David Laws, the Lib Dems’ children, schools and families, will be the party’s representative. The QT website gives his impressive pre-Commons bio: “Before his election to Parliament in 1997, he had a career in economics and business, during which he was vice president of JP Morgan, and head of US Dollar and Sterling Treasuries at Barclays de Zoete Wedd. He left in 1994 to take up the role of economic adviser to the Liberal Democrats, and from 1997 to 1999 was the party’s director of policy and research.”

Joining David on the panel will be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman MP, the former leader of the Tory party Iain Duncan Smith MP, the musician and songwriter Jarvis Cocker, and the journalist and columnist Peter Hitchens.

As per last week, we’re continuing to trial a new way of contributing to the open thread, via Facebook’s Live Stream Box, below:

If you’re tuning in, you can join the simultanous online Twitter debate here at #bbcqt, or the LDV debate in the thread below. Meanwhile Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson will be liveblogging events via CoverItLive at his own blog.

Fortunately, the Post has done the hard work for us. There is of course the usual, now unsurprising, confirmation that Saddam had no link to, nor even any sympathy with, Al Qaeda:

Piro raised bin Laden in his last conversation with Hussein, on June 28, 2004, but the information he yielded conflicted with the Bush administration’s many efforts to link Iraq with the terrorist group. Hussein replied that throughout history there had been conflicts between believers of Islam and political leaders. He said that “he was a believer in God but was not a zealot . . . that religion and government should not mix.” Hussein said that he had never met bin Laden and that the two of them “did not have the same belief or vision.”

“When Piro noted that there were reasons why Hussein and al-Qaeda should have cooperated — they had the same enemies in the United States and Saudi Arabia — Hussein replied that the United States was not Iraq’s enemy, and that he simply opposed its policies.”

But the key point of interest – for Western observers, at least – is probably the unaccustomed regional perspective. The erstwhile Iraqi dictator was afraid not so much of the US disapproval but of another war with Iran. As the Post reports:

Hussein’s fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. Iran and Iraq had fought a grinding eight-year war in the 1980s, and Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq — which is largely Shiite. “Hussein viewed the other countries in the Middle East as weak and could not defend themselves or Iraq from an attack from Iran,” Piro [the interrogator] recounted in his summary of a June 11, 2004, conversation.

“The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors,” Piro wrote. “Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”

So there you have it. Fear of others is the key to all human evil.

Incidentally, the conduct of the debate about the Iraq war in Norwich may be of interest to voters and campaigners in the Norwich North by-election. The current Green Party candidate in the by election, Rupert Read, bizarrely stripped naked and put a brown paper bag over his head as a protest.

He also disrupted a 2004 visit to Norwich’s market place – newly, but controversially, refubished by the then Lib Dem administration – from then Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy by dancing excitedly around him, demanding to know why Kennedy was in favour (sic) of the war in Iraq – and drawing allegations of assault from some aggrieved Lib Dems who got bumped in the ensuing melee. Current Lib Dem by-election candidate, April Pond, at that time a senior Norwich city councillor – and who had played a prominent role in the market refurb – was one of the most livid. Eventually no court case ensued, the various parties presumably concluding that it was case of six of one and half a dozen of the other.

But the point to remember is that, in the tortuously philosophical mind of Dr Read, support for troops sent by a democratically elected Parliament to fight in a war is to be equated with support for the war itself, which Lib Dem MPs (lest we ever forget, Gawd Bless ‘Em) voted solidly against.

And he accuses us of ‘fibbing’ …

* Terry Gilbert is a former Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate, and has been a Lib Dem member since 1983.

Calculating party support ahead of the by-election is difficult due to division boundaries overlapping constituency ones.

An approximation would give a line-up based on the June 4 results of: Conservatives 10,656 (40.1pc); Labour 4,953 (18.6pc); Lib Dem 4,371 (16.5pc); Green 4,251 (16.0pc); Ukip – standing in only four seats – 2,106 (7.9pc); BNP 228 (0.9pc). …

Labour, Lib Dems and Greens will be seeking to establish themselves early in the campaign as the main challenger to the Tories.

This compares with an ICM opinion poll last week (with a high margin of error) suggesting the Tories (34%) and Labour (30%) out front, with the Lib Dems on 15% and the Greens on 14%.

Of course not only do the local county boundaries not overlap directly with the constituencies, but the way folk vote in Parliamentary elections is often different than in local elections – just ask the Lib Dem PPCs in Liverpool city! My guess is the opinion poll figures will prove more accurate than an analysis of local election results, but we’ll see soon enough.

George Osborne used his second homes allowance on a London property and then switched it to a large farmhouse in his Cheshire constituency of Tatton. He bought the Cheshire residence ten months before he won his Tatton seat in 2001. Instead of taking out a mortgage on the farmhouse he increased the mortgage on the London property which he bought for £700,000 in 1998.

