the party is committed to increasing benefits by cbi rather than rpi. so he's backing on the policy rather than supporting it. >> recent work by the foundation has shown that britain has the lowest proportion of 16 to 18 years old studying mathematics of any of our competitor countries in the lecd. just as bad we have a chronic shortage of math teachers in our schools. what action is the government going to take on this issue? >> the honorable lady makes a very good point and produced a extremely worthwhile point which looking in terms of math teaching and in terms of the number of people studying math. we're going to be taking a series of steps to sort this out which my right honorable friend the education secretary will be announcing. one of them is to expand teach first which is an excellent scheme to get graduates from our best universities into schools and it will include primary schools and many of them will be math teachers but we want to raise the bar for teachers in terms of the qualifications they need to teach math. it's vital in our country

he has lost the support of the cbi because he does not have a growth strategy.the economy has taken a highly predictable downturn. he has lost his essex man. and i understand that there were forecasts of snow for the end of the week. is there anyone remaining in the government who still understands or is in touch with the concerns of ordinary people, whose jobs are under threat because of his policies? >> the point i would make is that the cbi says very clearly that it is absolutely essential that we get to grips with the deficit. what it said at the time of labour's last budget was that there was not a credible plan. it believes that there now is a credible plan. this is not going to be easy. the labour party is committed to cuts from april this year. this will not be easy, but it has to be done. >> the conservative-liberal democrat coalition that has been running reading borough council since last may has uncovered the fact that over the past 12 years the previous labour administration spent 1.4 million pounds of taxpayers' money funding the salaries of three