We have not succeeded.  The changes to the Bill have failed to quell fears that the NHS is being fragmented in pursuit of market dogma.  There is no serious support or enthusiasm for the Bill within the NHS; indeed opposition among the health professions is hardening.  If we were confident of our cause we should certainly press ahead; the BMA is not always right!  But the legislation is so complex that even lawyers disagree about its implications.  And as the economy worsens and each week brings new “revelations” of shoddy healthcare, the Bill seems increasingly irrelevant to the real problems faced by the NHS.

The coalition protected the NHS financially but it still faces the toughest four years since its creation.  If we cannot convince the electorate of the value of this legislation, all NHS problems, whatever their derivation, will be laid at our door. LibDem peers are working enormously hard to secure further improvements to the Bill, but their efforts are largely invisible to all but the most avid Hansard readers.  And whatever the outcome at report stage, we will have to convince the public about the positive merits of the Bill.  Claiming to have made it less bad than it would otherwise have been does not make a convincing Focus story when the local NHS is in disarray.

We could start with our own supporters.  If we cannot convince them that Bill is good for the NHS then we need to reconsider while there is still time.  A good model is the special conference that was called to endorse the coalition agreement.  This enabled the leadership to explain and win our support for a radical and surprising course of action.  The NHS Bill has similar implications for the party’s future.  Many are puzzled that we, the party of Beveridge, are apparently committed to the marketisation of the NHS that some informed commentators believe could be irreversible?

We need to hear and be convinced by the case for this highly controversial Bill. A special conference while the Bill is still in the Lords would enable us to take stock and change direction, even at this late stage.

*Dr Graham Winyard is a member of the Liberal Democrat Health Committee

Many, including myself, would love to see the line extended all the way up to Scotland, providing a real boost to domestic tourism and sustainable growth.

But in amongst the disputes over cost benefit analyses and NIMBYism, there are some startling figures which remind us why High Speed Rail is vital for the future of British transport; and why it is that we included it in our 2008 policy paper Fast Track Britain, our 2010 Election Manifesto and now the Coalition Agreement.

Over the last 50 years the length of our rail network has roughly halved, but, since 1980, the number of passenger journeys has doubled. This reduction in capacity, at a time when demand has soared, has fuelled over-crowding and led to eye-watering price hikes.

Network Rail estimates that by 2024 the existing line to Birmingham and the North West will be full – already we are seeing serious congestion on commuter services at the Southern end of the line, seriously harming service reliability and passenger welfare.

These fundamental facts have been largely ignored by politicians and the press alike; the debate over the HS2 project has been damagingly distorted. The need for the extra capacity which this project will provide is not a luxury, it is a cold, hard necessity which we cannot afford to ignore.

There have been some ludicrous suggestions that this capacity problem could be fixed by extra carriages and the reduction of first class seats. It sounds like a simple solution, but running that many services on a single would result in a completely unreliable service. Massive infrastructure works on a deeply overcrowded line is not a solution, it’s not even a quick fix, it is a completely unrealistic alternative.

The only possible alternative would be to just build a non-high speed line along a similar route. But current estimates place the cost saving at just 9% and, crucially, the line would not stop the extraordinarily damaging growth in road and air travel.

Current projections suggest that the HS2 project will transfer 6 million air trips and 9 million road trips onto rail. If you’re going to build a new train line, you have to make it fit for 21st century travel.

There are some who say that we are so far behind our competitors in Europe and Japan that we should construct the whole line all in one go. But this would delay the commencement of building due to the size of the consultation and the complexity of the Parliamentary process, and it would lead to disproportionate financial and logistical difficulties. Just think back to previous Government IT projects.

For years Liberal Democrats have derided Government plans to patch up the old train lines and ignore technological advances abroad. But now, with massive pressure on freight and commuter services, disproportionate economic growth in London and the South-East and a pressing need to reduce our carbon emissions, High Speed rail is no longer the transport of the future, it is a logistical imperative.

I would like to pay tribute to John Dixon. He has served the public diligently and with distinction on Cardiff Council. He would have been an enormously effective and hard working Assembly Member. He has paid a very high price and I would like to pay tribute to him for the dignity with which he has handled the situation over the past two months.

Aled Roberts too has had a difficult couple of months but he is now back in the Assembly where he belongs and we have wasted no time in getting down to business and I have been able to announce the team that will hold the government to account.

William Powell with his roots in the rural community is well placed to represent rural Wales. He is a member of the Farmers’ Union of Wales so he will be able to speak for farmers with confidence in the Chamber. William also serves on the committee of the Lloyd George Society – a true liberal.

Aled Roberts takes on the education portfolio. During his tenure as leader of Wrexham Council, they boosted the GCSE results of the pupils in the county. Aled has already, on his first day back, called for the Labour Government to introduce a pupil premium in Wales given that that the Welsh equivalent of Ofsted recently said that pupils from poorer backgrounds do not have the same opportunities as their wealthier counterparts.

Our new AM for Wales South Central, Eluned Parrott, with her experience working with the higher education sector, will take on the business and enterprise portfolio. Eluned worked very hard during the National Election campaign, delivering leaflets all across her region and supporting constituency candidates wherever. A true team player.

