Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen
10.33am: You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's papers, are here.
As for the rest of the papers, here are some stories and articles that are particularly interesting.
• Tony Blair tells the Financial Times in an interview (subscription) that Germany should rescue the euro.
Tony Blair has delivered a stark warning of a popular backlash against austerity policies in the eurozone ahead of this Sunday's re-run election in Greece.
"You look at what the Greeks are being asked to accept: it's beyond tough," Mr Blair said in an interview with the Financial Times in Jerusalem.
The former long-standing UK prime minister, a self-professed pro-European, said the risk of unrest applied to Europe as a whole. "In the end, what people will ask is: 'Is the single currency worth it if that's what we're being asked to accept'."
Mr Blair's said the remedy should be a "grand bargain" between Germany and the rest of Europe to rescue the single currency. This would involve a pooling of European debt and a new push for growth, matched by deficit reduction through pension and welfare reforms.
• Anushka Asthana in the Times (paywall) says George Osborne is being urged to abandon his plans to put VAT on repairs to listed buildings.
George Osborne is facing further revolt over his budget from countryside, heritage and building groups who warn that he will inflict serious damage on Britain's "finest and most loved buildings".
Fifteen organisations, including the Federation of Master Builders, Countryside Alliance and Historic Towns Forum, have written to The Times urging a U-turn on the decision to levy VAT on alterations to listed properties.
They are furious about Treasury claims that one aim of the policy is to tackle an "anomaly" through which millionaires can install swimming pools without paying VAT because they own an historic home.
The groups have looked at more than 12,000 applications for alterations and found that just 34 related to swimming pools. They say that half of people who live in listed buildings are in lower socioeconomic groups, C1, C2, D, and E.
• Steve Richards in the Independent says Tony Blair was told before the 2005 election that the Sun would not support Labour unless he offered a referendum on the EU referendum.
Brown should have admitted his round-the-clock interest in the media; it would have reinforced his argument about the recklessness of some newspapers. He had cause to be obsessed. More to the point, he was not alone. One of Murdoch's senior intermediaries described to me his discussions with Blair over whether the Labour government would offer a referendum on the proposed EU constitution as being like a "negotiation". The senior intermediary made clear to Blair that The Sun would not endorse Labour unless the referendum was offered. Blair told me in January 2005 that he knew The Sun would be backing Labour, five months before the election took place. I assume his confidence was based on the "negotiation". Blair once told me that dealing with the media was like sharing a flat with a demented tenant.
• Bernard Hogan-Howe, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, says in an article in the Times (paywall) says the government's draft communications bill is no more intrusive than existing legislation.
Gaining access to communications data is no longer a sophisticated means of gathering evidence. Just as mobile phones, e-mail and social media have become part of our lives, so this kind of work has become part of daily policing.
Already some forms of data are not available to us. This will only get worse if changes are not made. We must preserve our ability to make use of this vital intelligence and evidence.
I fully support public debate about this issue and understand concerns about privacy. That's why I think it is really important to be clear: I do not see this proposed legislation as being more intrusive than the laws we currently have. Police already have access to communications data; the problem is that for some services it is not currently collected and stored by the service provider.
10.31am: Here's the start of the Press Association story about the opening of David Cameron's evidence to the Leveson inquiry.
David Cameron has long-held views about media regulation in the UK formed when he worked for a major commercial broadcaster in the 1990s, he told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards today.
As he began his evidence under oath at the Royal Courts of Justice, the prime minister said his seven years as corporate affairs director at Carlton "was quite a formative period".
The Tory leader has submitted an 84-page witness statement and three exhibits to the inquiry and will be questioned about them in an all-day session.
Asked about his time in television before quitting for a political career, he said: "Carlton was quite a formative period.
"I formed a lot of views about the media then which I still hold today."
He said he also formed relations with many journalists at that time, though those with Westminster media were forged more in his previous role as a ministerial special adviser.
In that role, he said, he acted as both a "mouthpiece" for his home secretary and chancellor bosses and as a "sponge", meeting people the minister did not have time to see.
Asked if he ever gave his own opinions rather than representing those of the minister, he said: "On occasion, I am sure I would have made clear to people my own views about something."
Pressed on whether he would have made clear that he was not speaking the mind of his political boss, he replied: "I would hope so."
10.04am: David Cameron is giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry now.
You can follow the proceedings on our Leveson live blog.
9.33am: Theresa May (pictured), the home secretary, has also been giving interviews this morning. She has been talking about the draft communications bill being published later and she insists this "isn't about snooping". According to PoliticsHome, this is what she told Sky News.
This is about purely having access to the, sort of, who, when and where of these [internet] communications. It's not about listening to or looking at the content of what anybody's saying in these communications. Looking at that content will still require warrants and that still requires warrants to come up to the secretary of state, but this is about merely maintaining an ability that the police and others have at the moment to be able to have access to the same sort of data they've got at the moment, same information they've got they can use in prosecuting cases and stopping terrorists, but making sure that it can cover those new means of communication.
