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A parliamentary committee questions the length and quality of some apprenticeships, saying six month programmes are of no real benefit.

• Bankia chairman: savers must remain calm
• El Mundo: €1bn taken out since Bankia nationalisation
• Spanish bond yields jump at auction
• Vince Cable: Germany can solve the crisis
• Prime minister will urge eurozone leaders to take urgent action to stem the crisis
• CEBR: Crisis could cost $1 trillion

2.46pm: Stuart Gulliver, chief executive of banking giant HSBC, has told the Guardian that the crisis has intensified over the last week, and that a firewall would need to be put around Spain if Greece leaves the euro.

Jill Treanor, our banking expert, reports:

A week ago, when Stuart Gulliver was asked about whether Greece would
stay in the eurozone he said it was "impossible" to tell. Asked again today, he said "We're in a worse place than we were a week ago".

"It remains a very difficult thing to call. I think the second election in June will be be a referendum on whether to stay in the euro. A month is a very long way away," he said.

"We are now seeing price action that is consistent with capitulation,"
said Gulliver.

And if Greece decides to exit the eurozone, he believes an firewall
will need to put around Spain. "We need to take Spain out of the
market," he said.

HSBC has a bank in Greece with 16 branches and he said there were no particular signs of inflows or outflows. Asked it if was logical for Greeks to keep their money in banks if the county was going to leave the euro, he said it was: "if you believe the polls that show 75% of the electorate want to stay in the eurozone but don't support the austerity".

But, he added, that if there was a run on Greece banks it might not be possible to wait for the elections on June 17.

2.33pm: Our Madrid correspondent Giles Tremlett has full details on Bankia's denial of a bank run:

In the note, published by the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores as "price sensitive information", Bankia said that operations in its branches "have been within the normal parameters", adding:

The evolution of deposits in the first fortnight of May has a highly seasonal nature

However, there is no mention of the €1bn euros that El Mundo newspaper said had been pulled out of the bank over the past week.

Bankia also expected that "the level of deposits will not suffer any major changes over the coming days."

The bank went on to remind clients that the governmnent had said they would not suffer because of the nationalisation and that the Bank of Spain said last week that Bankia was solvent and functioning normally.

Shares are now "only" 11% down on the start of day price.

2.05pm: Breaking news: Spain's Bankia has called on savers to remain calm. The bank has responded to today's reports that more than €1bn of funds had flowed out of the company in recent days.

Bankia issued a statement to the Madrid stock market in the last few minutes. In it, new chairman Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri said:

Bankia's clients can be absolutely calm about the security of the the savings they have deposited

So, a clear signal that a bank run is not taking place.

1.26pm: It appears that Spain's economy minister Fernando Jimenez Latorre has calmed the worst of the crisis by insisting that Bankia was not suffering from an outflow of deposits (see 12.54pm)

Shares in Bankia have struggled back a bit, now down 13.6% at €1.43. Still a hefty fall.

1.08pm: Today's plunge in Bankia shares comes just a week after Spain's government stepped in to partially nationalise the bank. Under that deal, €4.5bn of state loans are being converted into shares, giving the Madrid government 45% of the company.

Like the rest of the Spanish banking sector, Bankia has suffered massive losses because of the country's property crash. This has left it sitting on around €30bn worth of bad debts to developers, or losses on land and buildings which have been repossessed.

12.54pm: Spain's economy secretary has just denied that Bankia is suffering a bank run, Reuters reports from Madrid.

Asked about today's reports that Bankia customers had withdrawn more than €1bn since it was nationalised last week, Fernando Jimenez Latorre told a press conference that:

It's not true that there is an exit of deposits at this moment from Bankia.

According to news flashes from Madrid, Jimenez Latorre also said that Bankia has everything it needs for succes, and should be given time....

12.32pm: The euro has just slipped to a new four-month low against the US dollar, as fears over the eurozone crisis swept through the foreign exchange markets again.

The euro hit a low of $1.2668, its lowest level since 17 January this year. The dollar was also rallying against other currencies, hitting a four-month high against the Swiss franc.

As well as the sitation in Bankia, traders were reacting to a report that Moody's would announce updated ratings for 21 Spanish banks tonight. City analysts fear that many of the banks could be downgraded, with the news now expected at 8pm BST.

12.05pm: European stock markets have fallen sharply following the news that Bankia's shares had tumbled.

In London the FTSE 100 is down 57 points, or 1.05%, at 5348, with Barclays shares falling 3.7%, and IAG (British Airway's parent company which also owns Spain's Iberia) down 3.8%.

Spain's IBEX is down 1.5% at 6510, a new low since 2003.

Italy's FTSE MIB has dropped almost 2%, with its own financial stocks falling.

The French CAC is down 0.8%, losing 24 points to 3023, while the German DAX is down 0.6%, or 40 points, at 6343.

11.51am: Shares in Spain's Bankia have now fallen by as much as 26% on the Madrid stock market, following those reports of customers withdrawing funds (see 11.17am for more).

Bankia was previously classed as 'under auction' (Reuters reports) -- which indicates that a large buy or sell order was passing through the market, or that the Madrid exchange was struggling to match buy and sell orders due to a mismatch.

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong to state that Bankia shares had actually been officially suspended, as some City traders also thought. It appears that market volatility was causing trading to be interrupted (with thanks to Pablo Rodriguez of El Mundo, which was the first to report that some Bankia customers have been withdrawing funds.

11.31am: Vince Cable, the business secretary, said this morning that Germany can save the eurozone from disaster, pointing out that Europe's largest economy has done very well out of the single currency.

Cable told my colleague Dan Milmo that he was not "Apocalypse Now" about the crisis. Speaking from Ellesmere Port, where more than 2,000 Vauxhall car manufacturing jobs have been saved this morning, Cable said he confident of a positive outcome to the Greek crisis.

I am not Apocalypse Now about the European Union and the Eurozone. There are risks around Greece but Greece is a very small country. The significance of Greece is if you get contagion but I think that it is possible to be reasonably optimistic that Germany understands those risks and will put mechanisms in place. There are risks and worries and I am not minimising that. But there is every reason to believe that the EU will pull out of this crisis as Britain will.

Asked what 'mechanisms' he was referring to, Cable added:

We are talking about the firewall, the willingness of the European Central Bank to intervene, the understanding of the Italian and Spanish governments that if they play their part they will get back-up from, particularly, Germany. The Eurozone has advanced quite a long way from the peak of the crisis

It ultimately comes back to Germany thinking they have done extremely well out of the Eurozone, the competitive exchange rate. They have everything to gain from making sure this succeeds. And they are not just going to let it go down the pan.

11.17am: Shares in Bankia, Spain's fourth-largest bank, have tumbled by as much as 26% this morning. This follows a report that worried customers have withdrawn more than €1bn from their accounts since it was partially nationalised last week.

The El Mundo newspaper reported this morning that Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri, the bank's new chairman, gave Bankia's board the information at a meeting this week.

Bankia, which was created from seven 'cajas' (savings banks) last year, was only floated on the stock market last July.

