Morning Report – May 12th

There’s some tough talk in today’s papers about George Osborne “taking on the unions”, which is no doubt part of the chancellor’s bid to be the darling of the Tory right. Picking up on Boris Johnson’s attack on worker’s rights, The Times(£) reports that Osborne plans to “cap the costs of discrimination cases, dilute pension rights for state employees who move into the private sector and alter entitlements when companies change hands”. You can almost hear the Tory tight flecing their muscles.

David Laws will be suspended for seven days from the commons over his expenses. That might scupper plans to bring him back to the cabinet table, although the spin has already begun – Matthew Parris says (£) Laws will emarge with his career and honour intact. That may well be true, but it’s hard to see how someone found guilty over expenses (and suspended from parliament) could return to the cabinet.

Headline of the day goes to the Daily Mirror for “Minister accused of gagging coastguards”. Unfortunately it’s about government cuts, not anything more salacious. The story is a serious one though, as it seems ministers have tried to stop coastguards from giving evidence to MPs over the vast reduction of 24-hour coastguard stations. The government should let them speak, but the coverage of this issue ahs been minimal so far.

And it seems that Ivan Lewis changed his speech to Progress last night at the last minute, chopping a line that argued some voters consider Labour to have been “spendthrift”. While the Tories will try and make this a bigger issue than it should be, it seems to be a storm in a teacup – some voters do think we were “spendthrift”, but that doesn’t mean they’re right, and Lewis never suggested that they were.