Here’s a comment on Tony Blair’s evidence from Ivan Lewis, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary.

Tony Blair was right to apologise for the impact of the catastrophic error in the Downey case on the loved ones of the Hyde Park victims.

Equally, he was right to remind people that the scheme was not an amnesty and was introduced at a very difficult stage in a complex peace process.

Tony Blair deserves tremendous personal credit for a peace process which ended decades of violence and has been lauded around the world. The valid concerns associated with the administration of this scheme do nothing to change the fact that his leadership was central to making peace possible in Northern Ireland.

Labour’s Kate Hoey goes next.

Q: The other key player in this, Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly, has refused to come along to give evidence. Why do you think that is?

Blair says the committee will have to ask Kelly.

And that’s it. The hearing is over, after more than two hours.

I’ll post a summary soon.

Ian Paisley goes next.

Q: Judicial review became the norm under your government. But relatives could not judicial review this policy because it was kept secret from them. In that respect, you bent or twisted the law. Whether you broke the law is something this committee will have to decide.

Blair says he does not accept that. The Hallett review found this was not secretary.

Q: But how could people have subjected it to judicial review.

Blair says there were parliamentary answers about this.

Q: As a lawyer, you know their right to challenge this was taken away.

Blair says he and Paisley come at this from different angles. Paisley opposed the Good Friday Agreement.

Paisley says his party got Sinn Fein to support. One night, in a phone call, Blair told him not to push Sinn Fein to swear and oath of allegiance to the police. But they did push for that, and it happened.

Blair says that, if it had been left the Paisley’s DUP in 1998, there would never have been a peace agreement.

Sylvia Hernon goes next.

Q: Why can’t we get the names of these people, given that they were not going to be charged? There is a lot of concern amongst victims about this. They think people who may have killed their relatives are included.

Blair says he does not know what the legal position is.

Q: Do you think the names should be published?

Blair says you would have to take legal advice first. Some of those named might object vociferously. They might not want to be associated with terror.

Q: But if these people were not going to be charged, what’s the problem?

Blair says these people might object.

Labour’s Stephen Hepburn says Blair has put in a good peformance today. Because of what he did, Northern Ireland faces a better future.

Blair says Sir John Major played a major role too. And he took risks as well.

Blair says he is sorry if David Trimble felt that he was kept in the dark over this. Trimble sacrificed his own political career for the good of Northern Ireland, he says.

More from Henry McDonald.

One intriguing omission thus far from the interrogation of the former prime minister was the question about what the Irish government knew about the OTR scheme especially the letters to the IRA fugitives. Because if his Dublin counterparts knew nothing about the letters in particular,then it is clear the Blair administration kept Irish ministers in the dark as well as the Unionist negotiators and the nationalist SDLP.

Laurence Robertson, the chairman, goes next.

Q: Was Rita O’Hare one of the first people considered for one of these letters?

Blair says he is not sure what he can say about this case.

Q: Jonathan Powell told use he went to Dublin to see her, and told her she should not come back to Northern Ireland because she was wanted. Wasn’t that odd? Should your staff have been encouraging people to come back and face justice.

Blair says he does not know about that conversation. But if O’Hare had been arrested at that point, it would have caused serious problems for the process.

Q: Why?

Because she was a strong advocate for the process.

Q: But she was wanted in connection with a serious crime?

Blair says the process involved dealing with lots of people involved in terrible crimes.

Q: Did the blurring between early release, and not being charged, affect the system?

Blair says the letters of assurance were sent to people who were not going to be charged.

He says he was asking the IRA to do something to historic - to abandon their opposition to the police, and to join it.

Q: Did you think it might have been better to review all unsolved cases?

Blair says he thought about a Truth and Reconciliation process. But these things were difficult. There would have been a row about the terms of reference.

Q: Do you ever wish you had just put an amnesty in the original Good Friday Agreement?

