Here’s how the Telegraph reports it:

Danny Alexander, a Liberal Democrat Cabinet minister, says the better-off are receiving overly-generous tax relief when they invest money for their retirement. Mr Alexander’s proposals would see tax relief halve from 40 per cent to 20 per cent. He also wants workers on the minimum wage, who earn up to £12,500 a year, to pay no income tax at all. Mr Alexander claims that removing the higher-rate tax relief would save the Exchequer more than £7 billion and make the system fairer. Even restricted to those earning more than £100,000 the Treasury could save £3.6 billion.

“If you look at the amount of money that we spend on pensions tax relief, which is very significant, the majority of that money goes to paying tax relief at the higher rate,” Mr Alexander told The Daily Telegraph. His remarks may open up a new dispute between the Tories and Lib Dems over tax. They are already at odds over Lib Dem calls to keep the 50p top rate of tax and introduce a “mansion tax” on high-value homes. George Osborne, the Chancellor, is expected to strongly resist any calls to scrap higher-rate tax relief. …

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, wants to move “further and faster” with tax cuts for lower-paid workers — a move that would be funded by higher taxes on the better-off, but which had not been accepted by Conservatives.

At the Liberal Democrat spring conference next month, the party’s members are expected to pass a motion calling for cuts in tax relief for higher-rate savers, with the Chief Secretary likely to back it. “I’m willing to study that motion but I dare say I will [support it],” he says. “I wrote an election manifesto at the last election which proposed going considerably further for precisely the reasons of fairness that I’ve set out. As a Coalition government, we’ve made some decisions in this area already, which go in the right direction. When it comes to people on low and middle income, I am a tax-cutter by instinct.”

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In a development that you couldn’t make up, the Independent, in its own coverage of the programme,  referred to Lord Ashdown when talking about the Conservative Party’s major benefactor.

This prompted our own Paddy Ashdown to write to the paper with, The Voice suspects, his tongue firmly wedged in his cheek

“It is one thing to misrepresent my position on the benefit cap as you did last week, but quite another to confuse me with Lord Ashcroft, the Tory funder of Belize fame, as you did yesterday in your report “Lord Ashcroft accused of hiding business links to ‘corrupt” islands”.

Please reassure your readers that I am a quiet little herbivorous Lib Dem living a life which offends no one in a small cottage in Somerset.”

Stephen Tall: The publication of the University application figures for 2012 — the first year of the new £9k maximum fees regime — has something for everyone. Those who have always claimed the prospect of huge debt would deter potential students can point to the headline 8.7% decline in applications. Those who say the new fees repayments system is the best affordable deal can highlight that this year marks the second highest ever number of applications from teenagers, including for those from disadvantaged areas. Whichever side you take, these are in any case just one year’s figures: this debate will continue to rage.

Another debate which will rage is likely to be this: what should the Lib Dem policy on tuition fees now be? Officially, party policy remains unchanged from the 2010 manifesto: the Lib Dems are committed to abolishing them. However, we all know what happened after the general election: the biting reality of Coalition politics triggered an infamous U-turn. Can the party really enter the 2015 general election with the same policy that we reneged on in this parliament? And if not how should Lib Dem policy start adapting to the changed reality of the new fees policy?

Mark Pack: Both the economics and the politics of promising to abolishing tuition fees in the 2015 manifesto look pretty implausible to me. Even if we thought it was politically sensible to say “we didn’t do it last time, but we really mean it this time”, given the likely state of the nation’s finances in 2015 there is unlikely to be much money to spare for extra spending on policy priorities and there’s going to be a long list of other worthy causes to lay claim to what cash there is.

What might well be plausible on both fronts is a limited expansion of bursaries and the like so that tuition fees and maintenance costs are covered for a larger number of those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. It would fit well with Nick Clegg’s passion for social mobility and the party’s wide message about building a fairer society.

Stephen Tall: I agree with you on both the economic and political implausibility of sticking to a ‘scrap fees’ policy which almost half the party’s MPs voted against. Yet I also find it implausible that the Lib Dem conference-voting members will find it in themselves to jettison a policy to which the party has been so wedded. I guess a compromise might be accommodated which sidelines the abolition of fees as a long-term aspiration impossible in present circumstances — in which case it risks becoming our Clause IV, a not-to-be-implemented policy which members cling to out of nostalgia but which simply reminds the public of a distinctly unglorious moment in our party’s history.