This graph shows how its share price tumbled in recent weeks, and is down 70% since flotation. That means huge losses for the many retail investors who took part.

10.31am: David Cameron has begun giving his speech in Manchester, warning about the dangers of the eurocrisis. He began by saying:

We are living in perilous economic times. Turn on the TV news and you see the return of a crisis that never really went away. Greece on the brink; the survival of the Euro in question. Faced with this, I have a clear task: to keep Britain safe. Not to take the easy course - but the right course. Not to dodge responsibility for dealing with a debt crisis - but to lead our country through this to better times.

Andrew Sparrow is covering the whole event here, in his Politics Live blog.

10.23am: A striking poster urging a No vote in Ireland's referendum on the EU fiscal treaty was erected overnight in Central Dublin:

It shows a European fist squeezing Ireland until it bleeds, and was put up by the Mandate union over its headquarters in Dublin's Parnell Square.

It appeared as the latest opinion polls send a warning sign to the Republic's governing parties. Just over a third of the Irish electorate remain undecided about what way to vote in a fortnight's time, according to respected polling firm Milward Brown.

From Dublin, Henry McDonald reports:

Around 35% of voters are in the "Don't Know" category with 37% saying they will vote Yes and 24% indicating they will vote No. This latest snapshot of Irish public opinion was taken amongst 1,000 voters on Monday and Tuesday for today's Irish Independent newspaper.

Of the two ruling parties Labour has the toughest task in securing a Yes vote on 31 May with 50% of their supporters saying they oppose the EU fiscal treaty, the poll found.

However a substantial majority of voters want the Republic to remain inside the euro currency zone with three out of every four polled stating they do not want Ireland to exit the euro.

The increase in the "Dont Knows" indicates that the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his team still have a fight on their hands to persaude the Irish people to ratify a treaty that ties his government and all other states in the EU into tight budgetary controls.

The opposition to the treaty ranges from Sinn Fein and the United Left Alliance over to pro free market multi millionaire businessman Declan Ganley and his Libertas organisation.  Even the British eurosceptic UKIP have entered the fray distributing tens of thousands of leaflets across Ireland urging voters to reject the latest EU treaty.

10.12am: The word from Westminster is that Downing Street officials are confirming that prime minister David Cameron will hold a conference call with François Hollande, Angela Merkel and Mario Monti this afternoon.

This will give the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and Italy a chance to talk ahead of this weekend G8 meeting, where Barack Obama is expected to urge Merkel to back a new eurozone growth package.

9.54am: Spain has seen its borrowing costs jump sharply at an auction of government bonds. That's worrying, but the good news is that it raised the funding it needed.

The interest rate, or yield, on €1.09bn Spanish bonds maturing in 2016 jumped to 5.106%, compared with 3.374% at a similar auction in March. That underlines the fears swirling through the eurozone.

Spain also sold €1.02bn of 2015 bonds at an average yield of 4.375%, up from 2.89% in April (a much calmer month).

In total, Spain managed to raise €2.5bn, which means it has met 55.8% of its gross funding programme for 2012.

Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Sovereign Strategy said it would be "painful" for the Spanish Treasury to be selling debt at such prices.

Spain is selling its debt at punitive rates against a rapidly deteriorating domestic and external backdrop. Eurozone "break-up contagion" is seeping into Spanish yields.

The Greek crisis is placing huge strain on peripheral eurozone bonds and European bank shares. Spain is on the sharp end of these fears. The Spanish government itself can do very little to shore up confidence in the near term.

Unless there is a bold and decisive response on the part of the eurozone, sentiment towards Spain will deteriorate further. This is a very slippery slope right now.

9.49am: More developments in Greece - Antonis Samaras, the conservative New Democracy party leader, has addressed his parliamentary group this morning saying "we are the front of resistance against catastrophe."

From Helena Smith in Athens:

The unilateral withdrawal from the EU-IMF sponsored loan deal keeping the Greek economy afloat would be tountamount to the destruction of the country, he said, attacking Syriza for its "lack of preparedness and inability" to govern.

Samaras spelt out "the nightmare" that would ensue if Greece gave up the euro.

Reverting to the drachma would mean wages being "cut in half, deposits being cut in half" and property prices being devalued. The price of imports would skyrocket particularly for food and gas.

"This is the nightmare that those who speak of a unilateral condemnation [of the loan accord] will bring us."

Looking visibly shaken, the ashen-faced Samaras who had been a vociferous supporter of Greeks going to the polls "as early as possible" after the emergency interim government of Lucas Papademos took over last November, said Greece's national interests would also be threatened.

"Greece in Europe is protected nationally and geopolitically," he said. "If we become isolated we will find ourselves totally vulnerable with many around us being tempted to exploit our weakness," he said.

With the new caretaker government in power the speech in effect kicked off the electoral campaign. Alexis Tsipras' will also address his parliamentary group at 1:30 PM (11.30am BS) (as I type, his speechwriters are sharpening their pens).

9.30am: We're hearing that Alexis Tsipras, the head of the Syriza party whose popularity has surged recently, will travel to France and Germany next week to discuss the crisis.

More from Helena.

Senior cadres in Syriza, the radical left group which looks poised to emerged as the biggest party in next month's elections, have just confirmed that Alexis Tsipras, its leader, will be visiting Berlin and Paris for talks next week.

The 38-year-old, who has sent shockwaves through EU capitals saying that Greece can no no longer commit to the onerous terms of €130bn loan agreement it has signed up to with the EU and IMF, will be departing from Athens for Berlin on Monday.

It's not clear yet who Tsipras will be meeting.

9.25am: News in from Greece, where our correspondent Helena Smith says the country's interim caretaker government has just been sworn in.

Helena writes:

In what will go down in modern Greek history as one of the smallest cabinets ever, it is comprised of 16 ministers, mostly university professors and diplomats.

The swearing in of the new cabinet followed a similar ceremony for new prime minister Panagiotis Pikramenos. In another first the make-up of the new government was announced at dawn. A high court judge, Pikramenos takes over from former vice president of the European Central Bank Lucas Papademos who left the post warning that Greeks hadn't made sacrifices for "an empty shirt" but to put the debt-stricken Greek economy back on track. "There are those who are waiting to benefit from the chaos that will follow the humbling exit of the country from the common currency," he said.

9.15am: Benedict Brogan of the Daily Telegraph has a good take on David Cameron's upcoming address in Manchester:

'The Prime Minister's speech is the verbal equivalent of grabbing the Germans by the lapels and shouting 'do something'.

8.51am: Shares have fallen in major European stock markets today, but we're not seeing a repeat of Wednesday's selloff.

FTSE 100: down 19 points at 5384, - 0.36%
CAC: down 10 points at 3038, - 0.34%
DAX: down 3 points at 6380, - 0.06%

Mike McCudden of Interactive Investor said markets remain on a "negative trajectory", despite some traders reckoning that the crisis might prompt yet more quantitative easing from the world's central banks.

Volatility will remain until the markets have some comfort over Greece and the elections on the 17th June are looking more like a vote on whether they stay in the Euro despite local public opinion.

