Once again, it was Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable who asked the hard questions of Alastair Darling today, as Labour’s Chancellor attempted to put right his boss’s blunder in penalising 5.3 million of the nation’s poorest by doubling their tax rate.

Vince’s Commons’ response is reprinted from the Hansard transcript below. Particularly telling, however, was Mr Darling’s answer to Vince’s first question, asking exactly how many of the 5.3m victims of the Prime Minister’s decision will be compensated:

I said in my statement that 4.2 million households will receive as much as, or more than, they originally lost. The remaining 1.1 million householders will have their loss at least halved. In addition, those people might be benefiting from tax credits and other measures. I set out to try to offset the average loss; I think that that is what the majority of people in the House wanted us to do.

Labour MPs appear relieved that this ‘prudent’ Prime Minister is borrowing £2.7 billion to get the Government out of a tight hole. But how they can be pleased with a measure which leaves over one million of the poorest worse off is beyond me. If these had been Lib Dem or Tory proposals you can guarantee Labour supporters would have been roundly condemning them - and quite right, too. The gullibility of Labour MPs is almost as bad as their leader’s profiligate incompetence.

Anyway, here are Vince’s words of wisdom: Read more »

Cast your minds back to last September…

Gordon Brown was riding high in the polls, the Tories were in disarray and the Lib Dems were polling at 13%. Gordon toyed with exploiting his momentary advantage by calling a snap election. He dithered and dithered and dithered until the polls turned and the choice was taken away from him.

Since when nothing has gone right… Labour slumped to third place in the local elections, the Tories won London, and the Lib Dems scored 24% of the vote.

So perhaps Gordon got his just desserts for trying to manipulate the electoral process for tribal advantage.

Yet the fact remains that the decision of when the voters get to vote in or kick out a government should not reside with the Prime Minister of the day. And thanks to Lib Dem MP David Howarth the days of Prime Ministerial whim may be over. The good folk at Unlock Democracy have written to Lib Dem Voice to tell us:

The Fixed Term Parliaments Bill, introduced by David Howarth MP, receives its second reading debate in the House of Commons this Friday.

A Private Members’ Bill, it has a chance of becoming law if enough MPs support it. However, as the debate is on a Friday when most MPs are in their constituents, it is absolutely crucial that enough MPs show up in order to ensure the vote does not fail.

You can help ensure this happens by writing or phoning your MP over the next couple of days and asking them to support the Bill in the second reading debate on Friday. In addition, please ask them to sign

EDM 1528 - Fixed Term Parliaments.

If you would prefer to write, use the WriteToThem.com website (you
can also use this website to look up the name of your MP) or address
your letter to [name of MP] MP, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. To
phone, dial 020 7219 3000 and ask to be put through to your MP’s office.

For more information about why we should have fixed terms for the
House of Commons, see the Fixed Terms website.

On the basis that Lynne Featherstone was really the first MP to start Twittering (Alan Johnson’s temporary use of Twitter for his Labour Deputy Leadership bid being the half-exception), that likely means that this update from Lynne is the first Twitter update that’s been done from the benches of the House of Commons.

Conservative MP Douglas Carswell earlier this year became the first MP to blog from there.

Imagine, perhaps, a future that includes MPs doing blogging or Twitter updates as, say, the Prime Minister answers questions at PMQs. It would add a whole new perspective to the event.

Free Our Bills is campaigning to get information about legislation passing through Parliament available in a sensible electronic format, so that it can more easily be made use of and publicised on the internet.

Nick Clegg has now given the campaign his full support:

Parliament belongs to the people. It’s time to open it up so people can find out what’s going on. mySociety has done a brilliant job in recent years in doing that - and it’s time to take this project to the next level and get information about the laws Parliament passes into the public domain.

It takes a new MP months to figure out how the tortuous bills procedures work - so how we expect the voters to know what’s going on, I have no idea. The changes MySociety are calling for are vital so that every MP is fully accountable for the decisions they take on behalf of their constituents.

