He acknowledges the top-line 8% decline in applications and the mass protest that followed the original decision, but points out that applications from students in deprived areas have barely declined at all:

…a more objective analysis of the data shows a clearer picture. Although applications were down by a significant number, the total number of 18-year-olds in England this year is significantly down as well. If you adjust the figures to take account of changes in demographic, the application rate in England – which is where the changes in higher education policy have the greatest effect – has declined by only 1%. Just as important, the decline is proportionately higher in areas where more people go to university and which tend to be more affluent (where the figure is 2.5%) compared with more deprived areas, which very encouragingly have hardly seen any decline at all (0.2%). Both of these figures compare with a 3.5% population-adjusted decline in applications across England when the Labour government introduced top-up fees for the 2006 academic year.

Although Simon did not support the rise in tuition fees in 2010 – “My fear was that although nobody going to university for the first time would pay up-front fees, this message would be lost among the political fallout and the headlines of £9,000 fees. I was worried particularly about young people from very mixed and traditionally working-class inner city communities such as those I represent in Bermondsey and Southwark,” – he resolved that young people should make properly-informed decisions about starting higher education:

After being appointed advocate for access to education in 2011, I travelled the country and heard first-hand that when young people were presented with facts not fiction about the costs of higher education, they were much more willing to apply.

Read the full piece at Comment is Free.

The government is expected to make a series of concessions in the coming days on it controversial £26,000 household benefits cap to win over wavering Liberal Democrat MPs. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, is expected to agree that a discretionary fund should be established to ease the burden on families who could be made homeless at a sensitive time in their children’s education. …

There are growing expectations that Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader who has voiced concerns about the cap, will be won over by a new “discretionary fund”. Hughes has expressed fears that the cap, which includes housing benefit, could force thousands of families out of their homes in London and the south-east.

The discretionary fund would allow councils to exempt some families from the cap for a limited period of time if, for example, a child was due to sit examinations. The fund, which would only apply to existing recipients, would be modelled on the system that was set up after Hughes voiced fears last year about the impact of the housing benefit cap.

The cap, which will mean that no working household will be allowed to receive benefits of more than £26,000, is due to come into force in April 2013. This means that councils will have around a year to introduce the changes … The Lib Dems have argued that showing discretion for a limited period of time could avoid families moving into expensive bed and breakfast accommodation if they are forced out of their rented home but need to remain in the same area for their child’s schooling. The government is also looking at the introduction of a grace period for people who suddenly lose their jobs and are immediately hit by the cap.

Meanwhile, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne — who supports the cap in principle — has called for the Coalition to agree a local rate for the cap in recognition higher living costs, especially in London. It’s a curiously inconsistent position for Labour to adopt as Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson highlights here in a post titled ‘Have Labour just made a big mistake on the benefits cap?’:

The coalition has been pushing the idea of regional pay bargaining for a while now which has thus far been responded to by protest from Labour MPs. How can they now credibly fight that when they have made pretty much the exact same argument the government make in favour of it in the context of a benefits cap?

As I drove into the village of Haverthwaite on Saturday morning to do some residents’ surveying, I was preparing to turn the radio off and then Ed Balls popped up. I listened with amazement. In his interview he admitted not only that the programme of cuts being carried out by the Coalition government were right, but that Labour would not over turn them if they were in Government. Unfortunately however he didn’t go as far as to admit that the cause behind all the cuts – the dire economic situation – was in fact largely his fault.

You’ll have heard Simon Hughes and me over the weekend rightly calling on the two Eds to apologise. We want them to apologise to the British public for deceiving them for 18 months before finally admitting that what the Liberal Democrats have been doing in Government is broadly the right approach. However, there is one apology we didn’t call for publicly, but which they still should make – that’s an apology to you!

Last May across the country, from Lancaster to Sheffield and Manchester to Newcastle, many of you lost your council seats to undeserving Labour candidates who were fighting their elections on a false platform with dishonest messages. They stood on a platform that the Eds now admit was wrong. Shame on them – but I’m proud of you.

In addition, Nick Clegg deserves an apology. Nick has been berated and abused by the Labour leadership over the last 18 months for having the guts to stand up and work as part of the Coalition in the best interest of the country. Now Labour have admitted that their attacks were inaccurate – but there’s no hint of apology. They have gone from being in the wrong place, to all over the place.

I don’t expect the apology to come, and we definitely didn’t need Ed and Ed’s endorsement to motivate us for the next set of elections, but their cack-handed u-turn is certainly an encouragement.

This May I expect us to beat Labour in areas we couldn’t last year as their dishonesty has now been exposed (voluntarily, which is nice of them!). Of course we now have the inevitable Labour infighting as the Unions start going potty, accusing Ed and Ed of betrayal and breaking pledges (sound familiar?).

That leaves the Liberal Democrats as the only political party with the backbone to tackle the country’s problems, but with the heart to do everything to ensure that fairness, compassion and justice are written through everything we do.