On your point about the party developing a more pragmatic policy of targeted assistance to help those groups most likely to be put off by fees, this seems to me essential. However, we need to ensure our thinking is informed by evidence of what actually works. As it happens in the example you cite, bursaries, the evidence so far indicates such assistance doesn’t actually help encourage the poorest to apply to university (though it may help in lowering drop-out rates). Too much educational policy in this country is based on personal hunches of what should work, and not enough on the reality of what will help. If the party wants to be taken seriously on access to higher education, it needs to start doing some proper policy heavy-lifting. And soon.

Mark Pack: The big untouched issue in higher education is the reliance on lectures – and on lecturers who aren’t trained in lecturing to boot. I say this as a former sometime university lecturer… We say the education is vital and yet let people get up in front of students and lecture with remarkably little in the way of training in many cases. Reputations and ratings do help push universities into doing rather more than they used to in order to ensure that lecturers do a good job, but even whey they do the central tool – the lecture – is still predominantly used in a very old fashioned way.

With the widespread availability of video on demand over the internet letting students watch the world’s best lecturers from previous decades at the click of a mouse, the idea that there should be widespread use of an inexperienced, under-trained person who stands up and talks for 55 minutes is very much in need of questioning.

The government is expected to make a series of concessions in the coming days on it controversial £26,000 household benefits cap to win over wavering Liberal Democrat MPs. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, is expected to agree that a discretionary fund should be established to ease the burden on families who could be made homeless at a sensitive time in their children’s education. …

There are growing expectations that Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader who has voiced concerns about the cap, will be won over by a new “discretionary fund”. Hughes has expressed fears that the cap, which includes housing benefit, could force thousands of families out of their homes in London and the south-east.

The discretionary fund would allow councils to exempt some families from the cap for a limited period of time if, for example, a child was due to sit examinations. The fund, which would only apply to existing recipients, would be modelled on the system that was set up after Hughes voiced fears last year about the impact of the housing benefit cap.

The cap, which will mean that no working household will be allowed to receive benefits of more than £26,000, is due to come into force in April 2013. This means that councils will have around a year to introduce the changes … The Lib Dems have argued that showing discretion for a limited period of time could avoid families moving into expensive bed and breakfast accommodation if they are forced out of their rented home but need to remain in the same area for their child’s schooling. The government is also looking at the introduction of a grace period for people who suddenly lose their jobs and are immediately hit by the cap.

Meanwhile, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne — who supports the cap in principle — has called for the Coalition to agree a local rate for the cap in recognition higher living costs, especially in London. It’s a curiously inconsistent position for Labour to adopt as Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson highlights here in a post titled ‘Have Labour just made a big mistake on the benefits cap?’:

The coalition has been pushing the idea of regional pay bargaining for a while now which has thus far been responded to by protest from Labour MPs. How can they now credibly fight that when they have made pretty much the exact same argument the government make in favour of it in the context of a benefits cap?

University applications from UK students for the first year of higher tuition fees are down by 8.7%, according to figures from the admissions service.

With fees rising to up to £9,000 per year, the impact has been biggest for England’s universities – down by 9.9%.

The LibDem Voice team have been quick to respond. Mark Pack pointed out three key facts about the figures:

1. Proportion of poor school-leavers applying to uni. at record levels
2. Best year ever for applications by teenagers save last year’s spike
3. Drop in mature student applications, which has caused the overall decrease figure

And Stephen Tall has a full commentary on his blog:

Headlines you won’t read today: University applications up this year more than 16%*

Yes, you read that headline right: applications to university have gone up by 16% this year — when compared with 2009:

2009 – 464,167 applications (by Jan. deadline)
2012 – 540,073 (+16%)

I’m being deliberately selective, of course. This year’s round of applications — the first under the new fees regime — show a drop of 7.4% compared with last year (2011: 583,546), or a 5.3% drop compared with the year before (2010: 570,556). (Source: UCAS website; also for graph below.)

The point of my misleading headline is simple: headline figures can easily mislead.

