Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen, including David Cameron, Ed Balls and Nick Clegg addressing the British Chambers of Commerce conferenceEd Balls’ speech, Q&A and interviews - SummaryDavid Cameron’s speech - Summary and analysis 3.43pm GMT Nick Clegg is now taking questions.Q: What do you think we need to do to improve trade relations with Brazil? 3.34pm GMT Clegg says he wants one million more women to be in work by 2020 than today.We have started to crack the glass ceiling, but we are still a long way from smashing it.In Britain today, too many women find their talents are wasted.There is only so much government can do. If we are to stand a chance of smashing that glass ceiling we need British business to hold the hammer.My challenge to you is to embrace change. Embrace shared parental leave. Embrace flexible working. Close the gender pay gap. 3.29pm GMT Nick Clegg is addressing the BCC conference now.He starts by saying that, five years on from 2010, it is difficult to believe now that Britain could have suffered the same fate as Greece. 3.17pm GMT Ed Balls was on the World at One. He told the programme he had no idea what the diary clash was that meant Ed Miliband could not attend the BCC conference and he accused the presenter, Shaun Ley, of “scraping the barrel of trivia”.This is really scraping the barrel of trivia. Ed Miliband has spoken to the BCC twice in this Parliament, he spoke to the CBI a few months ago, he’s at the EEF in a few weeks’ time. I was there, as was Chuka Umunna, setting out a pro-wealth creation message, but pro-wealth creation which will change things so it works for working people. Now the Tories don’t want that debate, and they certainly don’t want to have a debate about HSBC or about their policies on Europe which are putting off investment and damaging jobs, so they are kind of making up these silly stories and I think you should know better. 2.50pm GMT Just for the sake of it, here’s Neil Kinnock’s “I warn you not to be ordinary” speech from the 1983 general election campaign. 2.43pm GMT Here are two interesting tweets on David Cameron’s speech.From the journalist James Maxwell. If Cameron wants a British Mittelstand, he might have to reconsider the Tory war on trade unions.If David Cameron thinks Britain needs a pay rise why does he insist on a public sector pay freeze?If higher wages were in firms’ individual interests, they would already have raised wages. If, on the other hand, they are in firms’ collective interests, we have a collective action problem. Even if each individual firm thought that it was in everyone’s interests to raise wages, it would not do so for fear that others would not follow with the result that it would have higher costs with no offsetting benefit in the form of higher demand or pro-business public opinion.In either of these cases, Cameron’s speech is pointless. If a pay rise is in firms’ individual interests, it would have raised pay already. And if it is in their collective interests, each firm needs more than words to convince them to raise pay. For this reason, serious advocates of higher pay, such as the TUC, have called (pdf) for policy measures to force pay up, such as stronger union rights, full employment policies or a higher minimum wage.If David Cameron continues his attacks on trade unions, then begging British businesses to award their workers a pay rise is about as useful as pointing to the sky and shouting ‘please don’t rain’ while simultaneously demolishing flood defences ...In the UK, figures from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills show private sector trade unions earn 7 per cent more than their non-unionised counterparts, while in the public sector union members earn nearly 20 per cent more. Research from the European Trade Union Institute suggests that organised workers, often led by trade unions who can negotiate pay increases together, are much more effective at standing up to bosses who tell them they can’t afford to give their staff a pay rise (often while awarding themselves a six or seven figure bonus for cutting costs). 2.22pm GMT At the lobby briefing this morning David Cameron’s spokeswoman said ministers did not know about alleged tax evasion at HSBC’s Swiss arm until details emerged at the weekend. This is from the Press Association.Labour has sought to step up pressure on ministers, demanding chancellor George Osborne explain whether HSBC’s former chairman and chief executive Lord Green was asked about the activities of the its Swiss subsidiary prior to his appointment as minister for trade. However a No 10 spokeswoman said neither Lord Green - who served as a coalition minister from 2011 to 2013 - nor any other member of the government had been aware of the allegations concerning wrongdoing by the bank. In 2011 HMRC boss Dave Hartnett said "whole nation" probably knew it had HSBC data http://t.co/i7ZVF6QxLx pic.twitter.com/f09hB6nKYh 2.06pm GMT Earlier this week YouGov’s Peter Kellner wrote an excellent analysis of Labour’s problem with business. He pointed out that, although voters largely agree with the party’s policy stance on business, they are suspicious of the party’s motives.Business leaders, and bankers above all, are unpopular with millions of voters. A landslide victory beckons for any party that can persuade voters that it understands business and would curb its excesses, yet at the same time work with well-run companies to build