I fully support the Free our Bills campaign, and will do all I can in Parliament to win this battle.

From a party news release:

The Liberal Democrats have today written to the Commons Speaker asking when the detailed breakdown of MPs’ expenses will now be published.

Commenting Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg, said:

“There are legitimate grounds for appealing the decision to publish private addresses. However, there is no earthly reason why the rest of the information should not be published immediately.

“Any delay will only add to the British public’s distrust in their politicians.”

Update:
Coverage in The Times:

The Speaker of the Commons is facing a revolt over his decision to fight the release of MPs expenses in the High Court after the Liberal Democrats formally declared their opposition to the appeal.

Nick Clegg is calling for the immediate publication of the data relating to 14 MPs — including the Liberal Democrats Sir Menzies Campbell and Mark Oaten — after the disclosure order by the Information Tribunal. Details about other MPs’ expenses would follow in October…

Today the Liberal Democrats urged the Speaker to publish all the details, minus MPs’ addresses, as soon as possible. They said that they did not believe it merited a costly High Court action.

Paul Burstow, the party’s chief whip, contacted Mr Martin to raise concern over the issue and to ask when the expenses details would be released.

A spokeswoman for Mr Clegg said: “We agree with the appeal about the publication of addresses, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the expenses cannot be published now.”

The Telegraph:

The Liberal Democrats accused the Commons Commission, which Mr Martin oversees, of misleading them after the party was sent a letter promising that the expenses would be published in full this week, and that there would be no appeal.

The Sun:

COMMONS Speaker Michael Martin yesterday GAGGED MPs from discussing his High Court bid to keep their expenses secret…

Last night the Lib Dems called for him to publish the claims but not the addresses.

and most other newspapers too.

Both Nick Clegg and David Cameron tackled Gordon Brown on the consequences of the credit crunch for the economy. The Tory leader focused on the regulatory failures which allowed Northern Rock to become such a mess; the Lib Dem leader tackled the Prime Minister on home repossessions and the current ‘boom and bust’ in the housing market. Tick to Nick for picking the issue which matters most to the public.

The Prime Minister shaded his confrontation with Mr Cameron, looking pretty comfortable on his home turf of the economy, while unusually the Tory leader relied heavily on his notes for his over-long questions. Jonathan Calder at Liberal England is pretty scathing of Dave’s performance today:

… he is clearly not a master of the economics brief. His questions were wordy and Gordon Brown was armed with some good quotes to answer him. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Cameron’s case over the Financial Services Agency, you have to score the contest to Brown.

David Cameron’s second problem is that he is, er, David Cameron. The only time he threatened to engage public interest today was when he talked of the price of bread, milk and eggs. Yet if ever someone gave the impression of not knowing how much bread, milk and eggs cost, that person is David Cameron.

I always wondered, in a society where being “posh” is just about the worst sin out, if David Cameron’s background - and even more the fact that he looks like a public school boy - would count against him. This is one issue where it will.

Nick is looking more and more comfortable at PMQs as the weeks go by. He hasn’t tried to ‘do a Vince’, and skewer Gordon with a smart quip, but he is sticking doggedly to his task of interrogating the Prime Minister on the serious issues of the day with his two questions. Which, after all, is what PMQs is supposed to be for. Anyway, judge for yourselves… the Hansard text of their exchange is below:

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That’s the question posed by a new piece of academic research which shows just how much richer Conservative (though not Labour) MPs have ended up by the time they died:

While the role of money in policymaking is a central question in political economy research, surprisingly little attention has been given to the rents politicians actually derive from politics. We use both matching and a regression discontinuity design to analyze an original dataset on the estates of recently deceased British politicians. We find that serving in Parliament roughly doubled the wealth at death of Conservative MPs but had no discernible effect on the wealth of Labour MPs. We argue that Conservative MPs profited from office in a lax regulatory environment by using their political positions to obtain outside work as directors, consultants, and lobbyists, both while in office and after retirement. Our results are consistent with anecdotal evidence on MPs’ outside financial dealings but suggest that the magnitude of Conservatives’ financial gains from office was larger than has been appreciated.

