30/10/2010

Available for over a year

Elinor Goodman looks behind the scenes at Westminster Housing benefits cuts announced this week lead to emotive exchanges in the House of Commons. Ministers were accused of everything from outright unfairness, to social cleansing of the poor from big cities. Two London MPs, Labour's Siobhain McDonagh and the Conservative Bob Blackman, discuss the implications of this major reform of the welfare benefit system, with Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George. On Thursday the government produced a White Paper on Local Growth, following on the better than expected figures for economic growth. But how will growth be achieved given the size of the spending cuts? Conservative MP Simon Hart and Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop consider the consequences of these measures for their constituencies in Wales and the North East. Ed Miliband gave shadow ministerial positions to a large number of his party's new young MPs, raising questions about how much basic parliamentary experience MPs should have, before sitting on the front benches. Catherine McKinnell got the most senior of these posts- shadow Solicitor General. Did she think she was up to it? From the new intake to the "leavers". In the week when details of former MPs resettlement payments were published Lembit Opik and Tom Levitt (formerly Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs respectively) talk about what has been happening to them since the election.