He designated the London house his second home, even though it was his main residence, so he could claim mortgage interest payments. Two years later he took out a separate £450,000 mortgage on the farmhouse, made that formally his second home, and has since claimed £100,000 on it. It is claimed that Mr Osborne was able to reduce the mortgage on his London home to less than £200,000 before he sold it for £1.48million in 2006, making a £748,000 profit. He did not pay capital gains because he had declared it his main home since 1998 with the tax authorities – despite the two years it was formally designated as his second home with Commons officials.

The Liberal Democrats have calculated that if Mr Osborne had paid tax for those two years, he would have been liable for £54,948. David Cameron has banned his MPs from flipping their homes and avoiding paying capital gains tax.

Here’s the story in The Times:

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, is to be investigated by a sleaze watchdog after revelations in The Times over his second-home allowance claims. … [John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards] is to look into a complaint about Mr Osborne’s claims for a second-home allowance after it emerged that he had taken out a mortgage on his constituency home that was nearly £5,000 more than its purchase price.

… Mr Lyon said he would look into a claim that “Mr Osborne claimed for mortgage payments that were not necessarily incurred, contrary to the rules of the House”.

“Since your complaint involves allegations relating to events of over seven years ago, I have consulted the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges and they have agreed to me initiating an inquiry into this part of your complaint.” He said that he put the claims to Mr Osborne, adding: “When I have received his response, I will consider best how to proceed.”

And here’s what Lib Dem Treasury sokesman Lord (Matthew) Oakeshott has to say about the allegations:

George Osborne should know that you can’t tell the taxman one story and the fees office another. We asked him to come clean and pay the taxpayer back weeks ago but he did nothing.

“This is a real test of David Cameron’s leadership – he needs to make his Shadow Chancellor pay back the tax he’s dodged. It looks like Cameron has either got one rule for the Notting Hill set and another for the knights of the shires, or that George Osborne is simply too close to chop.”

From the BBC:

In a statement, he told MPs he wanted two deputy speakers from the government side and one from the opposition side.

He is believed to be concerned that following his own election by secret ballot last month the three deputies should also be elected.

Mr Bercow indicated he had consulted party whips, who normally appoint the deputy speakers, about the plan.

It is thought that Mr Bercow is looking to implement the changes – or to start the process of change – after the summer recess.

Electing the deputy speakers could raise a question of political balance – traditionally the Speaker and his three deputies have been chosen to reflect the strength of the various parties in the Commons.

The three current deputy speakers are Conservative MPs Sir Alan Haselhurst and Sir Michael Lord, who were both among the MPs defeated by Mr Bercow in the contest to be Speaker, and Labour’s Sylvia Heal, who did not stand.”

Looking at these figures – and acknowledging that many more Muslims have died in violence in the Balkans, Pakistan, Chechnya – it is easy to see why young Muslims living in these countries have a view of the world that includes a sense that the world values their lives much less than those of, say, me, a typical western male…

Obviously any member of a western government would shout me down were I to make such a claim to their face. Any Western liberal democracy places the utmost value on human life, regardless of race, religion or gender. At least, so any Bill of Rights you care to read would tell you.

But that’s just the point. It’s easy to legislate for a concept, but to live up to that all the time is not easy.

We shouldn’t shy away from the fact that any democratically elected government that values its prospects for re-election jealously protects the lives and interests of its citizens. Couple this very understandable bias with the fact that none of the most powerful and influential governments in the world are Islamic nations and you get the situation that, in any multinational forum – be it the G8 or the UN – it is the interests of the richer, western liberal democracies that are put to the fore not those of the Islamic world.

Look at the Darfur genocide. Were that happening in the UK there would be an overwhelming response, not only to protect those being oppressed, but to bring the oppressors to justice. It is not outside our power to take such actions when these events occur -even in the Sudan, but our governments choose to take less action because there is no reason to take any action other than a moral obligation.

It is this narrow self-interest that is the major driving force behind every country’s foreign policy. However, it is arguably at the root of most of the problems in the world. The fact is that the ‘war on terror’ has killed far more Muslims than it has anyone else. I say that we should forgive the Muslims of the world for thinking that the world doesn’t care about them. Fair point, really. This view is borne out of a dispassionate examination of the facts over the last couple of hundred years.

It is this feeling of impotence in the face of an unjust world that is at least partly driving young Muslims into the arms of extremist recruiters. If we are to overcome these problems, we could do worse than learn lessons from the UK’s attempts over the years to resolve the sectarian problems in Northern Ireland.

For centuries (right back to Cromwell), Britain has tried to subjugate all or parts of Ireland. It is only really since the 1970s has there been a concerted effort to move away from a self-perpetuating circle of violence, and move towards trying to engage with all sides to find a solution. While the focus is on the differences between people, then the problems worsen. It is only when we acknowledge our shared humanity do we have any chance of raising ourselves above the violence and finding a way out of the mess that the violence creates.

