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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Let’s discuss today’s top stories with the Editor in Chief of Elle Magazine, Lorraine Candy; the Labour MP Diane Abbott and the journalist and broadcast Julia Hartley-Brewer.  To start with Osborne and IDS blaze ahead with the cuts.  Diane, what about companies paying the living wage so the state doesn’t have to subsidise through tax credits?

DIANE ABBOTT: I actually don’t think we should be subsidising employers, I think instead we should have a living wage and a London living wage but a lot of these cuts will be going from people who are working and on the Housing Benefit, the government argued initially when it made cuts in Housing Benefit this would force landlords to bring rents down – it did nothing of the sort.  They simply replaced working people and working tenants with students and people from overseas.  We polled these cuts and they were widely popular and they will be widely popular right up until they hit people who realise these cuts are about them, people in work, people who are doing their best.  These are savage cuts and they are not really necessary.  I thought that everyone is mocking Charlotte Church but she came out against these benefit cuts, she went on the march, she marched the whole way because I was beside her and that shows something that you just said, that young women and young people are beginning to realise these cuts are hitting them.  We talk about aspiration but these cuts are crushing aspiration.  

DM: But these cuts are hardly hitting Charlotte Church.   

DIANE ABBOTT: That’s why you should respect her for saying it is not going to affect me, I’m well off but I care about other young people my age who are going to be hit.  

DM: I put a specific question to the leadership contender Andy Burnham as to why he wasn’t on it after what your party has been saying about cuts.  

DIANE ABBOTT: Unfortunately there’s an element in the party leadership which broadly supports the benefit cuts but it’s quite interesting.  We had a leadership hustings yesterday, they all said they are pro benefit cap stuff and they got booed for it.  

DM: Bar one.  

DIANE ABBOTT: Bar one, my friend Jeremy Corbyn who stood up against the cuts and it is quite interesting that the line that the leadership candidates apart from Jeremy are taking is not popular with Labour supporters.  

DM: Do you think he might get in?  Some people are saying there is a strong strand within your party who support him.   

DIANE ABBOTT: I think he is going to do a lot better than people think.  People don’t understand how a one person, one vote system works and they don’t understand a lot of what Jeremy is talking about like bringing railways back into public ownership and fighting these cuts is actually very popular with Labour supporters.  

DM: Interesting to see how that goes.  [Story about tuition for school children]  

DIANE ABBOTT: Even children at state schools get tuition, it’s an epidemic among London parents.  The other thing is that people are aware it is much more competitive now.  When we were at school you could leave school, waste five years and still have a decent career and now we know our children have to be on it from the very beginning.  
[Story about Europe] Let’s just say, I was in parliament during the tragic era of John Major and his euro rebels.  The Tories are poised to plunge into the most awful warfare about Europe.  It is not rational, they get hysterical, it is quite extraordinary.
[Story about drinking in pregnancy] I do think it makes it easier for nurses and midwives advising women if they can just say no, you cannot drink.  When we see the consequences of some of these women drinking in childbirth, I think that anything that makes it easier to say to women no, you just can’t drink, makes it easier and makes it better for the children.  If the advice is that you can’t drink during pregnancy then you are quite within your rights at these functions to say no, I’m sorry, that’s medical advice.  However I will admit one thing, I did drink during pregnancy, I drink Guinness and condensed milk but I’m of Jamaican origin and Jamaicans believe pregnant women should drink Guinness and condensed milk so I just did!  

DM: Just one last quick story, Diane, the row between Harriet and Ed about peerages, four to hand out, who are they going to?  

DIANE ABBOTT: Well this is bizarre.  Ed Miliband, who I have got a great deal of time for, wants to give a peerage to this bloke called Spencer Livermore who no one has heard of.  Spencer Livermore advised Gordon Brown and we lost that election, he advised Ed Miliband and we lost this election, why would you give a peerage to a man who has lost at least two elections on the trot?  The thing about the honours list generally is that a lot of people who don’t otherwise get recognition get recognition through that so I would give peerages to people like that, I wouldn’t give political honours but I certainly wouldn’t give a political honour to the two loser Spencer Livermore.  

DM: On that note thank you all very much indeed for taking us through some of the stories in the Sunday papers.