Daily catch-up: Mothers, the NHS and civil service neutrality

Trams, Camberwell Green, 1940s. Via Old London.

• What was notable about Prime Minister's Questions yesterday was not just that David Cameron expressed what millions of non-political people think about Jeremy Corbyn: "I know what my mother would say. She would look across the Dispatch Box and say, 'Put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem.'" But that Corbyn for once had a pointed response delivered with some rhetorical force. "My late mother would have said stand up for the principle of a health service free at the point of use for everybody."

His mistake of technique was to wait too long – 35 seconds – for the noise to subside. The Speaker isn't going to intervene because he annoys MPs by doing so, so Corbyn should have simply ploughed on: the microphones will pick up what he says even if the noise in the Chamber sounds impossible.

Corbyn compounded his error by tweeting an after-the-event response to Cameron's comment about his appearance, in the form of a quotation that has been unconvincingly attributed to Albert Einstein but never verified: “If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies."

I think Corbyn and Cameron both misjudged the serious question that prompted their yah-boo. Corbyn because he appeared to be trying to brush aside the problem of excess weekend deaths in the NHS, and Cameron because he was provocative in asserting that the only thing wrong with Jeremy Hunt's claim was that his figure for excess deaths was too low.

Patients admitted at weekends tend to be more seriously ill, so some increase in deaths is to be expected and is found in healthcare systems around the world. But there almost certainly is a problem of poorer care at weekends as well (Tom Chivers has a good summary of the evidence here) and it is depressing to see the Labour Party and the British Medical Association trying to make excuses for it. Depressing as it may be, it was tactically inept of the Prime Minister to make over-emphatic assertions about excess deaths that is likely to push the junior doctors further into defensive intransigence.

• The question of Europe didn't come up at PMQs until right at the end, when the Speaker called Owen Paterson, the former cabinet minister. He was unhappy about the guidance for ministers and civil servants on the EU referendum, which he thought failed to provide for equality between "the supporters and opponents of the proposal being voted on".

Cameron was having none of it:

The Government have a position on this issue: the Government’s position is that we would be better off in a reformed European Union. Ministers are able to depart from that position, and campaign in a personal capacity. That is, I think, a very important statement. It is right in terms of how we go about it, but it does not mean that the Government are neutral. It does not mean that the civil service is neutral.

That last sentence will provoke amateur constitutionalists, but is absolutely right and often misunderstood. Of course the civil service must be impartial, in that civil servants must not express their own views and must serve the government of the day. But they are there to serve the government of the day. That means that it is their job to implement the policy of that government. It was Harold Wilson who invented the device of suspending collective ministerial responsibility to allow ministers to campaign against government policy, but the Government still has a policy. Paterson can look up the rules, which are set out in the Civil Service Code, based on the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.

• Yesterday was a big day for Conservative MPs "clarifying" where they stand on the EU referendum. In the past 24 hours, the numbers of those backing "In" have risen by 11 to 162, just four short of a majority of the parliamentary party. Those backing "Out" have gone up one to 140, with 28 still to declare. Cameron had hoped to keep the "Outers" down to about 70, but having a majority of his MPs backing his position is at least something.

In 1975, when Harold Wilson was managing a similar split in his party, 137 Labour MPs were for the Common Market in a House of Commons vote in April, with 145 against, and 33 not voting. Thanks to Mr Memory for the numbers. Wilson's Cabinet split 14 for Yes, seven for No (Cameron's is 17 to 5).

• And finally, thanks to Moose Allain ‏for this:

"My business politely checking eggs is ticking ova nicely."

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