Clearly the Middle East is the major area of tension between the West and the Islamic world. This has always been the case, and is at least partly attributable to the world view of academics in the 19th century. The very term ‘Orient’ evokes mental images of luxury and indolence and exoticism that are far removed from life in Northern Europe. So, from the off, our view of the Middle East was tainted by the fact that it is so different, on a superficial level from the UK, France and Germany (where most Orientalism scholars came from).

If we could somehow shake off this ‘us and them’ view of the world that is so out of place in an increasingly globalised economy, and replace it with just an ‘us’ view, I think that there would be far fewer problems in the world.

While this might seem like naive idealism, there is an argument, very well argued by Clare Short (even if her book does come across as saying ‘I could have saved the world if Tony Blair had only let me’) for re-focusing our foreign policy towards world development. While it may not be the multilateral approach that might be required for such a change to really have an effect, I would say that there is a moral imperative for us to use what wealth we can to help those less fortunate than ourselves to improve their lot.

Who knows? It might even come full circle and benefit us in the long term.

* Rob Hart is a Lib Dem member and activist in Farnborough, Hampshire.

… initial findings [from research by the Department of Work & Pensions] are of significant discrimination. And whilst it is clearly early days and the DWP is going to do more work – it seems clear to me that – first – those who argued there isn’t a problem which needs fixing in particular need to look very closely at what the DWP has been finding, and second – here is a simple proposal which costs business nothing but could actually deliver enormous benefits in removing discrimination in the job market.

Removing such discrimination is not only important in itself – but by providing people with equal opportunities to earn their living, it opens up all sorts of other knock-on benefits in terms of social cohesion and economic efficiency, which we all benefit from.

What do Lib Dem Voice readers think? Is Lynne right to pursue this campaign as the party’s equalities spokesperson? Or do you think it’s unworkable – and, if so, why? Here’s the question:
Do you support the idea of job applications being made anonymous?

And here are your options:

Feel free to continue the debate in the comments thread below…

The news has a state vs public ownership flavour at the moment:

Passengers to pay price for crisis on the railways
“A series of big projects are in grave doubt after the collapse of the highest-earning franchise exposed a deepening hole in the rail budget.

National Express East Coast is to be renationalised after the parent company refused to honour a pledge to pay the Department for Transport £1.4 billion in the years to 2015.

The DfT will have to accept a much lower sum when it puts the franchise back out to tender and is likely to be forced to pay up to £500 million a year to other rail companies that have been hit by the recession and can recoup most of their losses from the taxpayer.” [Times]

Sale of Royal Mail stake shelved by ministers [FT]
Peter Mandelson told peers yesterday that there was “no prospect” of part-privatising Royal Mail at present, despite the postal services bill having already gone through the Lords.

“Market conditions have made it impossible to find a partner on terms that would make it value for money to the taxpayer,” the business secretary told the Lords. “When market conditions change . . . we will return to the issue.”

Government insiders admitted that “political reasons” had been behind the decision to shelve the sale.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

% rise!
Willie Rennie on the real decisions to be made on public finances.

Garden posters in Norwich North
More musing on election signage from Nich Starling.

I was rather surprised at the introduction to your speech earlier today to the UCL Constitution Unit where you painted what seems to me a very misleading picture of what is happening to turnout in British elections.

I appreciate that is a fairly strong criticism, so I hope you won’t mind me justifying it by taking parts of your speech and commenting on them in detail.

You can read my detailed comments in the original blog post. Today I received a response from her, which she’s given me permission to quote:

I’ve just been passed your post on LibDem Voice which I read with interest.

You’re right, of course, that turnout in Wales in the European Parliamentary elections was the second lowest since 1979, not the lowest. Thanks for picking that up. It should have been spotted it at our end, it wasn’t and it has been corrected. We obviously shoudn’t have given the wrong figures.

But I’m disappointed that you seem to have missed the key point I was making – and indeed made more than once in the speech last night – which is that all of us who are committed to the vital importance of democratic politics and elections, and who want to defend democratic politics as a public good can, in my view, take some comfort from fact that the gloomy predictions about turnout made prior to the elections weren’t fulfilled. I said:

this turnout, against such a backdrop, does show a continued faith in democratic politics with people wanting to have their voice heard.

I don’t deny that there are at every election a range of factors which can influence this. As you point out, for example, the combination of a local council election with a General Election clearly makes a big difference. But I simply don’t think that we can always seek to explain or excuse turnout on that basis. The stark fact remains that it is still the case that the UK continues to have lower than average turnout at European Parliament elections. 34% is a lot worse than 43% across Europe as a whole and is something that we shouldn’t just accept. And for turnout to be mostly 40% or below at county council elections simply illustrates the huge challenges we all face as we try to encourage participation in democracy – for our part by ensuring there are no barriers in people’s way when they want to register to vote, and for yours by being active within a political party.

