceedings and give families more choice and control over support for children with special educational needs (SEN).

The system of SEN statements for children with disabilities and learning difficulties will be replaced in England from 2014 by a simpler assessment process providing statutory protection up to the age of 25 for those who go into further education, rather than it being cut off at 16.

The bill also lays out flexible parental leave, which would give working parents the choice of sharing caring responsibilities.

Other bills include the public service pensions bill to reform the schemes of millions of public sector workers, unveiled on the eve of a fresh strike by tens of thousands of workers outlining their opposition to the move.

The Queen also noted her diamond jubilee year, which will create a four-day weekend in the first week of June by moving the late May bank holiday to Monday 4 June and adding an extra bank holiday the following day, as well as the forthcoming London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“In the year of the diamond jubilee, Prince Philip and I will continue to take part in celebrations across the United Kingdom. The Prince of Wales and other members of my family are travelling widely to take part in festivities throughout the Commonwealth.”

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George Osborne’s growth policy is turning British cities into Detroit UK | Simon Jenkins

Britain’s economy needs smart growth, not dumb policies that have delivered a double-dip recession

Europe’s collective response to the 2008 credit crunch ranks with the treaty of Versailles and German reparations among the great follies of history. While the peoples of Greece, Spain, Italy and France wrestle with counter-productive austerity policies, Britain’s rulers have no more idea of what to do next. On Tuesday David Cameron and Nick Clegg renewed the coalition marriage vow of two years ago, but there were no smiles of rapture in a Downing Street garden, just gritted teeth in an Essex factory. Cocks of the walk had become headless chickens.

Those who warned at the time that the coalition risked double-dip recession by over-suppressing demand have been proved right. The chancellor, George Osborne, raised VAT to 20%, tightened benefits and allowed banks to restrict credit (while saying the opposite). He declared that private sector growth would more than compensate for public sector contraction. He meant well, but he was wrong.

He was also wrong to dismiss the desire of Gus O’Donnell, then cabinet secretary, for a plan B. It was clear 18 months ago that demand was collapsing. A government obsession with rescuing banks took the cabinet’s eye off the ball and had nothing to do with the case. The longer course correction was delayed, the more demand drained from the economy, until the gangrene of double-dip set in. Britain is now having one of the worst recessions in the OECD.

From Cumbria to Corinth it has been left to ordinary voters, to the great Babel of democracy, to bring reality to bear on those who manage economies. Enough austerity, they have cried, try something that works. As Andrés Velasco, the former Chilean finance minister, has written, it is “insane” to envisage countries locked in a common currency slashing their deficits while trying to promote growth: it is a contradiction in terms. This appears at last to have been grasped by an improbable coalition of the White House, IMF, Greek electorate and new French government – and even the ageing British one. They all want “growth”, though few seem to know how to get it.

In Britain the only growth the Treasury has recognised so far has been to turn to the banks. It is like asking the mafia to promote honesty in local government. Ministers pleaded with bankers to lend more to real people, and even printed the money for them to lend. The banks simply carted the loot from the mint and used it to pay off their gambling debts. There is no evidence that one penny of the hundreds of billions of pounds made available “leaked” into the productive economy.

I witnessed government growth policy at work last week on the road north out of Manchester towards Rochdale. The scene is one of utter devastation. Not just individual shops but entire parades have gone out of business and are boarded up. Mile upon mile of factories, garages, supermarkets and warehouses lie empty and for sale. Recession has delivered the coup de grace to a quarter century of manufacturing decline. Manchester is by no means the worst hit of English cities, but its northern suburbs are Detroit UK.

The British economy needs three things: demand, demand, demand. It needs cash in pockets and cash in tills. It does not need richer banks or easier credit lines or looser regulation. It needs that old Keynesian salve, money in circulation. If money can be showered short term on banks, it can be showered short term on consumers, whether through benefit handouts, vouchers, tax holidays or scrappage schemes. Osborne declares quantitative easing to be off his debit sheet. He can do the same for temporary boosts to the money supply.

The chancellor can take credit for winning a reputation for responsibility. Now is the time to draw on that credit. To the claim that boosting demand is inflationary, the answer is that this is the least serious threat to Britain at present. Look at youth unemployment, shop prices or interest rates. Visit the outskirts of any British city. Britain is bursting with unused capacity. Inflation is for another day, not now.