Peter Black, who has been an Assembly Member with me since 1999, takes on Local Government and I will be shadow minister for health to ensure that the Labour Government does not take us down the wrong avenue.

We will be ready to support the Welsh Government where we agree however we will not be afraid to criticise when the Welsh Government gets it wrong.

But for the next few months we will also we watching closely the actions of the UK Government!

It was great to welcome the Cabinet to Wales this week and that Nick Clegg took the opportunity to meet with Welsh Lib Dem members to answer their questions, including some on the future of devolution in Wales. Throughout the General Eelection in 2010, we saw how natural and confident Nick was at addressing large groups of people. Members of the Welsh Liberal Democrats were very happy that Nick took time out of his busy schedule in Wales to come and talk to them and take their questions.

While the Cabinet were in Wales, the Prime Minister addressed the Assembly on devolution issues. The Coalition Agreement committed both parties to ‘establish a process similar to the Calman commission for the Welsh Assembly’. In Scotland, this process looked in detail at the devolution stettlement considering ways of increasing the financial autonomy and responsibiity of the Scottish Government but also at wider devolution issues.

The Coalition Government has now asked the four parties in the Asssembly to consider what the remit of such a commission should be. We shall engage positively in that process but we should also be clear that there were two parties who committed to such a process and we need to deliver. I know that there are precious few Tories in Government who really believe in extending devolution for Wales (and there are no Lib Dems in the Welsh Office). So we are relying on the Lib Dems in Government to hold the Prime Minister and his colleagues to his committment.

Empowering people is key to being a Liberal Democrat, Indeed, Andrew Stunell wrote on this forum back in December:

We are devolving power back to local authorities, communities, and individual people up and down the country. Lib Dems have long campaigned for power to flow from the bottom-up not top-down. The “Man in Whitehall” doesn’t know best, and the publication of the Localism Bill marks the end of Labour’s top-down presumption they know more than local people about how their area should be run.

As the leader of the Liberal Democrat group in Islington, I am excited by the prospects opened up for local people in the Bill. However, as I am also the Shadow Executive Member for Housing and someone who lives and has worked in social housing most of my life, there is one element of the Bill that troubles me. A concern that is echoed by many tenants, community leaders and activists across the country.
There is a clause in the Bill that introduces something called a ‘democratic filter’ to housing complaints for both Council and Housing Association tenants. This will mean that before tenants can go to the housing ombudsman, they must first go through a third party of an MP, local councillor or a tenant panel. Adding another level of “red tape”, something that the localism bill was supposed to do away with.
As a councillor, I will be more than happy to support any constituent who needs help in this area, and have been doing so for over 13 years now. But as a democrat, I believe it should be the tenant’s choice as to whether they involve me or not. The inclusion of a third party in a complaint should always be their decision, they shouldn’t be forced to.

As a tenant, I know that my neighbours are often far more likely to know about issues that arise in social housing than most MPs and even many councillors. But also I know that, like everyone else, we protect our privacy and don’t want to be forced to share our personal information. For example, if a family feel they have been wrongly targeted over anti-social behaviour, they might not want to bring in a third party likely to judge them further.

Interestingly, many years ago the “democratic filter” for complaints about Council services was removed, why is it being “re-introduced” for those of us who live in social housing? I am incandescent that tenants in ‘social housing’ have been singled out for this experiment in solving the so-called ‘democratic deficit’ which involves further stigmatisation and removal of direct access to alternative justice in a way that is not applicable to any other citizen consumer in the UK.

This measure wasn’t in either the Liberal Democrat or Tory manifestos; it is neither Liberal nor Democrat sadly. It also wasn’t in the Coalition Agreement to which we have agreed to abide. Given this, we Lib Dems should stand up for the democratic rights of tenants by removing this superfluous requirement, and ensuring the Localism Bill is as effective as we know it can be.

Terry Stacy is the Leader of Islington Liberal Democrats and the Shadow Executive Member for Housing. He is also a housing association tenant, Chair of Island Homes and a member of the board of the National Housing Federation.

A key part of this is the role of the Lib Dem parliamentary committees, one of which I co-chair.

These committees are not simply talking shops. They perform two important functions: making our influence felt within government and preparing the ground for party policy in the future.

Increasingly, the fruits of these committees are being seen.

The Coalition Agreement is the contract that underwrites this government. It sets out the policy agenda agreed between ourselves and our Coalition partners.

However, the exact shape of the legislation and how it is introduced is, rightly, subject to scrutiny and improvement, and that is one of the roles our committees take on.

Take elected police commissioners for example. The Government is committed to introducing them, but it is right that we discuss and raise concerns about their remit and the manner in which they are introduced.

The Lib Dem home affairs committee has been doing just that and is applying pressure to make sure they are subject to robust checks and balances.

Take the issue of the state pension age for women. Jenny Willott, as co-chair of our work and pensions committee, is pressing for changes to ensure the increase in the state pension age does not unfairly disadvantage thousands of women who will not have been given adequate time to prepare for their retirement.

But we don’t just scrutinise and influence existing government policy, we bring forward new ideas.

Earlier this year, as a result of the work of the Treasury/BIS committee that I co-chair and the think tank CentreForum, I published proposals to distribute shares in the bailed-out banks to the British public.