a fairer and more prosperous Britain.Miliband, together with Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, and Chuka Umunna, shadow business secretary, say that this describes Labour’s strategy exactly. The trouble is, voters don’t believe them. Like business leaders, they judge that Labour has moved to the Left, and that leading Labour politicians don’t really mean it when they say they are pro-business.When I see businesses on the move – expanding, succeeding – it quickens the pulse.Yes, of course, I like what it all means – but I also deeply admire the people who make it happen.I want to say something very frank. I’ve sat in parliament from 2001 to 2015.We need to think strategically about helping those small firms over the ‘valley of death’ funding gap so they can become medium firms - and the medium firms can become larger firms.As we see in countries like Germany, with their Mittelstand of strong, well-financed, medium-sized businesses – this is where a lot of the growth and jobs comes from ...I want Britain to have its own version of the German “Mittelstand” – a backbone of medium-sized firms which export, innovate, generate new jobs - and with our Help to Grow scheme, we will be there to back you.Here we are with a big business audience led by one of the most important business organisations in the country and they are not saying ‘don’t have a renegotiation, don’t have a referendum, just stick your head in the ground and hope this issue goes away’. They are saying it is quite right to have a strategy that gives Britain the best chance of staying in a reformed European union that works in our interest.I think the danger of the alternative to what I’m suggesting is that Britain would just steadily drift towards the exits of the EU because the British public would not be taken along for this very, very important decision.Within the public sector we have actually seen quite a lot of pay increases through progression, through people taking on new skills and talking on new tasks. And we have seen that take place, for instance in the NHS, so that people have had pay rises, in many cases year on year. 1.01pm GMT David Cameron’s Kinnock parody (see 12.31pm) has made it to the top of the World at One news. I guess that counts as “job done” for Cameron. Summary coming soon. 12.51pm GMT Labour claims it has won a victory over mesothelioma compensation.Gov have given in to @UKLabour re Mesothelioma comp & will boost tariff to 100% for those diagnosed after today http://t.co/wDuBQ9CM7k 12.39pm GMT Cameron says the trading relationship with Nigeria is really important. He wants to strengthen it, including by using the Nigerian diaspora in the UK.And that’s it. The Cameron speech is over. 12.32pm GMT Back to the Q&A.Q: Why are you telling business leaders to increase pay when public sector pay is not going up. That’s not fair. 12.31pm GMT And here’s the quote from Cameron where he parodied Neil Kinnock to attack Ed Miliband.A former party leader, back in the day, gave a famous warning.Let me update it – and change the party. 12.30pm GMT Here’s the quote from Cameron’s speech where he praised Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for being more pro-business than Ed Miliband.I want to say something very frank.I’ve sat in parliament from 2001 to 2015. 12.27pm GMT Q: Shouldn’t you be warning business that you might not get what you want on Europe, and that you might take the UK out of the EU by mistake?Cameron says he would not put it like that. 12.25pm GMT Cameron says if women are excluded from business, as his wife would say, more than half of talent is being excluded. 12.25pm GMT The lobby briefing is over. It looks as if the government is backing down over its Labour/HSBC allegations.Y'day, Tories say Ed Balls shd say what he knew about HSBC in 05. Today, No10 says no minister aware of wrongdoing at bank until this week. 12.23pm GMT Cameron is now taking questions.Q: What will you do to support exports? 12.20pm GMT Cameron says, when he shadowed Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, at least they agreed that business needed to be supported.But that consensus has been broken, he says. 12.18pm GMT Cameron says the next Conservative government would launch Help to Grow, a scheme to help small firms grow.This would help them through the “valley of death” they face as they try to get established, he says. 12.12pm GMT Cameron says the Conservatives would increase the amount of business rates that councils can keep. 12.09pm GMT Cameron says he has also taken steps to help firms export.The Foreign Office has been refocused on business promotion, he says. 12.09pm GMT Cameron says, in the next parliament, the Conservatives would always grow capital investment in line with GDP.The government has cut businesses taxes and cut regulation, he says. 12.06pm GMT Cameron says the government is putting in place the conditions that business needs to succeed. 12.04pm GMT David Cameron is speaking to the BCC now.He says when he sees businesses succeeding, “it quickens the pulse”. He admires business figures, he says. 12.03pm GMT Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Eurosceptic group, Business for Britain, says Ed Balls did not sound as if he thinks Labour will win the election..@edballsmp opening jokes re @BBCNewsnight were good, but he doesn't come across a man expecting to be Chancellor in 88 days time #BCCConf 11.50am GMT Ed Balls even found time to comment on Christopher Hope’s tie.Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls to me: "Even Gordon Brown wouldn't wear that tie." What's wrong with it? pic.twitter.com/4TchbK7wax 11.49am GMT After his speech and Q&A, Ed Balls gave interviews to BBC News and Sky. Here are the key points he’s been making.Here’s the full text of the Balls speech.In the end what happens in Europe is people have to decide are you serious, or are you just playing politics. And if our European partners conclude we’re not actually in there for the long-term, trying to win those arguments and find that place for Britain, they will give up on us. And the lesson of European politics is, you never walk out of summits. You don’t go back to your parliament and slag off your European partners. You don’t let them think that in the end you’ve given up, and that you’re thinking about leaving, because if that happens, then you lose influence, and your lose your ability to win arguments. That is what is happening at the moment for Britain. I hear from business people, from the City and more widely all the time, we are being listened to less than we were before. And that is really dangerous. The fact this is evidence of law breaking, of tax evasion and advice to people to avoid tax which first came to the attention of government in 2010. Now, George Osborne can try and divert attention away. The fact is, he was the chancellor when that information came to HMRC. And what did he do? And why did he and David Cameron, after that, make teh boss of HSBC a minister in the government. Now their accusation seems to me that, while the guy who was in charge of the whole bank, Mr Green, did not know about it in 2007, government ministers in the last Labour government somehow should have done, even though the evidence hadn’t been presented to government at all. It’s a preposterous claim and I think most people have seen it for what it is: an attempt to divert attention from a failure on behalf of the government. I have to say, simply telling people they’ve never had it so good will only make working people feel that politicians are out of touch with the reality of their lives.After years of kicking this into the long grass, we will make a swift decision to expand airport capacity in the south-east, while taking into account environmental concerns, when the Davies report is complete.I believe in the power of markets and incentives to create wealth and good jobs. But I know too that markets don’t, by themselves, deliver the long-term investment in ideas, skills and infrastructure that modern economies need. 11.03am GMT In his question to Ed Balls (see 10.55am), Nick Robinson said Lord Mandelson had warned today that Labour must not be seen as anti-business.As the BBC reports, this is what Mandelson actually said.You must never use language or even body language, let alone what you say, that creates the impression that you are for or against any section of society of the economy. We need people working together, there has to be a collaboration between business and government, between politicians and entrepreneurs. 10.58am GMT The speech and the Q&A were over.The speech was solid, but unremarkable, but the Q&A was good. Balls’ answer to the first question (see 10.55am) was particularly strong. I’ll post a summary shortly. 10.55am GMT Balls is now taking questions.Q: What is your backup strategy if you do not get EU reform? 10.43am GMT Balls confirms Labour’s support for the mansion tax. He does not expect people to celebrate paying another £250 a month, he says. But raising this money for the NHS is necessary, he says. 10.40am GMT Balls is now setting out the features of Labour’s industrial policy. The party is committed to expanding airport capacity in the south east, and it will make a swift decision on responding to the Davies Commission recommendations, subject to environmental concerns, he says.And he confirms that Labour would block a proposed further cut in corporation tax, so that it could use the money to cut business rates for small businesses. 10.35am GMT Balls says people are not seeing the advantages of economic recovery.Working people are now £1600 a year worse off since 2010. This is set to be the first time since the 1920s when working people are worse off at the end of the Parliament than they were at the beginning. So at a time when, even as our economy recovers, most people are not yet seeing the benefit in their wages and living standards, this is no time for complacency. 10.32am GMT Ed Balls is now speaking at the BCC conference.He says he hopes the politicians addressing the conference today will not offer partisanship and sloganeering, but constructive ideas about the country’s economic future. 10.25am GMT Labour is keeping up the pressure on the government over the HSBC tax avoidance revelations. Shabana Mahmood, the shadow Treasury minister, has written an open letter to George Osborne, the chancellor, with a series of “Who knew what when?” questions.Here’s an extract.Lord Stephen Green was chairman of HSBC 2006-2010 and was appointed a Conservative peer in September 2010 and then as trade minister by David Cameron in January 2011.Given that, as the financial secretary said yesterday, the government was made aware of allegations of wrongdoing against HSBC in May 2010, eight months before Mr Green’s appointment to government, failure to ask probing questions would have to be seen as wilfully negligent. As chairman of the Bank, Mr Green would either have been aware of malpractice or, if not, surely questions would arise as to why not and his fitness for such a senior government post of trade minister. 