8.31am: Today police officers are going to find how their pay and conditions may be cut. Tom Winsor is going to publish his report recommending savings and Theresa May, the home secretary, has already said that she wants to cut take-home pay to save jobs. But there are plenty of other stories around too. Here's a full list.

9.15am: Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, and Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, will announce a plan for green apprenticeships.

10.15am: Executives from British Airways and the British Airports Authority give evidence to the Commons transport committee about the impact of the winter snow on airline travel.

10.30am: Tom Winsor publishes his review of police pay and conditions.

10.45am: David Gill, the Manchester United chief executive, gives evidence to the Commons culture committee on football governance.

11.15am: Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, gives evidence to the Commons health committee on GP commissioning.

12pm: The Police Federation gives its response to the Winsor review at a briefing.

12.30pm: Damian Green, the immigration minister, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee on the impact of possible Turkish accession to EU.

2pm: William Hague gives a news conference with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

3pm: Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, will speak at the Age UK conference. As Patrick Wintour reports in the Guardian today, he will signal his commitment to bringing in a flat-rate state pension worth more than £140 a week.

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.

8.47am: Paul McKeever, the chairman of the Police Federation, has been giving interviews this morning ahead of the publication of the Winsor review of police pay and conditions. I have not heard him yet but, according to the accounts on PoliticsHome, he sounds furious. Here are some of the points he has been making.

• McKeever said that the police were being treated unfairly compared to other parts of the public sector.

We keep asking the government why is it that they're giving police such a low priority ... We're facing a cut which is three times that which is being experienced in defence so it looks like the government have been very unfair, contrary to what David Cameron's been saying about fairness in the public domain.

• He said officers were "absolutely fed up and demoralised" because of the prospect of cuts.



I know that some in government have never had to pay a mortgage so they don't understand what it is to live on a budget but for many officers it's going to mean them losing their homes, not being able to put heating on. That's the reality for people out there and they're very angry and very upset by a government that's out of touch.

• He accused the government of perpetuating myths about police pay and conditions.

Police officers are very angry about the spin and negative stories that are coming out from the Home Office ... They're selecting some very isolated examples to try and taint a very proud police service which is highly regarded and respected across the world ... Some of these stories are patently false.

8.55am: Yesterday the new CBI director general, John Cridland, was surprisingly lukewarm about David Cameron's pro-enterprise speech at the weekend. Cridland said that he wanted to ensure that the action lived up to the words. This morning David Kern, the chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, said virtually the same thing on BBC Breakfast when he was asked about ministers' plans to cut regulation on business. According to PoliticsHome, this is what Kern said:

[Ministers] all said the right things but at the moment there is still a gap between words and action. We hope that the budget will remove the gap. We want a budget for growth. We think that they must accept, and in their vocabulary they have accepted, that this economy must be driven by the private sector. Now we want to see action, we want a whole sweep of regulations to be removed.

9.06am: The Department for Energy and Climate Change has published its draft "Carbon Plan". It explains how the government plans to cut carbon emissions. "This Carbon Plan sets out a vision of a changed Britain, powered by cleaner energy used more efficiently in our homes and businesses, with more secure energy supplies and more stable energy prices, and benefiting from the jobs and growth that a low carbon economy will bring," David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne say in a joint statement quoted in the news release.

9.18am: In the Commons yesterday William Hague failed dismally to explain why the MI6/SAS team sent to Libya decided to land by helicopter at night, instead of just turning up at the rebel HQ in office hours, in the way that journalists have been doing. But Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent, has got the answer. On the Today programme he said that the team were carrying "sensitive communications equipment" and that they did not want everyone in Benghazi to see it. Gardner said he does not know whether the equipment was for the rebels, or to establish a link with British assets in Libya. He also explained why the team got arrested. The British had been in contact with the rebels before they arrived. But, when they arrived, they were caught by a different group of rebels who did not know they were coming. It was "a complete mess-up" said Gardner. You can listen to Gardner's report on the Today website; it's in the second half of this 4min 22sec clip.

9.32am: For the record, here are the latest YouGov GB polling figures.

Labour: 42% (up 12 points since the general election)

Conservatives: 36% (down 1)

Lib Dems: 9% (down 15)

Labour lead: 6 points

Government approval: -29

That seems to be the lowest government approval rating from YouGov since the election.

There's also a Populus poll in the Times (paywall). Here are the figures.

Labour: 41%

Conservatives: 35%

Lib Dems: 11%

Labour lead: 6 points

10.09am: Tom Winsor is due to publish his report on police pay and conditions in about 20 minutes.

If you are looking for some background, the House of Commons produced a useful 20-page briefing note on police pay earlier this month.