As this article from The Times recognises, the Liberal Democrats are a progressive force in Government. We are the Party delivering tax cuts for working people, we are the party investing in the poorest school pupils, we are the party delivering the largest ever state pension rise and importantly, we are the party prepared to take the tough decisions needed to get this country back on track.

Anyhow, after Mr Balls had stopped not-quite-apologising on the radio last Saturday, I turned the car radio off, got out and spent 3 hours knocking on doors. The response I got, by the way, was fantastic. It struck me that just as Labour was making its U turn, the Lib Dems may have just turned the corner…

So don’t hold your breath waiting for an apology from Labour – but rest assured you are most definitely owed one!

* Tim Farron is President of the Liberal Democrats.

But a week or so later one-quarter of Lib Dem MPs rebelled, and (almost) no one noticed. In nine separate votes on 1 and 2 November, a total of 14 Lib Dem MPs voted against various aspects of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. The largest single rebellion saw 10 Lib Dem MPs vote to extend legal aid in complex cases. Exclude those in government, and as a proportion of the party’s backbench MPs, 14 rebels constitute a whopping 40%.

There have now been 86 Liberal Democrat rebellions so far this Parliament. In one session we’ve had more than twice as many Liberal Democrat rebellions as in the whole of the last Parliament. That’s a rebellion rate of 22%. Government is proving noticeably harder to handle than opposition – just as the Conservatives have also discovered.

Perhaps most worrying of all, however, for the party whips is the way the habit of rebellion has now spread. Almost everyone on the Liberal Democrat backbench has either abstained or voted against their party line (and most have done both).

The Legal Aid rebellions saw both Tom Brake and Simon Hughes finally break their ducks (Hughes had already abstained on tuition fees in December 2010). Of those who have been on the backbenches the entire parliament, the only Lib Dem who has not cast a single rebellious vote against the whip is Lorely Burt, although even she abstained on tuition fees last December.

Following the most recent rebellions, there is in fact now only one Liberal Democrat backbench MP whose voting has remained wholly loyal to the Coalition. His name is David Laws.

* Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart are at the Centre for British Politics at the University of Nottingham. They run www.revolts.co.uk, which analyses the voting behaviour of British MPs.

Political donations to the Liberal Democrats from a nightclub chain totalling almost £80,000 went undeclared as its councillors discussed a tower block development opposed by the firm, BBC London has learned.

The Ministry of Sound, in Elephant and Castle, south London, was fighting to prevent developer Oakmayne building a residential tower block nearby. The club feared noise complaints from the completed tower block would eventually lead to its closure.

But none of the three Liberal Democrat politicians who rejected the application declared that the party locally had been in receipt of donations from the nightclub – £21,000 at local level and £57,300 at national level. Technically, planning councillors do not have to declare donations to their party – even though they would have to declare attending a party at the club – because councillors are deemed not to benefit personally.

In light of the BBC investigation, lawyers for Oakmayne are writing to Southwark Council asking for the decision-making process to be re-run. A further £1,000 was donated to Simon Hughes, the local Liberal Democrat MP. Mr Hughes has also publically sided with the nightclub in the dispute, arguing that residential development in the area is inappropriate.

Three comments on this:

1) The BBC’s report is partial. Only right at the foot of the (long) piece do they allow a quote from Anood Al-Samerai, Leader of Southwark Lib Dems, which offers some much-needed context:

“We do declare who gives us money. But I agree, I was a bit concerned because they were big donations. I contacted the borough solicitor in advance of the meeting. He came to me with advice that we did not have to declare it. … It would certainly be helpful if the advice [from central government on declaring donations] was clearer. I’m in favour of anything that makes politics more transparent.”

That the councillors sought proper advice before the meeting is a fact the BBC fail to mention, presumably deliberately, and places their actions in a different light. Many will feel they should still have declared the donations in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. However, the BBC’s report implies they sought to cover the donations up, which is a very different thing.

2) Ask yourself ‘Whose interests are being served here?’ A property developer loses a planning application for residential development; suddenly there is extensive media coverage implying political impropriety. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to see who has been feeding the media the story that best plays to the ‘all politicians are crooks’ news agenda. Again, many will think it’s Southwark Lib Dems’ fault for placing themselves in this position — but the journalists might have been better advised to be a little more sceptical of the property developer’s motivations before choosing their side.

3) This is a reminder of the need to avoid appearances of conflicts of interest, even if there are none in reality. I am sure Simon Hughes and the councillors involved have acted totally properly throughout; but I’m a Lib Dem so it’s not my opinion which matters. Many of those who do read this story will think ‘there’s no smoke without fire’: the laziest cliche in the book, maybe, but if even the BBC buys it that should be enough to make us stop, think, and ask ourselves the honest question: how would this look in the eyes of a cynical journalist trying to sell a story?

There is no doubt about it. Ed Balls was signalling a four at Prime Ministers’ Questions. His hand was a bit lower than normal, but it would pass to signal a boundary at Morley Cricket Club.

