Donald Macintyre's Sketch: Amal Clooney drops in to chamber but wheelchairs are not welcome
Boris Johnson seemed less riveted than Mrs Clooney during a visit to PMQs
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Your support makes all the difference.Two busy celebrities found time to drop into the Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. One seemed wholly absorbed in the proceedings, watching closely as Harriet Harman interrogated David Cameron. That was George Clooney’s lawyer wife, Amal, sitting in the peers’ gallery, who was in town to press the case of the deposed Maldives president.
The other seemed if not actually bored, at least less riveted; occasionally chatting amiably to his neighbour, occasionally seemingly lost in his own thoughts, as he lurked conveniently near the door for a quick getaway. That was Boris Johnson.
But at least they both got into the room. Which 30 or so disability rights demonstrators – about a third in wheelchairs – did not. They were prevented by at least as many police from storming into the Commons chamber in protest at the scrapping of the independent living fund. The Met said that “one person and his carer” were ejected from the building for “disorderly behaviour”. Which ministers will hope won’t be repeated. Evicting people with mobility issues from the mother of parliaments is not great for business.
Inevitably, the cuts – and specifically to tax credits for those at work – were prominent on Ms Harman’s charge sheet. “Now I know the Right Honourable Gentleman does not have to budget, but many families do,” she taunted. She said that to compensate those who lost out, the minimum wage would have to go up by 25 per cent. “That isn’t going to happen is it?” she added, in what would become her refrain of the day.
Cameron isn’t denying that tax credits will be cut. But he isn’t really trying – so far, at least – to answer this line of attack. He isn’t denouncing abuse of the system. Or bashing employers for relying on government subsidy to top up parsimonious wages.
Ms Harman mocked claims that cutting tax credits would actually help workers in the long run, as employers hiked wages to fill the gap. “To compensate for the loss of tax credits, employers would have to put up pay overnight by twice what the Office for Budget Responsibility has said they will do over a full year. That is not going to happen, is it?”
Cameron’s reply was that when Greece teeters on the brink, we should learn the lessons. So tax credits will have to be cut to stop the country becoming Greece?
Earlier, Ms Harman raised the migrant crisis in Calais. British PMs never normally miss a chance to blame the French. But Cameron was all entente cordiale. As he flew off to Brussels in his quest for EU reform, was he calculating he might need some help from Paris in the coming months?
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