Momentum is already building behind this idea. Another think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies has since come out in support of the proposals. Actually, what they did was make strikingly similar proposals that they published in their own name, but a good idea is a good idea and I’m glad more people are getting behind it.

At Prime Minister’s Questions this week, following a question by my colleague Alan Beith, David Cameron said he was open to the idea.

Radical thinking does not become government policy overnight, but I am hoping to meet with the Prime Minister in the near future to see how we can take the proposals forward.

The advantage we have being in Government is that we can make our ideas a reality. Not every one, but then we didn’t win the election. Nonetheless, this is an opportunity to influence the direction of our country that liberals haven’t had for decades.

Through our parliamentary committees, Liberal Democrats are influencing and improving Coalition policy, pushing innovative ideas and laying the groundwork for party policy as we prepare for the next General Election in 2015.

The initial premise of the Localism Bill appeals greatly to Liberal Democrat in the Conservative-led Coalition. What is there about bringing power to local communities that is not to be liked?

It could be argued that the principles of the Localism Bill were in fact first proposed within the Coalition Agreement, where Page 11 states;

We will promote the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. This will include a review of local government finance

However, this is where the principles of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives begin to clash.

The Conservatives have long been renowned for their desire to reduce state control, state spending “excesses” and state interference.

In direct comparison, the principles of Social Liberalism recognize harmonisation of freedom of the individual and the integral role of the state to provide services that address social and economic issues where they arise.

With one party considering the state to be excessive and the other considering the state to be essential there are bound to be clashes in ideology.

Devolution of power clearly means different things to different parties, and it could be argued both parties felt they were achieving manifesto commitments with this statement.

However, there is been a subtle shifting in the ideology of Liberal Democrats in the role of the state in direct response to both the Coalition Agreement and the proposal surrounding localism;

We want to make it possible for local people to work together to run local services. That’s how to deliver what people actually want. We’ll stop interfering from central government and help communities protect local services

The “protection” of local services is very different from “working together to run” local services.

To consider the issue from a separate angle, it is worth examining reasoning behind the creation of the welfare state and “public” services in the first place.

One of the principles of the introduction of a public state was to remove the stigma of charity, and thereby saving all recipients of benefits, services and support any embarrassment.

The principle of local people working together to run local services will in fact contradict the role of the state in providing services to address social and economic or issues.

Social liberalism in the UK rose in the late 19th century as a response to extreme social divide in economic decline. This created the role of the welfare state and underpinned the principles of taxation to fund this, with the right of universality embedded within.

In Context

The proposals under the summary of The Localism Bill are equally as undefined as the statement in the coalition agreement:

• for services which are used individually, this means putting power in the hands of individuals themselves
• where services are enjoyed collectively, they should be delivered by accountable community groups
• where the scale is too large or those using a service are too dispersed, they should be delivered by local institutions, subject to democratic checks and balances, enabled by full transparency.

Point 2 provides the bone of contention. Does this proposal engender a removal from the state, a return to the individual responsibility?

Or worse, does the proposal create a plurality of services, as is depicted in Liberal Democrats’ criticisms of the Liberating the NHS Bill?

As a party of perpetual opposition, our inclusive but often ponderous policy-making regime allowed members to influence core policy, in the knowledge that it would be a means of attacking the Government, but was unlikely to be applied. Occasionally, that led to somewhat populist ideas being espoused but, if a Government did something in a field where our policy was obsolete, or overtaken by events, our spokespeople had a set of principles to fall back on.

Such an arrangement worked, for the most part, especially in small Parliamentary Parties. However, its weaknesses became more apparent as Labour’s mania for legislation produced a plethora of technical changes in need of detailed scrutiny. In such instances, the Party relied to a great extent on the Parliamentary Party in the Lords to argue the detail, propose the amendments, and hopefully influence ministers.

Bearing in mind that the Party in the Lords has always been relatively poorly resourced, and is reliant on the goodwill of Peers, many of whom, until recently, were of retirement age or above, this was always likely to present difficulties. Add to that the tendency of members, activists and policy wonks to rather overlook the Lords as a means of influencing policy, and it becomes likely that opportunities were lost.

And yet it was in the Lords that the future of member involvement in short notice policy making emerged. The Digital Economy Bill saw two Party spokespersons struggling to amend some rather authoritarian legislation, but doing so in a way which left many Liberal Democrat IT professionals and experts deeply dissatisfied. Using e-mail and social media, new Party policy was rapidly drafted, submitted for debate at Federal Conference, and passed.

With the advent of the Coalition, the need to find new ways to allow members to make their views known to Ministers and spokespeople has become more urgent. Whilst the Coalition Agreement has the endorsement of members via the Special Conference held in Birmingham last May, what happens after 2012 remains unclear. In that light, Danny Alexander’s announcement in the recent all-member Liberal Democrat News of a policy review, using the vehicle of a strategy paper to be debated in September takes on huge importance.

There is, to my mind, a problem with this way of approaching the question. Firstly, the nature of coalition means that policy making needs to take place with much greater knowledge of what our coalition partners are thinking, in this instance made more difficult by the rather closed process of policy development favoured by the Conservative Party. Secondly, it fails to address the issue of responsive government, i.e. what happens if an un-planned-for event occurs, and a legislative response is required.