For a change, I’m going to stand this review on its head this week and concentrate on questions from backbenchers, starting with Liberal Democrats.

Question of the week came from Tim Farron:

The world population passed 7 billion this week. That is an awful lot of mouths to feed. In addition, the UN predicts that over the next 40 years, world demand for food will increase by 70%. That ought to be good news for farmers, but sadly, since 1990, Britain’s capacity to feed itself has fallen by a fifth. Does the Prime Minister agree that that is a disastrous situation, and will he urgently introduce a credible strategy to grow Britain’s farming industry to feed us all in future?

David Cameron answered with this usual “My honourable friend makes an important point.”

Mike Crockart was, by a narrow squeak, runner-up to “Question of the week” with this one:

The Prime Minister will be aware of Citigroup’s report, issued yesterday, on green energy investment in Scotland. Does he agree that this report very ably demonstrates that the benefits of green energy in the UK are unlocked only by combining Scotland’s renewable potential with the large-scale investment made possible by the UK; and does he agree that a drawn-out independence referendum is a serious distraction from that?

And, completing the triumvirate of Liberal Democrat wise men, was Simon Hughes on the subject of directors’ pay:

Following the Prime Minister’s answers a moment ago, and given the huge anger about the pay for the top 100 directors, can he give me a personal assurance that he is committed to the transfer of power over pay from the boardroom to the shareholders of our companies?

(By the way, I should, in passing, mention that Bob Russell, looking quite colourfully dressed, was dying to ask a question – as was Julian Huppert. Ho hum. In the Commons, they also serve who just stand up and down every two minutes.)

Green MP Caroline Lucas would have also caused a cheer from outside St Paul’s with her question about the proposed “Robin Hood tax”:

Will the Prime Minister listen to both the campaigners outside Parliament today and the 80,000 people who have written to him in recent weeks, and commit to becoming a leading advocate for the introduction of a Robin Hood tax at the G20 summit later this week? Will he ensure that the revenue is earmarked to tackle sustainable development and the growing climate crisis?

Finally, we go from long-term strategic thinking to an equally valid short-term “get our arse out of the fire” question from Alistair Darling:

When the Prime Minister goes to the G20 meeting over the next couple of days, will he try to persuade his colleagues of the urgency of coming up with some detail on the eurozone settlement reached last week? It is not at all clear how on earth Greece will get out of its difficulties, even if the referendum passes. European banks will need shoring up well before next summer, and as for the new rescue fund, which may be needed sooner than we think, it does not actually exist. Will he accept that the G20 now needs to show the same urgency and sense of purpose that it showed two years ago when it met in London? Otherwise, far from getting ahead of events, Governments will be condemned to being dragged along in their wake.

Paul Walter blogs at Liberal Burblings

At a time when the Tory right is pressing David Cameron ever harder to follow its agenda and trample on the Lib Dems, Hughes is acting as his party’s, and the coalition’s, left-wing brake. “I think the useful role I can play is to be a guardian of the policy and traditions of the left of the party,” he says…

Hughes has a strong message for such Tories as they demand a more eurosceptic agenda and the end of the 50p rate of tax for those earning more than £150,000. He describes them as “extreme” and deluded by a belief that the Conservatives are the natural party of government. Asked what his message is to the right, he says: “There is absolutely no majority in government for your views. If there is a coalition government in the national interest then extreme remedies and answers are not appropriate. You have to be a uniting government.”

The Conservatives, he says, also have to remember the electoral arithmetic that delivered this coalition. “There is no government without both of us. We may only have 8% of the seats in parliament but we did get a quarter of the votes – two thirds of what they got – and they have to face up to realpolitik.” He adds: “The Tory party is absolutely not the dominant force in British politics that it used to be.”

Read the full interview here.

The Simon Hughes Memorial Prize for Multiple Simultaneous Fringe Booking award this year was tightly contested. After Simon Hughes winning in 2009 and then in 2010 the honours being split fourways between Burstow, Cable, Featherstone and Teather, 2011 saw a tight contest again.

There were numerous MPs who managed one, or more, double bookings. Special mention for daring double booking must go to Huppert and Lamb both of whom have a double booking when in one of the slots they are down as the only speaker. Presumably they are hoping for very long-winded questions that are so unclear that they can safely nip out, give a talk somewhere else and then return in time to give an answer as if they’d been listening all the time. In fairness, evidence from past conferences suggests this is not an unreasonable hope.

On simple numbers they lose out to Andrew Stunell and his triple booking. But even he loses out to Vince Cable’s extra special triple booking where not only is he the only speaker listed at one of the events, the format is in fact him being interviewed. Absence from stage may be tricky during that one even allowing for the slightly shifted time of the interview.

So congratulations Vince. He is the Simon Hughes of Birmingham 2011, with his Usain Bolt impression coming soon to a fringe hotel corridor near you.

If you see him dashing do helpfully shout “The interview is that way” whilst pointing in a random direction.

Simon Hughes can meanwhile console himself with the knowledge that he and triple booking star Andrew Stunell displace Cable from his 2009 and 2010 number one spot for total number of fringes.