Blair says, in a sense, that is what they though they had in the Good Friday Agreement.

But then the question arose as to what they would do about people who had never been charged. They wanted some equivalent early release system. But that could never be achieved.

Q: After you failed to pass an amnesty bill, were you tempted to say to Sinn Fein, “That’s it.”

Blair says he could have done. But there would have been consequences.

If he had said that in December 2006, the peace process would have failed.

Q: Operation Rapid was introduced in 2007 (a speeding up of the OTR administrative letter scheme). Was this designed to get more people through?

Blair says there was a difference between accelerating a process, and changing the burden of proof.

He was under enormous pressure at this point, he says. The political context was “urgent”.

Nigel Mills, the Conservative MP, goes next.

Q: Did you ever put pressure on people to see if they could put more people in the “not wanted” category?

Absolutely not, says Blair. That would be an unlawful interference with justice.

Q: So how did you sell it to Sinn Fein?

Blair says he was not selling this to them. Letters were going to people who were not wanted. The difficulty was telling Sinn Fein he was sincere about dealing with the OTR issue when he was not giving them what they wanted, and the attorney general was blocking some moves.

Blair says many of the OTRS were integral to the way the IRA and Sinn Fein worked at the time. The Sinn Fein leadership was having to get their people to support the police, and to join the police. They said they could not deal with this unless they could address the prisoner issue, and OTRs.

He says, if he could show he was doing all he could, it was easier for Sinn Fein to manage this process.

Nothing was done that was not very controversial, he says.

Q: And is it true that, if Sinn Fein had not signed up to policing, the Northern Ireland executive would have not have got up and running again?

Yes, says Blair.

Ian Paisley, the then DUP leader, said at the time he would deal with Sinn Fein if they had given up criminality. But they had to support the police to show that.

But Sinn Fein said the prisoner issue had to be addressed.

If we had not tried to deal with that issue at least, I think they would not have signed up to policing.

And if they had not signed up to policing, Paisley would not have sat down with them, he says.

Labour’s David Anderson goes next. He starts by thanking Blair for what he did not peace in Northern Ireland. Sir John Major played an important role too, he says.

Blair says it was the prosecuting authorities who decided at the start who could get a letter.

There was one case at the start where there was an individual, and it would have been very helpful to have been able to issue them with a letter. But the prosecuting authorities would not allow this.

Q: Have any of these letters, or royal pardons, being issued to anyone elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly or to parliament?

Blair says he is not aware of that.

Q: Will the victims receive justice for what happened to their families?

Blair says this process was about people who were not going to be charged or prosecuted.

Under the Good Friday Agreement, convicted killers were released. Blair tells Simpson that Simpson disageed with it. Blair said he disagreed with it too. But he felt it was necessary. However, the victims’ relatives will never feel that that is justified.

Blair says he sees the same thing happens when Israel releases prisoners.

These are hard decisions to take, he says.

But, without that provision in the Good Friday Agreement, there would not have been peace, he says.

Whether it is justified is another matter, he says. He asked himself this at the time.

Q: Sinn Fein did not get all they wanted. But they did not walk away. They accepted it.

Blair says, if he had said he was not going to address the OTR process, that would have had a very serious impact. At certain points it would have destroyed the process, he says.

David Simpson, the DUP MP, goes next.

Q: Victims sitting here behind you today have a sense of betrayal. Some of them will never seek justice for their families.

Blair says he can feel the anger.

The Downey case was a mistake. It should not have happened.

As politicians, we all know that, when you take decisions, people will attack you, he says. But all he is trying to do is explain what he did.

Blair asks the MPs to recall what it was like during the Troubles. He wanted to bring “terrorism and destruction and misery” to an end. There are many people out free today who committed acts of terrorism “repugnant to any decent-minded person”. But he was not going to get peace unless he drew a line, he says.

He says he remembers visiting victims of the IRA and their families, including people who had been maimed. They felt “a deep sense of betrayal”, he says. But he wanted there to be a better future.