My co-editor at Lib Dem Voice Mark Pack has previously analysed some of the underlying questions that need to be asked before rushing to judgement: for example, that the number of 18 year-olds is in demographic decline, leading to a natural fall in numbers applying to university. If you look at the application figures for 17 and 18 year-olds there has been a decline of 2.5% from 2011 to 2012. Co-incidentally this more or less matches the fall in the birth-rate from 1992 to 1993 (18 years ago).

There is also the simple fact that last year’s figures were higher as students rushed to beat the introduction of £9k fees, with fewer opting, for instance, to take gap years — so no surprise then that one of the biggest falls in university applications of any age group is among 19 year-olds (down 12.5%).

The biggest driver behind the fall in university application figures this year compared with 2011 is that fewer mature students have applied to university — as also happened in 1998, after Labour first introduced fees. It’s clear mature students are the most ‘price-sensitive’.

You can read Stephen’s full post, complete with graph, here.

I write as a lifelong Liberal/Lib Dem and former councillor. I am sadly having to remain anonymous so that my wife is not made subject to reprisals for my views.

Lib Dem Voice recently claimed the future of the Post Office network is secure. I would like to present a counter (sic) viewpoint.

My wife took on a Post Office 10 years ago and her guaranteed monthly salary then was £620. Now, its £800 for a 48-hour working week – less than £3.70 an hour. Any further income is based on transactions alone.

Thanks to a hell of a lot of hard work, she managed to grow her total income from £18,000 to £32,000 at which point she could afford some part time help.

Now, with the loss of various government-related contracts all, bizarrely, designed to cut costs (but which just leaves a bigger hole for Government to subsidise) her income is below £24,000 and due to the dog-in-a-manger attitude of the Post Office contract she is BARRED from even offering successor services.

I am afraid that a very cynical trick is being foisted on us, under the guise of modernisation, a cynical trick that even Labour would not have been attempted.

My understanding is that the guaranteed payment to sub postmasters will be scaled back or even eradicated, meaning that postmasters incomes will be significantly reduced.

Many of the transaction payments are fractional percentages or literally penny amounts. If the basic payment is chopped, there do not seem to be any plans to increase the transaction payments to compensate.

This will potentially make many sub-Post Offices unviable, almost regardless of how well-used they are. Incidentally, the new subpostmaster contract I believe starts in April, but no formal details have yet been released to those affected.

The cynical part is that, under the new arrangements, once a subpostmaster’s income has been reduced below a viable level, their business is downgraded to a “Post Office Local” and moved to the nearest shop or petrol station that will take it, BUT they will be unable to offer the full range of transactions or even carry enough cash to pay more than a few pensions.

So ‘the network’ may remain in number terms, but many of the outlets that remain will be little more than a stamp vending machine – BUT we’ll have kept the promise not to cut offices. This downgrading will further erode the relevance of Post Offices in an electronic age.

The real irony is that all these ‘efficient’ independent, privatised couriers ride on the back of Post Offices by dropping their undelivered parcels at Post Offices.

As a service to their customers, rural POs allow this, so the courier company meets its delivery target by getting a signature and avoids the enormous costs involved in re-deliveries. If Ed Davey should be doing anything, it should be formalising that arrangement with couriers to generate income for postmasters.

… ministers will table a series of amendments to the health and social care bill that will oblige Andrew Lansley to maintain the NHS as a national public service and, his critics say, limit his ambitions to expand the role of the private sector. The changes will also spell out the kind of services that must be offered by GPs and will effectively ban them from withholding certain forms of care from patients. …

The peers, led by the Lib Dem, Baroness Williams, and supported by a former Tory lord chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, have complained that the original bill left serious legal doubt as to whether the secretary of state would any longer be responsible for providing a “comprehensive health service for the people of England free at the point of need”. They feared that the absence of a chain of accountability would allow the service to become fragmented as different groups of doctors adopted different approaches and the role of the private sector expanded.

Lansley’s reforms will abolish two major tiers of health service bureaucracy and devolve greater responsibility for commissioning care to GPs – moves the health secretary believes will deliver a more efficient service and a system of care tailored better to patients’ needs.

The Department of Health confirmed the changes would be made to the bill but denied they were a panic response following a fortnight in which Lansley’s approach has been criticised by a cross-party group of MPs and a growing number of health professionals.