16
Simon Hughes
Andrew Stunell

15
Vince Cable

13
Edward Davey
Norman Lamb

12
Chris Huhne

10
Norman Baker
Andrew George
Julian Huppert
Paul Burstow

9
Tom Brake
Sarah Teather

8
Lynne Featherstone
Stephen Gilbert

7
Danny Alexander
Steve Webb

6
Alan Beith
Jeremy Browne
Malcolm Bruce
Nick Clegg
Tessa Munt

5
Lorely Burt
Tim Farron
Don Foster
David Laws
Stephen Williams

4
John Pugh
Dan Rogerson

3
Annette Brooke
Duncan Hames
Nick Harvey
Martin Horwood
Charles Kennedy
John Leech
Michael Moore
Jo Swinson
Roger Williams

2
Alistair Carmichael
John Hemming
Robert Smith
Jenny Willott

1
Gordon Birtwistle
Menzies Campbell
David Heath
Adrian Sanders
Ian Swales
John Thurso

0
Michael Crockart
Mike Hancock
Mark Hunter
Stephen Lloyd
Greg Mulholland
Alan Reid
Bob Russell
David Ward
Simon Wright
Mark Williams

Note: I have included MPs marked as “tbc” and “invited” but excluded those who are not listed even if I know otherwise (as my extra information is only partial).

Here’s a sample:

We must now focus on the redistribution of wealth. But this will not succeed by means of greater hand-outs. Financial benefits must seek to engage people positively. The redistribution of hope and opportunity means the redistribution as well as the creation of work. Co-operative and mutual businesses and social enterprise should be prioritised. The private sector, like the public sector, should not be allowed to get away with obscene pay ratios and bonuses. All employers should be required to consider how they can increase employment and training, by themselves or with others.

Where communities are unable to provide work the government must be prepared to intervene.

A responsible economy is necessary for a responsible society. Building local, regional and national economies which provide the opportunity for all to participate in for fair reward will build much stronger communities. This will counter the appeal of the gangs and the get-rich-quick merchants. Other people and activity must now capture the energies and abilities of a generation that has greater potential than any we have had before.

You can read Simon’s piece in full here.

Here’s the schedule in full from Iain’s blog:

6-7pm Live Q & A with LibDem leader Nick Clegg
7-7.30pm Interview with Nick Clegg (tbc)
7.30-8pm Reaction to Clegg with Lord Oakeshott, Susan Kramer & Jo Phillips
8-9pm Meet the LibDem London Mayoral Candidates – Brian Paddick, Brian Haley & Lembt Opik (Mike Tuffrey is on holiday)
9-10pm The Future of the LibDems & the Coalition with Deputy Leader Simon Hughes.

Lucky Londoners can listen by tuning their wireless to 97.3FM. But there’s no excuse for the rest of us not to listen – we can catch the show on DAB radio or via the LBC website, Sky Channel 0112, Virgin Media 973 or via the LBC iPhone and iPad app.

Four whole hours of LibDemmery – it’s like conference come early. So why not tune in and share your thoughts in the comments below?

Here’s a sample:

Last week I submitted my report to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, with more than 30 recommendations on what can be done to improve access to higher education.

These do not focus only on university admissions but on what can be done to encourage young people to think about university from an early age.

This is crucial because from the age of 13 children are having to make decisions that will have an impact on the options available to them at the age of 18 and above.

I recommended that careers advice should begin as early as primary school, with parents and other adults coming into school to talk to children about their jobs and careers.

This is not to say that children at this age must know what they want to do when they are older but there is no reason why they should not be exposed to what is out there.

Schools should have careers advice sessions with parents as well as pupils so parents can be fully informed about the choices available to their children and how to support them.

As well as knowledge of courses and careers, children also need to know about basic financial management in order to help them make decisions about their future.

Financial education should be included in the curriculum for personal, social and Health education.

As part of its higher education reforms the Government has set aside £150million each year for scholarships to university.

I have argued in my report that these scholarships should go to schools so that every school can award scholarships to its students to go on to university.

This will demonstrate to everyone that there is a ladder from their school into university.

You can read Simon’s piece in full here.

Stephen comments:

However, there is one recommendation in ‘The Hughes Report’ with which I take issue:

It is my firm view that interviews which are conducted by an academic who will end up teaching that particular student are too subjective. … interviews should be conducted by trained admissions personnel who will not have face to face teaching responsibilities for the interviewee. (p.33)

It’s an odd comment for two reasons. First, it seems Simon Hughes believes tutors in those handful of universities which conduct interviews will automatically favour certain types of candidates — yet he produces no evidence to back up this conclusion. Such an assertion without corresponding facts is what migtht be termed, to coin a phrase, “too subjective”.

