Ahead of the release of the Leveson report tomorrow, today’s PMQs was a nervy, ill-tempered affair. Ed Miliband devoted all six of his questions to the government’s troubled Work Programme, declaring that David Cameron “got rid of a Labour programme that was working [the Future Jobs Fund] and replaced it with a Tory one that isn’t”. The facts were on Miliband’s side. As he pointed out, just 2.3 per cent of those referred found a job for six months or more in the first year of the scheme. While the Future Jobs Fund helped 120,000 people into work, the Work Programme has helped just 3,000 people. And, since June 2011, long-term unemployment has risen by 96 per cent, a stat that Cameron, unable to refute, simply ignored.
But this wasn’t quite the resounding victory that it should have been for Miliband. In a reference to yesterday’s tempestuous cabinet meeting, he declared that ministers were “at each other like rats in a sack”, to which Cameron artfully replied, “he worked in a government where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor couldn’t even be in the same room as each other.” The Labour leader’s stop-start delivery (pausing to tell Tory MPs to “calm down” at one point) meant his final question lacked force. But Cameron’s boilerplate response – “we’re putting the country back to work, their party wrecked it” – suggested a man who had given up winning the argument.
In response to questions on Leveson (most of which came from Tory MPs concerned about press freedom), Cameron, who received a copy of the report today, emphasised the need for an “independent regulatory system in which the public can have confidence” but said nothing to suggest that he favours statutory regulation. He later added that “whatever the changes we make, we want a robust and a free press in this country”. Miliband echoed Cameron’s hope of reaching an all-party consensus, speaking of a “once in a generation opportunity for real change”. But while Labour won’t receive a copy of the report until tomorrow, Nick Clegg, like Cameron, already has one. In the event that consensus proves elusive, Clegg has approached the Speaker about the possibility of a separate Commons statement tomorrow.
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