There is nothing he can do to take away that sense of betrayal.

For all its difficulties, this process has changed the country for the better, he says.

Q: The John Downey letter was sent off just after you left office, but seems to have been signed off before you left.

Blair says it would have been stupid to have sent out a letter knowing it was wrong.

Q: People have blamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Something went wrong.

Blair says he does not know about the details of what happened. But it is clear that there was a mistake, because there were warnings that Downey was wanted. As the person in overall charge of the government, he apologises for that. The mistake should have been corrected.

Q: Should a loyalist held in jail be treatred in the same way? I’m talking about Mr Tweed.

Blair says he does not know about this case.

Labour’s Kate Hoey goes next.

Q: Where did you see Gerry Adams in September?

It was at a Clinton Global Initiative event, he says.

Q: Are you surprised that people like David Trimble and Mark Durkan did not know about these letters?

Blair says he thought people know that assurances were being given to OTRs. But he accepts it if they say they did not know letters were being sent.

Blair says he finds it “odd” that, even though it was known that John Downey had been sent a letter wrongly, that was not corrected.

My colleague Henry McDonald has sent me another comment on Blair’s evidence.

In his very robust defence of the OTR scheme Blair has got the heart of the matter regarding the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and subsequent deals. He asked what did Unionism get out of the agreement and offered this answer - the Union.

Showing some knowledge of Irish republican history, the ex PM reminded the committee that they managed to shift Sinn Fein away from its former stance of no recognition of the principle of Unionist consent. Namely, that there could only be constitutional change if a majority consented to it within Northern Ireland only. One of his inquisitors Lady Slyvia Herman MP recognised this in her questioning of Blair.

Q: How involved were you with the details?

Blair says he was not involved in the specific details. He knew that individuals were getting letters. But they were going to people who were not wanted by the police, so the law was being upheld, he says.

Q: Did Sinn Fein push this too far?

Blair says Sinn Fein were complaining that the OTR issue in its entirety was not being addressed.

Blair repeats the point about how it would have been better to have pulled this into a proper scheme.

Q: Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland secretary, is now saying these letters are worthless. Has she made a mistake?

Blair says he would not have done that. But she is in charge now.

Q: Is it a mistake?

Time will tell, he says.

He says the current government inherited a peace process that was working. But it is fragile. “Be careful with it,” he says.

Blair says the Good Friday Agreement began a process. It did not make peace on its own. For almost the next decade, he was fighting to keep it alive.

Q: Lady Hallett says there was a link between you expediting the OTR scheme, and Sinn Fein agreeing, a month later, to opt into devolved policing. You said the process was on a knife edge at this point. But it wasn’t.

Blair says at the end of 2006 he was supposed to be taking a break. But he spend most of the time on the phone. It was on a knife edge. At one point he thought he had lost the whole thing. He remembers telling Jonathan Powell: “We cannot rescue it.” It was a horribly difficult period.

The executive was supposed to be up and running by March. But it was delayed until May. The Irish government said he should just tell the Unionists to agree, as if that would work. He had to tell them that that would be counter-productive.

Blair says he thinks his decision in December 2006 to speed up the OTR process probably did affect Sinn Fein’s decision to support devolved policing.

Sylvia Hermon, the independent MP, goes next. She starts by saying relatives will appreciate the fact that Blair is giving evidence in public, even if they do not like what he says.

Q: Do you still see people like Gerry Adams?

From time to time, at functions, says Blair.

Q: Did you tell the late David Ervine, the former Progressive Unionist party leader, about this?

Blair says he did not tell Irvine about the scheme. But Irvine knew about OTRs.

Q: Why were the letters kept secret?

Blair says the letters were not kept secret. When people asked about this, they were given answers.

He says he did not see it as “hugely controversial” because the prosecuting authorities had decided that these people were not going to be charged.

