Cameron interview marks start of Conservative conference: Politics live blog

They are still talking about the economy.

Q: When will the economy recover?

The economy is healing, Osborne says.

Q: Why don’t you spend more on infrastructure?

Osborne says he is spending money on infrastructure.

He has “hired” Paul Deighton, who was in charge of the Olympics, to push forward infrastructure projects.

Q: What do you think of the proposed merger betweeen EADS and BAE Systems?

Osborne says the government wants to protect national security and protect jobs and investment in the UK. Those tests will be used to decide the government’s approach to the takeover.

Q: Why don’t you name people engaged in aggressive tax avoidance?

Osborne says he is prepared to consider this. But there is taxpayer confidentiality in this country. He is closing aggressive tax avoidance schemes down, he says.

The government is now collecting more money from the rich than under Labour, he says.

Q: Are you going to speak out in favour of gay marriage?

Osborne says he supports gay marriage. He thinks Conservatives should support institutions which promote commitment. It will be a free vote in the Commons. He will be voting in favour.

That’s it. The Osborne interview is over.

I’ll post summaries soon of the Cameron interview and the Osborne interview.

Murnaghan turns to growth.

Q: You don’t have a strategy for growth.

Osborne says Murnaghan was implying that he was not cutting far enough. Now is is implying that he is cutting too far.

Q: How will you signal that we are all in this together. People think you are “posh boys out of touch with the public”.

Osborne says that is the Labour characterisation. But the government inherited a system from Labour where some people in the City were paying less in tax than their cleaners.

The government has addressed this.

But it has also addressed welfare, he says.

He says you cannot be “serious” if you do not address this.

Q: But the rich are getting a 5p tax cut next year.

Osborne says the 50p rate raised no money. The people paying the price for it were the poor looking for work. The rich did not pay it.

He says Labour never had a 50p rate, until right near the end. Now he has a 45p top rate, he says.

Q: And what are you going to do about Nick Clegg’s call for a mansion tax or a wealth tax?

Osborne says he does not think either of those ideas are good.

A mansion tax would affect people who did not think they were living in a mansion.

And he does not favour a wealth tax. He does not want to drive wealthy people abroad.

But the rich are going to have to make “another contribution”, he says.

George Osborne is being interviewed on Sky now by Dermot Murnaghan.

Q: Are you going to have to abandon your debt reduction target?

Osborne says the government has to find a further £16bn’s worth of savings.

The country has lived beyond its means, he says.

Q: But do you still think you will be able to get public debt going down by 2015-16?

Osborne says the Office for Budget Responsibility monitors these figures. It will provide an assessment in December.

But he can be clear that he is committed to dealing with debt.

Q: But you are not dealing with the debt. The IMF say you will miss that debt reduction target.

Osborne says the deficit has come down by a quarter.

Q: But debt is going up.

Osborne says that’s because there is still a deficit. The government is cutting the deficit.

Just before David Cameron gave his interview, the Liberal Democrats sent me a response to the George Osborne comments about the mansion tax. They said he does not have the final say over the government’s tax and spending plans. Here’s the comment from a party spokesman.

Decisions about possible new spending and tax plans haven’t been made yet and require the agreement of both sides. The government’s top priority is [tax] cuts for people on low and middle incomes. As we made clear at conference we will continue to push for fairer taxes – including wealth taxes – because the burden of any further austerity must be shared equally, and that means by the richest too.

I’ll post a full summary of the main points from the Andrew Marr interview shortly. In brief, David Cameron said that the wealthy would be expected to pay more in tax before 2015 (see 10.07am); appeared to rule out an in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU; insisted that he would keep his promise not to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners; threatened to veto the next EU budget; said that he would like Boris Johnson to take another job in politics after being mayor of London; and defended Jeremy Hunt over his remarks about abortion in an interview yesterday.

I’m afraid my laptop crashed half an hour. It’s obviously a Labour laptop, and did not take kindly to David Cameron.

But I have retrieved another slab of the Marr transcript. Here it is.

Q: Do you think there are signs of growth?

Cameron says these are tough times for the economy. The deficit has been cut by a quarter. He is not a forecaster, but he thinks the economy is rebalancing. A million net new jobs have been created in the private sector. Britain is exporting more things.

Last year more businesses were set up than in any recent year in our history.

A global race is underway. Some countries will make it and some won’t, he says.

Q: But debt is going up. When will you get on top of that?

Cameron says he inherited a deficit of around 11%. It is now around 8%. But the situation is still challenging. “These are very difficult times,” he says.

Labour had nothing to say about debt and the defict, he says.