I hope we can agree on my key thesis: that there is no room for complacency, and that we all need to work to rebuild confidence and commitment to the electoral process.

Credit is due for responding within 24 hours, which reflects well on the Electoral Commission compared with some of the other people and bodies that have been criticised on this blog in the past.

As for the gist of the response, I would have rather seen the Commission admit it had painted an inaccurately bleak picture, though I would agree that an accurate picture is still not a happy one.

It will be interesting to see what comments the Commission makes in future on turnout, and whether the Commission (or any journalists) start reporting the good news, such as rising turnout in London. Not only was turnout in 2009 sharply up (when compared on a like-for-like basis, i.e. with 1999 rather than 2004, when there were other elections on the same day) but it was also sharply up last year in the London Mayor and Assembly election.

Two years of sharply rising turnout figures in a row? That’s not a story I’ve yet seen anyone else report.

* North East Hampshire – PPC (07 Jul 2009)
* Basildon and Billericay – PPC (10 Jul 2009)
* South Basildon & East Thurrock – PPC (10 Jul 2009)
* Thurrock – PPC (10 Jul 2009)

See libdems4parliament.org.uk/events/ for more details.

… total spending will continue to rise, and it will be a zero per cent. rise in 2013–14.

Yes, you read that right: 0% counts as a rise in total spending in Gordon Brown’s eyes. The Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh (admittedly not a Labour cheerleader) sums up his performance today:

It was worse than that: it was bad in an inept, jaded, so-grey-I-make-John-Major-look-colourful kinda way. This was a man with the stench of decay around him.

Don’t forget that the economy and figures are supposed to be Brown’s strong suit. If he turns in a performance like this, it suggests that the only real reason for keeping him – namely a possible economic recovery for which he will claim credit – is disappearing fast.

If I were a Labour backbencher watching today, I would have my head in my hands.

That’s certainly how it read.

When Nick Clegg’s turn came, he also asked about public spending, linking the issue (in his supplementary) to his newly-adopted policy of scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system. It was in his first question, though, that I think Nick did best, skewering the tortured efforts of both the Labour and Tory parties to avoid levelling with the British public how they will respond to the economics of recession. Full Hansard transcript of Nick’s exchanges with Gordon follow:

Mr. Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): I first join in welcoming the announcement from Her Majesty today for such a fitting tribute to recognise the bravery and sacrifices of our armed forces.

This afternoon we have seen the bogus debate about public spending hit new lows. I am almost tempted to suggest that Lord Mandelson and the Conservative economic spokesman go on another cruise together to make up. The real failing is that the Conservative party leader wants to cut spending when the economy is still on its knees, which is economic madness, and he will not tell us how; and the Prime Minister is still living in complete denial about the long-term savings that will be needed when the economy starts to recover. Are they not both deliberately choosing to trade insults so that they can both avoid telling the truth?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman does not tell us what his policy is at all. The fact of the matter is that if spending were cut this year, jobs would be lost and services would be put at risk; and if spending were cut next year, jobs would be lost and services would be at risk. We are determined to ensure that spending remains in order to increase job opportunities and to protect home owners, and to make sure that our public services are in place. I hope that he will join our side of the debate in protecting public services for the future.

Mr. Clegg: What the Prime Minister is avoiding once again is the fact that difficult choices on long-term spending need to be made now if we are going to get any grip on the country’s finances. That is why we should admit that we neither need nor can afford to replace Trident. He is planning to sign the first contracts for the new Trident submarines this summer, during the recess when we are all away. Is it not obvious that he should not do that?

The Prime Minister: We have already announced a deficit-reduction plan for the next five years. We have taken difficult decisions about efficiency savings and asset sales, and about raising the top rate of tax: about measures that ensure that people who are in a position to pay more do pay more in the tax system—that is, at the top rate of tax. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will support those measures, which are designed both to reduce the deficit and to ensure that there are sufficient resources for public services. I have already made my position on Trident clear—in the debate on Monday.

The first step to building those future successes will be Liberal Youth’s comeback training event, Activate, taking place from the 3rd-5th July at The Foundry Adventure Centre in Derbyshire, Activate is a training event which aims to train up our new members in key campaigns, media, communication and team-working skills, setting them up to become the young politicians of the future.

Activate is the event that got Jo Swinson, now our youngest MP, involved in the party. Two of those who went to the last one, Jenni Clutton, 21, and Ben Rawlings, 27, are now amongst our youngest elected councillors. Indeed, Activate was my first ever event as a party member and the one which got me engaged with the party – some might say this is a bad thing, but 3 out of 4 can’t be bad, right? I am personally delighted to see it make a comeback and couldn’t recommend going more highly to the ambitious young leaders we have in our midst.