The difficulties arose with those who were wanted, but who had not been convicted.

Q: Hallett says the scheme was not secret. But the letters were secret. The first were sent by Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former chief of staff. Why were these letters kept secret for 14 years?

Blair says it was disclosed publicly that these people were informed that they were not being prosecuted.

The IRA did not publicise this because they thought this was “meaningless”. These people were not going to be charged anyway, he says. The IRA wanted them to deal with people who might be charged. These people were the equivalent of the convicted prisoners were released. Sinn Fein was asking its supporters to make concessions on decommissioning, and it wanted some concessions.

Laurence Robertson, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, goes next.

Q: Why was it so important to write letters to innocent people?

Blair says he had to show that something was happening.

The most difficult negotiation came in late December 2006. At the time he could not say he was doing anything more than he was already, but he could say he would accelerate the process already underway.

Q: Why was it so important that innocent people received letter?

Blair says it was important that some OTR cases were addressed.

He says he thought initially that, if you could deal with those convicted, you could also deal with those who had not been convicted. But it was not as simple as that, he says.

Q: Sinn Fein did not walk away. Why were you so convinced that they might?

Blair says if he had not been struggling to find a way through these problems, if he had just said he was not going to deal with OTRs - he cannot be sure what would have happened, but he was not prepared to take the risk.

Q: Relatives say it was not the scheme that the objected to, but the fact that they were not told about it. It made them distrustful of government in general. Do you accept that? It has compounded the hurt of victims.

Blair says the hurt is real. But the biggest contributor to that is people being told that there was an amnesty when there wasn’t.

It is just not true to say there was an amnesty, he says.

Blair says Gerry Adams and others kept complaining that the government was not dealing with OTRs.

Q: Do you accept the lack of transparency has compounded that hurt?

Blair says there is an issue about how much victims should be told when people are not being charged.

As the Hallett review said, with the benefit of hindsight it could have been done differently. He is not quite sure what the best approach would be.

But, he says, the whole purpose was to stop more people being killed by terrorism.

At times the process was on a knife edge. This was crucial to keeping it going, he says.

Blair says, in retrospect, it would have been better to have looked at the administrative procedure as a separate process.

It is not that we decided not to tell people. But it just wasn’t the focus.

If the government had been more open, people would have accepted it, he says.

He says he is “surprised” people think it was secret.

Q: If it was not secret, it was certainly not transparent. It was opaque at best.

Blair says he has already mentioned John Reid’s written answer to the Tories. Reid specifically talked about how many people were affected by this, he says.

Q: Were you worried that, by telling people they were not wanted, you were also letting people who were wanted know that they were wanted?

Blair says this was not a perfect situation. He accepts the reservations set out in the Hallett review.

They could not set up a scheme that dealt with this in its entirety.

Q: And were you implicitly telling people that they were wanted? And were you helping people evade justice?

Blair says he does not accept this. He thinks it was perfectly fair to tell people they were not wanted.

More from my colleague Henry McDonald.

One of the most fascinating points raised by Ian Paisley Junior MP is that all the intelligence from chief constables and others contradicted Blair’s claim of concern re the IRA returning to violence. Some commentators and veteran IRA watchers have doubted that by the time of the scheme in 2000 the Republican leadership under Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness would lose control of the movement if the deal had not been struck.

The North Belfast MP also tried to raise the question of other secret deals with Republicans such as allowing regions such as South Armagh to become “no go areas” in terms of ongoing multi million pound fuel and other smuggling scams.

Naomi Long, the Alliance MP, goes next.

Blair says these cases related to cases where the prosecution authorities decided people should not be charged.

The Downey case was a mistake, he says.

This was not an amnesty.

Q: All the people who have given evidence to us say the IRA were not going to go back to violence?

Blair says the OTR issue was intimately connected with the Good Friday Agreement.

Q: Were there any other deals allowing criminals to get off? Did the Department for Transport allow IRA fuel smugglers to get off?