10.22am: YouGov have done a new poll on the alternative vote. Using the question that will be asked in the referendum, they find 33% in favour of AV and 30% opposed. But 30% don't know, which means the contest is wide open.

10.29am: Here's Nick Herbert, the policing minister, responding to Paul McKeever's complaints about the government's plans to curb police pay. (See 8.47am.)

We have to deal with the deficit, and police forces can and must make savings, focusing on back and middle office functions like IT and procurement so that frontline services can be protected. But when three-quarters of force budgets goes on pay, reform of pay and conditions is also essential to protect police jobs and keep officers on the streets.

10.34am: The Press Assocation has just put out this about the Winsor report into police pay.

Skilled police officers working unsocial shifts should be paid up to £2,000 more than at the moment, the most wide-ranging review of their pay and conditions in 30 years said today.

But former rail regulator Tom Winsor's review said officers in the middle and back-office roles may lose up to £3,000 a year in allowances.

Only 57% of officers regularly work unsocial hours, the report said.

10.43am: The Winsor report has just been released to MPs in the Commons. It's 323 pages long and it's on my desk. I'll get the highlights up as soon as I can.

10.45am: Here's some more from the Press Association report on the Winsor recommendations.

• Paying some officers up to £2,000 a year more, and cutting allowances for officers in middle and back-office roles by up to £3,000 would save £485m over three years, including up to £60m in the annual overtime budget.

• All chief officer and superintendent bonuses should be suspended and £1,212 competence-related threshold payment should be scrapped, along with the "discredited" special priority payments of up to £5,000.



• Only those officers who actually work unsocial hours should be paid for doing so.



• Those working between 8pm and 6am should get an extra 10% on their basic hourly pay.

10.50am: And here's Tom Winsor on what his recommendations would achieve.

These recommendations will allow the police to provide a more efficient, economical and effective service to the public while providing officers and staff with a fairer deal. People should be paid for what they do and how well they do it and the service needs modern management tools to operate with the greatest efficiency and economy in a time of considerable national financial pressure and restraint.

10.51am: The Winsor report says police officers are "comparatively" well remunerated, with pay 10-15% higher than other emergency workers and the armed forces.

10.57am: I'm still ploughing through the summary, and I'll post a full account of it when I can, but I've already discovered something unexpected. If there is a pay freeze in the police, pay does not actually get frozen. That is because officers and some staff automaticallly progress up the pay scale.



For example, if pay progression were to continue, a police constable with seven years' service would cumulatively receive an additional £4,143 between September 2011 and 2013, irrespective of the pay freeze. It is estimated that this factor alone would cost the police service approximately £257m from September 2011 to 2013.

11.04am: Tom Winsor says that his plan would cut £1.1bn from the police budget over three years. He says that would save the taxpayer £485m, because he recommends that the rest - another £635m - should be reinvested.

11.12am: Here's another interesting factoid from the Winsor report. He says that 9% of police pay is theoretically a payment for working anti-social hours, even though 43% of officers now work office hours. Winsor says the "logical, but quite brutal" step would be just to take this away from officers who do not work anti-social shifts. But he accepts this would be unfair, because officers rely on this money and most of them are "quite unaware" that it constitutes an anti-social hours allowance.

11.22am: I'm reading the section of the summary dealing with police bonuses now. Winsor says the police service has "not been successful" at finding a fair way of rewarding good performance. For example, officers can get a competence related threshold payment, he says. When this was introduced, it was expected that 75% of officers would qualify. But 98% of officers actually receive it.

In my view, such a high acceptance rate is unlikely to be a reliable reflection of the almost universal outstanding competence of police officers, and is more likely to be a reflection of a degree of management timidity or neglect in the assessment of performance.

11.31am: This is what Tom Winsor says about winners and losers.

• At least two out of five officers would lose out under the report's recommendations. The officers who do worst could lose between £3,000 and £4,000.



• Those officers who do best could gain between £1,500 and £2,000.

11.38am: The full Winsor report is now available on the review's website (pdf).

And the Home Office has published Theresa May's response on its website. May is just saying she will consider the recommendations "very carefully". As the Home Office explains, May has to consult the police negotiating board if she wants to accept the proposals.

11.58am: Nick Robinson and Michael White have both written blogs this morning about the dangers the government faces taking on the police.

Here's an extract from the White blog.