8.48am: There are reports from Italy this morning that Mario Monti, Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, David Cameron and Herman Van Rompuy will hold a videoconference this afternoon, ahead of a meeting of G8 leaders this weekend. Nothing official yet...

8.38am: New economic data from Spain has confirmed that its economy shrank by 0.3% in the first three months of 2012, which put it officially back into recession.

No relief for the Madrid government, as it battles record unemployment and the crisis in its banking sector.

Spain will be in the spotlight this morning, as it holds an auction of government debt.

8.35am: $1,000,000,000,000. That's the cost of a disorderly, badly managed Greek exit from the eurozone, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

The CEBR warned this morning that the end of the euro in its current form is certain. But while a well-managed Greek exit might only knock 2% off global GDP, the worst-case would see a 5% drop in global output (or $1 trillion).

CEBR's Douglas McWilliams said: "The economic consequences depend on the timing and the way in which the euro splits. There is no doubt that when the euro breaks up it will be costly.

Some countries will lose around 10% of annual GDP. But this will happen anyway – the choice is between a period of austerity followed by the impact of the end of the euro and then some eventual recovery OR facing the trauma of the end of the euro early and then starting to get the recovery underway."

More details in our front-page story here.

8.15am: The fact that David Cameron will make such a blunt intervention on the eurozone later today underlines the desperately serious nature of the crisis.

The prime minister's message to Europe will be delivered in the city of Manchester. It appears to be partly a message to his European counterparts, and partly a signal to domestic voters that he will do everything possible to keep Britain safe.

Here's what we expect the prime minister to say:

Either Europe has a committed, stable, successful eurozone with an effective firewall, well capitalised and regulated banks, a system of fiscal burden sharing, and supportive monetary policy across the eurozone, or we are in uncharted territory which carries huge risks for everybody.

"But be in no doubt: whichever path is chosen, I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect this country and secure our economy and financial system.

Cameron may also repeat his line from Prime Minister's Questions yesterday that the eurozone "either has to make up, or it is looking at a potential break-up".

Our politics editor, Patrick Wintour, also reports this morning that Treasury insiders has been criticising Germany for demanding too much from peripheral countries. UK sources claim the Westminster government has long been pushing for eurobonds (collective borrowing) and a looser monetary policy.

But while Britain is badly exposed to the eurocrisis, Cameron's ability to influence events is limited. As political commentator Gaby Hinsliff points out this morning, it's not ideal for governments to be warning of problems they can't solve.

..& that's a dangerous position for govt to be in. warning of perils ahead, sounding rather powerless to stop it.

— Gaby Hinsliff (@gabyhinsliff) May 17, 2012

8.10am: Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the eurozone financial crisis.

Coming up ... David Cameron is due to warn of the desperate consequences of a eurozone break-up. In a sign that the crisis is dominating the political world, the UK prime minister will argue that eurozone leaders must urgently create closer fiscal ties and an effective firewall to prevent their currency union imploding.

More on that shortly.

In Greece, the new caretaker government will be sworn in this morning. Outgoing prime minister Lucas Papademos has warned that the country stands at a "critical crossroads", but insisted that it can return to "stability, sustainable development and social prosperity".

In the financial markets, yesterday morning's mood of panic has been replaced by a sense of weary unease. Asian markets have clawed back some losses overnight, as traders hunker down for weeks of uncertainty until the Greek elections of 17 June.

Customers who have booked flights to Kenya are being assured they will be able to get a full refund, or move to a different carrier after flights stop in September.

Michael Wigge has just published a book on his thrifty odyssey which saw him travel for some five months through 11 countries, arriving in Antarctica in November 2010 hitchhiking, bartering and doing quirky jobs.

• David Cameron's speech - summary
• Lunchtime summary

2.51pm: Here's a politics afternoon reading list.

• Tim Montgomerie at ConservativeHome looks at the 1922 committee elections and "one of the most important developments in the Conservative party isn't the tussle for supremacy between loyalist and critical backbenchers but the emergence of a Right that is more in tune with the age".

Distinguishing features of this group include...

1. A breadth of concerns (fuel tax and the NHS as well as Europe and immigration);
2. They aren't anti-government/ anti-state contrarians;
3. A tone that is in tune with our times. They hold very orthodox Tory views but are less shouty, speaking persuasively. They win people as well as arguments;
4. They don't rush to College Green with their concerns about the Tory leadership but are more publicly loyal;
5. They are fascinated with campaigning as much as policy. Many of the modern Right have had to fight long and hard to get into parliament. They are as interested in pavement politics as much as in manifesto politics. Rob Halfon's campaigning sub-committee of the '22 is one illustration of this.

• Alastair Campbell on his blog says Sir Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, is pro-Tory.

One of the best things we did was make the Bank of England independent. One of the worst things Mervyn King is doing is undermining that sense of independence by comments that in their echoing of a political strategy are either naive, inept or politically motivated. Not qualities you want in a Bank Governor at times like this.

• Sunny Hundal at LabourList welcomes Jon Cruddas's appointment to head Labour's policy review.

• Max Wind-Cowie at Demos says the Tories should love-bomb Cruddas, instead of depicting him as a union lackey.

Rather than dismiss Mr. Cruddas the Conservative Party should love-bomb him zealously. We should treat him as what he is – a thoughtful, working class politician likely to be frustrated by the uber-liberal prejudices of his Leader and the majority of the Shadow Cabinet. Take his support for an in-out referendum on the EU, his belief in a sons and daughters policy for council housing, his concerns about unchecked mass-immigration and use them as sticks with which to beat his Leader. Like Maurice Glasman, with whom he shares much ground, Cruddas represents a Labour movement that might be electorally successful but which is terrifying and ugly in the eyes of the Parliamentary party and its networks in Westminster.

• Allan Massie at the Telegraph rejects suggestions that loyalty is the Conservative party's secret weapon.

"Loyalty the Tories' secret weapon? Orwell once remarked on the number of expressions expressing incredulity in which the English language is rich. "Pull the other one" will do fine. Tories are as loyal to their leaders as the owners of football clubs are to the managers they install. And the leaders themselves are rarely distinguished by loyalty to colleagues or, some would say, to the party members either.

• Lucy Townsend at the BBC explains what "re-moding" - which the government have asked us to do during the Olympics - actually means.

2.28pm: Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, was giving a speech to a press gallery lunch this afternoon. But I'm told it was not particularly newsy. Here's the BBC's Iain Watson on Twitter.

Biggest revelation from Danny Alexander's speech -in the Clegg household OMG = On Miriam's Guidance

— iain watson (@iainjwatson) May 17, 2012

2.21pm: William Hague is answering questions on Twitter about Afghanistan. His Twitter feed is here. He's using the #askFS hashtag.

2.15pm: David Cameron does not often talk about his dead son, Ivan, but the Telegraph is running a story about what Cameron said about his grief in a letter to relatives of a brain tumour victim.

1.35pm: Here's a lunchtime summary.