10.17am GMT Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has not given his speech to the BCC yet, but Labour has released some extracts from his speech already.Like John Longworth, the BCC director general (see 9.40am), Balls agrees that “uncertainty” about Britain’s future in Europe is bad for business. But Balls says it is Tory policies that are generating this.To walk away from Europe - our biggest trading market - would be a disaster for Britain ...Britain walking out of the EU is the biggest risk to our economy in the next decade. EU exit risks British jobs, trade and investment and the future prosperity of the UK.Every comment by senior cabinet ministers saying they would be happy or relaxed to see us walk out, and every hint that a referendum could happen as early as next year - before any meaningful reform agenda could be achieved - only adds to the uncertainty and risk for British businesses.Britain must lead the debate for reform in the EU. Banging the table for change and for the EU to work better for Britain. But not flirting with exit and putting party interest above the national economic interest.Pro-business, but not business as usual. Promoting competition, not turning a blind eye to bad practice. Supporting wealth creation, but making sure everyone pays their fair share. 9.47am GMT My colleague Owen Bowcott has filed a story on the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling on prisoner voting. Here’s an excerpt.The coalition government is not planning to take any further action on prisoner voting before the general election in May 2015. Conservative policy, if the party wins the election, will be to treat judgments from the ECHR merely as advisory. It has threatened to withdraw from the European convention on human rights if the Strasbourg court is unwilling to agree to its approach. 9.40am GMT John Longworth, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, was on the Today programme earlier. He has also given an interview to the Financial Times (subscription). Here are the key points he has been making.We’ve done business surveys over a long period of time. Our members say they want a referendum. There is, obviously, a debate about the referendum at the moment, it’s in the political agenda and creating uncertainty, so if we are going to have a referendum, we ought to do it quickly. If the Labour party are elected, of course, who do not want a referendum, they will be under huge pressure to have one, which will create uncertainty. We have to come to a conclusion on these things and move on.Uncertainty is bad for business, and as long as uncertainty continues, that will not be a good thing. If parties are under pressure to have a referendum and it’s not clear whether they are going to give in or not, that in itself creates uncertainty.Our members overwhelmingly want to stay within the European Union trading bloc. They also do not want to join the eurozone, and they do not want any further integration. Those things have to be reconciled. We would be in a bad position if we were in Europe, but all the decisions were made for and by the eurozone.Without true reform, business support for the European project is far from guaranteed. A new settlement for Britain in Europe is essential to achieving our economic ambitions - helping our businesses succeed here at home, and across the world. As I go around the country and the economy picks up I see businesses giving pay rises. It helps spread the benefits of economic growth. I’m expecting to see increasing wage rises. Do you know what it is? No? Exactly. Neither do I. They have done a lot of things, the current government, which have been pro-enterprise but we don’t really know what the plan is for the next parliament. 9.19am GMT The Press Association has just snapped this.The rights of 1,015 UK prisoners were breached when they were prevented from voting in elections, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. 9.09am GMT The Press Association has filed a useful Q&A on David Cameron’s call for firms to give their workers a pay rise. Here it isWhat is happening to wages? Annual pay growth outpaced inflation for the third month in a row in November, with the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics showing that average earnings increased by 1.7% in the year to November, up by 0.3% on the previous month. 8.58am GMT Westminster is paying homage to business today. It’s the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) annual conference, and David Cameron, Ed Balls and Nick Clegg are among the senior politicians speaking at the busy event. The full programme is here.As Downing Street revealed overnight, Cameron will urge business leaders to give workers a pay rise.Put simply – it’s time Britain had a pay rise ...Now that your costs are falling and it’s cheaper to do business – I’m confident that more businesses will pass on that good economic news to their workers, in rising pay cheques and higher earnings.We need to bring the referendum date forward because two and a half years of uncertainty isn’t good for growth and investment. It should be no more than 12 months after the general election. Continue reading...
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