Author Archives: John Alderdice

Lord Alderdice writes… Improving the Justice and Security Bill

By John Alderdice | Thu 22nd November 2012 - 12:53 pm

Last night the House of Lords debated and voted on the Justice and Security Bill at its Report stage. I know from reading Lib Dem Voice and from listening to the recent debate at Conference what a touchstone issue this Bill is for many members. Which is why I want to explain how the Bill, which we have now passed to the Commons, is a very different beast from that originally under consideration.

Some of you will have seen that the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) produced a unanimous report last week. We have two eminent Liberal …

Posted in Parliament | Tagged anthony lester, joint committee on human rights, justice and security bill, nick clegg and simon hughes | 7 Comments

Lord Alderdice writes: The NHS Bill is substantially improved

By John Alderdice | Tue 14th June 2011 - 4:24 pm

As Liberal Democrats we are reformist by instinct and as in every other area of our community life we want to see reform of the NHS, not only to enable it to deal with the major resource and demographic challenges of the next twenty years, but also to ensure that it is more clinician-led, patient-centred and outcome-focussed than it has ever been before. That is why our MPs supported the principles of the Secretary of State’s original NHS Bill when it came to 2nd Reading in the House of Commons.

Our very public concerns have centred round whether the precise organizational …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and NHS | 25 Comments