The second reason it’s odd is this: let’s take the parallel of the workplace. Is Mr Hughes seriously suggesting he’d be happy to recruit a member of his parliamentary staff without interviewing them himself? Does he really think that only trained HR personnel should conduct interviews on his behalf to ensure proper objectivity? I don’t believe for a moment he would agree to such an arrangement. Indeed, I imagine Mr Hughes would take it as a slur on his professionalism for it to be assumed that he would be incapable of objectivity when recruiting his own staff.

Interviews are, it’s true, an imperfect and flawed method of selection — for anything. Mistakes are made. But I would never hire someone to work for me based solely on their covering letter and CV. How else, other than in a personal interview, can I test an applicant’s passion for their work, or measure their true potential? Nor would I want to leave it to an HR officer, however good, to probe their specialist knowledge of my professional expertise. And I’m quite sure that the potential employees I interview like the oppotunity to size me up, and judge for themselves if they want to work with me. Interviews are a two-way process.

There’s something else important about an interview: when you make your choice of candidate you are making a personal investment not only in them, but also in your judgement. And that provides a very powerful incentive to ensure you do everything in your powers to support them, including when you make a mistake.

Simon Hughes is by no means the first person to argue that tutors cannot be trusted to interview the students for whom they will be responsible for three or four of their most formative years. However, it isn’t simply the double-standard — tutors’ interviewing skills are subjective, employers’ are objective — which I find troubling; also troubling is his belief that the admissions system needs to be outsourced in order to eliminate personal contact between tutors and applicants. Not only does that betray a fundamental lack of trust in the professionalism of tutors, it also drives a wedge into their ability to forge a rewarding relationship with their students.

Read Stephen’s full article at Dale & Co.

Though 45 pages long in total, it presents clearly, readably and concisely 33 recommendations designed to ensure that everyone, from young to old, has the chance to experience higher education. You can read the report in full below, but there are five aspects which struck me as worth highlighting:

• Importance of early years: the report recommends that, from primary age onwards, ‘schools can play an important role in motivating children to think about their future career and start working towards achieving their dreams’. These range from work experience opportunities to, in particular, ensuring proper advice is available at age 13-14 ‘when a young person starts to make the choices of courses influenced by the qualifications they hope for and the careers they plan.’
• Financial education for young people is vital: Simon points out that the decisions made by 13-16 year-olds ‘will have large scale effects on their future finances, whether choosing higher education, leaving school at 16 and going to work, or going into apprenticeship or training. They are expected to take these decisions at the same time as taking into account future earnings, money management during their courses and, in the case of higher education, knowledge about the system for paying for their degree.’ It’s a big ask, and Martin Lewis’s efforts at MoneySavingExpert.com — and in particular his work to present the ’20 key facts’ about tuition fees — are particularly welcomed.
• Call to action for all leaders: Simon notes: ‘When they have explained to them accurately the monthly repayment which graduates will be required to pay under the new system for student finance, young people and their families are almost always greatly reassured and encouraged about the benefits of going on to university.’ Critics of tuition fees (such as Simon) can and will continue to oppose the Coalition’s policy; but they should avoid the language of scare-tactics which risk becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. There is a responsibility for all — political parties, student leaders, unions — to show leadership here. Though the tribal, knee-jerk response of University and College union general secretary Sally Hunt (“What exactly is the point of this report?”) suggests this hope may remain firmly aspirational.
• No populist attacks on universities: in contrast to David Cameron’s over-compensating tendency ignorantly to slam the UK’s top universities for ‘disgraceful’ admissions processes, Simon’s approach is more measured (and accurate): ‘Although there has been a marked increase in the number of people from poorer and non-traditional backgrounds attending university over the last five years, universities can still do more and the most selective universities can do much more.’
• Guaranteed scholarships for bright, low-income students: This is the recommendation which has, rightly, received most attention: ‘If 10,000 scholarships from the national scholarship programme were allocated [to a certain number of students in every secondary school, sixth form and FE college who satisfied a minimum UCAS tariff points score and who came from a family with an income below a certain level] then every school and sixth form and FE college could have on average three scholarships available to them.’ While all universities offer financial aid to students, the amount is only known once their application has been successful — merit-based, needs-based scholarships which underwrite students’ access to universities could make a huge difference to students considering applying to university.

The Hughes Report

They ask Murdoch to respond to public opinion by changing his commercial strategy in the UK: withdrawing his News Corporation bid for BSkyB and concentrating all his efforts on cleaning up News International.

The letter in full:

Proposed take-over of BSkyB by News International

Ever since the report of our Information Commissioner ‘What Price Freedom?’ and the conviction and imprisonment of Goodman and Mulcaire in 2006, there has been growing concern about the policy and practices of UK newspaper titles owned by News International.

Recent weeks have seen the publication of a flurry of further allegations against your company’s publications in the UK which have shocked and sickened the British public, and rightfully so.

It now appears that:

- an investigator working for your newspaper the ‘News of the World’ hacked into the phone of a kidnapped young girl and deleted her messages, giving her family false hope that she may still be alive.

- journalists and editors are implicated with police officers in illegal arrangements to obtain contact details of members of the royal family, which has put the royal family at risk through a completely irresponsible breach of security.