The cabinet’s current response to the cry for growth is to dip into the old goody bag. Osborne is already spending or planning billions of pounds for new railways, tunnels under London, wind turbines and aircraft carriers. There are murmurs of power stations, toll roads and ecotowns. The portfolio of ideas flowing through Whitehall reflects the interests of those whom Whitehall meets – government contractors, land-owners, estate developers and the bankers who finance them. It comes from government departments lobbying for airports, colleges, roads and hospitals.

The reason why the Treasury likes such projects is that they make headlines for ministers and can be controlled from the centre. Also, few involve big spending now. They are slow growth, lobbyists’ growth, dumb growth. They can be farmed out to private finance and are more likely to fuel the next boom than ease the present slump.

It would be better by far to import the US concept of “smart growth”. This does not channel counter-recessionary spending through grand projects. It directs it to the renewal of existing communities and infrastructure, to where there are already roads, transport, schools and hospitals. It restores, infills and stimulates activity where the social and physical framework is in place. It is productive and “sustainable”.

Smart growth revives the private sector through blood transfusion to the high street, rather than through the colossal public contracts favoured by Osborne and the industry secretary, Vince Cable. It makes cities denser, rather than depopulating them. It lets the market rather than the state allocate the extra cash. All this may lack ministerial glamour and earn little for consultants, but if politicians are serious about growth, smart sure beats dumb.

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Cameron and Clegg defiant as they reaffirm commitment to coalition

PM and his deputy insist they will stick with cuts plan and strive for growth as pressure mounts from Labour and their own parties

David Cameron has insisted that the coalition is “as important and necessary today as it was two year ago” as he and Nick Clegg launched a fightback in the wake of grim local election results for their respective parties.

The Conservative prime minister and his Lib Dem deputy made a joint appearance to reaffirm the need for the coalition relationship as they made clear they intend to stick with the “tough decisions” made to restore the country’s public finances, “redouble efforts” to create growth and “get behind families that work hard and do the right thing”.

Cameron said: “I believe the need for that coalition — two parties working together to solve the problems we have in our country – I think is as important and necessary today as it was two years ago.”

The event in Essex follows several stinging criticism in the days since the disastrous council and mayoral elections, in which Labour won 830 council seats, mostly from the coalition partners, and took control of an additional 32 councils in England, Wales and Scotland.

Earlier in the day, Ed Miliband was the first of the three party leaders to turn up in Essex to criticise the government over its refusal to change course on the economy.

Speaking in Harlow, where Labour took control of the council in last week’s local election, Miliband said: “The reality now for people aspiring to get on is that they feel they are running up against a brick wall in terms of unemployment and getting on the housing ladder.”

He added: “I don’t think Cameron gets it when he has a Queen’s speech that will not change course on the economy.”

But in the afternoon, the prime minister said the government had no intention of “letting up” on its deficit reduction programme to deal with the “country’s overdraft”, though he said he underlined this did not mean the government could not go for growth.

Speaking on the eve of the Queen’s Speech, which will unveil bills described as “pro-growth and pro-business”, Cameron said: “We need to think all the things we can do to get our economy growing. Whether that’s encouraging the banks to lend more money, helping firms to start up, making it easier for companies to employ more people, investing in apprenticeships – we need to do all those things and frankly we need to redouble our efforts in doing all of those things. We have to rebalance our economy.”

Cameron said the level of debt in households, banks and in the government had made recovery difficult.

He stressed the need to be very frank with people about the painstaking drive to boost growth: “It is tough, it is difficult, but … let’s build something really worthwhile, and yes it will take time, but it will be built to last, rather than as the last recovery was, built on sand.”

Clegg echoed the sentiment as he insisted the government would constantly strive to do more to promote growth, as well as reducing debt, but warned that voters should not expect quick results.

There had been a “shocking great heart attack at the very centre of our British economy” and there was a six to seven-year plan in place to cure it — well beyond the next general election, he said.

“It is painstaking work recovering from that and it is not something we are going to achieve and so we need to bear in mind the enormity of the trauma we suffered.”

He described the need to deal with debt so future generations did not have it hanging over them as a “moral duty”, but went on to say that two main areas where more efforts were needed was the level of lending to small business and investment in infrastructure by both the public and private sectors.

“Dealing with the deficit is a means to an end,” Clegg said.

“Austerity alone does not create growth. It is a necessary but not sufficient step. But what we are absolutely dedicated towards, is creating jobs, prosperity, investment, opportunity, optimism and hope in our country.

