The third of our instalments from ALDC’s local government conference Local Solutions takes the Government’s energy policy for local authorities as its topic.

You can still hear the first two instalments: Nick Clegg and Ros Scott, and Paul Scriven on Sheffield.

Today’s instalment is an excellent presentation from Mo Baines, from the Association for Public Service Excellence, talking about how councils will shortly be required to monitor closely just how much energy they are using and reduce it year on year.

You can …

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:40 — 37.2MB)

In the current tumultuous political times, both Labour and the Conservatives are clothes shopping, trying on different shades of a variety of colours. Labour has embraced the True Blue capitalist philosophies, and the Tories are trying to show themselves as champions of the poor and oppressed.

Yet the Liberal Democrats are sitting comfortably in their well-worn pants of proportional representation and civil libertarian values. Sitting comfortably is not an option in politics.

The issue of PR is being seriously considered by Labour, and the Conservatives are now attempting to portray themselves as the friends of liberty. This is a real challenge …

The crisis over MPs’ expenses has shattered trust in politicians. Trust in Parliament has never been particularly high – it has now plummeted to new depths. Our long-standing scepticism as to the motives of politicians has turned into a strongly held conviction that ‘they’re all at it’.

The silver lining is that the crisis may have opened the way for much needed constitutional reform. The Lib Dems in particular have proposed a raft of constitutional reforms as a solution to the crisis. But are we really at a constitutional turning point? And is institutional reform …

As a visitor to LibDemVoice you may or may not be aware of the work of Compass – the influential pressure group that campaigns for a more democratic, equal and sustainable world. Compass is about building a broadly based Liberal Left politics and as a Liberal Democrat activist we wanted to introduce you to our important work and to invite you to attend our National Conference on Saturday 13 June.

We believe that both the Tory and Labour leaderships want to turn back as soon as possible to the failed politics of the pre-crash – both in terms of the old economy …

I have come to the conclusion I am a Liberal Democrat, but have not yet pulled my finger out and joined the party. I am a student studying politics and have recently begun to question my political alliances.

Back in September, at the beginning of my degree, I joined the Labour party – mainly due to its cheap member’s fee. I no longer have any faith in the Labour party or Gordon Brown, whilst I would never consider voting Tory. Naturally my only remaining option was Lib Dem. Of course I could have aligned myself with a minority party, the Greens …

Last week, Alix Mortimer suggested that we shouldn’t sign the infamous petition calling for Gordon Brown to resign. Here Kalvis Jansons, the man behind the petition, explains why he created it and what he hopes it will do…

I believe there are two questions, regarding this petition, that everyone in the UK should consider:

(1) Should you sign the petition?

(2) Should you tell others about the petition (whether or not you sign)?

It might surprise many readers to know that, although I believe signing the petition was right for me, I

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Following their formation as the ‘Labour Representation Committee’ in 1900, the policy of the Labour Party (the name they adopted in 1906) regarding electoral reform was an obvious one. Primarily, they were interested in extending the franchise to their main group of supporters, the working class, who in the large part were excluded from the electoral process.

Alongside this however came a demand for electoral reform – an end to the ‘unfair’ First-Past-The Post and the introduction of a form of Proportional Representation which would create a better correlation between votes and seats.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Labour abandoned this policy …

Yesterday’s Budget was a stalling tactic. The Chancellor put off having to make the tough decisions needed to regain control of the public finances and gave no plan to move the UK back to black. David Cameron in his response promised that his Party would make these tough choices, but he failed to say how. There is a real opportunity for the Liberal Democrats, if Vince Cable can continue to lead the way as the only politician brave enough to say that the answer lies in tackling the big areas of public spending.

In Reform’s Pre-Budget analysis last …

Last week, the Government released guidance on tackling bullying in the community. It’s a welcome and interesting departure because it signifies an acknowledgement that bullying isn’t just an education issue.

