Author Archives: Gareth Epps

In September, the BIS Select Committee unanimously delivered a devastating verdict on the pubcos for the third time running and lambasted them for repeatedly breaking promises to change their business practices. They also found unambiguously that ‘the tie’, as operated by them, is unfair to licensees, many of whom can’t earn minimum wage despite healthy turnover figures; is bad for pub customers who are overcharged for a pint, due to the hugely inflated prices the licensee has to pay for beer; and it is closing pubs that need not and should not close.

The Committee found that, even after four …

The Big Society is, at best, an abstract concept. Nonetheless, it poses interesting and different questions for Liberal Democrats involved in local government and the voluntary sector.

In Reading, we have taken a principled decision to maintain overall levels of funding to the voluntary sector as part of our Conservative-Liberal Democrat joint administration. In fact, there is a small increase, alongside benefits in kind in the form of low-cost accommodation to the voluntary sector. This is set against a small decrease in the final year of a Labour administration whose warm words about the voluntary sector were not matched with genuine partnership.

The Reading approach, too, is one that is all too rare in other local authorities. In many parts of the UK, such as nearby Wokingham, the voluntary sector has been the subject of some of the sharpest cuts at all, seen as a soft target for cuts. For many voluntary organisations, this year has been the most traumatic for the sector for many years. With so much radical change in the air, community leaders as well as local government have needed to provide leadership that balances an understanding of communities with an understanding of the sector’s needs. Unfortunately some senior national figures with links to the Labour Party, such as ACEVO’s recently-knighted former Lambeth councillor Stephen Bubb, have taken to politically-motivated doom-mongering which is not going to help anyone.

Some 500 Liberal Democrats descended on London on Saturday to help set the agenda for the next General Election manifesto. This was a members’ event, so we won’t give away all the secrets here. The day was varied and well thought through.

Others have covered Nick’s speech, which can be read in full on the party’s website; while it contained little that could be described as genuinely controversial, it did beg a question of how the ‘big idea’ – of the decentralisation of public services – will work in practice. Not surprisingly, this theme was picked up in many of the sessions through the day.