Author Archives: Mark Pack

Mark was the Liberal Democrat Head of Innovations until June 2009 and is now at Blue Rubicon. He also lectures at City University and is co-author of 101 Ways To Win An Election. He blogs at www.markpack.org.uk and is on Twitter as @markpack. He likes chocolate. Lots of it.
Mark Pack

The low earner Liberal Democrats revisited

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th June 2012 - 11:50 am

A couple of years back I posted about the “low earner Liberal Democrats” who have been a major part of the party’s progress, especially in squeezing Labour votes in more rural seats and in making progress in urban areas against Labour. Events in the interim have if anything made this group even more important to the party.

In some ways, with in particular the emphasis on the £10,000 or more income tax allowance, support for a (modified) benefits cap and the Pupil Premium, the party’s policy outlook now addresses all the more their main concerns. However, in other ways, it does not.

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th June 2012 - 10:25 am

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Mark Pack

Government’s search for an alternative to PFI takes another twist with growth bonds

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th June 2012 - 7:55 am

Labour’s PFI and PPP schemes turned out badly in so many ways, it is easy to forget quite why they were so popular to begin with, both with politicians very much of the central government public spending school (e.g. John Prescott) and also with senior public sector managers wanting to get funding for their areas (e.g. at Transport for London).

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Unlock Democracy: the elections are worse than I feared

By Mark Pack | Wed 6th June 2012 - 11:50 am

Back in March I wrote about my concerns over the elections rules for Unlock Democracy’s internal elections:

Good news – supporters are being asked to submit nominations for its governing council. Bad news – the highly restrictive campaigning rules that make even the old Liberal Democrat internal election rules seem rather generous:

“Candidates may not produce any further promotional materials … No candidate may pro-actively campaign for election online, or allow anyone else to campaign on their behalf … The Returning Officer may disqualify any candidate who they deem to have made a public statement to promote their candidacy.”

As for

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

Chief Executive pay: is it tied to performance?

By Mark Pack | Tue 5th June 2012 - 3:50 pm

The LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance has been looking at the evidence on Chief Executive pay in the UK. Their conclusion? It is tied to performance – and is more tied to performance than it used to be. But it is a lopsided link with smaller cuts when things go badly than the increases when things go well. What’s more, when things go well Chief Executive pay rises much more than pay for others.

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Tony Greaves: From angry young man to simmering old guru

By Mark Pack | Mon 4th June 2012 - 4:50 pm

For many years Adrian Slade has interviewed prominent Liberal Democrats. To mark his recent decision to make his archive of the interview recordings available to researchers and other interested parties, Lib Dem Voice is running a selection of his write-ups of interviews from over the years. The latest is with Tony Greaves, dating from 2004.

There is something a little incongruous about the notion of the Liberal Democrats’ oldest angry young man donning the ermine of a peer of the realm.

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Mark Pack

Talking to Labour: the only news is that Labour still aren’t serious

By Mark Pack | Sat 2nd June 2012 - 10:45 pm

Talks of all sorts happen between different parties all the time, varying from the personal – such as a few quiet words over handling the consequences of a death in an MP’s family – to the national interest – especially on security matters – and including, of course, the political manoeuvering.

One rule however applies consistently across them all: if you’re serious about discreet talks, you keep them discreet. Talking at length to the media, whether on or off the record, about talks is only what you do if the talks are out in the public (such as the Cook-Maclennan talks in …

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Posted in News | 29 Comments
Mark Pack

Labour MP attacks rural broadband as “faster internet shopping for millionaires”

By Mark Pack | Sat 2nd June 2012 - 11:25 am

Labour MP Graham Jones has kicked up a fuss over his attack on the government’s plans to extend high speed broadband in rural areas, saying it will just mean “faster internet shopping for millionaires”. The MP for Hyndburn went on to say that the rural broadband investment “is just about faster internet shopping for wealthy people”.

Liberal Democrat MP David Heath begged to differ, telling the House of Commons that: “The honourable gentleman is deeply mistaken on this subject … If we do not invest properly to allow every member of every community in the country to have access to …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

Shirley Williams on the high point of her political career

By Mark Pack | Tue 29th May 2012 - 10:50 am

For many years Adrian Slade has interviewed prominent Liberal Democrats. To mark his recent decision to make his archive of the interview recordings available to researchers and other interested parties, Lib Dem Voice is running a selection of his write-ups of interviews from over the years. The latest is with Shirley Williams, from 2002 when she was Liberal Democrat leader in the House of Lords.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Shirley Williams picks election day in October ’64 as the high point of her long political career.  That was when, after three tries, she not only became a Labour MP (for Hitchin/Stevenage) but started immediately on her ministerial path. “It was always difficult for a woman but finally all these people had voted for me. I felt euphoric,” she says.