Registration is just £25 for the weekend, which covers accommodation, training, transport from the station to the event and food, and you can register by emailing Neal Brown, our Vice Chair Membership Development, at – it’s going to be one hell of an event, and I look forward to seeing you there!

* Martin Shapland is Liberal Youth Executive Member and Chair of the International Committee

This brings our absolute unique visitor readership for the last year to date (1 July 2008 – 30 June 2009) to 286,739, an increase of 110% on the equivalent figure for 2007-08 of 136,301.

The 5 top-read stories during the month were:

1. By-election results: Tories fail against Lib Dems (17th November 2006)
2. Tory claims for astrology CD (23rd June 2009)
3. Local elections – Friday open thread (5th June 2009)
4. European elections: rolling results news (7th June 2009)
5. County Council Elections 2009: Let’s stop this electoral manipulation now! (28th May 2008)

Whether you’re a regular here, or an occasional ‘popper-by’, we’re delighted you looked in. And if you enjoy reading LDV, why not try writing for LDV?

* Google Analytics’ term: it broadly means people using almost 38,000 different computers visited LDV at least once. Some people may be counted more than once (eg, home and work computer),whilst some people may not be counted (eg, two different people use the same computer, or someone reads the site through a feed reader without ever actually visiting it).

British economy in worst state in over half a century

Perhaps it’s the sweltering weather, perhaps recession fatigue has set in, but there is little reaction to yesterday’s startling news that the British economy contracted by 2.4% in the first quarter of 2009 – the worst decline in more than 50 years. It isn’t the main story for even one of the newspapers, though it led all last night’s TV news programmes. Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable underscored the seriousness of the data:

The biggest three month fall in GDP in more than half a century is a clear sign that we are in a severe recession. Such a dramatic collapse in growth can only make the public finances worse.

“Rather than making promises on public spending that nobody believes, the Government must start taking tough choices on whether it is going to cut spending or raise taxes to bring the economy out of the red. In the run up to the election, every party owes it to the public to explain how they are going to balance the books.

“Rather than squeezing public services, we must identify areas of public spending, such as public sector pensions or the renewal of Trident, which the country can simply no longer afford in their current form.”

National Express east coast rail route nationalised

As the BBC reports:

The government is to take the East Coast rail service, run by National Express, into public ownership. The troubled rail franchise, which is expected to have lost £20m in the first half of the year, is suffering from slumping passenger numbers. Ministers have refused the company’s requests for its contract with the government to be renegotiated.

The Department for Transport said that all East Coast services would continue and that tickets would be honoured. Existing operational staff will transfer to the new state company which will be set up to operate the route. The government added it intended to put the franchise out for tender from late next year.

Lib Dem shadow transport secretary Norman Baker has urged the Government to take a robust line:

National Express should not be allowed to just hand back its failing East Coast operation while it continues to make a profit on its other routes. Handing back one franchise must mean handing back them all.

“Instead of rushing in to another poorly planned private franchise agreement, the East Coast should be run as a public interest franchise until the end of the current term with tough passenger orientated targets to ensure that, for once, the passenger is put first. This would drive up performance across the network.

“The whole rail franchise system must be overhauled. We need longer deals, requiring train companies to invest in the network and meet strict passenger satisfaction targets.”

2 must-read blog-posts

Billboards – Big waste of money or effective campaigning technique? (Nich Starling)

Certainly it might make people have an awareness that a candidate is standing of that party has not got a high enough profile in the constituency or is unable to deliver the number of leaflets that the main parties can put out. But in a by-election it can serve to show the lack of effective ground troops that party has. … Does anyone else have experiences of billboards they can offer by way of comments?

If you want a royal family, don’t moan when they spend loads of cash (‘Costigan Quist’)

Perhaps I’m being a little slow, but isn’t that what the monarchy is all about? We get a posh family for the Americans to coo over, Prince Phillip to act as an ambassador abroad, Charles to sort out our architectural failings, a whole bunch of nice palaces and stately homes. Of course it’s going to cost money.

I said then that these things take time, Rome wasn’t built in a day etc. How prophetic, for today we discover that the figure of families helped by the Mortgage Rescue Scheme has rocketed … to six. Or 6 if you prefer. To be fair, that’s a 600% increase. On the debit side, the original intention was to help 6,000 families facing repossession.

Here’s what Our Vince had to say about it:

Helping just six families is absolutely pitiful and doesn’t even begin to address the scale of the problem. Vast reams of red tape stand in the way of families faced with repossession staying in their own homes. There are enormous time lags and the vast majority of people who think they are eligible find that they are not.

“Repossession is a ticking time bomb. Despite the predictions of a modest fall, the numbers of repossessions are likely to soar in the next two years because of rising unemployment. Temporary Government schemes are deferring the problem, not solving it. If interest rates start to rise next year, the problem will become even more severe.”