I get jittery when I see a government taking on the police alongside everyone else. It is not a mistake Margaret Thatcher made in the turbulent 80s. Her complaint – the old Tory jibe – that Labour tries to solve problems "by throwing money at them" was not applied by her to the boys in blue. The result was that when they confronted striking miners in the long battle of 1984-85, the coppers waved their overtime slips at the strikers. There was no question of where their loyalty lay, or that of all but the most fastidious of police chiefs: with their duty to uphold the law against disorder and a reckless, desperate and doomed strike. How strong is that feeling now, I wonder? The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) is the publicly funded private body that drew up today's 28,000 job-loss estimate from its 43 member forces in England and Wales. Acpo is getting its wings clipped in the wake of its costly and improper undercover police exercise that saw officers penetrate green protest movements and a number of their women members.

And here's an extract from the Robinson blog.



Remember that the Sheehy Report into cutting police perks was seen off in the 1990s. Ken Clarke who had taken on and beaten the nurses and the ambulance drivers met his match when faced by the boys in blue. Remember Jacqui Smith who faced a police march and protests at her home when she refused to backdate a police pay award.

In a moment I'll post a summary with all the key points from the Winsor report on one post.

12.11pm: Tom Winsor, the former rail regulator, has published his part one of his "independent review of police officer and staff remuneration and conditions". It runs to 323 pages and its recommendations are likely to have a significant effect on police officers and their civilian colleagues in England and Wales. Here are the key points.

• Police pay needs to be reformed because it is based on system devised 33 years ago, Winsor says. The job has changed significantly since then, he says. One key change is that civilian staff, who were only present in small numbers in 1978 (when Lord Edmund-Davies's inquiry reviewed police pay) now account for 36% of the police workforce. But he also says that the need to cut the budget deficit is one factor behind the review.



• The police are no longer underpaid. Their pay scales are typically 10 to 15% higher than other public sector workers and in some regions they are paid 60% more than median local earnings.

• Overall, the reforms would "concentrate the highest pay on the front line and more demanding roles in the police service". Winsor says he found "signficant resentments" within forces because the current system means that officers who work office hours benefit from extra pay that was supposed to reward people working anti-social hours.

• Some extra payments would be abolished. These include competence-related threshold payments (which are supposed to reward good performance, but actually go to everyone) and special priority payments, that can be worth up to £5,000 a year.

• Bonuses for senior officers would be suspended.

• Officers would be stopped from getting automatic pay increases for the next two years. Although the government is already committed to a pay freeze, this would not freeze the pay bill because officers automatically move up the pay scale for their rank every year. Winsor says progression up the pay scale should be suspended for two years.

• Various overtime payment rates would be cut.

• Chief constables would be given more power to vary the shifts that officers work. They would only have to "consult" on proposed changes, instead of having to "agree" them with officers as they do now.

• Officers up to the level of chief inspector should receive an extra 10% for working after 8pm or before 6am. This should be paid on an hourly basis.

• A new expertise and professional accreditation allowance worth £1,200 would be paid to most detectives and officers with expertise in firearms, public order and neighbourhood policing.

• Overall, at least 40% of officers would lose out. Those who fare worst would lose between £3,000 and £4,000 a year. Some officers would gain up to £2,000 a year.

• Police forces should be able to offer voluntary redundancy payments. But Winsor says there is no need to change the rule saying that officers with less than 30 years' service cannot be given compulsory redundancy.

• Overall, the recommendations would save £71m in 2011-12, £197m in 2012-13 and £217m in 2013-14. The figures for gross savings are higher, but some of the recommendations, like 10% higher pay for working anti-social hours, would cost extra money, and so the net savings add up to a total of £485m over three years.

• Winsor has said that his second report, which is due out in June, will propose simplifying the system of pay scales. He complains that at the moment one officer at a certain rank can be earning £13,000 more than someone else on the same rank because of pay differentials.

• Nick Herbert, the police minister, has said that "in principle" he likes what Winsor is saying about reforming police pay. Ministers did not see the recommendations in advance and, in her comment, Theresa May just committed herself to studying the proposals. But, in the light of what May has said about the need to curb police power, she is bound to want to take the recommendations forward.

1.10pm: Here's a lunchtime summary.

• The Police Federation has claimed that the pay reforms proposed today will make the policing an "extremely unattractive profession". "This is a major, major turning point for policing in this country," Paul McKeever, the federation chairman, told a news conference following the publication of Tom Winsor's proposal for reform of police pay. Some 40% of officers would lose out under the proposals, with some people losing up to £4,000 a year, although other officers could gain by up to £2,000. Nick Herbert, the policing minister, has said that he likes the proposals "in principle", but the Home Office is going to study the report in detail before it provides a substantive response. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has complained that the police are being hit harder than other public services. (See 12.11pm for full details of the report.)

• David Gill, the Manchester United chief executive, has told the Commons culture committee that the club's debt does not affect what it does. Asked about the £500m debt, he said: "We've seen good growth in the last five years in terms of our turnover. From my perspective, we know it's there, but we try to invest in the business to make sure we can continue to expand and be successful. We know that the debt is there but it doesn't impact what we do."

