Category Archives: The Independent View

The Independent View: Cross-party amendment to decarbonise power by 2030 needed to stop Osborne

By Will Straw | Thu 29th November 2012 - 6:50 pm

The Independent reports this morning that pro-green Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs are considering a rebel amendment to the Energy Bill to create a target to decarbonise the power sector by 2030. The policy is critical to reducing carbon emissions and energy bills in the long run and creating jobs and growth.

Last week, Ed Davey revealed the details of the Government’s much anticipated Energy Bill which will be introduced to Parliament today. In exchange for an extremely positive and welcome outcome for the renewable sector up to 2020, Davey lost his battle to include a 2030 decarbonisation target …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged ed davey and energy bill | 15 Comments

The Independent View: Liberal Democrats must not be complicit in Osborne’s dash for gas

By Craig Bennett | Thu 22nd November 2012 - 6:50 pm

Friends of the Earth and the Liberal Democrats have long had similar visions for our energy future: more renewables; phasing out fossil fuels; ramping up energy efficiency. In short, getting pollution and consumer bills down, while increasing energy self-sufficiency.

Everything about this vision is now at stake.

The ‘quad’ – the coalition’s decision-making grouping of Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Alexander – are locked in negotiations with Lib Dem Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey over a 2030 ‘decarbonisation’ target in the Government’s Energy Bill legislation.

Such a target …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged climate change, energy and gas | 22 Comments

The Independent View: What do we do when children are taught racism at home?

By Chris Meredith | Thu 22nd November 2012 - 8:45 am

Racism is an uncomfortable and emotive subject to discuss. To its victims it is absolutely devastating and can affect entire communities. In Britain it is considered socially unacceptable but despite this, and the numerous laws designed to prevent discrimination, racism is still worryingly commonplace. I’ve witnessed it myself on duty more times than I can count; the culprits are usually adults, which is shocking and unpleasant enough, but for me, the truly worrying cases are those involving children.

Last month I spoke to an officer who specialises in groups with extremist views. He told me about a child living in the …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged education, police and racism | 7 Comments

The Independent View: A reply to Mark Pack from Obama’s Director of Data

By Ethan Roeder | Mon 19th November 2012 - 8:53 am

The Crystal Ball chart blogged by Mark Pack highlights the interesting cases of Alaska and Utah. These outliers make sense given the dynamics of the race (the large Mormon population in UT provided a boost to Romney while the absence of Sarah Palin from the ballot hurt Republican performance in AK relative to 2008). But why do we not see more turbulence in the battleground states? Surely the gobs of money spent in these states along with the monumental ground efforts of the Obama campaign would push these states away from the crowd? The answer to this apparent disconnect …

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Also posted in LDVUSA and Op-eds | Tagged barack obama, Mitt Romney and sarah palin | 5 Comments

The Independent View: One hub or none – the choice for the UK

By Nigel Milton | Thu 15th November 2012 - 11:56 am

A recent Lib Dem voice poll asked ‘Do you support or oppose building a third runway at Heathrow airport?’ and it was not surprising to me, knowing the history of Liberal Democrat aviation policy, that 79% opposed this proposition. But this jumps the gun. Firstly, what is a hub airport and why is it valuable to the UK? Secondly, we need to understand if there is a problem to solve, and to define that problem. And then finally, what are the realistic options on the table that should be explored that will solve the problem.

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Tagged heathrow and south east airport expansion | 13 Comments

The Independent View: Hope yet for parity esteem for mental health issues

By The Voice | Mon 12th November 2012 - 1:23 pm

Mihir Magudia is Head of Strategy & Public Affairs for St Andrew’s Healthcare, the UK’s largest mental health charity that provides more services to the NHS than any other charity. On his blog, Spotlight, he praises Norman Lamb for signalling “parity of esteem” between mental health and physical health treatment at a recent conference:

…Norman Lamb went further than his predecessors. After rightly pointing out that people with mental health problems suffer from an institutional disadvantage in the health system (mentioning how they have been ignored by the reforms on waiting times, choice and payment by results) he went on to call

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Tagged mental health and norman lamb | 1 Comment

The Independent View: In defence of the Police

By Chris Meredith | Wed 7th November 2012 - 11:56 am

Comedian David Mitchell wrote an article in The Guardian recently in which he was generally disparaging of the police read it here

After reading the article I said to my wife ‘David Mitchell really doesn’t like the police’ her response was ‘What do you expect? He’s a liberal. They don’t like the police generally’ Is this true? It seems, to a degree, that it is. The police represent authority, discipline and justice. They can appear as the antithesis of the most basic principles of Liberalism: Liberty, equality, freedom and civil rights but my argument is that without the police democracy …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged criminal justice and police | 32 Comments

The Independent View: Fill your 4 x 4 with biofuel, or feed an African child for 200 days?