- people working for a News International title have hacked into phones and invaded the privacy of victims of terrorist attacks and the parents of dead soldiers.

We have no doubt that these events led directly or indirectly to the decision of your organisation to close the ‘News of the World’ this week, seeking to draw a line under this terrible affair.

However recent events have made clearer that illegal activities were not limited to the ‘News of the World’. There is now evidence that your papers the ’Sun’ and the ‘Sunday Times’ improperly obtained the medical records of the then Chancellor Gordon Brown so they could run a story about the health of one of his children – as a result of activity which could not possibly have any public interest defence.

People who were in charge of these newspapers are still employed by you at News International in the UK. Your son James, current chairman of News International, and a senior executive at News International’s parent company News Corporation, has admitted that he authorised cash payments to victims of phone hacking, payments which he himself has now admitted were wrong.

People working for your company have sought to cover up the many wrongs which it has committed. Your company has been accused of lying to the Press Complaints Commission, by the chair of the Press Complaints Commission. Only yesterday the police accused News International of trying to undermine the ongoing police investigation into the affair.

News International is simply no longer respected in this country. Given the history of the last six or more years, it should be of little surprise to you that many people in this country have no desire to have any more of our media fall into your hands, tainted as News International is by a history of completely unacceptable journalistic practices. News Corporation, as the owner of News International must take some responsibility for this.

Two days ago the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said you should do the decent thing and withdraw your bid to take full control of BSkyB. Many others have said similar things.

We hope you will respect the widespread expressions of public opinion and change News Corporation’s commercial strategy in this country.

We therefore ask, both on behalf of our party but also on behalf of a very large number of people in this country, that you now withdraw your News Corp bid for BSkyB and concentrate all of your efforts on cleaning up News International. We are clear that this would be the right thing for Britain, and for the reputation of broadcasting and journalism in the UK. We hope you are willing to give a positive response.

Rt Hon Simon Hughes MP
Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons

Tim Farron MP
Liberal Democrat Party President

Rt Hon Don Foster MP
Liberal Democrat Spokesman for the Department for Culture Media and Sport

BSkyB takeover: Lib Dems hint at backing Labour motion to delay deal (Guardian)

The Liberal Democrats have indicated they could back a Labour move in parliament to delay the Murdoch takeover of BSkyB until after the police investigations into phone hacking. …

[Simon] Hughes told Sky News: “We have to be careful and I would suggest if Labour want our support they should come and talk to us about that. If a motion can be formed that can provide wider than Labour support and isn’t a partisan motion, then I would think that they would get wider support. My recommendation to my colleagues – it’s not my final decision, it’s a parliamentary party decision – would be that we as a parliamentary party make clear that it’s our view that the takeover should not go ahead until the criminal investigations are completed.”

[Chris] Huhne said on the BBC: “We will obviously have to look at the details of the motion before deciding what should be done in terms of the voting.” …

… the Lib Dems are adamant that any move is not seen as a Labour one, with insiders highlighting Labour’s relationship with News International over the years and Miliband’s failure to speak out on the issue before the Guardian revelations about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s voicemail this week.

Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat peer and close ally of Cable, said: “Liberal Democrats from the cabinet to councillors to Focus deliverers are totally united. We want to block the BSkyB bid and then break up the Murdoch empire. He’s far too powerful – we don’t let Tesco have 40% of the market. This is not just about blocking the bid, it’s about ending a serious danger to our democracy.”

Phone hacking: I warned No 10 over Coulson appointment, says Ashdown (Observer)

The crisis engulfing David Cameron over phone hacking deepened on Saturday as Paddy Ashdown revealed that he had warned No 10 only days after the general election of “terrible damage” to the coalition if he employed Andy Coulson in Downing Street. The former Liberal Democrat leader, who had been extensively briefed on details that had not been made public for legal reasons, was so convinced that the truth would eventually emerge that he contacted the prime minister’s office.

Ashdown, a key player as the Liberal Democrats agonised over whether to join in a coalition with the Tories, told the Observer that, based on what he had been told, it was obvious Coulson’s appointment as Cameron’s director of communications would be a disaster. “I warned No 10 within days of the election that they would suffer terrible damage if they did not get rid of Coulson, when these things came out, as it was inevitable they would,” he said.

Huhne and Clegg both advised Cameron against hiring Andy Coulson (Observer / Guardian, links above)

It has also emerged that Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, received similar briefings to those given to Ashdown before the election, which he raised with Cameron – only to be rebuffed by the prime minister, who insisted that it was right to give Coulson a “second chance”.

Senior Whitehall sources say that Clegg was stunned by what he was told but concluded, after the coalition deal was struck, that he was powerless to change Cameron’s mind. “Clegg said: ‘It is not up to me to tell the prime minister who to appoint as his director of communications’,” said a source.

[Chris] Huhne said: “I certainly raised it with Nick, and Nick raised it with the prime minister, and it was made very clear to us that this was a personal appointment of the prime minister and wasn’t a government appointment and therefore we didn’t have any standing to object to it. It was very clear from what I had said previously that I think that big reputational risks were being run,” he added.