So, what might be done? Firstly, we need to strengthen the relationship between the Specified Associated Organisations, such as Liberal Youth, and the Associated Organisations, and the Parliamentary Parties. Clear channels of communication with our Ministers need to be maintained, managed and made accessible to Party members. Technology is our friend here, and with the platform for debate that is Liberal Democrat Voice, an issue of concern can be debated quickly, and groups can be formed on an ad hoc basis to gather responses and transmit them onwards.

The Federal Policy Committee is a vital conduit for raising policy concerns. Find out if there is someone on it who can champion your issue and e-mail them, don’t just assume that they are on top of everything. If an FPC member gets twenty, or thirty, or fifty e-mails calling for something, it strengthens their argument for action if they can call these in support.

The East of England Regional Party has established a twice-yearly meeting between its Parliamentarians and key local activists, councillors and candidates, where issues can be raised, explanations given, and concerns aired. The first of these, rather fortuitously perhaps, took place before the vote on tuition fees, and the feelings expressed certainly made an impression on the MPs present. Whilst the timings may not be as convenient in future, such meetings will at least connect our Parliamentarians to the membership.

And finally, don’t forget the Lords. The scope for influencing Government policy is perhaps greater there, with no guillotine on debates, and a generally more thoughtful scrutinising function. During the debate on tuition fees, all of the attention, and lobbying was focused on the Commons, and Peers were left largely undisturbed, even though they voted on the Bill after the Commons had done so. A well-argued, well-researched and well-referenced submission will generally draw itself to their attention.

Hopefully, members will take the opportunity to make a positive contribution to the development of Liberal Democrat policy. But we all need to be proactive, rather than bemoaning our lack of influence, and constructive, rather than just demanding that the Government not do something we don’t like…

His letter in full:

Dear Aaron,

Thank you for writing to me about your ‘Right to Recall’ campaign.

The idea of a right to recall was something I proposed when I first became leader of the Liberal Democrats and I am proud that it is now part of the Coalition Agreement. However my proposal was for it to apply to MPs who were found guilty of serious wrongdoing by the parliamentary authorities. My intention has always been that it should be for people found to be breaching parliamentary rules, the example I often used was that of Derek Conway.

While the Liberal Democrats have not been able to keep their pledge on tuition fees I believe we have played an important role in proposing a new system that is in line with our fair, progressive values.

That fairness includes ending the discrimination against part-time students; making sure that graduates do not start repayments until they are earning a suitable wage at a higher level than they do now; and ensuring that the lowest earning graduates will pay back less overall than they do currently.

For example, a nurse with a starting salary of £21,000 increasing to £27,000 in real terms over 20 years would pay an average of £7 a month over 30 years. Under the current system, they would be paying back at least £45 a month immediately.

I know your preferred option is for a Graduate Tax. As you know, that is something we also looked at but rejected, partly because we felt it was actually more unfair. Under a Graduate Tax people on below-average incomes would end up paying more than they would under our proposals.

If we are agreed that people should only start repaying after they graduate and that those repayments should be linked to the ability to pay then the important question is which system offers the fairest method of repayment. I firmly believe that a Graduate Contribution Scheme is fairer and more progressive than Graduate Tax.

I understand and respect the fact that you will continue to argue the case for your own preferred system and that debate is one that will continue after a new funding system is introduced. Equally I understand that part of that campaign will involve the NUS trying to pressure the Liberal Democrats.

However, I also believe that all of us involved in this debate have a greater responsibility to ensure that we do not let our genuinely held disagreements over policy mean that we sabotage an aim that we all share – to encourage people from poorer backgrounds to go to university.

Like me I am sure you have regularly spoken to people who believe that the new proposals will mean them having to pay before they go to university or say that they cannot afford the fees. As you know, there is no upfront charge and the repayments only apply to graduates who earn over £21,000. If the proposals are passed by Parliament I believe it is crucial that all of us are able to ensure that people know the true picture.

There is one thing in this debate that I believe unites all of us – both parties in the coalition; your fellow members in the Labour Party; the NUS and people throughout the country who care about higher education – and that is that the opportunity to go to university is one that everyone should feel they have. It would be a tragedy if we inadvertently allowed our debate about the methods to damage our shared goal.

I will be in touch to arrange a meeting with you to discuss this. I do not expect to change your current position, nor am I trying to stop you continuing to campaign for what you believe in, even after Parliament votes on these proposals. But I do believe that the nature of that debate, and the language we use, is important if it is not to have consequences that none of us want.

Yours sincerely,

Nick Clegg

According to the publishers:

The Liberal Democrats’ and Conservatives’ decision to form a Coalition government has changed the face of British politics. This book sets out the inside story of how this momentous event unfolded, and how – together – the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have started to address the challenge of a massive government budget deficit.

22 Days in May is the first detailed Liberal Democrat insider account of the negotiations which led to the formation of the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition government in May 2010, along with an essential desription of the early days of the government.

David Laws was one of the key Lib Dem MPs who negotiated the coalition deal, and the book includes his in-depth, behind the scenes, account of the talks with the Conservative and Labour teams after the General Election, as well as the debates within his own party about how the Lib Dems should respond to the challenges and threats of a hung parliament.

You can pre-order it now from Amazon with £3.00 off.