“We know we need to do more, constantly strive to do more, to create and foster the conditions for growth.”

Cameron was under pressure from his own party to steer to the right following dismal local election results.

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Miliband challenges government on economy

‘There is another way for Essex,’ says Labour leader on visit to Harlow, where his party recently took control of council

Ed Miliband has said the government needs to provide answers, not excuses, on growth in a speech in Harlow, Essex, a town where his party took control of the council in last week’s local elections and which is seen as symbolic of a revival of Labour’s fortunes among aspirational classes.

The Labour leader visited Essex, regarded as the political cradle of Thatcherism, on Tuesday before a trip to the county by David Cameron and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, billed as an attempt to relaunch the government after difficult local elections.

Miliband said the missing ingredient for contemporary Britain was growth, and that the economy was no longer working for working people.

He claimed Thatcher 30 years ago promised to make the economy work better for them, especially in places like Essex. “The reality now for people aspiring to get on is that they feel they are running up against a brick wall in terms of unemployment and getting on the housing ladder,” he said. “There is another way for Essex.”

He added: “I don’t think Cameron gets it when he has a Queen’s speech that will not change course on the economy.

“If they don’t find room for action to deal with living standards, energy prices, social care, train prices, then it will be clear they don’t have the right priorities.

“If there is one message from the local elections it is: you are not standing up for the right people, and you are standing for millionaires.

“At some point governments have to recognise it is not presentation, it is not the little accidents that happen in government, it is something deep. They promised a recovery and they have delivered a recession. It is no good the government running excuses; they need to provide answers. The government has been found out not just because their economic plan has failed, but because they have been standing up for the wrong people.”

In a 50-minute question-and-answer session in Harlow, Miliband opened by admitting that 71% of voters in Essex had not voted at all last week because they felt all politicians were the same, making promises they were unable to keep.

He argued: “When people have died and are dying for the right to vote, and you have 71% of people thinking politicians are all the same, I am determined to change that. The most important thing is that we do not make false promises because people are so used to politicians making promises.

“Why do so many people on the doorstep say: ‘You are all the same, you all break your promises’? Why is it? Because we make grand promises and then we break them. So I say let us make promises that we can keep – if we can put young people back to work, if you took on the energy companies and made a difference to living standards, made different choices on taxation. It is not promising the earth, but it is what we can deliver.”

He added: “That means I will be cautious about the promises I make. I think politicians for too long have given the answers that people wanted to hear.”

Privately his aides admit they would have preferred a tougher round of questions, and are still working on finding the right format with which to engage with the disengaged voter.

The bulk of the questions appeared to come from a leftwing point of view, including calls from Labour supporters to be tougher on the rich, and to be as radical as François Hollande, the new French president.

But Miliband also made a point of engaging with members of the audience who challenged the current welfare system, saying he too believed that, after a year on the dole, someone had to undertake some form of compulsory work experience.

He said it was good that Hollande was proposing a different direction, but refused to claim him as one of his supporters. He said Cameron had not put growth at the top of his international agenda and his concern was that the government growth plan was heavily dependent on export-led recovery, yet the European economy, the UK’s chief export market, remained weak, and was likely to do so for months.

Privately, Miliband does not regard Hollande as an extreme leftist, and thinks he is more likely to go for an addendum to the EU treaty rather than a complete rewrite.

During the question-and-answer session, Miliband admitted Labour had not done enough on housing.

Cameron and Clegg go on offensive over cuts, the coalition and growth

Joint speeches aim to halt critics from left and right, with softened stance on seeking growth as pressure rises

The prime minister and his deputy will defy critics on all sides by declaring in joint speeches on Tuesday that “there can be no going back” on the unpopular task of slashing government spending and debt.

But in a strong sign that the coalition is feeling the pressure from a renewed Labour party and an angry Tory right after the government’s huge local election losses last week, David Cameron and Nick Clegg will use their speeches to put new emphasis on the importance of getting growth back into the economy.

As part of the renewed emphasis on growth, ministers will unveil bills they describe as “pro-growth and pro-business” in the Queen’s speech on Wednesday, including less policing of regulations; changes to make it easier to hire and fire workers; and a long-promised Green Investment Bank to help fund schemes to cut and clean up energy use. Another bill will create an ombudsman for the grocery sector intended to crackdown on claims the biggest supermarkets are abusing their power over small suppliers, which will include the ultimate sanction of imposing fines on the worst offenders.