• David Cameron has renewed his call for the eurozone countries to intensify their efforts to stop Greece falling out of the euro. Later this afternoon he will discuss the crisis in a video conference call with the new French president, Francois Hollande, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the Italian premier, Mario Monti, the president of the European council, Herman Rompuy, and the EU commission president, Jose Manual Barroso. Earlier Vince Cable, the business secretary, said Britain should not be panicking about the prospect of a Greek exit from the euro.

• Cameron is to urge the French president to dilute his campaign promise to withdraw 3,400 French troops from Afghanistan two years earlier than planned, it has emerged. As Patrick Wintour reports, Cameron will meet François Hollande at the British ambassador's residence in Washington on Friday ahead of the G8 summit hosted by Barack Obama at Camp David. They are the first talks between the two leaders since Hollande won the presidential election in which Cameron openly backed his rival, Nicolas Sarkozy

• General Motors has announced an investment in the Vauxhall car plant at Ellesmere Port that will save the factory from closure, preserving 2,100 jobs and creating hundreds more.

• George Osborne, the chancellor, has told MPs that the government will spend £30m ensuring that churches affected by his budget decision to impose VAT on repairs to listed buildings are fully compensated. He made the announcement in the Queen's Speech debate on the economy, which saw Osborne and Ed Balls blaming each other for the poor state of the economy.

• The Northern Ireland attorney general, John Larkin, has dropped court action against Peter Hain after Hain agreed to clarify remarks he made about a high court judge. Hain, the Labour former Northern Ireland secretary, has agreed that the next edition of his memoirs will make it clear that a critical comment about a judge was not intended to undermine the Northern Ireland justice system. "My words were never intended to, not do I believe that they did, in any way undermine the administration of justice in Northern Ireland or the independence of the Northern Ireland judiciary, that very independence and integrity I worked so hard as secretary of state to achieve support for from all sections of the community, including those who had previously denied it," Hain said in a letter read out in the High Court in Belfast. Larkin was planning to prosecute Hain for "scandalising a judge". But today, in the light of Hain's undertaking, Larkin said he would drop the matter.

• The Department for Energy has revealed that the number of UK households in fuel poverty dropped from 5.5m in 2009 to 4.75m in 2010. The fall was mainly due to rising incomes, relatively stable energy prices at the time and reduced energy consumption, according to the 2012 Annual Report on Fuel Poverty released by the department.

• Ed Davey, the energy secretary, has said that he may "tweak" the start date for the next reduction in solar tariffs. Speaking in the Commons, he said: "I do listen to the industry and we are considering tweaking the start date for the next tariff reduction, but if we do it will be a tweak not a massive change." The next reduction was due to come into effect on 1 July.

• Mark Harper, the constitutional reform minister, has told MPs that the government is "determined" to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists before 2015.

• Graham Brady, the chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee, has said that yesterday's election to the committee executive was too factional. "I think the campaign was too factional, and occasionally bad-tempered, and I think sometimes colleagues didn't show the respect for each other that I would like to see," he said on the BBC's Daily Poltics show. As Nicholas Watt reports, the elections saw Cameron loyalists make limited progress in dislodging some of the prime minister's critics from executive posts.

• The Labour MP John McDonnell has come top in the ballot for MPs wanting to introduce a private member's bill.

• David Blunkett has backed a campaign calling for food for guidedogs to be exempt from VAT.

12.57pm: Ed Miliband (pictured) has responded to David Cameron's speech. This is what he told BBC News.

David Cameron isn't part of the solution, he is part of the problem. He promised Britain there would be recovery and he has delivered a recession.

All of Europe's leaders, including David Cameron, bear responsibility for the fact that over the last two years they haven't sorted out the problems of the eurozone and they haven't had a proper plan for growth and jobs in Europe.

When you listen to the prime minister, he is like a man watching events. He is the prime minister - he should be getting in there, getting it sorted out with Europe's leaders. Sorting it out means not just sorting out the eurozone problems, but getting that proper plan for growth in Europe, just like we need a proper plan for growth here in Britain.

The prime minister should be showing leadership, not looking like a man who is a bystander to events, shouting from the rooftops.

12.29pm: Here's a summary of the key points from David Cameron's speech.

• Cameron reaffirmed his call the eurozone countries to do more to support Greek's bid to remain in the euro. He suggested that Germany should contribute more and the eurozone countries should use eurobonds to help countries like Greece. But he also said that more fundamental fiscal integration was essential.

The Eurozone needs to put in place governance arrangements that create confidence for the future. And as the British Government has been arguing for a year now that means following the logic of monetary union towards solutions that deliver greater forms of collective support and collective responsibility of which Eurobonds are one possible example. Steps such as these are needed to put an end to speculation about the future of the euro.

This was billed as a new warning to the eurozone, but actually Cameron has been making these points for some time now. Today's warning was blunter than usual, because Cameron floated the possibility of Greece leaving the euro if the eurozone countries failed to address their problems, but there was nothing novel in it in policy terms.

The problem for Cameron is that he has delivered a "last chance" message like this before. For example, this is what he said in October last year.

Action needs to be taken in the next coming weeks to strengthen Europe's banks, to build the defences that the euro zone has, to deal with the problems of debt. They've got to do that now. They've got to get ahead of the markets now.

Experience suggests that the eurozone countries are quite capable of ignoring these warnings.

• He urged voters waiting for a recovery in the UK to be patient. Rebuilding the economy was "a long-term project", he said. "It's painstaking work."

• He accepted that the government needed to do "even more" to promote growth. "The additional ingredient that government will deliver and needs to do even more of is a radical programme of microeconomic reform to make our economy more competitive -including competitive tax rates, planning reform and deregulation,"

• He suggested that the government would expand its credit easing programme.

• He rejected Labour's call for the austerity programme to be relaxed to promote growth. That was "a cop-out", he said, and would mark a return to the "something for nothing economics that got us into this mess". In a passage about Europe, he also said that the idea that high-deficit countries could spend their way to recovery was "a dangerous illusion".

And I've found out why Sky and BBC News were not able to show the speech live. Cameron was speaking on the 16th floor of a building, and the broadcasters couldn't get their kit to reach that high.

12.17pm: My colleague Dan Milmo has been speaking to Vince Cable about the eurozone crisis this morning. Dan has sent me this.

Speaking from Ellesmere Port, where more than 2,000 Vauxhall car manufacturing jobs have been saved this morning, Cable said he confident of a positive outcome to the Greek crisis. "I am not Apocalypse Now about the European Union and the Eurozone. There are risks around Greece but Greece is a very small country. The significance of Greece is if you get contagion but I think that it is possible to be reasonably optimistic that Germany understands those risks and will put mechanisms in place. There are risks and worries and I am not minimising that. But there is every reason to believe that the EU will pull out of this crisis as Britain will."

Asked what 'mechanisms' he was referring to, Cable added: "We are talking about the firewall, the willingness of the European Central Bank to intervene, the understanding of the Italian and Spanish governments that if they play their part they will get back-up from, particularly, Germany. The Eurozone has advanced quite a long way from the peak of the crisis. It ultimately comes back to Germany thinking they have done extremely well out of the Eurozone, the competitive exchange rate. They have everything to gain from making sure this succeeds. And they are not just going ti let it go down the pan."