Tim Farron: The phone-hacking stench will linger (Independent)

The media, politicians and the police have failed the public. But it is not true that ‘they were all at it’ – whether it be all journalists or all senior politicians. Labour and the Conservatives spent decades cosying up to Rupert Murdoch and his cronies in the hope of an endorsement or a favourable headline. The Liberal Democrats did not. …

We are not all the same, not inside the Government or outside it. Nick Clegg did not beg for the scraps from Murdoch’s table. During the election campaign, former Sun editor David Yelland said ‘One man utterly beyond the tentacles of any of [Murdoch's] family, his editors or his advisers is Nick Clegg’.

I am bitterly disappointed that a non-Murdoch newspaper honey trap cost Vince Cable his right to adjudicate over Murdoch’s proposed BSkyB takeover. But the private comments Vince made, that he had ‘declared war on Murdoch’, should make it clear that the Liberal Democrats are far from in his pocket. … apologies, inquiries and punishment are not enough. … We need a new order. Journalists must act ethically and obey the law. The police must never breach their bond of trust with the public and politicians must put people before the powerful.

He cites the Sutton Trust’s findings that more than a fifth of 11-16 year olds believe their families will have to pay for the cost of university tuition, while a further 10 per cent believe students paid for university with money they earned before and during their studies:

This situation is clearly unacceptable. And now as we start a month where higher education is again back on the agenda, with today’s publication of the White Paper on higher education, and the decision of the Director of Fair Access on university access agreements due soon, there must be a concerted effort once and for all to destroy the myths around the new student finance system.
The negative politics surrounding student finance must end.

All too often in the recent past, politicians and others have given greater priority to attacking the government, rather than advancing the interests of young people and students. Politicians of all parties, student leaders, trade unionists and all others with a public platform and who are listened to on these issues must now make sure that they know the facts and do everything to make sure young people and their parents also understand the facts and are not misled.

Simon goes on to stress the following points:

• No university student studying for their first degree either full time or part time will be obliged to pay any fees starting in 2012
• The new system of student finance is much fairer and more progressive than the one this government inherited
• The government will do more to communicate with young people who might be applying in 2012.

Read Simon’s full piece at Left Foot Forward.

That is why people such as Danny Alexander are starting to sketch out possible tax policies for the next general election which will involve giving tax cuts to the least well off, paid for by taxing the richest more.

That combination worked well for the party’s £10,000 income tax allowance policy in 2010. The mix of cuts and increases not only made for a policy whose sums added up but also meant the policy appealed across the different wings of the party. The media often rather blunders into overdrawn and inaccurate characterisations of different views within the party, but in this area there are some clear differences between the instincts on tax of, say, David Laws and Simon Hughes. However, the £10,000 policy appealed both to those whose instincts were to cut general tax and also to those who instincts were much more about overall inequality.

Tax cuts for the poorest paid for by tax increases for the richest could repeat that unifying approach again. Moreover, with the party having already made very substantial (albeit largely unheralded) progress on bring tax on capital gains more into line with tax on income, the obvious place to look at next is other taxes on wealth – and that’s an area where there will almost certainly be plenty of scope for political difference from the Conservatives.

Moreover, higher taxes on wealth and tax cuts elsewhere could appeal both to Liberal Democrats concerned primarily about social mobility and also those more concerned about overall levels of inequality.

Quite what taxes on wealth should be is rather trickier as Vince Cable discovered with version one of his mansion tax proposals. Part of the problem with the original mansion tax plans was the lack of communication and discussion within the party in advance of the announcement. But there is also an inherent problem with such a tax on wealth, which is that some people, especially older people living in the south, have a large amount of wealth locked up in property but do not have much give in their income to pay for higher taxes. Inheritance tax used to be the answer to that, though these days it is often seen as politically untouchable – which is why the idea is being floated within the party at the moment of a property sales tax instead.

More popular amongst party members in areas such as South West London, though not in Whitehall, is the idea of adding extra property bands at the top end of Council Tax.

Despite the controversies around each of these policies, getting the tax cuts right at the other end of the scale may turn out to be the hardest, because if the income tax allowance is £10,000 by 2015, then further reductions in income tax become steadily less effective at helping the least well off as more and more of them are not in the income tax system. Once the details of the welfare changes have be finalised (and expect plenty more debate in the Lords as the current bill makes its progress there), it may yet be that the tax cuts part of the package actually is better delivered in the form of increased spending – but that would open up the different tensions within the Liberal Democrats.

The practical implication for all of this for party members? Political predictions running years into the future have an extremely low success rate, but it’s likely that if you want to influence a key part of the party’s 2015 manifesto, it’s certainly not too early to start getting stuck into debates and policy making over tax at both ends of the spectrum.

I’m not in Frank Dobson’s class, but even providing council housing to me would be an appalling waste given the pressing needs there are from people who really are in need of a helping hand.