The first good news is that inflation should fall – and steeply. Last year, inflation rose because of higher energy and food prices, and the rise in VAT.

Most of those increases are behind us – last week, energy price cuts of five per cent were trumpeted. Inflation, which peaked last year at 5.6 per cent (retail prices), should be down to about 2.5 per cent by May.

That will help hard-pressed household budgets.

The second piece of good news is that the Government has now delivered most of its bad news.
It is unlikely there will need to be any significant further tax rises and the tax-free personal allowance is due to rise by £600 this April – helping every taxpayer.

The third cheering fact is that interest rates and the pound look likely to remain low, thus helping people to pay off debt, and businesses to export

Finally, while the eurozone is a complete mess, growth elsewhere has been better than expected of late, particularly in the US.

The other good news, he reports, is that the Chinese are buying our Rollers by the shedload!

The full article can be found here.

Commenting on the Mayor’s 2012 fare rises being introduced today Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat Mayoral candidate said:

“Once again we start the year with another painful fare package from Boris Johnson. For the fourth year in a row he has racked up fares by far more than the rate of inflation.

“His latest rises will simply add to the financial problems of many Londoners – especially those on low incomes.

“Shamefully bus fares have been hiked up the most by Boris Johnson despite buses being most heavily used by low income Londoners.”

Commenting further Caroline Pidgeon, the Deputy Mayoral candidate and the Liberal Democrat London Assembly Transport spokesperson said:

“It is now time for a new approach to fares. We need to end the scandal of Oyster overcharging, and introduce targeted measures to specifically help Londoners on the lowest incomes. A one-hour bus ticket and cheaper early bird fares would make a huge difference to the pockets and purses of London’s lowest paid workers who have been hit so hard by Boris Johnsons’ excessive fare rises.”

Over at The Guardian, Dave Hill suggests this is an issue which could damage the Tory mayor, who faces re-election this May.

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Here‘s how the Press Association reports the story:

Martin Horwood, co-chairman of the Parliamentary Party Committee on International Affairs, said a new body was needed which was recognised by veterans as “truly independent”. Currently, any decision to award new medals is made by the Honours and Decorations Committee behind closed doors. But Mr Horwood believes it needs to be disbanded and reformed with a new independent chairman. It must also meet in public so that it is forced to justify its decisions, he said.

And the party website reports Martin saying:

“A National Defence Medal would be a small token of appreciation for the huge debt that everyone in Britain owes to the brave members of our Armed Services, past and present. For too long decisions about medals have been made behind closed doors. We need to bring the debate and consideration into the public gaze, so that veterans and current service personnel can contribute their views and see how decisions are reached.”

Lord (Monroe) Palmer, Martin’s fellow co-chair, adds:

“We achieved significant success in the House of Lords by getting Government agreement that the Pinjat Jasa Malaysia medal, which could be accepted but not worn, can now be worn. We must now go on to make the whole decision making process more transparent. I hope that as part of the review, a National Defence Medal can be instituted which can be applied for by all those who have served in the armed forces since 1945.”

(If you’ve not yet seen the Liberal Democrat Cabinet Ministers Christmas Card, brought to you by our own Mark Pack, enjoy it here.)

Liberal Democrat peers used to be in a remarkably privileged position in the party. Not only because they have held office without the pesky need for elections but also because for many years the third party in the House of Lords has been the key swing vote when the government has been wanting to get legislation through…

[However,] helped by the primacy of the Commons, revolts by Liberal Democrat MPs which could cost the government its majority are now no longer the neglected, poor relative of revolts by Liberal Democrat peers - but the patterns of rebellions have, so far, received relatively little attention.

You can read Mark’s full post here, and here’s his infographic in full:

We will update the site in due course with the results and party reaction, but for the time being here is a discussion thread…

UPDATE:

Sky News reports turnout in Feltham & Heston at 31%. Very low, but also in typical Sky ‘never wrong for long’ style, wrong. Turnout turns out to be even lower: 28.8%. It was 59.9% at the general election.

Liberal Democrats have hung on to third place in Feltham and Heston, just: Labour 54% (+10%), Conservative 28% (-6%), Lib Dem 6% (-8%), UKIP 5% (+3%).