Vince was today leading a debate in Westminster Hall on this very issue of mortgage arrears and repossessions – you can read the Hansard transcript HERE. Here’s his conslusion:

Repossession is only really a problem because of the underlying lack of available housing, particularly social housing. If social housing was freely available, repossession would not be the tragedy and disaster it currently is. Are the Government, working with the charitable bodies, doing any research at the moment on what happens to people who become repossessed? I do not think that any of us know where those people actually go, although anecdotal evidence suggests that most of them go into the private rented sector, which of course presents problems of its own. Many people go into the private rented sector because they can then get housing benefit, which they found more difficult to get as owner-occupiers, but many of them are still in considerable difficulty.

There is still an issue about how to ensure greater availability of affordable housing in the long term. Yesterday, the Prime Minister, in his statement, gave an indication that more money will be brought forward, stitched together from various other departmental budgets, to increase the availability of social housing. That is welcome, as far as it goes. I understand that the Housing Minister is due to make a statement this week indicating that councils will have greater flexibility in their housing revenue accounts, to enable them to build more council houses of a traditional kind. Will the Minister confirm that that is correct? Will we have a statement about it and will the Government move on the issue?

Another development is taking place on which it would be useful to hear the Minister’s thoughts. I understand that the biggest leap forward in the housing supply is now likely to happen in the form of institutional private investors—pension funds and insurance funds—putting their money into private rented accommodation, some of which could then be managed by local authorities or other registered social landlords, with a share of property being available for social renting, much as we have had through owner-occupier developments in the past. Do the Government welcome that trend? Are they looking at the role that social landlords can play in collaborative arrangements with private developers producing private rented property? Have they thought through some of the legal implications? Is it part of Government long-term planning?

My concluding thought is that the Government have introduced some useful initiatives. They have undoubtedly alleviated the threat of repossession for probably thousands of people, but in many cases the problems are being postponed. We are building up a crisis that will probably reach maturity in a year or two. I want to use this debate primarily to persuade the Government to think ahead rather than looking back, and to consider how to deal with the problem when the crisis builds up in magnitude, as it surely will.

^ In fact, it seems the actual figure was two rather than one. I’m not sure that changes very much, though.

Dear Jenny Watson,

I was rather surprised at the introduction to your speech earlier today to the UCL Constitution Unit where you painted what seems to me a very misleading picture of what is happening to turnout in British elections.

I appreciate that is a fairly strong criticism, so I hope you won’t mind me justifying it by taking parts of your speech and commenting on them in detail.

After talking about recent political scandals, you said:

One of the immediate measures of the impact of these events is turnout at the recent elections. Turnout for the European elections across the UK was just 34 per cent, against a European average of 43 per cent.

However, turnout in the UK has been lower than the European average in every European election since and including the first one in 1979. The mere fact of it being lower again does not tell us about the “impact of these events”.

The one piece of evidence you present on that is wrong, for you say:

In Wales it was down to 30 per cent, an all-time low.

In 2004 the European elections coincided with local elections across all of Wales. In 2009 they did not. Given that combining local and European elections on the same day consistently raises European election turnout, saying turnout fell between 2004 and 2009 is not making a like-for-like comparison. It is simply a reflection of the change in electoral rules.

Moreover, turnout was not “an all time-low”. As the House of Commons Library reports, turnout in Wales in 1999 – the last time European and local elections didn’t coincide in Wales – was 28%. If any long term trend can be drawn, it is that turnout in Wales is on the up, not “at an all-time low”.

You went on to say that:

County council elections tell a similar story. Few seats in the shires polled above 40 per cent, compared to 60 or even 70 per cent last time.

Whilst true, that is a highly misleading comparison. Last time the county elections were on the same day as a general election, and again it is a well established pattern that having both elections on the same day pulls up turnout in local elections. All those figures reflect is a change in how the elections are structured. It doesn’t tell us that the public are becoming more or less willing to vote in local elections.

Because of the changing rules around European elections, it is hard to find solid like-for-like comparisons to make. But I would give you the example of London in 2009 and in 1999. In both years, there was no all-postal voting and nor were there other elections on the same day (as was the case in 2004). What happened to turnout? It soared by 10.3%.

So not only did your speech present information in a misleadingly gloomy way, genuine ’good news’ was also left out.

Does this matter? I believe it does, not only because of the principle – the chair of the Electoral Commission should get electoral facts right – but also because of the impact. Painting inaccurate pictures of people’s unwillingness to vote will, if it has any impact, simply discourage people from voting.

I appreciate that these points in your speech may well have been researched for you by someone else and that you may have been repeating the information in good faith.

I hope that you will therefore carefully reconsider the evidence as to what happened to turnout in June and present a more accurate – and indeed thereby more hopeful – picture in future.