11.30am: David Cameron is taking part in a video conference with his fellow EU leaders who are attending this weekend's G8 summit in America this afternoon, Downing Street has revealed. My colleague Nicholas Watt has the details on Twitter.

PM to hold vid conf at 4.15 with Merkel, Hollande, Monti, Van Rompuy + Barroso - EU reps at #G8

Video conf was idea of Herman Van Rompuy - agreed a week ago - to discuss EU positions ahead of #G8

Vid conf: only PM's 2nd conversation with Francois Hollande. 1st chat election night #G8

11.21am: Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, says Cameron has "his head in the sand". Cameron has run out of excuses for the fact that the economy has failed to grow, Umunna tells BBC News.

11.17am: Cameron did do a Q&A session with journalists after the speech. As soon as it pops up on BBC News or Sky, I'll cover it.

11.16am: The full text of David Cameron's speech is now on the Number 10 website.

11.09am: Cameron winds up with a "whatever it takes" declaration.

I cannot predict how this crisis will end for others. And I cannot pretend that Britain will be immune from the consequences, either. But this I can promise: that we know what needs to be done and we are doing it.

Get the deficit under control, get the foundations for recovery in place, defend the long-term interests of our country and hold our course.

As prime minister, I will do whatever it takes to keep Britain safe from the storm.

11.08am: Cameron says globalisation offers big opportunities for the UK.

As nations get richer they spend more money on products where Britain excels. On everything from financial services and pharmaceuticals to jet engines, music and computer games.

The globalisation of demand means new countries demanding our products, fuelling new jobs at home.

11.05am: Cameron says that, although the Doha trade round is "going nowhere", that does not mean countries like Britain cannot promote free trade.

There is good work from Doha that we can salvage. Like the measures to break down the bureaucracy over getting goods across borders. I want to see a commitment to open markets and to rolling back protectionist measures already in place.

And most importantly, I want us to move forwards with "coalitions of the willing", so countries who want to, can forge ahead with ambitious deals of their own because we all benefit from the increased trade and investment these deals foster.

Cameron says that means getting EU trade deals finalised with India, Canada and Singapore. The EU should also open negotiations with Japan and the US, he says. A trade deal with the US would be "the single biggest bilateral deal that could benefit Britain".

11.03am: Cameron says there also needs to be action at a global level.

So over the coming weeks I'll be flying to Camp David and to Los Cabos in Mexico to fight for what is right for Britain at the G8 and G20 summits.

That means committing together to make the reforms we need to our economies to get growth in the global economy working again, including involving organisations like the IMF. It means persisting with reforms to make our banks safe, by implementing high-quality, global financial regulatory standards. It means recognising the risks to the recovery from rising and volatile energy prices and working together to ensure our energy security. And most of all it means getting together to give the world economy the one big stimulus that would really make a difference an expansion of trade freedoms, breaking down the barriers to world trade.

11.00am: And, third, Europe needs to address its "low productivity and lack of economic dynamism", he says. The single market needs to be completed.

And then Cameron issues his "eurozone at a cross-roads" warning.

The Eurozone is at a cross-roads. It either has to make-up or it is looking at a potential break-up. Either Europe has a committed, stable, successful Eurozone with an effective firewall, well capitalised and regulated banks, a system of fiscal burden sharing, and supportive monetary policy across the Eurozone.

Or we are in unchartered territory which carries huge risks for everybody. As I have consistently said it is in Britain's interest for the Eurozone to sort out its problems.

10.59am: Back to the speech. Cameron says the second thing that needs to happen is more political cooperation in the eurozone.

Second, the Eurozone needs to put in place governance arrangements that create confidence for the future. And as the British Government has been arguing for a year now that means following the logic of monetary union towards solutions that deliver greater forms of collective support and collective responsibility of which Eurobonds are one possible example. Steps such as these are needed to put an end to speculation about the future of the euro.

10.57am: BBC News are now broadcasting the Cameron speech. They weren't able to show it live for technical reasons. At the moment I'm ahead of the BBC broadcast.

10.52am: Cameron says three things need to happen for the eurozone to function properly.

First, the high-deficit eurozone countries need to address their problems.

First, the high deficit, low competitiveness countries in the periphery of the Eurozone do need to confront their problems head on. They need to continue taking difficult steps to cut their spending, increase their revenues and undergo structural reform to become competitive. The idea that high deficit countries can borrow and spend their way to recovery is a dangerous delusion.

But this will only be able to happen if the rich countries in the eurozone and the European Central Bank do more to support countries like Greece.

So I welcome the opportunity to explore new options for such monetary activism at a European level, for example through President Hollande's ideas for project bonds. But to rebalance your economy in a currency union at a time of global economic weakness you need more fundamental support.

Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble is right to recognise rising wages in his country can play a part in correcting these imbalances but monetary policy in the Eurozone must also do more.

10.49am: Turning to the euro, Cameron says that without Germany, the eurozone would be in a recession.

I realise that countries inside the Eurozone may not relish advice from countries outside it - especially from countries, such as Britain, with debts and difficulties of their own.

But the eurozone crisis affects the UK, he says. As Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, said yesterday, the eurozone crisis poses the biggest threat to the UK's recovery.

This Coalition government was formed in the midst of a debt crisis in the Eurozone. Two years later and little has changed. That's the backdrop against which we have to work. So it's only right that we set out our views. We need to be clear about the long-term consequences of any single currency. In Britain, we have had one for centuries. When one part of the country struggles, other parts step forward to help. There is a remorseless logic to it.

A rigid system that locks down each state's monetary flexibility yet limits fiscal transfers between them can only resolve its internal imbalances through painful and prolonged adjustment.

10.47am: Back to the speech. Cameron says legislation on its own will not create growth.

Some people asked why we didn't have more economy Bills in the Queen's Speech. If you could legislate your way to growth, obviously we would. The truth is you can't.

10.45am: But the government needs to do more, he says.

I believe that there is more that we can do. We can use the hard-won credibility of the government's balance sheet to help the economy grow without adding even further to our debt.

Let me tell you what this means.

In many areas we are already using the credibility we have earned to pass on the benefits of low interest rates to businesses and families. We have the credit easing programme for small businesses we have mortgage help for people who want new homes and then there are the guarantees for new infrastructure projects.

I want us to go further, so I've asked the Treasury to examine what more we can do to boost credit for business, housing and infrastructure.

This sounds as if he's announcing an extension of credit easing, but, from the text, it's not immediately clear how significant this is. I'll post more when I get it.

10.43am: Cameron lists some of the things the government is doing to promote growth: short-term measures, like cutting corporation tax, the National Loan Guarantee Scheme and reforming planning; medium-term measures like the Regional Growth Fund and apprenticeships; and long-term measures like High Speed Rail.

10.41am: Cameron accepts the government needs to do more to promote growth.

Fiscal responsibility and monetary activism is the right macroeconomic mix for our over-indebted economy. But the additional ingredient that government will deliver and needs to do even more of is a radical programme of microeconomic reform to make our economy more competitive -including competitive tax rates, planning reform and deregulation.

10.39am: And here's the attack on Labour's proposed economic strategy.