Conservatives have won in Kingston: Conservative 44%, Lib Dem 30%, Labour 17%, Green 4%. CPA 3%, UKIP 2%.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

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Stephen Tall: So we now all know the painful financial reality. With growth forecasts revised down by the Chancellor in his autumn statement, austerity is here to stay.

Both Lib Dems and Tories had hoped and expected that three years of painful cutbacks would be followed by a year or two of pre-election giveaways — the Lib Dems would press for a balanced mix of increased public spending on areas that had suffered most, together with more tax-cuts for the low-paid, while the Tories would focus on their tax-cutting priorities like inheritance tax and fuel duty. Both Coalition parties would have popular measures they could sell to the electorate, and which reinforced our respectively distinct identities. And both would be able to say to voters, ‘If Labour had been in power you’d still be looking at a couple more years cuts. We took the tough decisions early, now we’re all feeling the benefit’.

But all these calculations have now been turned on their head. When Danny Alexander was asked on Newsnight on Tuesday if the Liberal Democrats would go into the next election promising nearly £30bn more austerity, he replied: “I’m afraid so.” So where does this leave the party? Have we now signed-up by default to fighting the next election on a platform of more cuts until 2017? If so, does this in effect commit the Coalition parties to fighting on a united programme — albeit with different candidates and different manifestos — in 2015 against Labour?

Mark Pack: Predicting where the economy will be in six months time let alone three, four or five years is a highly uncertain business. It is not just the government’s economic forecasts that keep on changing, so too do independent (eg, OBR) and international (eg, OECD) ones. Labour too has been changing – it was forecasting 3.25% growth this year and when quizzed about this not even Ed Balls was willing to say Labour would have achieved that.

So it is not wise to put too much weight on current intentions for what will be done in 2015, save for what it tells us about political and economic instincts. One is that Danny Alexander wants to see the Liberal Democrats firmly committed to tough financial responsibility. That is not the same as signing up to Conservative policies – unless of course you take the absurd view that all tax cuts or increases are the same as if changing the top tax rate is no different from changing the bottom one. The same fiscal targets can be achieved in politically very different ways.

The second is that the assumption in senior Liberal Democrat circles is that Labour will eventually take up a similar position about financial responsibility, so that Alexander’s views do not end up being compatible with only a deal with the Tories in another hung Parliament. If that does not happen, then there will be very lively debate in the party.

Stephen Tall: In fact, the party is in no different a position than we would’ve been if we were a majority governing party right now (rather than the junior coalition partner), as our 2010 manifesto did not commit us to eliminating the deficit within the lifetime of one parliament. Sticking to that would’ve made post-2015 cuts inevitable if we were to balance the budget; the problem is simply more acute now because of the sluggish state of the western economy and the Eurozone’s problems.

And you’re right of course that Labour is in exactly the same position – indeed, Alistair Darling’s pre-election plans were for the cuts to last until 2017 – and today sees the launch of ‘In the black Labour’, a group of party activists determined to regain for their party the economic trust which they’ve so catastrophically forfeited. They make a crucial point, one which applies just as much to the Lib Dems as the other progressive force within British politics: “Labour must put fiscal sustainability at the absolute core of its policy agenda, to ensure low interest rates and steady economic growth. Not just for electoral reasons, but because fiscal stability is vital in securing social justice”.

That is precisely the argument the Lib Dems must continue to make (while Labour continues to dither) between now and the 2015 election. It’s crucial to Lib Dem success that we can demonstrate our ability to be financially responsible while making the political choices that show we’re very different from the Tories – our emphasis on taking the poorest out of tax is a case in point.

Mark Pack: Even within the Liberal Democrats, little credit is usually given to the very different approach to tax that the Liberal Democrats have achieved in coalition from what the Conservatives wanted – because so many of the changes happened quickly last summer (capital gains tax increases, pension tax breaks for the richest cut and so on) and because some of the most important things are those which have been stopped (marriage tax breaks, for example). It would therefore be unwise to assume that there will automatically be political credit to be won over taxes but there most certainly is a great opportunity there, as long as the party sorts out its views on wealth taxes.