By Jenny Ricks | Wed 17th October 2012 - 4:40 pm

From time to time the solution to a problem ends up being worse than the original dilemma. Such is the case with making fuel from food crops – biofuels – in place of burning fossil fuels. What started off as such a well-intentioned idea to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has ended up not only doing the opposite, but also contributing to world food price rises and driving poor people off their land in developing countries and into hunger.

But as the tide turns against biofuels, there are sustainable alternatives which can take their place. And that’s where the Lib

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged action aid, biofuels and food prices | 11 Comments

The Independent View: Why Lib Dems should vote against the Secret Courts Bill on Tuesday

By Clare Algar | Sun 23rd September 2012 - 2:20 pm

On Tuesday, Liberal Democrat conference will debate a Bill which strikes at the heart of liberal principles. The Justice and Security Bill will effectively put ministers and government officials above the law. If this is to be avoided, it is essential that Liberal Democrats vote for the motion, unamended.

Under the Bill, the state will be able to kick anyone bringing a case against them out of court simply by claiming ‘national security’ is at risk – a claim which has been used to cover up Government involvement in torture and rendition all too often during the ‘War on Terror’.

Politicians will …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged justice and security bill, ken clarke and nick clegg | 4 Comments

The Independent View: Liberal Democrats – nature needs you!

By Tom Fewins | Sat 22nd September 2012 - 10:25 am

A majestic soaring eagle. The lightning flash of a kingfisher. Feeding the ducks.

For most people, wildlife ignites their first sparks of interest in environmental issues, yet it is currently conspicuously absent from the political discourse. We hear a lot about sustainability and climate change, but if this Government is to realise its ambitions to be “the Greenest Government ever” it has to tackle biodiversity conservation as well.

We desperately need action: the UK has missed its commitment to halt biodiversity loss by 2010; 42% of our most important habitats and …

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Also posted in Conference and Op-eds | Tagged caroline spelman, environment and nick clegg | 1 Comment

The Independent View: An opportunity to direct the debate on Trident replacement

By Kate Hudson | Fri 21st September 2012 - 3:32 pm

In September 2010, Lib Dem Voice ran a revealing poll of its members to gauge opinion on Trident. With results strikingly similar to YouGov polls of Lib Dem members nationally, it found that 57% were opposed to replacing Trident and nuclear weapons altogether, while 90% were opposed to replacing Trident with a ‘like-for-like’ system.

It was commendable that the Liberal Democrats carried this sentiment into their 2010 election manifesto: standing apart from the Conservative and Labour consensus of ploughing £100bn into nuclear weapons amidst the worst economic crisis of recent times.

Opponents of Trident outside the party were also inspired by …

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Also posted in Conference | Tagged cnd and trident | 8 Comments

Independent View: What now for housing policy?

By Graeme Cooke | Fri 21st September 2012 - 2:21 pm

As the coalition approaches the halfway point of the Parliament, Liberal Democrats are in search of policies that demonstrate their distinctive contribution to government – especially on the crucial issue of growth. Pre-conference briefing suggests that leading party figures see affordable house building as a leading option. They are right to do so. It would boost demand, create jobs, and meet a pressing social need. The Tories are focused on reforming the planning system, but evidence suggests this is a tough political sell. Efforts to finance house building through clever Treasury wheezes that try to circumvent borrowing constraints have …

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Also posted in News | Tagged housing policy and ippr | 3 Comments

The Independent View: Low borrowing rates signal economic weakness, not strength

By Jonathan Portes | Thu 20th September 2012 - 2:00 pm

As the head of an independent economic research institute, it’s not my job to attend the Liberal Democrat conference (or indeed that of any other party). But, following up this FT article, I’d like to share some thoughts on this line from a motion you will be debating at conference:

Conference recognises that the difficult decisions taken by the Coalition Government have ensured the credibility of the UK government’s position in the financial markets allowing the UK to borrow at record low rates.

and on an amendment to the motion which you’ll also debate:

Conference also notes that it would be a mistake

…

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Tagged #ldconf, economy and jonathan portes | 25 Comments

The Independent View: Landlord licensing will not stop the criminals

By Richard Lambert | Mon 17th September 2012 - 1:24 pm

The National Landlords Association (NLA) is a membership organisation representing over 20,000 individuals and companies, letting privately rented residential property. The NLA provides advice to help landlords run their businesses for themselves and their tenants. Like anyone else, landlords like satisfied customers and repeat business.