Read more here.

The UK Parliament’s website lists email and website details for all the current MPs. A series of spots checks shows the data to look accurate (though of course there may be one or two errors in there somewhere). So I’ve been counting. And then, of course, I’ve drawn three barcharts.

They show in turn, what percentage of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs:

1. Have no public email address provided on the Parliament website (there’s no Lib Dem bar, because they all have one),
2. Have no website addresses listed on the Parliament website (and Parliament is reasonably generous at listing sites that are really sub-sites of something larger), and
3. Have neither a public email address nor a website listed.

So without further ado, here are the bars:

Personally, I’m quite surprised at just how many Labour and Conservative MPs don’t have either. For both it’s under 5%, but given the way the internet is so heavily used by the public now, the responsibilities of an MP to make themselves available to people, and not forgetting the staff and other assistance available to MPs (including having a Parliament email address set up for all of them), why would any MP have neither a public email address nor a website?

The Government narrowly avoided an embarrassing defeat in the Commons last night of their plans to close 2,500 post offices – Labour’s majority was reduced to just 20, with Lib Dems and Tories voting together.

Sarah Teather led the Lib Dem attacks on the closure programme– you can follow her arguments in Hansard here (and an extract of her Commons speech is copied below).

The Government majority would have been even tighter, of course, if the Tory leader, David Cameron, and 10 other Conservative MPs had turned up to vote. But as the Daily Mail’s Ben Brogan notes on his blog, the point of the Tory motion was not to reverse Labour’s post office closures – to do that, the Tories would need to have an alternative proposal for saving them. Which they don’t:

This was an Opposition Day Debate, after all. Nothing was at stake, save Government pride. To call this a rebellion is to give it more credence than it deserves. After all, if it had really mattered, David Cameron would have turned up to vote along with - by my count - 10 other Tories who were somehow absent from their own show. If they had, the PM’s majority would have been down to single figures. Pointless, yes, but worth having on the score sheet. Mr Duncan said tonight: “The hunt will now be on for all those Labour MPs who have pretended to support their local post office and then done a runner when they had a chance to make a real difference.” But what about the Tories who missed “a chance to make a real difference”? As I say, a jolly wheeze, but that’s all it was.

The division list from last night’s debate can be found here – worth looking through to see if your local Labour MP stuck to party lines last night.

And here, as promised, is an excerpt from Sarah’s speech: Read more »

The Lib Dem leader used his two questions to Gordon Brown today to highlight the issue of Gurkha soldiers who served this country being denied British citizenship; and then to ask Gordon Brown if he has any regrets about signing the cheques that paid for the Iraq war.

Two very serious issues, and as has become his custom very punchily delivered by Nick. Indeed, the level of loutish barracking to which he’s subjected by Labour and Tory MPs is an indication that his questions are hitting home – the Lib Dems’ opponents are very keen to ensure his sure-footed performances are interrupted as much as possible to make it more difficult for them to be broadcast on the news.

(Ironically, I heard a BBC journalist mention on the radio that Nick was “struggling to make himself heard” in the Commons – as if that reflected negatively on him, rather than the ill manners of those who shout out to drown him out).

Following Vince Cable’s star turns at PMQs was always going to be a tough act. It’s considerably to Nick’s credit that he’s done it seamlessly, but in his own style.

Anyway, Hansard’s record is reprinted below, so judge for yourselves: Read more »

A year on from a House of Commons vote on Lords Reform, we asked Baroness Ros Scott about the prospect of the Commons getting its way.

When I was asked about going to the Lords, I was warned that I might not be there for long.  That was 8 years ago, and I’m not convinced that we’re much nearer to reforming the Lords than we were then.