Q: Nick Clegg said there would be more austerity after 2015. Was he right?

Yes, says Cameron. The cuts will have to be decided before the election. The government will have to look at things like welfare.

Q: So the squeeze in welfare will start before the election.

Cameron says when the Tories came in some families were getting £40,000 or more in housing benefit. The government has stopped this.

Q: Clegg says he will not allow more welfare cuts unless the rich pay more.

Cameron says the government has always been fair. The top 10% have paid 10 times more to reducing the deficit than the bottom 10%.

Q: Clegg said he would persuade you to accept a new form of wealth tax.

Cameron says he will make sure that the rich pay their fair share.

He cut the top rate of tax, he says. But he raised four times as much from the rich by means like raising stamp duty.

He will take further action to make sure the rich pay a fair share.

Q: What will you do?

Cameron says you cannot be expected to announce George Osborne’s budget. But he will not introduce a mansion tax.

Q: So the wealthy will pay more in tax before the election?

Yes, says Cameron, and it is happening already.

He also says the rich are now paying a higher proportion of tax revenue than they did under Labour.

Q: Will the top rate of tax go down to 40p?

Cameron says he will not announce the budget, but they have done waht they have done, he says (implying it won’t go down to 40p.)

Q: Do you have any thoughts about the Jimmy Savile story?

Cameron says it is “truly shocking”. The BBC needs to look into this.

Andrew Marr is interviewing Cameron now.

Q: If the Leveson recommendations are not “bonkers”, will you implement them.

Yes, says Cameron. But he says he needs to wait until Leveson reports.

Q: And if he suggests something that requires law, that will happen?

Cameron says he needs to wait until he sees the recommendation.

Marr presses him again.

“We need to wait,” says Cameron.

It is clear people have been abused, he says.

The status quo is not an option.

All parties want a “sensible, regulatory system”, he says.

And here are the best columns about the Conservative conference from the Sunday papers.

• James Forsyth in the Mail on Sunday says David Cameron and his team are upbeat about their prospects at the next election.

First, they think the Nineties phenomenon of ‘shy Tories’ – people not being prepared to say they are voting for the party – has returned. They calculate that the party’s true level of support could be five points or more above what headline figures suggest.

Second, they are confident that incumbency gives them an advantage. Their analysis of the last Election result shows sitting MPs tended to be insulated against the national swing.

Third, they think they can be more targeted. In 2010, the Tories were trying to take 160 seats. This time, they are looking at just 40. I’m told the list will include more than ten Lib Dem seats.

• John Rentoul in the Independent on Sunday says he can imagine Cameron winning the next election.

It is possible to see how the Prime Minister might still win through, however. It does not really depend on what happens at conference this week, provided it avoids disaster. The winning scenario was painted jointly for me by a minister and a shadow minister, in separate conversations.

The Conservative minister asked: “What if, in a year to 18 months’ time, the economy is growing… but the cuts really start to bite?” That is quite possible, and perhaps the parallel to which this Cameronian moderniser was pointing was Margaret Thatcher in 1983, when unemployment was still high but disposable income rising for the majority. It may seem harsh, but elections can be won even if a minority is suffering.

The Shadow Cabinet member then said what the Tory message would be in 2015: “Labour drove the car into the ditch; do you really want to let them back behind the wheel?” The higher growth is, the more effective this message is likely to be.

• Matthew d’Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph, who interviewed David Cameron this week, says Cameron could be overshadowed at the conference by Boris Johnson.

Throughout our interview, Cameron was visibly focused, poised on the edge of his seat – except when pressed on what Quentin Tarantino would call the “Boris Situation”, at which point he squirmed and gurned, seeking to end the line of questioning with the usual lines – “Boris really is Boris”, “there’s no point trying to contain Boris”, and so on – and an affable shrug.

Sorry, Prime Minister: there’s no point presenting yourself as the Man with the Plan if a hugely popular contender for your job is mysteriously permitted to say that the plan contains the seeds of catastrophe. Jovial appeasement is merely encouraging the Mayor. There is a clear and present danger that he will steal the show from the PM in Birmingham, and that Cameron will start to be seen as yesterday’s tomorrow man, an obstruction to the Blond One’s ascent to power. It should anger the Cameroons much more than it does that all this is so. They need to act, for once, as if they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more. If No 10 has a Boris Strategy, I can’t see it.

• And Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer also says that Johnson will cause problems for Cameron at the conference.

