Tag Archives: shirley williams

Shirley Williams’ campaign against NHS reforms wins new concessions from Lansley

By The Voice | Published 29th January 2012 - 12:30 pm

Here’s how The Guardian reports today’s news that the Coalition will offer further concessions to the NHS reform bill in an attempt to head off a revolt in the House of Lords led by Lib Dem peer Baroness Williams:

… ministers will table a series of amendments to the health and social care bill that will oblige Andrew Lansley to maintain the NHS as a national public service and, his critics say, limit his ambitions to expand the role of the private sector. The changes will also spell out the kind of services that must be offered by GPs and

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Posted in News | Also tagged andrew lansley, health, NHS | 10 Comments

Ashdown, Glover and Williams on the party’s history

By Mark Pack | Published 25th January 2012 - 10:25 am

The latest edition of the Journal of Liberal History caries this account from me of the conference meeting which launched the new history of the party, Peace, Reform and Liberation. You can watch the meeting in full here.

It would be a brave person who walked up to Paddy Ashdown or Shirley Williams and told them to their face that they are history, or even old, but they are two of the most charismatic, interesting and thoughtful members of the living history class – people who have been around in politics long enough to be able to talk at first …

Posted in News | Also tagged duncan brack, history, julian glover, paddy ashdown | 2 Comments

Lib Dem Peers rebel as Government defeated on Welfare Reform

By Caron Lindsay | Published 11th January 2012 - 8:09 pm

The Government has suffered a series of defeats in the House of Lords tonight on various aspects of the Welfare Reform Bill.

The House of Lords was discussing amendments relating to the Employment and Support Allowance.

The Guardian reports that 3 Liberal Democrats, Jenny Tonge, Matthew Taylor and Roger Roberts voted for an amendment which protected young people’s right to claim Employment and Support Allowance.

The Government was also defeated on their one year time limit for claiming Contributory ESA. This was increased to two years by the amendment. The Liberal Democrat rebels were Dee Doocey and Jenny Tonge.

The third defeat was …

Posted in News | Also tagged dee doocey, eric avebury, house of lords, jenny tonge, matthew taylor, roger roberts, welfare reform bill | 44 Comments

VIDEO: Paddy Ashdown, Shirley Williams and Julian Glover on the Liberal Democrats, recession and The Guardian

By Mark Pack | Published 23rd December 2011 - 10:55 am

You can now watch again in full one of the best fringe meetings from the party conference, which saw Paddy Ashdown, Shirley Williams and the then Guardian editorial writer Julian Glover launch a new history of the party and its predecessors, Peace, Reform and Liberation.*

Julian Glover gave a very funny speech about his newspaper’s love/hate relationship with the party – “So there you have it, 150 years from The Guardian and the Manchester Guardian calling on the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats to be brave, radical; praising the party’s policies and then writing it off as irrelevant”.

Shirley Williams …

Posted in News | Also tagged featured, history, julian glover, liberal democrat history group, paddy ashdown, the guardian | Leave a comment

LibLink | In praise of… Shirley Williams

By NewsHound | Published 20th November 2011 - 10:08 am

One of this week’s Guardian leader columns, ‘In praise of…’, was deservedly dedicated to Shirley Williams, a Lib Dem peer, founding member of the SDP, and former Labour education secretary. Here’s a snippet:

Forever running late, but with a warmth that ensures she’s forgiven, Williams has great faith in reasonable compromise. She has pursued a more softly-softly approach towards the dreadful health bill than we have advocated. But survivors of the SDP’s internecine wars recall a wily chair perfectly capable of calling a crunch vote when an awkward customer had gone to the loo, and it is too early to judge

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged the guardian | 6 Comments

In other news…

By Mark Pack | Published 19th October 2011 - 11:31 pm

On the NHS:

Liberal Democrats may win a key concession on the controversial Health and Social Bill before the legislation is passed, PoliticsHome has learned.

Sources have indicated that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, including key rebel Baroness Williams, have struck a deal which would allow Lib Dem peers currently opposed to the legislation to secure changes to the role of the Health Secretary. They are currently concerned that the Bill will mean the Secretary of State is not responsible for ensuring that patients across the country receive the same services and standards of care.

PoliticsHome understands that the responsibility of the Health

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Posted in News | Also tagged katia zatuliveter, liverpool city council, mike hancock, NHS, paula keaveney | 7 Comments

Baroness Liz Barker writes… The Health and Social Care Bill in the Lords

By Baroness Liz Barker | Published 17th October 2011 - 2:53 pm

I have spent my entire working life in the field of health and social care. For many years I worked for Age Concern and for all my time in the Lords I have been a member of the Health and Social Care team. I am, and always will be, a passionate supporter of an NHS which is free at the point of need and open to all regardless of their ability to pay.

Although the Health and Social Care Bill only came to the Lords this week I have been working on it for several months along with Liberal Democrat colleagues, including …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged derek wanless, evan harris, health and social care bill, john pugh, NHS, nick clegg, norman lamb | 16 Comments

Opinion: If the cap doesn’t fit, don’t wear it

By Chris Nicholson | Published 26th September 2011 - 2:25 pm

The NHS Emergency Motion which was not debated at Conference in Birmingham had a clause that stated the cap on Private Patient Income (PPI) by NHS Foundation trusts should be retained. Shirley Williams has since stated that this is one of four main aspects of the bill which she will be trying to change in the House of Lords.