Yes, bullying happens in schools, but these behaviours aren’t confined to classrooms and playgrounds. For years, Beatbullying has understood that bullying can happen anywhere – in youth groups, parks, on buses, etc – and bullying in the community is a significant problem. That is why we run bullying prevention and anti-violence workshops in youth clubs and community groups, as well as in schools.

Crucially, what …

Launching our spoof Statebook website and campaign this bank holiday, we knew we’d be tapping into a strong and growing public unease about digital privacy.

Data leaks, massive government IT projects and ‘data retention’ are creating a sense that things in this area are going in the wrong direction. Perhaps people aren’t aware of all the details – but they know there’s a problem.

Statebook tries to bridge that gap by illustrating the wealth of information the government already holds on you, and how the government wants to get its hands on even more if it can – popularising the …

May I first of all begin by thanking Lib Dem Voice readers for indulging us, and to the editors for letting me write a response to Mark Pack’s post, Jury Team: so far, it’s a flop.

You won’t be surprised that I disagree with some of Mark’s points – the idea that all of our media coverage was friendly, and this strange accusation that we were ‘going out of our way to solicit anonymous donations’. Neither are true – our press officer did well to get as much coverage as possible, but that didn’t stop the knives coming out.

Similarly, …

As the world descends and travels into the catastrophic circles of economic chaos, globalisation seems vulnerable and suffering from nationalist rhetoric. With a growing centralised global economy, with major intuitions – such as the World Bank and IMF – is it time for the United Nations to overseas global economic and financial responsibility?

This is not a winsome notion, we are reaching the next geopolitical evolutionary steps for our civilisation and global federalism will eventually creep its way on to the international stage. Of course, the general public of the United States will be hostile to any bureaucratic institution that is …

Huge thanks to Lib Dem Voice for inviting me to speak at their fringe event on Saturday about lessons from the Obama campaign. It was my first conference and truly great fun – everyone I met was unfailingly friendly and welcoming. So apologies for the following ill-informed ranting!

As a longstanding member of the US Democratic party and the Regional Field Director heading up Barack Obama’s absentee voter efforts in the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia, I’m still in the process of getting my head around how British politics works. Fortunately, I have a lot of friends

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The Liberal Democrats stand alone among the three main political parties in promising to abolish university tuition fees. They do so in the hope that making tuition ‘free’ will draw more students from low income families into the higher education (HE) system.

This superficially attractive proposition ignores two important facts, however.

First, there is no such thing as free tuition – someone, somewhere has to pay, and under the Liberal Democrat plan that ‘someone’ is the taxpayer. And since most taxpayers are non-graduates with relatively low lifetime earnings, the policy involves a significant redistribution of resources from poor to rich.

Second, the abolition of fees will do almost nothing to get more poor students into university as the Liberal Democrats claim. Why? Because the gap between the HE participation rates of rich and poor students was not created by the introduction of tuition fees. Indeed research suggests that the gap actually narrowed slightly in the years after fees were introduced in 1998.

Vince Cable has stood out as an advocate of extremely sound economic policy while his counterparts have floundered. He predicted the housing collapse, he warned that the UK’s debt-binge was unsustainable and he was the first to take a decisive stance when Northern Rock collapsed. But the Liberal Democrats’ support for a stimulus of £30 billion – to include tax cuts for the low-paid and public spending increases – in next week’s Pre-Budget Report is entirely the wrong step.

As Reform’s new report shows, the academic evidence is that rather than boosting the economy, a stimulus could in fact cause long term damage to confidence by unbalancing the public finances further.

Secondly, it would not work. A public spending stimulus would take too long to take effect and would crowd out private spending, while tax cuts are more likely to be saved than spent. Higher tax credits would actually increase the marginal cost of work for people on low incomes.

Thirdly, we simply cannot afford it. The true level of debt is at least 60 per cent of GDP once the major “hidden” liabilities (e.g. Northern Rock, PFI) are taken into account. We have the 4th highest structural deficit in the OECD, and when the Government’s large long-term spending commitments on pensions and education are factored in, the UK already faces tax increases of £100bn – that means £4,000 for every British family.

