Party Lines: November 30th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

As Andrew Lansley unveiled his latest public health plans, shadow health secretary John Healey labelled them “pretty weak”, and said that “nudging” is nothing new on the Daily Politics:

“There’s nothing new in nudging. Good public health is always a combination of nudging and supporting people in making the choices they want to make and government action where it’s needed.

“We’ve been doing this as a government, we’ve been doing this in this country for a long time. This is a spin to suggest this is a new approach.

“The real test, I think, is do you provide the support and information for people when they need it and when they want to make choices for themselves about how to live, how to eat, how to have sex and do so safely. That’s been at the heart of public health for years.”

John Denham said that all Lib Dems should join Labour in opposing the tripling of tuition fees in an interview with BBC News this afternoon:

“We are very clear about rejecting the government’s proposals and frankly we should be joined by all the Liberal Democrats who promised they would vote against fee increases.”

“We would not have been reducing university funding by 80%, we wouldn’t have been having to make students and graduates pay the huge fees this government is planning to do.”

Speaking in the house today, Andy Burnham called the scrapping of school sports partnerships “Gove’s revenge”, and suggested that it was due to his poor sporting record at school:

“He [Gove] goaded me last time about my drama career at my school. Well I’ve looked up his school sport career. It didn’t take long. One article mentions it. It says in 1979 he won a scholarship to Robert Gordon school in Aberdeen, where he spent the next seven years excelling in every subject, expect sport.”