In his article, Tim makes the distinction between the NUS pledge against tuition fees, signed by Parliamentary candidates before the General Election (which he intends to abide by), the Liberal Democrat manifesto (which became a negotiating document) and the Coalition Agreement (which contains 65% of the Liberal Democrat manifesto).

Here’s an excerpt:

Fees are the poll tax of our generation and I cannot in good conscience vote for an increase. It is not for me to tell colleagues how to vote, but I believe we need to move away from burdening young people with debt. Education should be available to all – not just those who can stomach the debt.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto set out a six-year plan to phase out tuition fees altogether. But let’s remember we didn’t win the general election, which means our manifesto became a negotiating document. We did an outstanding job of negotiating the coalition: if you comb the coalition agreement you will see that 65% of our manifesto is in it.

The anger of the students is understandable, and I sympathise with it. Seeing thousands of young people engaging with politics is fantastic. My clear message to them is this: the Liberal Democrats are the party of free education – stick with us.

I want to see scrapping fees in our next manifesto. It’s great to see that the Scottish Liberal Democrats – who abolished fees when they were in power between 1999 and 2007 – have committed themselves again to keeping Scotland fee-free if they form part of the next Scottish government.

He goes on to point out that the Lib Dems have ensured the abolition of up-front fees for part-time students – who make up roughly half of all students – and highlights the the raising of the payment threshold from £15,000 to £21,000:

Along with a package of other measures, it means that the poorest 30% of graduates will be better off under the new system. Anyone who wants their analysis of the student finance package to be taken seriously has to acknowledge these advances – and that the progressive parts of the package only happened because of the Lib Dems.

You can read the full piece here.

During the negotiations back in May I wrote that we should take the Tory deal for the good of the country and that it was effectively the only game in town.

I was also supportive of many of the actions taken in the early days of the government including the decision to focus more heavily on reducing the deficit. I broadly accepted the arguments that the government as a whole have used to justify this.

I have not blogged myself since the start of August but have found myself in mid-October unable to contain my feelings about how Lib Dems within government seem to be approaching the task of communicating with the public about the decisions they are taking.

It is typified by (but not limited to) the recent controversy regarding tuition fees and the justifications used by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable for the change in tack by the party but it is broader than just that. It is the fact that they and other Lib Dem ministers seem to be determined to communicate an entirely united front from the government which will ultimately make it very difficult for activists on the doorstep to argue for the ways in which our party has made a difference in government.

No nuance of difference appears to be allowed in the rhetoric. Clegg himself is even on record as stating that this is the right way to go about it implying that he does not want to give the media ammunition for stories about splits. But this is a coalition government. We all know that the splits are already baked in!

I am also discomfited by the way in which Clegg now seems to be actively in favour of increasing tuition fees rather than just sticking to the coalition agreement. I fully understand that the Lib Dems agreed to abstain on tuition fees as part of that agreement. I am sure there are lots of things in there that the Conservatives did not want to agree to either.

If we start to unpick it then there is a real risk that the whole thing will unravel. Tory MPs for example would then have no problem voting down the AV referendum. Where would it stop?

For all these reasons and more I would accept the party in government sticking to this agreement to abstain. We would have a chance of explaining how the compromises of coalition government necessitated us to do so but to actively vote for what we so strongly campaigned against just a few months ago will frankly baffle people and is the sort of thing that could ultimately lose Lib Dem MPs their seats (including potentially Nick Clegg if recent polling data is to be believed).

Lib Dem ministers need to find a tone and a language to communicate that they are doing their best fighting internally for what the party wants and getting the best that they can.

This is not achieved by positioning themselves to never allow a cigarette paper between Tory and Lib Dem ministers. And it is certainly not achieved by disingenuously trying to claim that the finances are worse than we thought for cover regarding tuition fees.

We could ditch Trident for example to help pay for free tuition but the government has chosen not to do so. It is a compromise and as I have argued repeatedly the Lib Dems have got some good policies as a result of the negotiations. We need to continually talk this up rather than pretending that we completely agree with every policy that government produces.

I suspected when the government was first formed back in May that the public, activists and back-bench MPs would take a good while to adjust to the reality of coalition politics. What I was not really prepared for however was for Lib Dem ministers to find it so difficult to find a way to communicate the realities of what is happening within the government.

They need to find a way and quickly, otherwise how can they possibly expect Lib Dem activists to be able to do so on the doorstep?

How much respective influence have the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives had on the Coalition Government’s policies?

Lib Dem blogger Duncan Stott has crunched the data from the Guardian’s Datablog:

“The most objective way of assessing the coalition at this early stage is the coalition agreement. An analysis of this text and the roots behind each policy would give the best description of how this government is formed.

Happily the Guardian have done exactly this analysis and provided it as a spreadsheet. It list each commitment and gives the party of origin behind it (as well as their view of whether it is on track to be delivered – something I have ignored for this post). I have taken this spreadsheet as Gospel, so any inaccuracies in it are down to the Guardian not me.

This spreadsheet gives the following results: of the 399 policies in the agreement, 174 are solely from the Conservatives, 91 are solely from the Lib Dems, 80 were policies of both parties, and 54 are of unknown origin.”

Read the full post – with diagrams!- on Duncan’s blog, Split Horizons, here.

