A Commons committee report warns that multibillion pound plans to give every secondary school a makeover could be hit by lesser corporate interest in private finance initiative deals

Schools will be forced to tighten their belts as the government diverts spending to tackle the recession, MPs warn today. The government's promise to rebuild every secondary school in the country at the cost of nearly £45bn could be one of the first major casualties, the new report from the commons select committee for children, schools and families suggests. The Building Schools for th...

Much is still being made of the long Commons recess, and rightly so. Another day, another household name goes into administration, and our MPs are still on their jollies when they should be holding the government to account. The government's response to the Israeli/Hamas conflict is something MPs should also be debating. Not that I am criticising MPs. Some may say I am simply playing party po...

The London Evening Standard's Paul Waugh is reporting that Spelman will be cleared of wrong doing over her taxpayer funded nanny. If as sources claim the Lyon inquiry reports that there is no evidence of deliberate wrongdoing or a breach of Commons rules Cameron will not sack her from the Shadow Cabinet. This will infuriate many parents who have to pay for childcare out of post-tax income, to pay ...

It's not often you see a look of genuine shock on a politician's face. I saw it on the well-fed countenance of Chris - now Lord - Patten as he strode across the Lobby of the House of Commons one afternoon in October, 1989. He was Environment Secretary at the time and the shock had been occasioned not by some environmental disaster but by the fact he had just been told the Chancellor of t...

LibDem MP Lorely Burt is having data security issues for, errrm, "technical reasons". The reason being she emailed her password to everyone: From: BURT, Lorely Sent: 29 December 2008 08:59 To: Commons Members Staff Subject: Change of password Apologies for the previous email you have received in error. It was from a brainless MP (ie myself) trying to set up an email group. Please ignore the conten...

Former UK ministers are exploiting their inside knowledge of government for profit with 'impunity' and attempts at self-regulation have failed, warns the Commons public administration committee

Former ministers can exploit loose and ambiguous guidelines on lobbying to cash in "with impunity" on their inside knowledge of Westminster, a Commons committee warns.

Gordon Brown's lament to Andrew Marr this morning that he had been "pleading with people to have an early warning system for the world economy", and not for the past 10 months, either, but for the past 10 years, was doubtless a reference to speeches like this, made a full decade ago in the House of Commons. He told MPs then: "And the new way forward for this new era is sensible global financi...

It could happen to anyone of us. We are coming back from shopping, get out of a taxi laden down with bags and lose our wallet. Culture Secretary, James Purnell was lucky to get everything back including his cash, credit cards and debit cards. He was lucky too that his House of Commons pass was handed into the local police as well. It could well have been used to gain access to sensitive areas of g...