1.54pm: I got sidetracked by the Winsor report when I was going through the papers earlier today and so I did not post my usual round-up. But here are a couple of articles worth noting.

• David Miliband in the Times (paywall) explains why he thinks leftwing parties are losing all over Europe.

Historically the market was seen to leave people defenceless and stranded, while the role of the State was to redistribute power, through the vote, and then through rights and services. But the very success of social democrats in extending the role of government in tackling injustice has become a stick with which it is beaten; it has made the State more vulnerable to the charge that it is a powerful but incompetent ogre. This is how the financial crisis was turned against the Left. It has also been on the back foot in fostering a modern sense of belonging ... When left-of-centre parties fight elections as private sector reformers, in the name of efficiency and not just fairness, they can win. When they make government an ally in wealth creation and a defence against the abuse of private power, they turn the Right's antipathy to government on its head. It means reclaiming the language and substance of community. When we fight elections as public sector innovators as well as private sector reformers, we live out our origins as people wary of state power as well as market power. We shouldn't be afraid of the Big Society; we should claim it for our own and show how we can build it better.

• Rachel Sylvester in the Times (paywall) says Nick Clegg would like the Royal Family to modernise.

There is a growing desire in government to "clarify" the Royal Family's role. Nick Clegg will consider whether changes are needed as part of his shake up of how Britain is governed. "As the constitution of the country goes through the next stage of evolution, the idea of a constitutional monarchy will have to go through that evolution too," an aide says. "What we want is a monarchy that is modernising, in line with the modernisation of the country. There's a degree of keeping pace required."

2.55pm: Here's an afternoon reading list.

• Nick Pearce at the IPPR says David Cameron has made two key mistakes in his reorganisation of Downing Street.



The first is to appoint lots of civil servants into Policy Unit jobs. People like Paul Kirby may well share some of the Prime Minister's basic value orientations, but they are not political appointees capable of combining policy knowledge with political nous, party links and a commitment to a broader political project. Their careers will not depend on whether a Coalition or Conservative government is re-elected. They will not be able to attend party conferences or write political speeches for the Prime Minister. One consequence of this is that we can expect some more politically naïve decisions to make it through Number 10. The second mistake is a related one, the dispersal of the strategy function, previously housed together in the PMSU, across Number 10 and the Cabinet Office. These days, a good policy operation in Number 10 relies on a dedicated strategy function: individual members of the Policy Unit are simply too caught-up in day-to-day events to be able to spend time doing the deep research and analysis needed for serious strategic thinking. This will become ever-more pressing as the Coalition delivers on the bulk of its agreement and starts looking forward systematically to the 2014 Spending Review and the next Parliament.

• George Pascoe Watson at his Portland blog says David Cameron is very worried about losing the referendum on the alternative vote.

Three senior party figures held a crisis showdown last week at Conservative HQ. Elections guru Stephen Gilbert, party co-chairman Andrew Feldman and regional campaign director Darren Mott put the fear of God into staffers. They painted a stark and grim picture of the likelihood of the AV campaign winning on May 5. "Everything pales into insignificance compared to this AV problem", the gathering was told.

Recent polls have shown an increase in support for the "no" campaign. But senior Tories are deeply worried that huge numbers of "no" voters won't actually take part in the

referendum and they won't count. That's because the referendum is on the same day as regional and local elections which don't affect large swathes of the country, especially the big urban areas like London.

• And Mike Smithson at PoliticalBetting says the bank holiday/royal wedding calendar could help the yes camp in the AV poll.



From the polls that have measured certainty to vote it seems that YES has a slight edge in voter motivation. NO's big potential is amongst the C2s/Ds/Es but getting them out to the polling stations is going to be that much harder - particularly where no simultaneous elections are taking place.

3.00pm: Here's an afternoon summary.



• William Hague, the foreign secretary, has said there would have to be "strong international support" before a no-fly zone would be imposed over Libya. Speaking at a news conference in the Foreign Office, he said: "There must be a demonstrable need that is accepted broadly by the international community, as well as the strong international support that would come from that. There are examples of that already - the Gulf Cooperation Council statement is one example - but it has to have a clear legal basis, demonstrable need, strong international support, and broad support in the region and a readiness to participate in it."

• The Patients Association has discovered that there was a large drop in the number of certain NHS operations performed last year. As James Meikle reports, it has collected information from a third of acute trusts showing a 5% drop in key surgical procedures and longer waiting times for some operations. Responses from trusts suggested that in 2010 they performed only half the weight-loss procedures carried out in 2009.

For various reasons, I'm finishing earlier than usual today. Thanks for the comments.