[Johnson] will address the conference itself, a glorious opportunity for Borisovian grandstanding and an event that the prime minister will feel painfully obliged to attend. The compliment will not be returned: the mayor will have left Birmingham before Mr Cameron addresses the party. Cabinet ministers have to clear their conference speeches through Number 10. The prime minister’s people would very much like to see what Mr Johnson has in store for the conference. One Number 10 aide says: “He’s talked to us about where his speech is going.” In other words, they don’t really have a clue. If it is comedy Boris, he will make the rest of the cabinet look even more cardboard and grey. If it is serious Boris, the would-be prime minister in waiting, that will be really alarming for Number 10.

• Martin Ivens in the Sunday Times (paywall) says Cameron needs to take Miliband seriously.

Like the American president, Cameron’s vice is to sit back and fritter away his political capital when ahead. He switches the gears too quickly to cruise control. Expect him to come storming back in his own conference speech.

Both men are fierce fighters in a tight corner but Obama — usually — does “the vision thing” better than Cameron. On Wednesday in Birmingham the prime minister needs to convince us there is more to his own plan for one nation than austerity. Like the president, Cameron now knows that he can’t count on his opponent fouling up for ever.

Andrew Marr has not even started his interview with David Cameron yet, but already Tim Montgomerie is heckling him on Twitter.

Here’s a round-up of the best Conservative conference stories in the Sunday papers.

• George Osborne tells the Mail on Sunday in an interview that he will freeze council tax and cap rail fare increases.

The Chancellor has emphatically ruled out any plans to impose ‘wealth taxes’ on high-earners, and pledged to freeze council tax and cap commuter fares in a package worth £500 million.

The move to rule out a wealth tax will delight the Tory Party faithful – but will infuriate their Liberal Democrat Coalition partners, who have warned that they will not sanction further austerity measures without fresh levies on the rich.

In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, as the Conservatives gather for their party conference in Birmingham, Mr Osborne described the demands for a wealth tax as ‘the politics of resentment’.

And in an attempt to grab back the initiative on tax from Labour, he also announced the boost for hard-pressed homeowners and rail passengers.

Council tax is to be frozen for a third year in a row – a move worth £80 a year for the average Band D council tax payer – and rail fare rises will be limited to four per cent, worth £45 to the average season ticket holder.

• And Osborne tells the Mail on Sunday that he is ruling out a mansion tax, new council tax bands and other forms of wealth tax. The quotes are in the full write-up of the interview.

‘We are not going to have a mansion tax, or a new tax that is a percentage value of people’s properties. Before the election they will call it a mansion tax, but people will wake up the day after the election and discover suddenly their more modest home has been labelled a mansion,’ he says.

‘We don’t think people who have worked hard, saved up to buy a home, should be clobbered with a mansion tax.’

Adding a new tax band to the council tax for big homes is merely a sinister ploy to let tax snoopers get into people’s homes, he maintains.

‘You would have to send inspectors out [to revalue every home in the UK] and it wouldn’t raise much money,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to let the tax inspectors get their foot in the door.’

Osborne warms to his theme: ‘Nor will there be a wealth tax or annual tax on assets, temporary or otherwise. It is completely unenforceable. It would become a tax avoider’s charter.

• Cameron suggests in an interview in the Sunday Telegraph that the EU should have two budgets – one for the Eurozone, and one for the countries outside it.

The prime minister also vows today to use Britain’s veto, if necessary, to block “outrageous” attempts to increase the European Union’s overall budget in upcoming negotiations to set total spending for the years 2014 to 2020. “If it comes to saying ‘no’ to a deal that isn’t right for Britain, I’ll say ‘no’, he declares.

He also puts forward a “bold thinking” plan for the EU to have two separate budgets – one for the 17 nations in the eurozone and another for the 10 outside it, including Britain. This could potentially save the UK money – but would effectively set up a two-tier Europe.

• Cameron tells the Sunday Telegraph in an interview that Ed Miliband was “signalling right, but actually turning left” with his one nation speech last week. The quotes are are in the full write-up of the interview.

“What was interesting about Ed Miliband’s speech is there was just nothing about what needs to be done. You know, lots of attacks on wealth creation, but no ideas about how to create it. Lots of attacks on business, but nothing to stimulate it. Lots of talk about what was wrong in the economy, but not a word about the deficit. I thought it was rather an empty vessel, signalling right, but actually turning left.

“He is using One Nation as a sort of cloak to…talk about some quite left wing ideas about business, about banking, about wealth creation, about entrepreneurship, about tax and the rest of it. The slogan only works if the policies go with it, and you can’t have the slogan without the policies, or the policies without the slogan. And so, it seems to me, it just doesn’t add up.

“It’s one nation – but it sounds more like East Germany than Great Britain.”