But… on the other hand, people having to move looks very different if it involves disruption such as children having to change schools. That’s the angle the Evening Standard has picked up on:

The impact of the new limits on housing benefit has been laid bare in a report by Westminster City Council.

The stark scenario revealed shows that one in six primary school age children in the borough may have to move home and in many cases go to a new school.

In Maida Vale it is an astonishing 43 per cent who could be affected in this way.

Across central London, thousands of school children may have to move.

“May” is very different from “will”, of course, but even with that caveat Simon Hughes is on the case:

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes is due to meet with Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith next week to demand changes to the policy.

It is only certain parts of London which are particularly hard hit by the caps and Mr Hughes, who backs the policy in principle, wants ministers to lessen the blow for many of the households affected.

“It is crucial that the Government uses this time to think of a solution now that more and more evidence is emerging of the severe consequences the benefits caps will have on London and Londoners,” he told The Standard.

Firstly, there was the interest generated by having two Cabinet Ministers and the Party’s Deputy Leader speaking – Vince Cable’s speech was carried live by the BBC and Sky news was also filming throughout the day. Of course the Ministers were a significant draw, but the packed-out audience was also treated to stirring contributions from a variety of speakers who held said Ministers to account in the spirit of open discourse. In addition we had Neal Lawson’s passionate speech on the importance of promoting social liberalism in all parties; Will Hutton’s on how social liberals must carry Keynes’ mantle and deliver a fairer capitalism; LDV’s own Mark Pack and Alex Marsh on the crucial differences between Big Society and Community Politics; and finally (ten times finally), Simon Hughes on how we deliver our socially liberal agenda. I hope to have photos and videos from these sessions uploaded soon.

Some in the Party had feared such a gathering would descend into a series of gripes at Coalition failings and factional infighting; these fears were confounded by the high-class debate, the open and honest assessment of how Lib Dems had fared in our first year in government, and the positive enthusiasm with which we debated our future policy direction. There was much to commend the tone of discourse, even if some in the audience saw fit to criticise the thoughts of the SLF’s first Director Matthew Sowemimo through the medium of Twitter – I may not agree with every last detail of Matthew’s assessment, nor that of other speakers, but if the conference showed us anything it’s that democracy as public discourse is alive and well in the Lib Dems – something that Matthew and Neal both acknowledged Labour desperately need to learn from.

A key take-home message for me was the determination of Lib Dems to hold their representatives in government to account and to press for distinctly Lib Dem policy; there was a real sense that fresh from securing substantive changes to the Tories’ misguided health reforms, the Party’s mainstream can now confidently stand up for its values. The word mainstream is key; as SLF Chair David Hall-Matthews emphasised, together with many other speakers, the views and policies espoused by the social liberal forum are at the core of the Party’s centre-left soul.

I’m proud to have been associated with this event, and not because I want the SLF to grow into a powerful faction within the Lib Dems. The final word in our name – ‘forum’ – is the key, and I hope that events like the weekend’s continue to foster debate around the philosophy, the policy and implementation of liberal democracy.

It’s been a great month for Liberal Democrats who are setting the pace on the green agenda!

It doesn’t quite say it’s been a great month for ‘the’ Liberal Democrats but most people will read it that way and think vaguely of my one and only Kipling joke:

If you can keep your head while all around are losing theirs…then you haven’t understood the true seriousness of the situation.

To be fair on Simon and his team, we do need reminding that there is more to this coalition than AV, Lords reform and putting up with Eric Pickles or [insert ghastly alternative Tory minister of choice].

I am proud of the fact that Lib Dem ministers are introducing an Energy Bill, a carbon budget, and the Green Investment Bank. These are good policies which remind us of why we do politics in the first place. And we need to make sure that we cover them in our leaflets and conversations with the public.

But will the public notice? I have been to a fair few post mortems over the past week or so, from purely local to ALDC and the Federal Party. All pretty gloomy. The public caned us over tuition fees and being in the Coalition at all – and yet were nice to the Tories. True: someone who did not vote for us because of the Coalition probably did not themselves back the Tories, but it is hard to dislodge the idea that it is, in teenager speak, ‘so unfair.’

Meanwhile the public did not, except in isolated cases, give much support to the Greens. They rarely do, preferring an Augustinian ‘Lord make me virtuous but not yet’ approach, while hacking down trees because they ‘block out the light’. The Green Investment Bank, bluntly, is not going to float their globally warmed boat.

But what was truly unfair was that we were punished over AV: punished by the Tories who came out in higher numbers than normally would have been the case in local elections to vote No and Tory, punished by Labour who came out in higher numbers to Vote Yes and Labour (and also No and Labour). And punished by the blithering nature of the Yes campaign.

Move on, eh? Next year won’t be so bad. Thankfully there won’t on polling day in 2012 be another extraneous issue which will causes Tory voters to pour out and spoil our usual local election differential.

Well: there won’t be provided we don’t have Police Commissioner elections.

Still keeping your head?