But Lib Dem peers would be wrong to press for retention of the cap. Even for those who want to preserve a strongly public sector provided NHS the retention of the Private Patient Income (PPI) cap makes no sense.

The cap limits the …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged NHS | 4 Comments

Adrian Sanders is still right

By Mark Pack | Published 14th September 2011 - 12:22 pm

With the reduction in number of MPs back in the news, so too is the question of how many ministers there are. As I wrote in October last year:

I agree with Adrian Sanders and 22 Conservative MPs
Yesterday in Parliament Adrian Sanders and 22 Conservative MPs voted to reduce the maximum number of ministers allowed in the Commons in line with the forthcoming reduction in the number of MPs

Without a cut in the number of MPs on the government payrolls, reducing the number of MPs will increase the government’s power over Parliament when the whole thrust of other reforms is, rightly, that …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged adrian sanders, david heath | 11 Comments

LibLink: Shirley Williams – Why this flawed bill threatens the very future of the NHS

By NewsHound | Published 4th September 2011 - 6:32 pm

Writing in today’s Observer, Liberal Democrat peer Shirley Williams says:

As the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill has ground on, the doubts and questions that accompany it have become ever more difficult to address. This is a bill that has been subjected to a listening exercise, extensive consultation and a report by Steve Field, chairman of the Future Forum, redrafting by Parliament, more than 100 hours of debate, and dedicated efforts by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and the Liberal Democrat minister of state for social care, Paul Burstow, to amend it to meet the worries Lib

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged andrew lansley, NHS | 10 Comments

Shirley Williams revisits her childhood haunts

By Helen Duffett | Published 22nd August 2011 - 8:48 am

BBC Radio 4′s latest series of “The House I Grew up In” (which revisits the childhood neighbourhoods of influential Britons) includes an episode featuring Liberal Democrat Peer, Shirley Williams.

Shirley Williams, now Baroness Williams, returns to her childhood homes in London’s Chelsea and the New Forest. Her mother was the writer, Vera Brittain, whose most famous novel – Testament of Youth – was a best-seller when Shirley was a child in the 1930s. Her father, George Catlin, was an academic and and an instinctive feminist whose own mother had been an early suffragette, ostracised by Victorian society. He was a

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged bbc radio 4, george catlin, vera brittain | 1 Comment

LDVideo: Vince and Shirley’s war on Murdoch, while Nick savages PCC as “busted flush”

By Stephen Tall | Published 9th July 2011 - 5:20 pm

There’s no doubt about the big story this week: Rupert Murdoch being forced to close the biggest-selling British newspaper in a brazen bid to ride out the illegal hacking story that threatens his media empire.

Vince Cable’s prophetic powers first came to prominence during the economic storm that came close to collapsing the banking system. Last December, he accidentally went on the record to make clear his wish to clip Rupert Murdoch’s wings. Ironically, it was the Telegraph’s widely condemned subterfuge which stopped Vince in his tracks, and prevented his ability to hold to account the company where illegal hacking was …

Posted in YouTube | Also tagged media, nick clegg, rebekah brooks, rupert murdoch, vince cable | 15 Comments

LibLink | Shirley Williams: After all the arguments, where next for the NHS?

By Helen Duffett | Published 16th June 2011 - 11:22 am

Shirley Williams writes in the Times [£] today of her strong support for Future Forum’s recommendations for NHS reform, and suggests that listening exercises may be the way forward for future policy-setting:

Like many others, I was sceptical about the listening exercise. It seemed to me a way for the Government to win time so that it could rethink its proposals for NHS reform in the light of great scepticism from medical organisations, distinguished think-tanks, health service managers and staff, and, not least, doctors.

My concerns were not justified. The Future Forum, chaired by Professor Steve Field, himself for many

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged future forum, nhs reform, nick clegg, steve field | 2 Comments

LibLink | Shirley Williams: Lib Dems should take credit for thwarting Lansley

By Helen Duffett | Published 13th June 2011 - 10:19 am

Shirley Williams, writing today in the Independent, says that the Liberal Democrats can be proud of their influence on NHS reforms:

Liberal Democrats, from our party’s grassroots to its leadership, can be proud of the influence we have exerted to change the Government’s NHS plans. It is clear now that the proposals that will be taken forward are dramatically different to those originally proposed.

The implications of Andrew Lansley’s massive health proposals, setting England’s health system on the path to a market in health care rather than a public service, were very slow to sink in. The complex, extensive and sometimes almost

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Posted in News | Also tagged andrew lansley, nhs reform | 13 Comments

Tamed and reshaped – Clegg on the NHS White Paper

By Mark Pack | Published 12th June 2011 - 10:11 am

Speaking last night at an excellent anniversary dinner to mark 25 years (yes, 25 years) of Liberal Democrat control on Sutton Council, Nick Clegg said the party has been successful in taming and reshaping the NHS reform plans.

The run of political and electoral success achieved by Liberal Democrats in Sutton is, as Clegg pointed out, a standing answer to anyone who doubts that you can achieve and then hold political power whilst continuing campaigning and staying true to your liberal roots. One of the key people in that success was Ruth Shaw, who Nick Clegg personally presented with the 2010 …

Posted in News | Also tagged graham tope, NHS, nick clegg, ruth shaw, sutton council, sutton liberal democrats | 8 Comments

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