In a joint event marking two years of the coalition, the Conservative leader, David Cameron, will say that the agreement to make the economy the central plank of the government’s programme continued to be the “number one priority”.

“That was and remains our guiding task, and in these perilous times it’s more important than ever for Britain that we stick to it,” he will say. “There can be no going back on our carefully judged strategy for restoring the public finances.”

Both leaders will make their case for continuing with harsh spending cuts by arguing that continued borrowing would have to be repaid by “our children”.

The Lib Dem leader and deputy PM, Nick Clegg, will say: “Ducking the tough choices would only prolong the pain, condemning the next generation to decades of higher interest rates, poorer public services and fewer jobs.” .

The event in Essex follows several stinging criticism in the days since the disastrous council and mayoral elections, in which Labour won more than 800 council seats, mostly from the two coalition partners, and took control of an additional 32 councils in England, Wales and Scotland.

On Monday the unoffical Conservative Home website began publishing an “alternative Queen’s speech”, including contributions from 20 Tory MPs led by the former cabinet ministers David Davis and John Redwood. The publication was seen as a clear steer to the right by pressing for “tougher control of immigration, a referendum on Europe, lower taxes on fuel and income, more conditionality in welfare and less community punishment of repeat and serious offenders”.

Mirroring anger among some Tories that the coalition has given too much ground to their minority partners, the Lib Dem deputy leader, Simon Hughes, hit out at Tory MPs, accusing them of acting as if they were “born to rule”, and suggesting that without his party’s support they would not still be in government.

Despite an event intended to emphasise the continuing good relationship between the two men at the top of the coalition and their continuing commitment to the coalition agreement, however, both Cameron and Clegg’s speeches do appear to bend to growing criticism from political opponents on left and right, and among business and international organisations, all attacking the government’s focus on debt reduction over strong policies for growth.

Government advisers insisted their policies remained unchanged, but the language of the speeches was in contrast even to briefings last week by the prime minister’s official spokesman, who met questions about these criticisms with continued emphasis on the debt reduction.

“We must never forget that tackling the deficit is a means to an end and the end we all seek is growth,” Clegg will say, twice. There would be a “renewed sense of urgency” and a “redoubling of our efforts” on two key growth policies: getting more credit into the economy and building infrastructure, he will add.

Labour’s leader, Ed Miliband, will also visit Essex to counter the relaunch attempt with his own event, pressing the apparently successful message that the continuing economic problems can now be blamed on the government’s austerity programme and a focus on tax cuts for the rich to stimulate growth. “One million young unemployed; living standards squeezed ever tighter; a tax cut for the very rich; a recession made in Downing Street,” Miliband will say.The growth theme is likely to be taken up on Wednesday when the Queen’s speech includes two bills under Lib Dem business secretary, Vince Cable, including a wide-ranging enterprise bill bringing together new powers for shareholders over executive pay, reform of the competition regime, and further attempts to reduce red tape such as allowing local councils to opt out of or relax regulations, less strict inspection regimes, and stronger “sunset clauses” to kill off regulations which are not delivering the intended improvements. It will also include changes to employment rights including making it easier for companies to get rid of underperforming staff or downsize in tough times, and to encourage more employees to settle complaints through arbitration rather than formal tribunals.

The enterprise bill will also usher in the Green Investment Bank, which will not have powers to borrow until 2015 at the earliest, and then only if public debt is much lower.

Nick Clegg risks Tory anger by pressing on with Lords reform

Lib Dem leader says party’s radicalism needed ‘as much as ever’ on issues such as constitution

Nick Clegg has signalled his determination to press ahead with reform of the House of Lords in a move likely to anger Conservative MPs who have identified the issue as an electoral millstone that contributed to the dismal performance by coalition parties in last week’s local elections.

In an article for the Guardian, Clegg says that Lib Dem radicalism is needed “as much as ever” on issues such as the constitution and that the party will be pushing “harder for reform”. The tone of his remarks contrasts with that adopted by David Cameron in an article published in Daily Telegraph, saying that the Conservatives need to “focus on what matters”, and by the chancellor, George Osborne, who used an interview to depict Lords reform as a peripheral concern.

Sources at No 10 rejected claims that the Queen’s speech has been rewritten in the light of last week’s election results to give it a more populist flavour – proposals such as gay marriage, which weekend reports said had been dropped, were either never due to be in it, or shelved some time ago. But the issue of Lords reform remains a faultline in the coalition. Lib Dem ministers are determined to press ahead with legislation to make the upper house largely elected, while Tory MPs and peers from all wings of the party spent the weekend identifying it as a key example of a policy showing the government out of touch with the concerns of voters.