The private-rented sector has grown from a low point of eight per cent of households in 1990 to over 17 per cent today, matching the social housing sector. This growth has accelerated in recent years, due to the combined effects of …

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Tagged housing and landlords | 13 Comments

The Independent View: How David Laws can help children and the economy at the same time

By Alison Garnham | Thu 6th September 2012 - 8:57 am

When David Laws arrived as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he famously found a note from his predecessor telling him ‘there’s no money left’. With the IFS warning child poverty levels have reached a turning point and will shoot upwards again, we have to hope that any handover note left for him this time is more optimistic, particularly on improving opportunities for poor children.

As Minister for Schools, David Laws will oversee the development of the party’s flagship policy to tackle child poverty, the Pupil Premium, which Sarah Teather lists as one of her main achievements in her time

…

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Tagged child poverty and david laws | 16 Comments

The Independent View: Why we must talk about the EU now

By Petros Fassoulas | Wed 5th September 2012 - 3:35 pm

I guess talking about Europe is not what a party wants come September. With the conference fast approaching, the polls painting a gloomy picture, debate about the leadership raging and the small subject of the economy hanging over everybody, the last thing one needs is a debate about Britain’s place in the EU.

But in politics there is no escaping the big issues. The EU is not just a club we are members of. We are the EU. Our economy is deeply integrated in the wider European economy and our ability to influence the global events that affect us depends to …

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Also posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged eu | 42 Comments

The Independent View: only 24 hours left to have your say on adult filtering

By Jim Killock | Wed 5th September 2012 - 11:55 am

Default blocking of online adult material is a controversial and illiberal policy, which has attracted criticism from plenty of Liberal Democrats – and rightly so. Default Internet censorship takes decisions about what is appropriate for families and households out of parents’ hands. In the process the Government would be constructing an infrastructure of censorship that will be inefficient, error-ridden and open to abuse.

Default blocking will mean the Government and technology companies, rather than parents, deciding what is ‘appropriate’ for children and young people. Filtering can give parents a false sense of security and also inevitably leads to the the ‘wrong’ …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged civil liberties and default blocking of adult content | 13 Comments

Independent View: Danny Alexander’s green line

By Liz Hutchins | Fri 17th August 2012 - 1:49 pm

Danny Alexander is right to recognise Liberal Democrats will not be forgiven for delivering George Osborne’s attacks on the environment. Alexander’s ‘Generating Growth and Jobs in a Time of Austerity’ conference motion is pretty bold and we hope it is an opening salvo in a serious re-adjustment in the Liberal Democrats’ environment agenda in Government.

Alexander’s intervention is needed. Osborne has seized the environment as an issue and is using it to play to the Tory right in an attempt to save his political skin. This has involved much tilting at wind turbines and charming his friends and relatives by proposing …

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Tagged Danny Alexander, energy, energy policy and friends of the earth | 12 Comments

The Independent View: FairCopUK – a new campaign for police honesty

By John Cross | Tue 7th August 2012 - 10:39 am

FairCopUK is a new campaign for the UK police to be required to be honest when explaining what your rights are and what powers they have. I was inspired to set up the campaign by Richard Taylor’s suggestion that the police should not be allowed to lie or mislead without justification.

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Tagged civil liberties and police | Leave a comment

The Independent View: Will Osborne gas the Lib Dems’ green credentials?

By Craig Bennett | Fri 27th July 2012 - 9:05 am

Ed Davey’s announced this week that he’d secured an important concession from the Chancellor over wind farm subsidies – but at what cost?

Although there was understandable relief over the certainty this move gave to investors in clean British energy it seems the victory may have come with a hefty price tag: an agreement to burden our electricity system with dirty and increasingly expensive gas for decades to come – despite the enormous damage this could cause to both the economy and planet.

Ed Davey’s success in securing a 10 per cent cut in wind farm subsidies – to reflect the …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged climate change, ed davey, energy and friends of the earth | 21 Comments

The Independent View: Making coalition government work – lessons for the future

By Ben Yong | Tue 24th July 2012 - 10:50 am

In 2011 the Constitution Unit spent one year examining how the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition works. We interviewed almost 150 people about the Coalition: individuals from both parties—both in and outside Parliament—as well as civil servants, journalists, and interest groups. We have just published the result of our study in a book: The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Works

We are particularly grateful to all those Lib Dems who were so generous in giving their time to be interviewed, and for Mark Pack’s very kind review of our book. And in the same spirit, we offer some thoughts on lessons for the future. Professor John Curtice argues that the conditions that led to a hung parliament in 2010 remain; and even if the boundary reforms goes through, the possibility of a hung parliament is still quite high. Even if, as some suggest, the Liberal Democrats will lose a large number of seats in 2015, they may still be in a position to determine the shape of a new government. So what lessons are there to be learned from the last two years of the Coalition, and how might the Lib Dems approach a hung parliament in 2015?