Vince Cable also proposed tax increases on richer people to fund this stimulus. Art Laffer, the senior American economist, has said recently that this would actually weaken the public finances further, because rich people can reduce their ability to pay taxes whereas poorer people cannot.

However, the Liberal Democrats have also embarked on a programme of research on public sector productivity which seems to be better than the other two Parties. Its results should be very timely.

This is the right step. To keep the recession and unemployment to a minimum, the Government’s short term objective should be the same as the long term path to economic growth – to increase productivity. This should be the theme of the Pre-Budget Report and of Budget 2009.

Banks are jeopardising the prospects of the next generation, discouraging financial responsibility and leaving young people facing the sharp end of the credit crunch. With the Government, they have created a “gilded generation” of pampered and over-protected young people, mired in debt and unable to understand their finances.

The liberal free-market think-tank Reform’s new report, written in conjunction with the Chartered Insurance Institute and published this week, finds that the “IPOD generation” of 18-34 year olds – whom we have described as Insecure, Pressurised, Over-taxed and Debt-ridden – have been failed by the “financial establishment”.

Young people have grown up in …

In this time of great financial uncertainty, Nick Clegg’s endorsement of ‘credit freezes’ for all – the ability for individuals to lock and unlock their own credit records – last week in Cambridge may not have received much media coverage. It should have.

NO2ID believes that giving people meaningful control over their own personal information is a truly radical and significant policy. It could, if broadly and properly applied, begin to carve out a genuine alternative to the database state. And in the immediate future it could also prevent a great deal of fraud at zero cost to the …

Speaking at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority conference on 13th October, Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo MP spoke of her enthusiasm for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which reaches third reading and report stage in the Commons on 22nd October. The Minister stressed to the IVF and embryo research regulatory body that the law must keep pace with scientific and medical developments, and that services need ‘proportionate’ regulation. She rightly called for a law that is both ‘right for science and right for society’.

As a former Director of Policy and Communications at the HFEA, I remember the frustration of scientists and clinicians who were unable to pursue rational and ethical lines of work because of the prohibitions of an overly prescriptive and out-of-date law. This HFE Bill is necessary, if not overdue, to set the legislative framework necessary for fertility research and treatment in the twenty-first century.

The same frustrations are shared by the doctors and nurses striving to provide a modern, evidence-based abortion service as part of family planning care in the UK. The 1990 HFE Act amended the 1967 Abortion Act, shaping the manner in which abortion services are currently provided. Ungainly as it may seem to yoke these two areas of legislation together, new clauses to the HFE Bill on abortion are appropriate and necessary to make sure that abortion services, too, can keep pace with scientific and medical developments and are regulated proportionately. The proposed new clauses to the HFE Bill affecting abortion care are primarily:

▪ Removal of the need for two doctors’ signatures to give permission before an abortion can be carried out- instead abortion would be provided on the basis of informed patient consent and in their best interests, as with all other medical procedures. (Evan Harris MP et al, New Clauses 1 & 13)
▪ Allowing nurses and midwives to carry out abortions where appropriate (Frank Dobson MP et al, New Clause 2 & 14)
▪ Allowing abortions to be carried out in GPs surgeries and Family Planning Clinics where appropriate (Jacqui Lait MP et al, New Clauses 7 & 10)
▪ Home administration of misoprostol (the second dose of medication when undergoing early medical abortion (Christine McCafferty MP et al, New Clause 9)
▪ Preventing misleading advertising by pregnancy counselling services to require clarity in advertising where they won’t refer for abortion and don’t provide treatment (John Bercow MP et al, New Clause 11)
▪ Clarifying that the legal right of conscientious objection does not also extend to the non-provision of contraception on this ground (Evan Harris MP et al, New Clause 12)
▪ Extending the Abortion Act 1967 to Northern Ireland (Diane Abbott MP et al, New Clause 30)

Abortion, as a solution to the serious public health problem of unintended pregnancy, is very much a part of modern society. No woman ever wants, or sets out to have an abortion, but women want, and need abortion to be there as an option for them when our contraception fails, or we fail to use it effectively.