Today’s Autumn Statement has been delivered in incredibly difficult and uncertain economic times. But as Liberal Democrats, Nick, myself and the Ministerial team have worked hard to ensure the Autumn Statement as a package of measures remains true to our party’s values and to the commitment we made to the British people when the coalition was founded. Every decision has been informed by our desire to help to people working hard to make ends meet in difficult times and to put the economy on the right course for the long term.

Getting the economic fundamentals right is crucial. Throughout Europe, countries are being held to ransom by their bond markets. Their failure to take firm control of their spending has had catastrophic consequences. But our resolve to pay down the deficit is sheltering households and businesses across the country from the worst impacts of this storm.

Before the General Election, British long term interest rates were roughly equivalent to Spanish and Italian ones. Now they are much lower. It doesn’t just mean the cost of government debt is cheaper, it keeps mortgage rates and business borrowing costs down too.

These benefits of economic credibility have been secured by the Coalition’s firm resolve to tackle the terrible economic legacy left by Labour. Meanwhile, not only has Ed Balls failed to learn from Labour’s past mistakes, he is also ignoring the sobering evidence from the Eurozone. Labour wants to spend more, borrow more and increase debt – just at the point where we see that countries that borrow more end up in a state of crisis.

In tough times, it’s even more important to ensure that every penny of public money is well spent. As Liberal Democrats we have pressed for resources to be prioritised towards offering practical help to those that need it most and towards investing in infrastructure and social mobility  to rebalance our economy

Liberal Democrat policy being delivered in Government has already secured income tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes and action to tackle youth unemployment through the Youth Contract announced by Nick last week. The Autumn Statement goes further – offering help with fuel duty, rail fares, and extending care for 2 year olds so it now reaches 40% of children. It has also increased in the bank levy to ensure they continue to pay their fair share.

Most important, the Autumn Statement secures further investment for the long term – delivering an extra £5bn in capital spending on projects across the country, an extra £1bn to the Regional Growth Fund, and a credit easing package of £20bn to secure cheaper access to finance for small businesses.

This is a package we as Liberal Democrats should be proud of – in difficult times for everyone, working together as a coalition we are taking action to protect the British economy from the storm around us and build a better, more sustainable economy in the future.

Tim Gordon brings to the role a lifetime of commitment to the Party, as a volunteer, campaigner and candidate, but also a strong commercial background and clearly demonstrated leadership qualities.

Tim Gordon has been a Party activist since his teens, when he first volunteered for the SDP “Yes to Unity” campaign, and has since campaigned in every major election. He stood as parliamentary candidate in Rotherham in 2005. He worked as a researcher for David Steel when he was Foreign Affairs spokesperson, and has been a member of several policy working groups over the years. He is currently an active member in Islington.

Tim Gordon’s professional career has been shaped in the world of strategic business management. He started at the Financial Times, before working at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and most recently as Group Development Director at European Directories, a large European media company. Through this career Tim has demonstrated strategic thinking, use of online technology to deliver change, fundraising ability, an understanding of internal organisation dynamics and experience of building alignment around common priorities.

Tim takes over from Chris Fox, who leaves us on Wednesday to take up a new role as Director of Group Communications at a FTSE100 engineering company.

During the five week interim period, the Federal Executive-appointed recruitment panel have asked Hilary Stephenson, the current Director of Elections and Skills, to serve as Acting Chief Executive. Having known Hilary for many years I know that she will very ably hold the fort for this time and I am delighted that she has agreed to take on this challenge.

Tim Farron

Stalkers are to face jail under government plans to create a new criminal offence after prosecutors admitted it was hard to bring cases to court.

Lynne Featherstone, the Liberal Democrat Home Office minister, on a visit to Manchester, [is today to] unveil proposals to introduce a specific offence of stalking, potentially also covering cyber-stalking. A three-month consultation will also look at the use of restraining orders and police attitudes to stalking cases, following concern that the treatment of allegations differs between forces.

Every year, up to 5 million people suffer incidents of stalking or harassment in some form, research suggests. Only one in 50 incidents of harassment reported to police result in a prison sentence. At present, people accused of stalking are prosecuted under other offences, frequently harassment or breach of the peace. A government source said: “Most people will be surprised this is not a criminal offence already and would think it is right that it becomes one. The Government will look at how best to do that.”