Author Archives: Mike Bird

Mike Bird

Opinion: The Welfare Uprating Bill is a mistake; this is not economic liberalism

By Mike Bird | Thu 20th December 2012 - 2:26 pm

I was saddened to hear during the Autumn Statement that increases in many benefits would be capped at 1% for the next three years, particularly because I was in total agreement with David Laws when he opposed a similar policy last year. I was also disappointed that after months of party figures grandstanding about any welfare cuts being contingent on reformed property taxes, no higher council tax bands were announced.

Abandoning indexation for benefits does not just affect them in the year that benefits are not indexed. To use Job Seeker’s Allowance as an example, if inflation is 3% …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 21 Comments
Mike Bird

Opinion: bashing bankers the economically liberal way – risk and responsibility

By Mike Bird | Tue 13th March 2012 - 3:23 pm

Just before conference I caught some largely unreported news on a Private Member’s Bill, put to the Commons by Steve Baker MP, founder of the Cobden Centre, and one of the Conservative 2010 intake.

My usual response to scant coverage of a Conservative backbencher’s bills would be thankful, but in this case, the bill highlights something that has received astonishingly little attention: reforming the personal liability of directors. We’ve rested on the important points of how to discharge shares in effectively state-owned institutions, and how to increase lending to struggling businesses. On these issues Stephen Williams …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 11 Comments
Mike Bird

Competition and Universities: building new Higher Education policy

By Mike Bird | Mon 16th January 2012 - 1:53 pm

We took a severe beating in late 2010, from which we’re still not entirely recovered. From here, we can go in two directions: we can build a Higher Education policy that we can be proud of, or we can leave our policy in the pieces it’s currently in, and prepare for 2015’s brutal assault.

It’s hard to see a treasured policy fall apart under the pressure of electoral and financial reality. We all know there are positive aspects of the increase in graduate contributions that we can claim as ours: a Labour or Tory government would not have faced the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 12 Comments
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