Traditionally the transport sections of party manifestos contain commitments to various expensive, long-term public expenditure projects. In the current financial climate it is no surprise that the coalition agreement’s transport section is rather heavy on matters of regulation and bureaucracy and rather light on directly spending money to improve transport.

So we have a promise to “make Network Rail more accountable to its customers”, a commitment to “fair pricing for rail travel”, a move towards “longer rail-franchises in order to give operators the incentive to invest”, a reform of the way “decisions are made on which transport projects to prioritise, so that the benefits of low carbon proposals (including light rail schemes) are fully recognised” and a promise that “we will turn the rail regulator into a powerful passenger champion”.

When it comes to specific projects, the list is rather short even if it starts with a bang: “we will establish a high speed rail network”, “we will support Crossrail and further electrification”,  ”we will mandate a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles”, “we will support sustainable transport initiatives” and “we will work towards the introduction of a new system of HGV road user charging”.

To round it off there are two commitments covering traditional moans from motoring columnists: “we will stop central government funding for new fixed speed cameras and switch to more effective ways of making our roads safer” and “we will tackle rogue private sector wheel clampers”.

The university and further education section has one of the agreement’s ticking political time bombs: student tuition fees. Party conference and the Federal Policy Committee have made very clear their strong support for scrapping them. The agreement only goes as far as to say “We will await Lord Browne’s final report into higher education funding, and will judge its proposals … If the response of the Government to Lord Browne’s report is one that the Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote”.

It’s an issue that has already made Ming Campbell talk about rebelling in Parliamentary votes. The situation, however, is still very much up for grabs, with not only Lord Browne’s recommendations yet to appear (and no-one knows what they will be as yet) but also plenty of scope for the Government to then decide which recommendations to accept and in what form. It is far from a done deal that the outcome will be an unpalatable recommendation, Lib Dems abstaining and the measure going through.

Elsewhere in the section we get support for “the creation of apprenticeships, internships, work pairings, and college and workplace training places”, a commitment to “set colleges free from direct state control and abolish many of the further education quangoes”, a promise to “review the support for part-time students in terms of loans and fees”, a pledge to publish more information about student courses – including satisfaction scores and subsequent graduate earnings data, and also movement on the controversial research funding arrangements: “we will ensure that public funding mechanisms for university research safeguard its academic integrity”.

Although when talking about other parts of the agreement I’ve sometimes being quite critical about the parking of issues with commissions or reviews, the commission on long-term care is a good move. It has a clear remit, has to report within a year and tackles an area which requires policies that have a chance of long term cross-party agreement given the nature of the subject. The failure of cross-party talks prior to the election means the chances of achieving this are far from high, even if coalition should at least force an agreement between two parties. So fingers crossed…

The rest of this short section continues one of the agreement’s main themes, namely giving individuals more discretion over public services and more scope to pick their own route in life. For social care that means “we will extend the roll-out of personal budgets to give people and their carers more control and purchasing power”, “we will use direct payments to carers and better community-based provision to improve access to respite care” and “we will reform Access to Work, so disabled people can apply for jobs with funding already secured for any adaptations and equipment they will need”. Finally, there is also a promise to “break down barriers between health and social care funding to incentivise preventative action”.

The taxation section contains one of the major Liberal Democrat policy objectives yet also one of the Conservative proposals that most makes many Lib Dems feel uneasy. On the positive side is the promise to “increase the personal allowance to £10,000, making real terms steps each year towards meeting this as a longer-term policy objective”. Then there is also “we will also ensure that provision is made for Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain on budget resolutions to introduce transferable tax allowances for married couples”.

Elsewhere there is a significant presence of other Liberal Democrat proposals, including switching the taxation of flights from per-passenger to per-plane (so encouraging fuller plans and less pollution), a promise to “seek ways of taxing non-business capital gains at rates similar or close to those applied to income”, developing the Lib Dem approach to tackling tax avoidance, increasing the proportion of taxes coming from green taxes and reviewing the taxation of non-doms (the last a tacit admission perhaps that neither the Conservative nor Lib Dem proposals on this were quite right).

For the Conservatives this is balanced out by their priority of opposing Labour’s ‘jobs tax’: “the increase in employer National Insurance thresholds proposed by the Conservatives will go ahead in order to stop the planned jobs tax”. However, rather than increasing employee NI thresholds, the funds the Conservatives earmarked for that policy will instead go towards funding the increase in income tax allowances.

At the time David Cameron started talking about the Big Society, the concept struck me as a mix of traditional community politics and vagueness. Looking at the specifics in this section, there is still a fair amount of vagueness, but the specifics are ones that often touch on themes which our party (or more precisely the Liberal Party) has talked about in the past and rather neglected in more recent years. In other words, it’s a case of David Cameron stealing our old clothes and now, via coalition, forcing them back on us.

Take the commitment to “give public sector workers a new right to form employee-owned co-operatives and bid to take over the services they deliver” or the promise to “support the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises”. Either could have come straight out of a Liberal Party policy pamphlet from the 1970s – and I mean that as a compliment.

Likewise the promise to “train a new generation of community organisers and support the creation of neighbourhood groups” is a policy that leads on from what many good Liberal Democrat councillors around the country do – trying to create and foster community groups, whether it is a Neighbourhood Watch or a football league for local children.