• Theresa May, the home secretary, tells the Sunday Times in an interview (paywall) that the government is investigating ways of restricting immigration to Britain from the EU.

[May] is concerned that EU expansion and unfettered freedom to travel could lead to big levels of economic migration. Work restrictions on migrants from Romania and Bulgaria are lifted next year, with experts forecasting an influx of jobseekers.

May’s move will delight Eurosceptics and grassroots Tories but presages potentially bruising battles with Brussels. David Cameron has already signalled the government’s intention to renegotiate the UK’s relationship with the EU …

“We are looking at this whole area of the abuse of the freedom of movement. But we will go further on this, and the issue of free movement will be part of the review,” she said.

• The Sunday Times (paywall) says Cameron is going to announce a series of measures for “strivers” who “work hard and want to get on”, regardless of their social background.

The prime minister will use his speech at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham to appeal to middle-class families trying to recover from the recession, young people seeking to climb the career ladder and the ambitious working-class voters who once supported Margaret Thatcher.

“If you help people who aspire, it creates a virtuous circle. It means they do better, the country does better,” said a source close to Cameron.

Presumably he’s been reading Lord Ashcroft’s polling research about “suspicious strivers”.

• Cameron tell the Sun on Sunday that he has been more radical than Margaret Thatcher on some issues.

Reeling off his list of scrapes, Mr Cameron blasted back: “So have we dithered over educational reform? Mrs Thatcher never reformed public sector pensions. We have done that. Mrs Thatcher never vetoed a European treaty. I have done that.

“Capping welfare payments — no government has ever done that.”

• Patrick Hennessy in the Sunday Telegraph says 71% of Conservative party constituency chairmen want Cameron to drop his plans for gay marriage, according to a survey of 100 of them.

• Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, tells the Observer in an interview that the economy is probably doing better than the official growth figures suggest.

Echoing an opinion likely to be supported by the chancellor, George Osborne, in a speech on Monday, defence secretary Hammond said: “You won’t find anybody, hardly anybody in the business community or in the financial community, who thinks that the economy is doing right now what the data tell us it is doing. There is a mood that the economy is healing.”

• Liam Fox tells the Sunday Times (paywall) that Tory rebels should stop plotting against Cameron.

Fox, who stood unsuccessfully against Cameron for the Tory leadership in 2005, said he would “never say never” when it came to his leadership ambitions but insisted: “I don’t have any at the moment.”

He was uncompromising, however, when it came to those whispering against Cameron. “Any of my colleagues who have raised these issues with me gets exactly the same response: we need to get back to a debate about substance and not about personality,” he said.

• The Observer says Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith are supporting a bid by the ConservativeHome website to turn itself into a political group formed on the principle that the Tory party modernisation programme has so far been “badly flawed”.

• The Independent on Sunday says Cameron is being warned today by his own MPs that he must “refresh and revive” the optimism and “sunshine” that won him the Conservative leadership or risk losing the next election.

• Jamie Doward in the Observer says more than 50 victims of phone hacking have written to Cameron expressing fury at suggestions that the coalition government could reject a call from Lord Justice Leveson for some form of statutory regulation of the press.

• Daniel Boffey in the Observer says that Boris Johnson is under pressure to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry after being forced to publish his diary listing a string of undisclosed conversations with News International executives, including Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch, at the height of the phone-hacking scandal.

• Anthony Wells in the Sunday Times says the latest YouGov polls shows that Ed Miliband has received a boost since his speech to the Labour conference.

Topline figures are CON 31%, LAB 45%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 8%. The 14 point Labour lead reflects the bigger Labour leads we’ve shown in our polling since Ed Miliband’s speech, and certainly suggests they’ve received a boost from their party conference.

Turning to Ed Miliband specifically, his job approval rating is minus 9, a big jump from minus 29 last week and his highest since early in his leadership in 2010 and early 2011. On the various questions asking people to compare David Cameron and Ed Miliband that we repeated from last week Miliband’s figures have seen significant boosts on many measures, but he still trails Cameron in the same places he trailed him a week ago.

• And Daniel Boffey in the Observer says Opinium polling for the paper says Labour has increased its lead over the Conservatives to 11 points.

The opposition leader’s approval rating shot from 23% of likely voters before the speech to 28%, according to the latest Observer/Opinium poll. David Cameron’s approval rating is slightly higher at 30%, but the narrowing in this key area for the Tory party will be a major worry.

Overall, Labour stretched its poll lead, with 41% signalling an intention to vote for them compared with 30% for the Conservatives and 9% for the Liberal Democrats.