No, says Blair.

And this was not a private arrangement, he says.

He says the Hallett review found that there was no secret.

Q: But it was a confidential arrangement.

Blair says John Reid told the Tories in a parliamentary answer about this scheme. “It is not secret,” he says.

Q: Are there any other deals, allowing fuel smugglers to get off? It’s a multi-million pound racket.

Blair says he does not know what Paisley is talking about.

Q: Did your fondness for Gerry Adams affect your judgment?

Blair takes up something Paisley says. He is apologising for the mistake, he says, but not for the policy.

On Adams, he says he had relations with many people in the peace process, including Paisley’s father.

Q: But did your fondness affect your judgment?

Blair questions the term fondness.

Paisley quotes from Blair’s memoirs. In them, he said he got to like Adam and Martin McGuinness, perhaps more than he should.

Blair asks how many people on the committee would have voted to release convicted prisoners as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Not many, he says. But, without that, the agreement would not have happened.

Ian Paisley, the DUP MP, is now asking questions.

Q: I’m sorry we’ve only got an hour.

Blair says that was the committee’s suggestion. He would be happy to give them ore time.

Q: Will you apologise to victims?

Blair says he takes full responsibility as prime minister for not putting in place a structure that would have allowed the scheme to be more formal. He regrets the fact that not doing this may have let to the Downey trial collapsing.

But he says he does not apologise for sending letters to people who were entitled to them. If that had not happened, the peace process would not have happened.

Henry McDonald, the Gurdian’s Ireland correspondent, has sent me some initial thoughts on the hearing.

It is interesting that Tony Blair states that the on the run scheme was neither an amnesty or a secret deal. At least three Irish Cabinet ministers have confirmed, albeit off the record, that the Dublin government at the time were unaware of the scheme in its detailed.

One senior cabinet minister in Dublin told the Guardian that while they were aware their British counterparts were “up to something”, the then Labour administration kept them the Irish in the dark over how detailed this scheme was.

It is also worth remembering that the OTR scheme incorporated about 200 wanted IRA fugitives. They included senior Sinn Fein figures such as Rita O’Hare, on the run since the attempted murder of soldiers in 1972. She played a key role in Washington DC running the Sinn Fein office there during the Clinton era.

However, it is equally interesting that Blair predicted the process “would have collapsed” if the scheme had not been implemented.

Q: But two people got letters associated with the Kingsmill massacre. And letters went to 95 people associated with almost 300 killings.

Blair says he does not know about those 300 cases.

It would have been better to have had a more formal scheme, he says.

That might have reduced the chances of the Downey event occuring.

He says he understands the feelings of those relatives upset about people getting letters.

But he has two points to make.

It was a good idea to send letter to people who weren’t being charged, he says. If that had not happened, the OTR issue would not have been resolved.

Second, this issue was “critical” to the peace process. At some point it was fundamental. You cannot be sure, he says, but it is “likely that the peace process would have collapsed.”

• Blair says the Northern Ireland peace process “would have collapsed” if it had not been for the government’s concessions on OTRs.
  

Blair says this scheme applied to people who were not going to be prosecuted.

From the outset, his desire was to bring in a scheme that would apply to everyone.

Q: If there is evidence against someone, they are normally prosecuted. Why did this not happen?

Blair says the evidence against people was considered.

This is not the way Sinn Fein wanted it to happen, he says.

At the time he wanted a resolution of the “on the runs” (OTRs) issue, he says.

But he was not changing the law to deal with them. He was just applying the law.

Osborne says there is only one credible plan to deal with debt. That is the government’s long-term economic plan.

And that’s it. His speech has finished.

Ed Balls is speaking now. He starts by saying the TaxPayers’s Alliance - not a source he normally quotes approvingly - has dismissed the charter as a gimmick.