Those who argue we should spend more want us to borrow more, driving up our deficit and our debt and putting our hard-won credibility and low interest rates at risk.

Higher interest rates would mean higher mortgages, lower employment and even more of the money people work so hard for wasted paying the interest on our national debt. We must not and will not let this happen.

10.38am: Cameron says the government still spends £120m a day on interest on Britain's debt and that the government is doing what it can to bring the deficit down.

A central promise of this government - and one of the key tasks that brought the Coalition together - was to deal with this deficit. That is the only path to prosperity.

And that is exactly what we are doing. Despite headwinds from the Eurozone, we are on track. It is a long-term project. It is painstaking work. But the tough decisions we have taken on deficit reduction really are beginning to yield real results. And there can be no deviation from this.

10.32am: Cameron says today's General Motors investment at the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port (see 9.35am) is a vote of confidence in the British car industry.

Look across the country, at Honda in Swindon, Jaguar Land Rover in the West Midlands, Toyota in Derby and Nissan in Sunderland. Britain's car industry is growing.

Indeed, this week our balance of trade in cars turned positive in the first quarter – for the first time since 1976 when Jim Callaghan went to the IMF. And it's not just our car industry which is strong. Life sciences, pharmaceuticals, information technology, aerospace, the creative industries, services. Britain has a stronger base from which to grow.

10.26am: Sky and BBC News have not deemed Cameron's speech important enough to give it the live treatment. [UPDATE at 12.29pm: That's not right. They could not cover it for technical reasons. See 12.29pm.] But colleagues are tweeting from Manchester, and I've got a text in front of me, so the blogging carries on. I'm reporting using the text issued by Number 10 this morning, not from what I can hear Cameron saying. It's not an ideal arrangement, but it's unusual for the prime minsiter to depart from his text and this seems better than not reporting the speech at all.

Cameron says the government has cut the deficit by a quarter already.

Since we took office two years ago, we have cut the deficit by more than a quarter.
Yesterday, we had encouraging news on unemployment, too. The number of people in work – up by 100,000 in the last quarter. And the number of new business start-ups last year was one of the highest in our history. So now more than ever this is the time to stand firm.

It is important not to squander the progress made, he says.

Yes, we are doing everything we can to return this country to strong, stable economic growth. But no, we will not do that by returning to the something for nothing economics that got us into this mess.

We cannot blow the budget on more spending and more debt.

10.22am: David Cameron is starting his speech in Manchester.

We are living in perilous economic times. Turn on the TV news and you see the return of a crisis that never really went away. Greece on the brink; the survival of the Euro in question. Faced with this, I have a clear task: to keep Britain safe. Not to take the easy course - but the right course. Not to dodge responsibility for dealing with a debt crisis - but to lead our country through this to better times.

My message today is that it can be done. We are well on the way in this journey.

10.14am: David Cameron is about to deliver his speech in Manchester on the economy and the euro crisis.

Here's Patrick Wintour's story previewing what he's going to say.

10.09am: You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.

As for the rest of the papers, here are some articles and stories that are particularly interesting.

• Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph says Britain should be helping the Greeks to leave the euro.

Something strange has happened. Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne appear to have swallowed the official European line that unthinkable disaster will ensue when the euro collapses. And, of course, it will be messy when Greece exits the euro. But the truth is that the single currency has been calamitous for the peripheral countries of Europe, and will get more calamitous the longer they stay in. Now is the time for them to walk away. And here Britain's traditional role should be to provide help and support – for instance, by offering some of the most brilliant City minds to help the Greeks negotiate an elegant exit and plot a solvent future. Instead, the Chancellor is siding with Greece's tormentors.

• David Aaronovitch in the Times (paywall) says there are too many lawyers in parliament.

Whether the issue is drugs policy or the introduction of phonics into schools, we don't apply the methods that we could to help us to make better decisions. Rather, we rely on selective evidence, persuasion, rhetoric and crossing our fingers and hoping like hell. So why is that? One reason may be that scientists don't get to be decision makers and lawyers do. Of 650 MPs there are 158 from business, 90 former political advisers, 86 lawyers and 38 journalists. Just one MP worked as a research scientist and two have science PhDs. In the US Senate there are no former research scientists, but 38 per cent of senators are lawyers. In President Sarkozy's first 16-strong, cabinet, 9 members were lawyers or had law degrees.

I love lawyers. I love their intellect ... But lawyers are not, in the way that scientists are, truth seekers. When lawyers test the evidence, they do so not to get as close to the truth as they can, but to make an argument or to decide whether a law has been broken or upheld. And now, in this era of judicial inquiries and extended judge-power, much of our governance seems to be a series of turf wars between lawyers in politics and lawyers in law.

It's good that there is something of a resurgence of interest in science, of which the sceptics movement is a part. Perhaps we will see a day when — as the writer Alexandra Robbins put it, the geeks shall inherit the earth and a Martin Rees, a Colin Blakemore and a Lesley Yellowlees can sit at a Cabinet table presided over by Stella Creasy (Labour, PhD in social psychology), or Therese Coffey (Conservative, PhD in chemistry) or even Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, PhD in Biological Chemistry). And, if the evidence points in that direction, they might even let a lawyer or two in to join them.

• Kiran Stacey in the Financial Times (subscription) says the Department for Work and Pensions has dismissed Steve Hilton's call for welfare cuts worth £25bn as "utter nonsense".

Mr Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, is keen on looking at ways to encourage part-time workers to make the move into full-time employment, among other measures likely to be part of a spending review some time in the next three years. But a person close to the minister described the £25bn figure on Wednesday as "nonsense", saying there was no room left for such steep cuts.

The work and pensions department is already planning to save £18bn a year in benefit payments by 2014-15 by implementing measures such as a cap on housing benefit and less money for disabled people.

The person said: "We have already cut £18bn from the welfare bill. How does he imagine we can cut another £25bn? This is utter nonsense, the figure is ludicrous."

• And Sue Cameron in the Daily Telegraph says Hilton's plan to cut the size of the civil service by 90% has also been dismissed as nonsense.

[Steve Hilton] is the man whose calls for a further 90 per cent cut in Civil Service numbers have been hitting the headlines. One of his justifications is that we once ran an empire with only 4,000 civil servants – so how can we justify a Civil Service of 434,000 today just to run Britain? It's a fun argument. It is also absurd.

It is true that under the Raj we ran India and her 400 million people with fewer than 1,500 civil servants. Yet so disproportionate are the numbers that they should have raised questions – even with Mr Hilton. As the historian Niall Ferguson asks in his brilliant book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World: "Was this the most efficient bureaucracy in history? Was a single British civil servant really able to run the lives of up to three million Indians, spread over 17,000 square miles, as some district officers were supposed to do?"

The answer, of course, was no. As Mr Ferguson explains, beneath the tiny top layer of overwhelmingly British officials was another, much larger bureaucracy composed of Indians who carried out day-to-day administration. And below them, says Mr Ferguson, "was a veritable army of lesser public employees… Without this auxiliary force of civil servants who were native born, the 'heaven-born' would have been impotent."

