Cameron climbdown on sentencing policy

So Downing Street has asked Ken Clarke to go away and dump the entire 50% sentence remission for early pleading … but it’s not offering more money to plug the lost savings.  One No. 10 source told me that the PM is not convinced that Ken Clarke’s been cutting enough elsewhere in his departmental budget.  My source said he was “first to offer” cuts and big ones at that, but has not been so dilligent in actually producing them.  Talk to the campaigners on legal aid and you wouldn’t necessarily think Ken’s being lenient on cuts.  Likewise the courts service has been squealing with pain.  But my source says the MOJ hasn’t done enough work on administration cuts and probation cuts amongst other areas and Ken has been told to go back and look elsewhere in his budget for the savings.

Is this all working for David Cameron’s benefit with his own backbenchers?  Well,  some traditional figures on the right have been trotting over to the Millbank studios to praise a sensible re-think.  But talking to others you hear a different story.  “We all know this isn’t Dave running to the rescue,” one Tory MP said.  “It’s Dave showing that the first whiff of trouble and the government runs away.”

Click here for a Channel 4 News special report on government cuts