There is a general consensus in the Commons that something needs to be done to democratise the second chamber, but a range of views about exactly what that should be.  Voting on the Cunningham report reflected that range, and resulted in a failure to gain a majority for any one of the six proposals on offer.   Last year’s vote at least progressed to a clear majority for a predominantly elected House, but legislation remains a distant prospect.

My views on the Lords have changed over time.   Until I got there, I was broadly in favour of an elected second chamber as a matter of principle.  I never felt moved to man the barricades on the issue, largely because the actual power of the Lords is so limited.   Working in the Lords, I have rather come to admire the way it works, the genuine expertise which resides there, and the fact that it usually avoids the more undesirable aspects of political point scoring.

But the “cash for peerages” allegations have hardened my views on the need for reform. I believe now that nothing short of a complete move to an elected Chamber can restore the credibility of the Lords.

And a credible second chamber is needed more now than ever before.  It is clear that the Commons is even further away from real change than the Lords.  An unrepresentative voting system, supine backbenchers and the power of government business managers means that the Commons is unable to hold the Executive to account.  It is not uncommon for Bills to arrive from the Commons with as much 40% of the content unscrutinised, because of the way the government whips manage the business.

Whilst that situation exists, a strong second chamber, with a public mandate, untainted by suspicion of corrupt appointment is a necessity.

And it is for that reason that I don’t think full reform will happen anytime soon.   I’m not sure that any government really wants a second chamber willing and able to flex its muscles.  Ensuring that the Lords remains partly appointed will be government’s way of clipping its wings.

My guess is that initial reform will remove the Bishops and the remaining hereditary peers.   A sort of voluntary retirement scheme will be offered, with a modest financial settlement based on past attendance.    This would clear some capacity for the election of a tranche of “senators” on a regional list basis, for a term of 12 (or 15) years non-renewable.

Five years later, the grim reaper will have  created space for a second elected list, and so on until we have a second chamber which around 80% elected.  The other 20% will be non political appointees.

The challenge for Liberal Democrat parliamentarians will be how much of a future programme for reform we can support.  Purists will urge rejection of everything short of a totally elected house, pragmatists will urge us to take any steps which move us closer to our ultimate goal.

Ros Scott speaks is a front-bench Lib Dem peer covering the  local government portfolio. Her website is here and her blog here.

This was always going to be a tricky Prime Minister’s Questions for Nick Clegg, given the delight both Labour and the Tories take in ganging up on the Lib Dems in Parliament. In fact, as in previous weeks, Nick easily withstood the yelling and abuse from the other benches, and was able to ask clear and punchy questions on the subject of the week: Europe.

Fairness demands I note that Gordon Brown is improving at PMQs - his reponses to Nick were pretty sharp, and he also seems to be getting the measure of David Cameron in their sparring sessions. Judge for yourselves below.

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Unsurprisingly, today’s PMQs couldn’t quite match up to the excitement of yesterday’s Parliamentary proceedings - or indeed the rooftop excitements. Davd Cameron suffered from poor briefing in his questions on Parliamentary proceedings, and was left deflated by an on-form Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Nick Clegg put in one of his strongest PMQs performances to date, shrugging off the expected barracking of Labour and Tory MPs following yesterday’s Euro referendum walk-out, and focusing on a crucial but under-reported issue: mental health.

Here’s the Hansard version so you can judge for yourselves:

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The House of Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, has found himself in the full glare of unwelcome publicity this weekend, following allegations that he has misused his Parliamentary allowances:

In the past two weeks it has emerged that some black cab trips made by Mr Martin’s wife to buy food were claimed on expenses, that allowances were claimed for a home he owns outright in Scotland, and that he used air miles earned on official business to buy first-class tickets for some relatives to fly to London over the New Year.”

As none of this is outside the rules it might not matter - but for the fact that Mr Martin is leading an inquiry intended to make clearer and more transparent what MPs can and cannot claim as expenses.