I’m going to switch to the Tony Blair hearing in a moment. But I think we’ve got the gist of it. Osborne is refusing to admit that he has missed his borrowing targets (although he has). And Balls is refusing to admit he would borrow more (although he would).

(If you’re still confused, this Resolution Foundation chart will undoubtedly clear everything up.)

Osborne says Labour would either introduce a tax bombshell or a borrowing bombshell. Either way it would be an economic disaster, he says.

Osborne says Labour has had various policies on the deficit.

First, Labour said it opposed the coalition’s plans. Then it said it would control spending with “iron discipline”. Then it tried the Basil Fawlty approach - don’t mention the deficit. Then it said it would cut the deficit as quickly as possible. Labour opposed the charter for budget responsibility, then said it would be back it. Then, on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday, Ed Miliband said cutting would not eliminate the deficit. Miliband said he wanted to improve the trend rate of growth. But that was exactly the “fiddle” adopted by Gordon Brown that got us into this trouble in the first place.

Balls intervenes. He asks Osborne where the charter for budget responsibility says the deficit will be eliminated by the end of 2017.

Osborne says three years from now is the end of 2017-18.

Balls says the charter does not say that. It talks about the third year of the rolling five-year period ahead. (See 1.13pm.)

Osborne says Balls should use his piano fingers to count.

Charlie Elphicke, a Conservative, asks Osborne if he heard Paul Johnson from the IFS say borrowing and debt would be higher under Labour.

(That’s the most pointless question yet. Osborne has spent the whole debate so far doing nothing but quote Paul Johnson.)

Osborne says, for the third time, he is inviting Balls to admit his plans would involve more borrowing.

Balls says Osborne may have mis-spoken. But can he confirm that he has reduced the deficit more slowly than intended, and borrowed £200bn more than he planned.

Osborne says he has halved the budget deficit. Balls’ plans involve £170bn of more borrowing, he says.

He says Balls is asking Labour to vote for £30bn more in consolidation. Where will that come from? The Lib Dems say from taxes. The Tories say from tax avoidance (£5bn), from departmental cuts (£13bn) and from welfare cuts (£12bn). But Labour won’t say where its cuts will come from.

Geoffrey Robinson, the Labour former Treasury minister, invites Osborne to clarify his claim that he has not slowed the pace of deficit reduction.

Osborne says he has stuck to his spending plans, and cut the deficit by a half.

Osborne says the SNP and the Greens are going to vote against the government. But Labour are going to vote with the Conservatives, because they do not want to admit to the British people that their plans involve spending more money.

Osborne says Labour’s position is bizarre. They claim that the government is borrowing too much, but say they want to borrow more.

He says there is a test in this debate: will Labour confirm it will borrow more? He invites Ed balls to intervene.

Balls says Osborne told MPs a moment ago that he was not going slower on cutting the deficit. That is blatantly untrue. Will Osborne withdraw?

Osborne says he is delivering on his spending cuts.

Why won’t Balls tell the truth? When the British people discover Balls wants to borrow £170bn more, they will not let him near Downing Street.

Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative, intervenes. Labour used to complain about the cuts going too far, too fast. But now they are saying the cuts have not gone fast enough, he says.

Alec Shelbrooke, a Conservative, intervenes. He says the Labour leader of Leeds council said this government had done more for the north than Labour did.

Osborne says, according to the IMF, no other major economy has cut its structural deficit so successfully.

Ed Balls intervenes. When will we get back our AAA credit rating?

Osborne says we retain it with some credit rating agencies. And if anyone thinks the solution is to borrow £170bn more (see 11.27am), they are wrong, he says.

Osborne says every Labour government leads the country into bankruptcy.

Labour said 1m jobs would be lost. But there are 1.7m more people in work.

Full employment is in sight.

The north of England is the fastest growing area of the economy, he says.

John Bercow, the Speaker, announces that the debate is starting. He says he will not allow a vote on an amendment tabled by the Green MP Caroline Lucas saying the charter for budget responsibility should be rejected.