Yours sincerely

Mark Pack

UPDATE: Jenny Watson has responded to this post.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. The cards were due to be trialled there – sparking trade union anger. … But Mr Johnson said the ID card scheme was still very much alive – despite Tory and Lib Dem calls to scrap it. He said the national roll-out of a voluntary scheme was being speeded-up – with London to get them a year early in 2010 and over-75s to get free cards.

Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne wasn’t impressed:

This is another nail in the coffin for the Government’s illiberal ID cards policy, which will soon be so voluntary that only Home Office mandarins seeking promotion will have them. Airport workers did not want to be guinea pigs for this deeply unpopular scheme, which has now been reduced to nothing more than a second-rate passport.

“These expensive and intrusive plans should be ditched now. The vast amount of money would be far better spent on something that will actually fight crime and terrorism – ten thousand more police on the street.”

I’m all for Chris’s denunication of ID cards. But I do wonder about our oft-repeated line – first adopted, I think, when Simon Hughes was Lib Dem home affairs spokesman – that we would hypothecate the cash saved from ID cards for putting 10,000 more ‘bobbies on the beat’. Why do I wonder, I hear you ask?

Well, first, as I understand Vince’s line to be, the abolition of ID cards is one of the party’s plausible and cashable savings to help bring down projected government debt in the coming years. If that’s the case, we can’t also spend the saving on new police officers.

Secondly, the policy of putting 10,000 more ‘bobbies on the beat’ was adopted back when abolishing ID cards was held still to be a risky political view to take: Labour adopted them to be seen to be ‘tough on crime’, and were backed by the Tories. It was understandable, perhaps even canny, politics for the party to show that vanity projects like the ID card scheme have an opportunity cost, and that there is more than one way of being seen to be tough. But time has moved on. Opposing ID cards is now mainstream, and we don’t need to come up with a tough-sounding policy as political cover.

And thirdly, the policy is, at best, suspect. Is there actually any evidence that putting 10,000 more ‘bobbies on the beat’ would cut crime? Here’s what Guardian journalist Nick Davies had to say about the issue as long ago as 2003:

The heart of the whole problem is that the system makes a set of assumptions about the behaviour of regular offenders – that they are making rational calculations about their behaviour, that they are worried about getting caught and that they are fearful of being punished. Those assumptions may apply to the law-abiding majority, but they are overwhelmingly false in relation to the generation of adolescents, usually male, who are based in the wreckage of the old public housing estates, whose values have been distorted by a childhood in collapsing communities and broken families, and whose ambitions have been swallowed by the one style of life which offers them status, excitement, a decent income and the prospect of promotion – crime and particularly the blackmarket in drugs. These are the lifestyle criminals who commit 80% of recorded crime: patrols don’t inhibit them, detectives don’t catch them, prisons don’t deter them.

That article is one of four in-depth pieces Nick wrote challenging lazy media/political assumptions about how to cut crime on his insightful FlatEarthNews website under the ‘Media Falsehoods & Propaganda: Bobbies on the beat’ banner. It’s still recommended reading – even for Lib Dem shadow home secretaries.

However, it appears as though the door has been partially blocked by the baby gate of Alternative Vote Plus, the brainchild of the Jenkins Commission. Akin to a less proportional version of the Additional Member System used in Scotland, Wales and in London Assembly elections, AV+ would make our voting system slightly more representative – but not to the point where it would frighten Labour and Conservative MPs raised on a diet* of safe seats.

Since this appears to be the best offer on the table, our Take Back Power campaign has endorsed it, with the disclaimer that we’d really rather have STV.

However, what we’re not doing at present – and I would claim we need to do – is directly challenging the findings of the Jenkins Commission that led to them rejecting STV as a possibility in the first place.

The Commission considered STV as it works in Ireland, with large multi-member constituencies aimed at ensuring that there is at least one Teachta Dála for every 25,512 people. Given the comparative population of Britain and Ireland , the Commission claims that the expansion in parliamentary numbers required to facilitate this would be unacceptable to the public, and instead considers STV in the context of constituencies containing on average 350,000 people. This is one MP per 87,500 people, assuming a similar number of parliamentarians to at present. The Commission claims the length of the ballot paper needed to serve such large constituencies to provide ‘a degree of choice which might be deemed oppressive rather than liberating’ – which anyone who voted in the recent European elections will, of course, know to be true, and in no way an unproven assertion by a parliamentary commission. I myself found my 3-foot ballot paper so oppressive that I voluntarily surrendered my freedom of speech for the entirety of polling day.

Aside from a few more niggles around complexity and suitability (look out for the part where the Commission comes close to asserting that the views of politicians are more important than the public when it comes to voting reform), the meat of the Commission’s objections to STV came in the form of the political realities into which it will be placed.

