Tory minister defends axing migrant rescue – as it happened

Here’s a round-up of the day:

• A poll suggests Labour could face electoral meltdown against the Scottish National party in Scotland in the wake of the independence referendum. Jim Murphy, the favourite to become the next Scottish Labour leader, accused his party of lacking passion and vision.
• David Cameron has ruled out any reform of drugs policy after the publication of a Home Office report suggesting there is no link between stricter laws and the level of illegal drug use.
• Fiona Woolf, the chairman of the new child abuse inquiry, is under fire after it emerged government officials had helped draft and re-draft a letter about her contact with Lord Brittan, the former home secretary who is likely to be called to give evidence about a missing dossier related to alleged Westminster paedophile activity.
• Lord Ashdown has criticised the government’s decision to axe search and rescue missions for migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, putting him at odds with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. The government has publicly defended the policy in the House of Commons, saying it will help deter crossings and prevent deaths.

That’s all from me. Andrew Sparrow is back on Monday to guide you through the political week but there will be a readers’ edition tomorrow.

I leave you with the news that Michael Gove, the chief whip, is obviously doing a sterling job at marshalling his troops in the Commons:

Labour’s problems in Scotland have been highlighted not just by Jim Murphy but the party’s shadow deputy leader of the Commons, Thomas Docherty. This was him with some harsh words earlier on the BBC’s World at One:

The state that the Labour party is in right now is we are in a dreadful position. And we’ve got to be honest about ourselves. We have very low esteem with the electorate. The electorate looks at us and has no idea what our polices are. We have a moribund party in Scotland that seems to think that in-fighting is more important than campaigning. And we have a membership that is ageing and inactive. We can return to be the grown-up party that wants to be in government or we can self-indulge like a throwback to the 1980s and watch our party implode, the SNP win again, the Tories win again, and have another referendum.

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This is the letter from Fiona Woolf, the chairman of child abuse inquiry to the home affairs committee. Keith Vaz says it shows officials watered down the letters to downplay her contact with Lord Brittan, the former home secretary who is likely to be called to the inquiry over a dossier alleging Westminster paedophile activity that went missing from his department.

PS The website is having some technical issues that mean all comments have disappeared. It’s being investigated as I type.

It seems like a complete stand-off between the Tories and Lib Dems on drug policy. Electoral strategists from both sides are probably quite enjoying the fact the row has been reported as a clear dividing line.

However, there was one small bit of policy that was actually agreed, which went largely unnoticed when Lib Dem home office minister Norman Baker announced it during the drugs debate in the Commons. The government will amend regulations to make Naloxone - a drug that prevent overdose on heroin - more widely available to prisoners on their release.

Optimistically, Baker claimed:

The debate has now been opened. We can no longer rely on the stonewalling that we have so often had about drugs policy in this country. There are genuine debates to be had about the way forward and I think the genie is out of the bottle and it will not be going back in.

A man who has similar hair to Mario Balotelli caused a bit of unwarranted excitement in the Commons earlier. A Tory MP tweeted that the footballer was watching the debate on drugs from the public gallery. Journalists rushed down there...

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More trouble is brewing over the government’s second choice to lead the child abuse inquiry, Fiona Woolf.

It has emerged that she did not write the first draft of the letter detailing her contact with former home secretary Lord Brittan, who was handed a dossier making allegations about Westminster paedophile links that later went missing. The letter, which revealed she was on dinner party terms with Brittan, was also edited seven times.

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs committee, has said: “The final version gave a sense of greater detachment between Lord and Lady Brittan and Mrs Woolf than her previous attempts.”

Mrs Woolf’s letter to the Committee raises more questions than it answers about an appointment process that has been chaotic, and a series of exchanges with the Home Office and others, where words, and sometimes even facts, have been amended.
It is extraordinary that Mrs Woolf did not even write the first draft of her letter which was supposed to detail her own personal experiences. The letter then underwent seven drafts with a multiplicity of editors.
The lessons of the Butler-Sloss appointment and resignation have not been learned. There should have been full disclosure of this information before, not after, her appointment.

This is more bad news for Theresa May, the home secretary, after the previous head of the inquiry, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, had to stand down over her links with the establishment because her brother was attorney general at the time.

Many MPs are frustrated that the Home Office does not seem to have grasped that it does not matter if theories of a continuing establishment cover-up are far-fetched.

The point is that there must be no perception at all of any possible conflict of interest if the chairman is to command the confidence of the public, and especially the victims of child abuse who have repeatedly been let down by the authorities.

David Cameron has made his view clear on the decriminalisation of drugs: it won’t be happening on his watch. Speaking at the Cameron Direct event in Cheshire, he said:

The evidence is, what we are doing is working. I don’t believe in decriminalising drugs that are illegal today”.
I’m a parent with three children. I don’t want to send out a message that somehow taking these drugs is OK and safe because, frankly, it isn’t

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My colleague Severin Carrell has written this about Jim Murphy in the face of the Ipsos MORI poll suggesting Labour could lose a huge number of seats in Scotland (including Murphy’s own):

Jim Murphy, the clear favourite to become the next Scottish Labour leader, has accused his party of lacking passion and vision as a shock poll showed Labour faces being wiped out by the Scottish National party at the general election.

As he confirmed he would contest the leadership, the former Scottish secretary said he wanted the Scottish Labour party to “end its losing streak”, saying: “We’ve lost too many elections north of the border and I want to bring that to an end.”

He’s got a huge job ahead of him if he wins, says Sunder Katwala, of British Future:

Another key moment came when Lord Mitchell, a former Labour frontbench spokesman in the Lords, backed the actress Maureen Lipman, who has dropped support for the party after five decades because of its policy on recognising Palestine as an independent state.

I certainly support a Palestinian state, but not quite yet. It must be negotiated with both the Palestinians and Israel.
And pain me though it does to say this, I agree with Maureen Lipman when she says Labour and Ed Miliband have got it wrong.

Quite an interesting debate about the Middle East has been going on in the House of Lords. Lady Warsi, who resigned as a Foreign Office minister over the government’s policy on Gaza, has made her first speech since standing down. She does not hold back about the government’s Middle East peace policy:

Our policy is simply not working and it is flawed. Different strands of our policy are simply not viable and no longer hold true. We know that our policy is not working - yet we continue to stick to it. Out policy is not responding to the reality on the ground and yet we fail to change it.

This approach damages our reputation both at home and abroad - and sadly no longer makes us an honest broker.

On illegal settlements, she said the UK condemns these and argues that they threaten the viability of a two-state solution, but no consequences follow for Israel.

The situation on the ground has so changed and continues to do so that what we say we seek is unlikely to be achieved.
We say we have a position: we condemn. But the actions of that condemnation are not there to be seen. No consequences follow.
We prefer private to public diplomacy - and I agree with that - but I fail to see those tough private conversations.