Nigel Farage is going to publish a book before the election, the Bookseller reveals. Apparently it will be a book that “takes us beyond the caricature of the beer-drinking, chain-smoking adventurer in Jermyn Street double-cuffs, to describe the values that underpin Farage’s own journey; from successful City trader to critic of the European Union and champion of Britain’s right to govern itself, revealing his loss of faith in the mainstream parties and his personal vision for a Britain outside the EU.”

My colleague James Ball is also dismissing David Cameron’s proposals for a new internet surveillance law as unworkable. Here’s an extract from his article for Comment is free.

Encryption is what protects your private details when you send your bank details to a server. It’s required for governments and companies when they store customer information, to protect it from hackers and others. And it’s built right in to whole hosts of messaging applications, including iMessage and WhatsApp.

If Cameron is proposing an end to encryption in the UK, then any information sent across the internet would be open for any company, government, or script kiddie with 10 minutes “hacking” experience to access. It would spell the end of e-commerce, private online communications and any hope of the UK having any cybersecurity whatsoever.

On internet surveillance, here are two articles that are well worth reading.

• A Q&A from my colleagues Alan Travis and Ewen MacAskill on what David Cameron is proposing.

• A blog from Cory Doctorow arguing that Cameron’s proposals are wholly unrealistic. Here’s an excerpt.

What David Cameron thinks he’s saying is, “We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us.” There are enormous problems with this: there’s no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

Yesterday David Cameron said - again - that he wants televised leaders’ debates to go ahead. During his Q&A in Nottingham, he said:

I don’t want to pass up the opportunity of talking to millions of people about these vital issues. I think the debates were successful last time, I think they were good and I would like them to happen again.

However, according to some YouGov polling for the Times’s Red Box email, most voters don’t believe him. Only 22% of respondents said they think Cameron “genuinely wants there to be a debate”.

On the subject of polls, this is worth flagging up.

Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has written an article for the Times (paywall) setting out the different approaches the Conservatives and Labour have to public spending. They are quite distinct, he says, and voters face “real, meaty political choices” at the election.

Labour has said that it wants to achieve balance or surplus on the present budget. That is, it would be happy to keep borrowing to pay for investment spending — at present levels of investment, spending that would allow it to borrow about £25 billion a year.

To achieve that, it would need to find spending cuts, or tax increases, of about £7 billion after 2015-16, perhaps not easy after so many years of austerity. And don’t forget that both parties are signed up to a tough spending round in 2015-16 itself. Yet cuts of this magnitude over the rest of the parliament would be modest relative to what has been delivered thus far.

The Conservative plans are rather different. They want to achieve a surplus on the overall budget and so would not be happy to borrow to invest. That means that they would need to find spending cuts of about £33 billion after 2015-16. Lest there be any doubt, there is a big difference between £7 billion of cuts and £33 billion of cuts.

The Times has splashed on Johnson’s comments, highlighting what he says about the impact Labour’s plans would have on borrowing. Here’s an extract from Johnson’s article.

If Labour is spending more — and if it doesn’t raise taxes — it will be borrowing more and, perhaps more important, presiding over a greater burden of debt.

The effect of this might be relatively modest in the short term, but borrowing as much as their rule would allow beyond 2020 would mean national debt about £170 billion higher (in today’s terms) by the end of the 2020s than would be achieved through a balanced budget.

Ed Davey, the energy secretary, has announced that a private consortium, Nuclear Management Partners, is losing a £9bn contract to clean up nuclear waste at Sellafield.

There will be an urgent question on this at 12.30pm, which means the debate on the charter for budget responsibility will not start until after 1pm.

For the record, here are today’s YouGov GB polling figures.