Even the pledge to “introduce National Citizen Service … a programme for 16 year olds to give them a chance to develop skills” is very similar to what Liberal Democrat MPs such as Mark Oaten and Lynne Featherstone have talked about previously.

Rather as with data/technology policies these policies may be overwhelmingly from the Conservative Party manifesto yet from a Liberal Democrat perspective they make the coalition’s policies better than they would be if we’d all simply been relying on recent Lib Dem policies. There are many cases where having to concede and have Conservative rather than Liberal Democrat policies makes for less welcome government; these two cases remind us that the traffic isn’t all one way – and of the need to keep our own policy making imaginative and effective.

The public health section is very brief and rather anomalous as a section on its own, though given the length of the NHS section splitting this area off makes some sense. There is little of surprise in what there is of this section – public health is important (gosh), it should be improved (shock) and the government will be ambitious (crikey). Innovation is also good (well I never).

The details do however give a flavour of the general policy approach taken by the coalition across a wide range of areas. There is the commitment to give local communities greater power (in this case over public health budgets). There is a desire to use (financial) incentives to improve public services (in this case incentivising GPs to tackle public health problems). There is a niche commitment that reflects a welcome understanding of an often ignored topic (in this case support for talking therapies). And there is a thorny issue which it is promised will be investigated (in this case improving access to healthcare from people from the most disadvantaged areas).

Moving on to schools, the big topic – and the one many Liberal Democrats are uncomfortable with – is the proposal for ‘free schools’. Balanced against that is the clear commitment to the pupil premium policy long trumpeted by Nick Clegg.

There is an emphasis on improving the teacher profession and matching pay more to performance. As ever, regulation will be cut, vocational training will see its quality raised, efforts will be made to attract more teachers, there will be more performance information about educational provides (including past exam papers), more flexibility in the exam system and a reform of league tables “so that schools are able to focus on, and demonstrate, the progress of children of all abilities”.

In a rather unnoticed parallel to the proposal to give anonymity to rape suspects, here there is promise to “give anonymity to teachers accused by pupils and take other measures to protect against false accusations”. In both areas the argument is that false accusations can cause such harm, even if followed by an exoneration, that special measures should be taken. However, whilst this has generated much debate in the case of rape, the schooling provision has pretty much passed without comment. Of course, there’s no magic reason to assume that if a policy suits in one circumstance it suits in the other too, but it’s striking that arguments which could apply in both have largely been left unsaid in the educational case – e.g. “But by giving anonymity you’re slurring the accusers by assuming they’re often lying”.

Action is also promised to help schools tackle homophobic bullying (an issue the Liberal Democrats, and in particular Sarah Teather, have been very vocal on) and to “prevent the unnecessary closure of special schools, and remove the bias towards inclusion”.

The political reform section of the coalition document is the second longest in the whole agreement, beaten for length only by the NHS section. By now the headlines from this section are very familiar:

• Fixed-term Parliaments
• A referendum on the alternative vote
• The ability for voters to force an MP to face a special by-election if they have been found guilty of serious wrongdoing (“recall”)
• A “wholly or mainly” elected House of Lords, using proportional representation
• Any petition that gets 100,000 signatures will get a formal debate in Parliament
• Implement the Calman Commission for Scotland (an important factor in winning the support many Scottish Liberal Democrats for the coalition)
• A referendum on further Welsh devolution

This list may be familiar, even wearily familiar, to those who have read policy papers, motions, speeches or pamphlets over the years calling for major political reform. But this isn’t just a wish-list; it’s a list of what the government is getting on and doing.

Some of the details in this section have attracted controversy (most notably the 55% threshold for fixed-term Parliaments and the plans to create more peers ahead of reform of the Lords) though there are also many other welcome details, including:

• Implementing the Wright Committee plans for reform of the business of Parliament – already well under way, and crucially so because they involve the government ceding powers to MPs. The longer any government is in power, the less likely that is to happen.
• Stopping MPs claiming Parliamentary privilege to avoid prosecution for wrongdoing. (This is the defence some Labour MPs accused of expense abuses are trying to use.)
• A new “public reading stage” for legislation, giving the public much more opportunity to comment on the detail of proposed legislation.
• Extra support for people with disabilities who wish to become MPs, councillors or other elected officials.

Residents are also due to get the power to call a referendum on any local issue and to veto “excessive” council tax increases, whilst firms will be able to block any proposals to implement supplementary business rates. In this, the proposals mirror a wider pattern through the document of being willing to devolve power but often preferring to the give that power to people or bodies other than local councils and to mix reduce rules for local government with also putting in some new restrictions (and with the freezing of council tax in England yet also reducing ring fencing of funding).

Also in this section is a promise to fund 200 all-postal primaries during the Parliament, “targeted at seats which have not changed hands for many years. These funds will be allocated to all political parties with seats in Parliament that they take up [ie not Sinn Fein], in proportion to their share of the total vote in the last genera election”. I’m rather ambivalent about primaries, however this proposal can’t be faulted for its ambition in giving the idea a very thorough try-out and the focus on opening up politics in traditionally safe seats is a sensible one.

There are also some curious details, such as the speeding up the move to individual voter registration. That’s a welcome move, but it’s surprising that it should have rated so highly as to have made it in to the coalition document. Plus we have the near-obligatory promises to cut perks and bureaucracy, improve the civil service, run departments better, keep the peace in Northern Ireland and to make MP pensions less generous.