Funnily enough, the senior Civil Service in Britain today comprises just over 3,700 people. The other 430,300 are the front-line troops who run Jobcentres, tax offices, pensions, prisons and myriad other services. Small wonder that Mr Hilton, who has never run a large organisation, was given short shrift by the head of the Civil Service, Sir Bob Kerslake. After a stormy meeting, Sir Bob, who used to run Sheffield, told Mr Hilton that the idea of a further 90 per cent cut in numbers was "nonsense".

• Graeme Paton in the Daily Telegraph says the government could give schools complete freedom over teachers' pay.

Ministers are considering proposals for a "complete deregulation" of salaries to give schools more power to curb pay rises for the worst teachers, it was revealed.

The Coalition said sweeping reforms were needed because rewards are currently being given to the "great majority of teachers" – creating little incentive for staff to improve.

It could lead to schools in England paying some qualified teachers at a "significantly reduced" rate, the Government admitted. Average classroom teachers currently receive £34,700 a year.

9.48am: For the record, here are the YouGov GB polling figures from last night.

Labour: 45% (up 2 points from Tuesday night)
Conservatives: 31% (down 1)
Lib Dems: 9% (up 1)
Ukip: 8% (down 1)

Labour lead: 14 points

Government approval: -37

It's the second time this week Labour have had a 14-point lead in a YouGov poll. That's the biggest lead YouGov have recorded for Labour since the polling firm was founded in 2002.

9.35am: It's not all bad news today. Following a vote by workers at the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port in favour of new working conditions, the firm is going to confirm an investment that will secure 2,100 jobs.

9.28am: David Cameron has released extracts from his speech in advance. And Ed Balls (pictured), the shadow chancellor, has released his rebuttal in advance too. Here's an extract.

David Cameron is totally out of touch and deeply complacent if he thinks Britain is on the right course. His failed policies have pushed us into recession and the government is now set to borrow an extra £150 billion to pay for this economic failure.

Plan A has failed in Britain, but it is also now failing across the eurozone. David Cameron must recognise the austerity policies which are failing in Europe are the very same policies that have failed in Britain and which the British government has been urging eurozone countries to stick with ...

Instead of using the eurozone crisis as an excuse for Britain's problems David Cameron must wake up to the fact that our economy has not grown for over a year and a half on his watch. When countries like France and Germany have avoided recession, despite the eurozone's problems, it's clear Britain's double-dip recession was made in Downing Street.

9.13am: There's a lot of comment about the eurozone crisis on the airwaves this morning.

Vince Cable (pictured), the business secretary, said people in Britain should not be panicking.

We need to get the risks in perspective. There clearly are risks to the UK. Greece itself is a small country, it's only 2% of the European economy. The risks arise if the crisis were spread to other weaker, countries in southern Europe, but there is no reason why that should happen. They are in the process of creating firewalls to prevent the financial crisis spreading and we hope that they do.

But as far as the UK is concerned we can't directly influence what is happening in the eurozone because we are not part of it. What we can do is to make sure that the UK is a well-run economy ... I don't think there's any reason whatever why in the UK we should be panicking or taking an excessively negative view.

Lord Lamont, the Conservative former chancellor, said a Greek exit would be "messy" but that that would be better than allowing the crisis to prolong.

If we get a situation that is just going on and on, I think that's worse.

The immediate effects of a Greek departure don't go to this country but they would reach us indirectly. The worst effects are on the banking system, first on the Greek banks, but then on French banks that have lent to Greece, and then British banks that have lent to France, so indirectly we are involved.

But the most damaging thing I think is this corrosive effect on confidence. We hear all the time demands for more growth - growth above all depends on individuals and individuals will only grow their business if there is confidence. This going on and on and on - and it's a very serious crisis - the threat being in the background is profoundly destabilising.

Alistair Darling, the Labour former chancellor, said it would be better if Greece did not leave the euro.

I think it is not in the eurozone's interests to let Greece go. I think it would be cheaper to reach a deal with Greece that actually works because the present one is never going to work.

It is going to be very painful for Greece whatever they do, but there is no easy options here but the risk of Greece going out and spreading to other countries in Europe is too great. Look at it from Germany's point of view. The last thing they want is a break-up of the euro and a return to the Deutschmark. It would price them out of the market.

I've taken some of the quotes from PoliticsHome.

9.00am: "We are living in perilous economic times." That's what David Cameron is going to tell us in a speech in Manchester. It is being billed by Number 10 as a speech on the economy and Cameron will use it to reject Labour's calls for a "Plan B".

We will not do that by returning to the something for nothing economics that got us into this mess. We cannot blow the budget on more spending and more debt. It would squander all the progress we've made in these last two, tough years. It would mean more austerity, for even longer. It would risk our future.

But there will probably be more interest in what he has to say about the eurozone crisis. As the Guardian reports today, it is estimated that a disorderly Greek withdrawal from the eurozone (and no one has worked out how to achieve an orderly withdrawal yet) would cost the eurozone $1trn (that's trillion - 12 noughts). Accordig to the extract sent out by Number 10 in advance, Cameron is going to say the eurozone leaders either have to take decisive steps to protect their currency, or accept that Greece is on its way out.

The eurozone is at a cross-roads. It either has to make-up or it is looking at a potential break-up.

Either Europe has a committed, stable, successful eurozone with an effective firewall, well capitalised and regulated banks, a system of fiscal burden sharing, and supportive monetary policy across the eurozone. Or we are in unchartered territory which carries huge risks for everybody.

As I have consistently said it is in Britain's interest for the eurozone to sort out its problems. But be in no doubt: whichever path is chosen, I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect this country and secure our economy and financial system.

I'll be covering the speech in detail, and all the reaction to it. There will also be further coverage of the eurozone crisis on our eurozone crisis live blog.

Here are the other items in the diary for today.

9.20am: Universities UK holds a briefing on the impact of the government's immigration policies on universities.

10am: Mark Harper, the constitutional affairs minister, gives evidence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee about the registation of lobbyists.

10am: Sir Harold Evans, the former Sunday Times editor, and Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph columnist, give evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

10.15am: David Cameron will deliver his speech on the economy in Manchester.

As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and another in the afternoon.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm on @AndrewSparrow.

And if you're a hardcore fan, you can follow @gdnpoliticslive. It's an automated feed that tweets the start of every new post that I put on the blog.

Travel analysts say airlines could be forced to pay out £1billion a year in compensation if a new European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling becomes law.

Not only did the bond markets force Spain to pay punitive and unsustainable rates to borrow, but also shares in the country's fourth-biggest bank Bankia plunged 22 per cent as its customers fled.

The P-word carries an emotional Thatcherite kick, but what is happening now is something different – and using the term loosely is counterproductive

The painful passage of the Health and Social Care Act through parliament has led to claims that the NHS in England is being privatised. The same word has been used to describe the private healthcare provider Circle's deal to run Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust in Cambridgeshire. But while Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms and the Hinchingbrooke deal can be called many things, neither are privatisations.