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged coalition, featured, john curtice and Mark Pack | 10 Comments

Independent View: Housing Benefit reform needs liberal principle of localism

By Graeme Cooke | Fri 20th July 2012 - 10:51 am

The Prime Minister’s recent suggestion that young people under the age of 25 might be barred from receiving Housing Benefit has re-ignited the debate about welfare reform. Talk of a further ‘benefits crackdown’ duly generated the positive headlines that Downing Street strategists were after, while opponents howled in apocalyptic objection to this latest attempt to control the benefits bill. Pretty soon, the political debate moved on, everyone having fulfilled their roles to perfection. Evil Tory bogeymen, tabloid headline writers, charity campaigners all did exactly what we would have expected them to do. Maybe the specific proposal will remerge in future …

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Tagged housing benefit and ippr | 5 Comments

The Independent View: Liberal Democrats should support Financial Transaction Tax

By Richard Carr | Wed 18th July 2012 - 12:59 pm

Charles Beaumont has recently written on this site about the potential for the Lib Dems to go further in taxing the financial sector. In doing so, he raises two options: the Financial Activities Tax (FAT), which he favours, and the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). For clarity at the outset, the FAT is generally understood to be an additional corporation/income tax on the excessive profits/remunerations in the financial sector. An FTT, on the other hand, taxes all the transactions of financial organisations, such as banks and hedge funds, at the point at which their deals are settled.

Whilst the overarching thrust …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged financial activities tax, financial transaction tax, stamp out poverty and tax | 15 Comments

The Independent View: House of Lords Reform – The Way Forward

By Peter Facey | Tue 10th July 2012 - 11:15 am

It’s fair to say that last night’s debate on the House of Lords Reform Bill will not go down in history as the Common’s finest moment. There was more cant on display than the entire run of Play Away. Many of the speeches appeared to be against a different bill entirely and you could be forgiven for thinking the bill bore no resemblance to the one which Labour had proposed in its own White Paper in 2008 (in fact, the proposals are remarkably similar).

For all that, however, it is fair to say the Lib Dems have not exactly covered …

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Tagged lords reform | 8 Comments

Why won’t the Government get rid of this pesky threat to free speech that nobody wants?

By Keith Porteous Wood | Fri 6th July 2012 - 10:51 am

On Wednesday evening, Lord Mawhinney tabled an amendment (no.155) in the House of Lords to remove the word “insulting” from Section 5 of the Public Order Act to flush out the Government’s attitude on this catchall provision with a very low prosecution threshold that tarnishes our reputation for freedom of expression.

Section 5 has served to nobble those engaged in mischievous, but harmless, pranks, street preachers, and those pouring scorn on religion, but, worse, also those speaking truth to power. Of even greater concern is the chilling effect: what, for fear of prosecution, has not been said but should have …

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Also posted in News and Parliament | Tagged public order act and secularism | 11 Comments

The Independent View: The Trident review risks being a damp squib

By Kate Hudson | Sun 24th June 2012 - 4:55 pm

This week the Ministry of Defence (MOD) announced a £1.1 billion contract with Rolls Royce for building nuclear submarine reactors. This has caused quite some controversy and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was immediately called to answer an Urgent Question in the Commons on the implications of this spending and whether it preempts a future decision on whether or not to replaceBritain’s Trident nuclear weapons system.

The contract itself will see £500m spent on the refurbishment of Rolls Royce’s Raynesway plant in Derby, while £600m will go on building new nuclear reactor cores to powerBritain’s submarines. Most of these will be …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged nick harvey and trident | 4 Comments

The Independent View: The end of the Equal Marriage Consultation

By Conor Marron | Fri 15th June 2012 - 10:25 am

Pre-heat the debate to 1000°C (for fan-assisted debates consult your hyperbole and scaremongering manual at www.c4m.org.uk). Then, to an unsuspecting social network add an average gay couple from Newcastle, experience in web development, some amazing volunteers and zero funding. Leave for 114 days (either side of day jobs) and you end up with:

over 60k supporters
131,346 visitors
11.3k tweets
2353 Twitter followers
42,328 Likes
770k YouTube views
A genuine grass-roots campaign for marriage equality in England and Wales.

The closing of the consultation gives an opportunity to pause and consider how we got here. The Liberal Democrats became the first major political party to officially support same-sex marriage in September 2010. In September 2011 the Coalition Government announced it would consult on legalising same-sex marriage by 2015, which was generally greeted with a warm welcome and a mixture of “It’s about time” and “Why not?” by most.

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Tagged equal marriage | 10 Comments