Among the Tories joining that protest on Sunday were Lord Fowler, who said it was “bad politics” and not worth any votes, Tim Yeo, who said Lords reform should be “relegated right to the bottom of the queue” and Julian Brazier, who said it was a “ridiculous fringe” policy.

Although the Tory inquest on the local election defeats is wide-ranging, and will continue on Monday with the publication of a rightwing alternative Queen’s speech on the ConservativeHome website co-ordinated by David Davis and John Redwood, there was no support on Sunday for Nadine Dorries, who said the Conservative party would split unless David Cameron and Osborne resigned. Her claim that 46 Tory MPs would demand a leadership election by Christmas, enough to trigger a ballot, was also widely dismissed.

But Lord Baker, a former chairman himself, and Lord Ryder, chief whip under John Major, both said that Cameron needed to appoint an MP as a party chairman because the two people doing the job at the moment, Lady Warsi and Lord Feldman, could not do enough from the House of Lords to defend Cameron politically. Ryder also said Cameron needed to concentrate more on substance.

“[Cameron] has to keep his eyes on the horizon and not be going down the cul-de-sac of day-to-day party management over the management of 24-hour news,” Ryder said. “To this day, he seems to lack coherence, so nobody knows what he stands for, what his beliefs are, what his convictions are. They want to know more about him, they want to know where he really wants to take the country.”

In his Guardian article Clegg writes: “The first two years of the coalition were a rescue mission for the economy. The second half has to be about reform. That means in politics, too. For more than a century, we have been debating the commonsense idea that the people who obey the laws of the land should elect the people who make them. Instead of getting ourselves tied up in knots in Westminster about this, we just need to get on with it.”

Clegg is not claiming that Lords reform should be the government’s top priority. Vince Cable, the Lib Dem business secretary, told Sky that the government should implement Lords reform “quietly and quickly” and in private Lib Dems say that it is the Tories who are pre-occupied with the issue.

We are not obsessed with Lords reform,” a senior Lib Dem source told the Guardian. “It’s some people on the Tory right who are obsessed with it. It’s a gigantic form of political displacement activity for them. It’s completely absurd to claim that Lords reform is the reason that the Conservatives did not do as well as they did in the local elections.”

“We are not obsessed with Lords reform,” a senior Lib Dem source told the Guardian. “It’s some people on the Tory right who are obsessed with it. It’s a gigantic form of political displacement activity for them. It’s completely absurd to claim that Lords reform is the reason that the Conservatives did not do as well as they did in the local elections.”

On Sunday Osborne repeatedly stressed that Lords reform was not a priority for him or for the government . But, unlike his Lib Dem colleagues, he hinted that the government would be willing to compromise on Lords reform if the bill started to clog up the parliamentary timetable. In his Telegraph article Cameron did not mention Lords reform. The lesson the Conservatives should draw from the local elections was “not about tacking right or moving left”, he said. “The message people are sending is this: focus on what matters, deliver what you promise – and prove yourself in the process. I get it,” he said.

“Parliament can discuss these issues. Parliament’s very good at discussing constitutional issues,” Osborne told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “But it is not going to be occupying the bulk of the time of people like myself, David Cameron, and indeed Nick Clegg.”Osborne’s comments will reinforce suspicions that the government will eventually concede a referendum on Lords reform. Cameron and Clegg have both said that they see no need for one, but ministers may compromise to get the legislation through the Commons.

Cameron and Clegg have both said that they see no need for a referendum on Lords reform, because voters backed the idea at the 2010 general election, but Labour are demanding one and, with Tory rebels threatening to support them, ministers may decide that granting a referendum is the only way to get the legislation through the Commons.

Lord Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, has backed calls for a referendum, but many reformers are opposed to the idea because they believe that it would lead to the idea being rejected – a prospect that seems even stronger in the light of the way elected mayors were almost totally rejected in the 10 referendums last week.

Cameron’s ‘big society’ undermined by cuts and distrust, says study

Prime minister’s flagship project losing initial goodwill as community groups suffer funding ‘body blow’, finds report

David Cameron’s flagship “big society” project is at risk of being derailed by savage cuts to grassroots voluntary groups and a collapse in trust among the very people the government expected to deliver its vision, according to an independent audit of the first two years of the initiative.