Collins, the Guardian's dictionary of choice, defines privatise as "to transfer (the production of goods and services) from the public sector of an economy into private ownership and operation". The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a transfer "from public to private ownership and control".

Circle (which itself needs some explanation, being 49.9% owned by a staff partnership and 50.1% owned by the London-listed and Jersey-based Circle Holdings plc), has been contracted to manage Hinchingbrooke hospital for 10 years. It is novel that a private company is controlling an NHS trust – but it is doing so for a limited time. The staff remain NHS employees (although Circle plans to give them shares as well), and the hospital will return to the health service at the end of the decade. "Management outsourcing" would be a good description; the trust prefers "operating franchise".

Private investors will only want to own something, rather than just supply it, if it has the potential to make money. A government with any sense will only want to sell it if it can allow it to go out of business. While most healthcare is paid for by taxes, NHS trusts will spend money rather than make it, and it would be both desperately unfair and politically suicidal to close an NHS hospital purely because it had got its finances wrong.

Privatisation has actually fallen out of fashion politically, partly because most of the obvious organisations have already been sold, and partly because both government and suppliers now prefer long-term management deals. Under the private finance initiative, suppliers are building and operating hospitals worth £11.4bn in England – and will receive an estimated £72.2bn for doing so by 2049, according to Treasury figures. PFI deals can certainly be criticised for issues including their high cost and inflexibility. But they do involve building new publicly owned NHS hospitals, not private ones.

It could be argued that privatisation should take a broader meaning, of heavy private sector involvement in the running of public services. The trouble is that this involvement is a matter of degree: all public services use private companies. In healthcare, this includes supplies such as medicines and equipment, but there are deals that go much further, such as PFIs. Some trusts outsource work in a way that sees the transfer of public sector employees to private companies, but with the public sector body continuing as the commissioner of the work.

For those wanting to see less private sector involvement in public services, "privatisation" is a tempting word to use: it carries a big, emotional, Thatcherite kick. But using it loosely allows those defending the plans to reply, with justification, that critics don't know what they are talking about. And if you're campaigning to change government policy, isn't giving your opponents ammunition counterproductive?

• SA Mathieson is a senior healthcare analyst for Kable

Nasa's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer has sampled 107 'potentially hazardous' near-Earth asteroids - 330ft wide or larger - to make estimates about how many are out there.

Gas and electricity price rises at the end of last year are expected to have pushed 400,000 more households in England into fuel poverty.

Credit card companies are misleading customers over the time it takes to credit accounts if a payment is made in cash, with RBS/NatWest even potentially fining them.

Shares in Bankia tumbled 30% after El Mundo reported that more than €1bn of deposits had left the bank in the last few days

European stock markets have suffered fresh losses amid reports that nervous customers at Spain's fourth-largest bank had begun withdrawing funds.

Shares in Bankia, which was nationalised just a week ago, tumbled 30% at one stage on Thursday after Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that more than €1bn ($1.26bn) of deposits had left the bank in the last few days. Although Bankia denied it was suffering a bank run, the reports fuelled fears that Europe's banking sector might crack under the escalating pressure from the ongoing eurozone financial crisis.

In Greece, a caretaker government was sworn in under the leadership of supreme court judge Panagiotis Pikramenos, who will run the country until new elections on 17 June.

Warring Greek political leaders swung into election mode, with Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy party saying Greece would face a nightmare of plunging wages and bank deposits if it left the euro. But Alexis Tsipras, the head of the rival Syriza party, reiterated that he would renegotiate the terms of Greece's austerity plan if he won power.

In London, the FTSE 100 index of leading shares had fallen by 60 points, or 1.1%, by lunchtime, with French and German markets showing similar falls.

The US dollar hit a new four-month high of €1.2668 against the euro, as investors once again put their money into safe-havens.

City experts remained split over whether European leaders could hold the eurozone together in its current form.

"I don't think a Greek exit from the Euro will take place in the very short term – as policy compromise is likely," said Graham Neilson, chief investment strategist at Cairn Capital. "But the broader impact of a Greek exit, which still looks inevitable longer term, is still being underestimated."

The crisis will dominate this weekend's meeting of G8 world leaders, which will be hosted by Barack Obama. Four European leaders – David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Mario Monti and François Hollande – are expected to hold a video conference call later on Thursday.

Cameron has urged eurozone leaders to do a better job of balancing austerity and growth, following data on Tuesday that showed there was no economic growth across the region in the first three months of 2012.

Britain's biggest banks suffered more pain on the markets today after Spain fuelled the flames of the eurozone crisis with more economic woe.

Group's annual general meeting sees almost a third of shareholders vote against criticised pay scheme

Cookson has become the latest UK business to suffer a shareholder revolt over pay as nearly a third of investors rebelled against the industrial material group's boardroom pay policy – which has awarded £20m in shares to the group's three most senior executives.

The group's annual general meeting on Thursday saw 31.8% of investors vote against a pay scheme that has been strongly criticised by shareholder advisory groups. It was backed by 68% of investors.

Cookson's chairman, Jeff Harris, said the award was justified. "There is no suggestion whatsoever that this is in some way an example of reward for failure," he said.

Under the terms of the scheme the chief executive, Nick Salmon, was given shares worth around £7m, with the finance director, Mike Butterworth, receiving shares worth £3.6m and the head of the ceramics division, François Wanecq, being awarded stock worth £9.3m.

The Association of British Insurers had issued a red-top alert – its highest level of objection – over the report while Pirc, another advisory service, called for a vote against the reappointment of the board. The proxy votes showed that every director was voted back on with a majority of 94% or higher. However, including abstentions, around 13% of shareholders failed to back the re-election of three board members who sat on the remuneration committee: Jan Oosterveld; Peter Hill; and Jeff Hewitt. The committee chairman, John Sussens, was not backed by 14% of shareholders once abstentions were included.

In statement issued after the AGM, Harris said: "The board continues to listen very carefully to views expressed by shareholders and will be taking these into account along with the result of today's vote on the remuneration report, as remuneration policy is formulated going forward and we develop future policies."

Cookson joins the ranks of big pay protest votes this year, which include ballot rebellions at Barclays, Xstrata and William Hill, as well as the enforced departures of chief executives at Trinity Mirror, Aviva and AstraZeneca.

Cookson also addressed wider shareholder concerns about its growth by raising the prospect of a demerger. It announced a strategic review that will consider separating its two major divisions: engineered ceramics, which makes products for the glass, steel and solar industries; and performance materials, which supplies to the electronics and automotive markets. Scott Cagehin, an analyst at Numis Securities, said: "We believe that this strategically makes sense, especially given the individual nature of the divisions."

A 4.3% shareholder in Cookson said the demerger could allow a revamp of the group's remuneration structure. Gavin Morris, a partner at Governance for Owners, which describes itself as a "responsible activist shareholder", said: "They are looking at the demerger option. In a demerged entity there is an opportunity to look at the remuneration structure." GfO backed the remuneration report, saying that Cookson had a "good remuneration process".

It was unveiled on the BBC TV show ‘Tomorrow’s World’ in 1991 during which its British inventor held a Starlite-coated egg up to a blowtorch - and it was still runny inside.