Now the Lib Dems’ treasury spokesman in the House of Lords, Matthew Oakeshott, is piling on the pressure, tabling a Parliamentary question asking for the details of Mr Martin’s employment – using taxpayers’ money - of Mike Gannett from PR firm Luther Pendragon as his personal media spokesperson.

So far, senior politicians have lined up behind the Speaker, with Nick Clegg today arguing there has been “a bit of a witch hunt” against Mr Martin. James Forsyth over at The Spectator’s Coffee House blog questions the wisdom of this approach, arguing the Lib Dems’ USP should be their anti-establishment spikiness. He also suggests some tactical reasons for quizzing the Speaker’s fitness for office just now:

it is to Clegg and the Lib Dem’s advantage to be seen to be crossing the Speaker right now as their big battle at the moment is to get their ‘in or out’ referendum amendment down; the Commons Clerks are reluctant to allow it to be tabled as they don’t see it as relevant to the Lisbon Treaty bill. But if the Lib Dems were to be denied after publicly criticising Martin, they would be able to kick up an almighty fuss which would disguise their own deep divisions over the issue.”

So, what should be Nick Clegg’s approach: should he be calling for the Speaker’s head pending an independent inquiry; or is he right to dismiss the critics of the Speaker?

After last week’s half-term break, there were few surprises at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions: the Lib Dems’ Nick Clegg was able confidently to lead with Labour’s mishandling of the Northern Rock collapse (thanks to Vince Cable’s far-sighted statements), while Tory leader David Cameron (who, with George Osbourne, has been all over the place on the issue) avoided mentioning it in his first round of questions.

Nick followed up – after a pointed dig at the Tories’ “economic illiteracy” – with a ‘bread and butter’ question on energy prices, something which is fast becoming his trademark.

Here’s the Hansard transcript of their exchange:

Read more »

The Independent has the story:

The disgraced Conservative MP Derek Conway will keep his place among a group of MPs paid a £13,000-a-year bonus for chairing parliamentary proceedings. Mr Conway’s political career was apparently in ruins after he was suspended from the Commons after being criticised for employing his son as a researcher.

But he has retained a prestigious and lucrative position as a member of the “chairmen’s panel” appointed by the Speaker Michael Martin to oversee detailed debates on Bills…

Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said: “I find it very surprising he is still in that position and nobody has seen fit to question it.”

Meanwhile, Nick Clegg is calling for the review into MPs’ expenses to be beefed up:

Pressure is mounting on the Speaker, Michael Martin, to take a tougher line on MPs’ expenses amid fears that the review he ordered following the Derek Conway affair will not produce radical reforms…

The Liberal Democrats will next week call for the group to take evidence from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the anti-sleaze body. Nick Clegg, the party’s leader, believes this would give the Commons’ own review expert advice and, crucially, an independent element.

After this week’s controversy about bugging of MPs, Nick Clegg used his two questions to the Prime Minister to ask directly about Labour’s desperate efforts to keep tabs on every man, woman and child in the country. In particular, Nick focused on the fingerprinting of children at school, and demanded the Prime Minister stop the practise – a question Mr Brown preferred to ignore.

Meanwhile, the Tory leader’s PMQs’ increasingly shrill performance has become the focus this week of some criticism from the BBC’s Nick Robinson:

The leader who promised an end to ‘Punch and Judy’ has become more and more contemptuous in his attitude to the PM and, as a result, less respectful towards the office itself. … I recall David Cameron telling Tories to be aware that whatever they said would, in the end, tell voters as much about them as the person they were attacking. Has he forgotten this or am I missing something?

There’s no doubting that Mr Cameron is quick on his feet, and well able to riposte with a barbed insult. Yet this poison-tongued smoothness - combined with some glib questions and the full-throated braying of the Tory ranks - can produce a fairly unedifying spectacle which does nothing to make Dave look Prime Ministerial. His advisors would do well to steer him away from lines like today’s rather pathetic playground crack, “I think the Prime Minister had been practising that soundbite all week, and do you know what? It is still rubbish.”

Anyway, read for yourself below how Nick got on this week:

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