The Joint Ministerial Committee Meets Today

Today sees the first plenary session of the Joint Ministerial Committee, with representatives from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland travelling down to Westminster to meet with their British counterparts to discuss where the axe should fall on public services:

The economy is expected to dominate talks between Prime Minister David Cameron and the leaders of the devolved administrations.

The Tory leader will chair the first plenary session of the joint ministerial committee (JMC) which brings together the heads of all the UK nations.

Not quite all the UK nations. England won't be represented.

There will be smart arses who say that England is represented by UK ministers, or by the UK Government as a whole, but that is a downright lie. The Government represents the United Kingdom in its entirety, not parts of it. Nick Clegg, who attends the JMC talks, is only a minister because the Tory party could not command a majority across the UK despite the fact that it won the majority of seats in England. Yet Clegg will have a ministerial say on English domestic matters. Danny Alexander, Nick Clegg's axe-weilding Scottish Chief Secretary to the Treasury, will not be attending the meeting, but he - constitutionally no less a representative of England than Cameron or Clegg - will slash England's public spending despite being elected outside England and possessing no direct democratic mandate from the people whose lives his cuts may ruin.

If the UK Government truly represented England's interests then they would lose no time in scrapping the Barnett Formula in favour of something transparent and fair, which is the only way of making the spending cuts open, responsible and fair.

I want to make sure we go about the urgent task of cutting our deficit in a way that is open, responsible and fair.

I want this government to carry out Britain's unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country.

I have said before that as we deal with the debt crisis we must take the whole country with us - and I mean it. - David Cameron, 7th June 2010