Finally, the ‘West Lothian’ question (should, for example, Scottish MPs in Westminster get to vote on laws that only apply to England?) gets a commission. As this is a question that has been around since Scottish devolution was put to a referendum in the 1970s, setting up a commission does have the feel of “Bugger, we don’t know what to do on this” about it.

That aside, the proposals in this section do get to grips with numerous substantive issues and should make our government and democracy much healthier by the time of the next general election.

The story of this section in a nutshell is “short term good news, long term uncertainty”. In the short term pensions will get a good deal: “We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011, with a ‘triple guarantee’ that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices of 2.5%”. This is a more generous deal, and sooner, than Labour proposed in their manifesto.

There is also a promise to “implement the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman’s recommendations to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policy holders”, greater flexibility over how people can use their pension funds, pledges to protect the winter fuel allowance, free TV licenses, free bus travel, free eye tests and prescriptions and a simplification of the rules to encourage more occupational pensions.

That’s the good news. The doubts come from a promised review of the date at which the state pension starts and a commission to review the long-term affordability of public sector pensions.

The national security section is brief, outlining the creation of a National Security Council, the commencement of a defence review and a promise to “deny public funds to any group that has recently espoused or incited violence or hatred. We will proscribe such organisations”. The pledge on deportation is carefully balanced: “Britain should be able to deport foreign nationals who threaten our security to countries where there are verifiable guarantees that they will not be tortured. We will seek to extend these guarantees to more countries”. Civil liberties will be strengthened via a review of control orders, with a look at how to allow intercept evidence in court (and so reduce the need for such extreme measures).

By contrast, the health section is one of the longest, packed full of details. One of the legacies of David Cameron’s attempts to reposition his party and past tax and spend debates with Labour is that the Conservatives were pledged to real terms increases in health spending each year. This was in fact a more generous pledge than the Liberal Democrat one – and it’s this more generous pledge which has made it into the coalition agreement.

Beyond that there is a range of commitments to reduce top-down orders and control, cut administration and quangos and give front line staff, patients and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) a stronger role in the health system. Potentially running slightly counter to that is the commitment taken from Conservative plans to “establish an independent NHS board to allocate resources and provide commissioning guidelines”. That should take power away from the Secretary of State for Health but risks becoming another central source of orders and targets.

Access to a high quality GP service, dentistry, cancer, children’s hospices and dementia are the specific health areas picked out for commitments alongside a more general commitment to helping elderly people live at home for longer. Although not in the document, my understanding is that the Liberal Democrats are also pushing hard for mental health to feature in the list of areas to get extra resourcing too. Nick Clegg has often spoken out on this topic, decrying mental health’s role as a Cinderella service despite the widespread nature of mental health problems.

Finally, there’s a hint of the possibility of a radically different future for the NHS developing over time with the promise to “give every patient the power to choose any healthcare provider that meets NHS standards, within NHS prices. This includes independent, voluntary and community sector providers”. In other words, it’s a vision of the NHS which is not defined by who provides the service but by what the public can demand.

The jobs and welfare section of the coalition agreement is one of the least important – not because the policy area doesn’t matter (it certainly does) but because it says very little beyond, “we want to make the welfare system better”. Quite what better means and whether it can really be done is all down to how Iain Duncan Smith in particular does his job, the choices he makes and the degree to which pensions minister Steve Webb influences matters. The benefits area is one where there is little disagreement on principle but there is plenty of disagreement over the right approach to meeting those principles and the practical details to follow.

Thus, few will disagree with the promise that “we will investigate how to simplify the benefit system in order to improve incentives to work”. However, when previous governments have made similar moves in the past they have often been controversial – and often been opposed by the party. Probably starkest in its Conservative overtones is the commitment that “we will ensure that receipt of benefits for those able to work is conditional on their willingness to work”. But all will really depend on how Iain Duncan Smith’s reviews play out – and whether he wins the battle with the Treasury for up front investment in order to make long-term saving in welfare rather than seeing the review as cover for an immediate round of cost cutting.

If Iain Duncan Smith is one of the leading Conservatives viewed most warily by many Liberal Democrats, Ken Clarke is one whose views are often seen as most amenable (at least for those who can’t or don’t remember his controversial public sector reforms before he became Chancellor). Matching that, the contents of the short justice section are largely a natural fit with Liberal Democrat proposals. Points here include “historical convictions for consensual gay sex with over-16s will be treated as spent”, “we will carry out a fundamental review of Legal Aid”, “we will explore alternative forms of secure, treatment-based accommodations for mentally ill and drugs offenders” and “we will consider how to use proceeds from the Victim Surcharge to deliver up to 15 new rape crisis centres, and give existing rape crisis centres stable, long-term funding”.

With Ken Clarke in post the promise of a “full review of sentencing policy to ensure that it is effective in deterring crime, protecting the public, punishing offenders and cutting reoffending” sounds more likely to be amenable than if those were the marching orders for, say, Michael Howard.

The most controversy in this section has come from the pledge to “extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants”, a policy that was passed by Liberal Democrat conference a couple of years ago but also a policy that had gone unnoticed by large parts of the party.