But David Davis, the Tory backbencher, told the Today programme that the plans would not affect experienced criminals.
The only people who will avoid this, avoid being covered by this, are the actually criminals because they are always around this. You use a pre-paid phone, you use an internet cafe to hack into somebody's wi-fi. You use what is called proxy servers, and those are just the easy ways. There are harder ways too and you know actually the 7/7 bombers went round it. Organised criminals go round it. Organised paedophile rings go round it. What this will catch is the innocent and the incompetent.
9.27am: According to the Daily Mirror's James Lyons on Twitter, Mark Hoban is giving the banking statement in the Commons, not George Osborne. I'll amend the running order I posted earlier.
9.24am: David Cameron has put out a statement today to mark the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the Falkland Islands. Here's an extract.
Our resolve to support the Falkland Islanders has not wavered in the last thirty years and it will not in the years ahead. For the last 180 years, ten generations have called the Falkland Islands home and have strived hard to secure a prosperous future for their children. And despite the aggressive threats from over the water, they are succeeding. The Falklands economy is growing, the fishing industry is thriving and tourism is flourishing. Next year's referendum will establish the definitive choice of the Falkland Islanders once and for all. And just as we have stood up for the Falkland Islanders in the past, so we will in the future.
9.11am: Iain Duncan Smith (pictured), the work and pensions secretary, was on the Today programme this morning defending his plan to change the way poverty is defined. I've taken the quote from PoliticsHome.
The key thing is what we don't measure with [relative poverty], and this is why we're launching the consultation today. If you just measure the relative income levels, you know nothing about what actually happened to the families. What we're after understands what actually happened to those families. Let's take, for example, a family which has drug addiction problems. We give them more money and they, according to the relative income levels, go above the poverty level. But in actual fact that family probably lives in some real difficulty because the parents, who are on drugs, don't spend the money on their children.
Across the board, health, early intervention, dysfunctional families, whether they're in work or out of work, these are figures that are not looked at or tracked in the poverty figures. So, we're simply saying in the consultation, income matters, we're not departing from the idea of measuring income, but we are saying far better if we also now look at other measurements to let us know whether there's a life change taking place. The key thing is you attack poverty by knowing that what you do changes the lives of those people, so that they move on and out of poverty and sustain that.
My Guardian colleague Tom Clark was listening, and he has used Twitter to challenge Duncan Smith on three points.
9.00am: I'm pretty sure that Winston Churchill never had to put up with the impertinence of being grilled by a public inquiry when he was prime minister, but these days it's almost part of the job and today David Cameron is doing his turn in the Leveson hot seat. The Daily Mail has got some colourful detail about the amount of preparation he's been doing.
Mr Cameron has been using two government lawyers, paid for by the taxpayer, to prepare for his appearance at the Leveson inquiry.
Downing Street sources said the Prime Minister has taken advice from the Treasury Solicitor Paul Jenkins, the head of the Government Legal Service, and from a leading QC.
Mr Cameron has been involved in three hours of intensive mock cross-examination over the last two days, effectively war-gaming his appearance before Lord Justice Leveson.
Tory sources have revealed that Andrew Feldman, the Prime Minister's close friend from university and co-chairman of the Tory Party, has been playing the role of Robert Jay, the chief counsel for the inquiry.
Lawyers have spent dozens of hours compiling a written statement for Mr Cameron and details of his meetings with media executives. But despite reports, senior government sources insisted that the experts have not been involved in personally 'prepping' Mr Cameron.
I'll be keeping an eye on Cameron at Leveson, although for full coverage you should read our Leveson live blog.
Otherwise, it's quite busy. Here's the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The Office for National Statistics releases poverty statistics.
9.30am: Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, gives a speech on poverty. As Patrick Wintour reports, he will take the first steps to downgrade the Labour government's commitment to eradicate child poverty in 2020 by announcing that he is to publish a green paper looking at a range of new non-income indicators of poverty.
10am: David Cameron gives evidence to the Leveson inquiry. You can follow the proceedings on our Leveson live blog.
10am: Michael Gove, the education secretary, gives a speech at the National College for School Leadership conference.
10am: Vince Cable gives a speech on infrastructure at a Reform conference.
11.30am: Theresa May, the home secretary, publishes the draft communications bill, which contains plans to extend internet surveillance. As Alan Travis reports, the draft legislation will say that the government will pay internet and phone firms so that they can track everyone's email, Twitter, Facebook and other internet use.
Around 12.30pm: Mark Hoban, a Treasury minister, will make a statement in the Commons on the government's plans for banking reform.
As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and another in the afternoon.
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