The Commission argued that STV constituencies on the Irish model would work well in big cities, but in the countryside would cover huge geographic areas to incorporate the approximately 350,000 people necessary. If 3-member constituencies were reduced in size in the countryside, this would give the Conservatives a massive inbuilt advantage, owing to their rural base. A hybrid STV/AV system, with STV constituencies in the cities and AV in the countryside would disadvantage Labour – the Tories would get seats in the cities, while Labour would be unable to similarly capitalise in the countryside.

This is a serious objection – some of the Highland constituencies are already enormous, and this would lead to a single constituency covering much of Scotland . Attempts to hybridise the system on the lines that Jenkins proposes would reduce the very proportionality that STV is meant to achieve.

So how can we counter this? I would argue that to do so we need to think bigger than simply voting reform – we need to reconsider the way in which our parliament functions in its entirety. It would involve a rather unprecedented change, but one which modern technology (namely calculators) would make plausible.

We break the connection between population and constituency boundaries, and instead allow boundaries to be set depending on appropriate geographic/social factors, so that constituencies can be a variety of different sizes in both geographic and population terms, to be determined by the Electoral Commission. This is similar to the unhybridised system Jenkins initially considers, but with smaller rural constituencies. This would seemingly give the Tories an inbuilt advantage, but that’s without considering another change that would overcome this objection.

I propose we end the system whereby every MP has a single vote in the House of Commons and instead institute a system whereby they have a number of votes given by the number they received at their election. Since it’s under the STV system, every single person in each constituency has the chance to lend their authority to an MP of their choosing – in a much more real way than at present. If you vote for a candidate under this system, you aren’t just picking them to win – you’re actually increasing their relative power to act on your behalf.

Maintaining parity in constituency populations is no longer as important under this system, as the power of a political party is no longer given by the territory it controls, but by the number of people who vote for it.

A potential objection to this proposal is that like AV+ it produces multiple classes of MPs – or rather every MP is now in a class by themself. I don’t necessarily see this as a problem. Certainly, while it means that some MPs will have more influence than others (reducing the scope for a potential ‘awkward squad’ of rebel MPs from minor constituencies to upset their party), it’s much more important to ensure that the power of an MP is given in a very real way by the support they have in the country.

I appreciate that this is a little radical, but the purpose of this posting is to stimulate discussion around overcoming the sorts of arguments put forward by the Commission against STV, and to provide a suggestion as to how we might do that. Right now, the way in which Parliament functions is rather feudal, with votes tied to land rather than to people. As a liberal, I believe this is something which needs to change.

*Pun.

* Adam Bell is a Lib Dem member in Islington.

Daisy Benson, a Liberal Democrat member of Reading Borough Council, used Facebook to encourage young people to take part in a scrutiny review of the standard of private rented housing in the area. “I used it because the issue we were looking at particularly affected students and young people and it’s a good way to reach them.”

Benson set up a Facebook group and listed the consultation questions. The group attracted more than 80 members. Among them was a local student, Neal Brown, who says that it was the first time he had taken part in a council initiative. “Facebook makes it easier for young people and students to get involved. While joining relatively silly groups about TV shows and such like, they are also joining groups with serious intent.”

Benson adds: “I’m certainly trying to impress on my council that using Facebook is a good thing to do. It’s cheap and it reaches a lot of people but it wouldn’t be suitable for every issue or every audience.”

The use of social networking by councillors (and MPs) is frequently highlighted here on LDV – but what are the best examples you’ve seen, whether by Lib Dems or by other parties?

The global recession is likely to worsen the international security environment considerably. It is already making many weak and poor states weaker and, as both 9/11 and recent events in North Korea have shown, the consequences flowing from weak, fragile and pariah states are now a greater potential threat to national and international security than the actions of strong, competitive ones.

Climate change is arguably a far graver threat to our long-term security than terrorism and probably a greater challenge to humankind’s ingenuity and leadership than anything else ever faced. Terrorist groups are extending their reach and destructive potential, thriving in the largely unregulated global space in which they enjoy the benefits of new communications technologies, and can deploy ever more lethal weaponry. Meanwhile, the global flow of people exposes us to disease outbreaks that can spread far more quickly than ever before. Swine flu spread around the world in just a few weeks, Sars spread to four continents in 48 hours.

The trouble is we are not altering our approach or our thinking fast enough to keep up with this pace of change. The security of Britain is no longer just the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence — it now impacts on all government departments and requires them to work together in ways they have neither the structures nor the cultures to do. We still find it much easier to continue spending on old priorities than to invest in meeting new, less familiar ones. But the sheer scale of the resource constraints we now face means it is going to be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to fund what we are already trying to achieve, let alone face the new threats that confront us.

Business as usual is not an option. Government needs to work smarter. We urgently need a wideranging strategic security review, including but going well beyond defence. We also need a framework that enables aid, diplomacy, defence and other security policy instruments to work together in a single approach, rather than pull against each other as different parts of government jealously defend their patch.

You can read the article in full HERE.