The report concludes that the big society lacks a clear vision and strategy and is in danger of becoming “an initiative for the leafy suburbs”, despite the prime minister’s championing of a policy he described at its Downing street launch in 2010 as something he hoped would be “one of the great legacies” of his government.

It says grassroots community groups expected to deliver the big society have been dealt a “body blow” by the first tranche of expected £3.3bn cuts in government funding to the voluntary sector over the next three years, while a support programme, introduced by ministers for charities at risk of going bust, was “too little, too late”.

As a result of the cuts and the government’s failure to communicate or deliver its big society aspirations, much of the goodwill civil society groups initially felt towards the project has now evaporated, says the report, published by the thinktank Civil Exchange.

The report’s author, Caroline Slocock, said it was too early to pass judgment on Cameron’s vision, which tapped into a “genuine seam of public interest”. But she said: “There are real question marks over the vision and delivery of big society.”

The report draws on more than 40 data sources to test progress on the government’s “three pillars” of the big society: enabling people to shape their local area, opening up public services provision to charities, and levels of “social action” such as volunteering. It finds:

• There is a widening “big society gap” in which volunteering and other forms of social capital are strongest in wealthy areas. Cuts have hit charities based in deprived areas the hardest, creating the danger that the project becomes “an initiative for the leafy suburbs”.

• Despite ministerial promises, charities and social enterprises have been sidelined in the market for government contracts, such as the Work Programme, which the report says has “an implicit bias towards large, private sector businesses”.

• The government lacks a common vision and strategy for the big society, while smaller voluntary groups vital to delivering the project have found it hard to make their voices heard in Whitehall. It cites figures showing 70% of charity leaders believed the government did not value or respect the voluntary sector as a partner.

The sense that big society policy is foundering is underlined by a separate Guardian survey of the 16 specially invited guests present at the big society launch meeting held in Downing Street in May 2010, hosted by Cameron and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.

Most of those invited were the kind of grassroots community activists and social entrepreneurs identified by the government as central to its project.

The survey reveals that while most of the participants still subscribe to big society aims in principle, many key supporters have become disheartened by the scale of cuts to charities and the failure of the government to put its weight behind the policy, which sought to give local people and charities a bigger say in running their communities and services.

One guest, Rob Owen, chief executive of the offender rehabilitation charity St Giles Trust, said large-scale cuts to voluntary sector funding had hampered the delivery of the big society. He said: “It’s difficult to be radical or a revolutionary when there’s no ammunition in the rifles, or very little.”

The meeting was held just two weeks into the coalition administration on 18 May 2010. Hosted by Cameron and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, in the cabinet room at No 10, the staging and timing of the event was meant to symbolise the importance the coalition placed on the big society.

But Dick Atkinson, chief executive of Balsall Health Forum, a grassroots community group in Birmingham, which was credited by the education secretary Michael Gove as the “inspiration” behind the big society manifesto, told the Guardian much of the optimism he had detected at that cabinet room meeting had been swept away by funding cuts.

He said: “The big society idea was good but I’m not convinced that the government has been able to turn its words into good deeds… nothing like as much progress has been made [as I had hoped].”

Social entrepreneur Paul Twivy, at the time chief executive of the Big Society Network, said he had believed in the big society ideology, but had been dismayed by the “devastating” cuts to the voluntary sector, which threatened to do long-term damage to civil society.

He said: “At some point we are going to have to say it [big society] is not a principle unless it costs money… There’s no doubting the sincerity of David Cameron towards big society. But he has to enact it.”

The big society has had a rocky ride politically having been relaunched several times by the prime ministerin the face of widespread cynicism, even among government ministers. The government’s big society “tsar”, Lord Wei, resigned after less than a year in the role, while Steve Hilton, the PM’s policy guru and an important supporter of big society, quit in March.

The civil society minister, Nick Hurd, defended the government’s big society record, and attacked “cynics who continue to carp”. He argued that over the past two years, the government had “done a huge amount to create the conditions for people in their local communities to drive the change they want to see”.

But Lord Adebowale, chief executive of the social enterprise Turning Point, who attended the Number 10 launch, said the idea had become marginalised: “It’s hard to put my finger on anything that’s happened as a result of big society. I’m an optimist but I suspect big society has lost momentum and purchase. Big society exists, but in the frozen wastes of Siberia.”