Labour: 33% (up 1 point from YouGov in the Sunday Times)

Conservatives: 32% (no change)

Ukip: 17% (down 1)

Lib Dems: 6% (down 1)

Greens: 6% (no change)

Labour lead: 1 point (up 1)

Government approval: -24 (no change)

According to Electoral Calculus, this would leave Labour the largest party, but seven seats short of a majority.

And here are election predictions from a variety of organisations.

Elections Etc: Labour 297, Conservatives 294, Lib Dems 29.

Election Forecast: Conservatives 284, Labour 280, SNP 33, Lib Dems 28, Ukip 3

Polling Observatory: Conservatives 33.8%, Labour 33.4%, Lib Dems 9.2%

(These are all academic forecasts, based on models that using current polling data and make allowance for how polls shift in the run up to an election.)

May 2015: Conservatives 283, Labour 269, Lib Dems 25, Ukip 4, SNP 46

(This is based on current polling, taking into account Lord Ashcroft’s seat by seat polling.)

Electoral Calculus: Labour 321, Conservatives 242, Lib Dems 19, Ukip 0, Nationalists 49

(This is just based on current polling.)

The BBC’s Nick Robinson interviewed Tony Blair for his new “Can Democracy Work?”, which started on Radio 4 this morning. He asked Blair about why people were turning away from the main parties and Blair kept telling him that voters wanted strong leadership.

What you realise when you actually get into government is that the problems require far more practical solutions and, however new you say you are, politics still operates in the same way. I still [say] people, what they actually want is clear leadership and direction; they want answers to their problems...

There is a whole swathe of the public that thinks ‘I elect my government; you guys, go and govern. Don’t keep troubling me every three seconds with what I should think or what I shouldn’t think.’ They want to see their leaders leading.

Robinson then, rather obviously, asked if Blair thought Ed Miliband had a problem in that regard. Blair defended Miliband but, as Robinson pointed out when he reported this on the Today programme this morning, as endorsements go, it was relatively half-hearted.

I’m not sure he has got a problem. That will be for the people to choose ... but I’m in the Labour party and I’ll be backing him.

Sir James Dyson, the inventor and entrepreneur, has been invited to give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee following his attack on Theresa May’s call for foreign students to be made the leave the UK when they graduate.

Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, said:

Sir James’ views on immigration are of great interest to the committee. The Committee has long held the view that student numbers should not be included in the net migration figure.

My colleague Alan Travis points out that it is still not entirely clearly exactly what David Cameron is proposing on internet surveillance.

Inflation has fallen to 0.5%. My colleague Graeme Wearden has all the details on his business live blog.

The two coalition parties are split over internet surveillance legislation. As the Guardian reports today, David Cameron has said he wants to extend it, but Nick Clegg is using a speech to the Journalists’ Charity to accuse him of going too far.

Clegg was on the Today programme this morning setting out his case. But, as an interview, it was cack-handed, and probably counter-productive. There were two problems.

First, Clegg was extremely reluctant to say whether he agreed with the principle that the security services should have the power to spy on all communications on the internet, including new ones that are evolving with a very high level of privacy. Justin Webb had to press him at least three times on this, because he kept claiming that this was not the issue, although he eventually conceded that there was no absolute right to privacy. Clegg may have had a point, but he sounded evasive.

Second, Clegg claimed that he was not aware of the case of the Saudi blogger who has been flogged for insulting Islam, even though this has been widely reported. Mary Beard is just one of many people who have expressed astonishment about this on Twitter.

As for the substance of the interview, I will post the key points shortly. I will also report what Boris Johnson has been saying about this.

After that, it’s a busy day. Here’s the agenda.

9.30am: Inflation figures are published.

Around 12.40pm: George Osborne and Ed Balls open the debate on the charter for budget responsibility.

2pm: Tony Blair gives evidence to the Northern Ireland affairs committee about IRA fugitives, or “on the runs” (OTRs).

As usual, I will be also covering all the breaking political news from Westminster, as well as bringing you the most interesting political comment and analysis from the web and from Twitter. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.