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Mark Pack

How does UK employee protection compare with other countries?

By Mark Pack | Mon 28th May 2012 - 11:24 am

Rather handily, the OECD complies a set of international indicators of employee protection, the latest version of which was revised in September 2010, using 2008 data. The survey looks at “the procedures and costs involved in dismissing individuals or groups of workers and the procedures involved in hiring workers on fixed-term or temporary work agency contracts”.

What does it show?

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

Beware putting your family in election leaflets

By Mark Pack | Sat 26th May 2012 - 11:10 am

One detail from Carina Trimingham’s unsuccessful legal action this week (possibly subject to appeal) is about using families in election leaflets:

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Posted in Campaign Corner and News | Tagged | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Local liberal heroes: Peter Truesdale

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th May 2012 - 11:50 am

A while back, I penned a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten – such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP.

There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure – those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are often unacknowledged in the wider party.

Today it is the turn of Lambeth Liberal Democrat Peter Truesdale.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

LibLink: Sarah Teather – Special needs children deserve more

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th May 2012 - 9:55 am

Writing over in The Guardian, Liberal Democrat minister Sarah Teather says:

John Harris writes of the fight he had to simply get the basic support for his autistic child (Special needs kids deserve better than a rush to reform, 21 May). His experience is a story I have heard over and over again. It is precisely this problem that the coalition government is trying to fix…

I also know the system doesn’t work well enough for children with less severe needs either, such as those with unrecognised language difficulties whose frustration in trying to communicate shows up as angry, even criminal, behaviour.

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

How well do you know the party’s MPs?

By Mark Pack | Thu 24th May 2012 - 9:55 am

One (and as far as I know, only one) current or former Lib Dem/SDP/Liberal MP has presented a 45 minute ITV programme about venereal disease.

Can you guess who it is?

(Answer after the jump.)

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Posted in Parliament | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Five of the most common mistakes that Lib Dem campaigners make

By Mark Pack | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 9:50 am

Over the next few weeks, I’m taking part in a handful of training sessions about learning the lessons from May’s elections. There’s much to learn from May and from being in government, but I’ve also noticed that many of the old favourite, long-running lessons are very much still with us. So here’s my selection of the top five of those Golden Oldies.

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Posted in Campaign Corner | Tagged | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Sensible decision from European Court on prisoner voting rights

By Mark Pack | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 7:25 am

The BBC reports:

The European Court of Human Rights has said individual governments can decide how to implement a ban on convicted prisoners voting.

The judgement means the UK will be able to decide for itself how to resolve the long-standing row over votes for prisoners.

But the court says the UK only has six months to outline its proposed reforms…

In a summary of its judgement, the court said it “accepted the Government’s argument that each State has a wide discretion as to how it regulates the ban, both as

…

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Posted in Election law | Tagged | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Coalition partners: sink or swim together?

By Mark Pack | Tue 22nd May 2012 - 11:50 am

The idea that Liberal Democrat and Conservative political fortunes are tied together comes in two forms. The basic – that with both being in government, the public’s overall view of the government (and in particular its economic record) will heavily determine its view of both parties come the next election. Sink or swim together then. Then there is version which adds an asymmetric twist. Namely that if the public views the coalition as a failure both parties will sink together, but if the public rates the coalition as a success, being the smaller of the two parties means the Liberal Democrats won’t necessarily get their share of the credit.

What does the polling data show?

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Posted in Polls | Tagged | 22 Comments
Mark Pack

Is the government’s crackdown on tax avoidance working?

By Mark Pack | Mon 21st May 2012 - 11:50 am

Interesting news via The Times over the weekend :

Britain’s only listed accountancy firm is to close its specialist tax division in a move that will be regarded as another victory for Revenue & Customs against tax avoidance by the rich.

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Mark Pack

Is the end in sight for Returning Officer bonuses?

By Mark Pack | Mon 21st May 2012 - 8:50 am

I’ve written often enough before about the problems with the “bonus” payments that Returning Officers receive for doing their job at election time. One problem is that they receive the bonuses in full even if they have messed up dreadfully, though that is now changing. The other is that the grounds for having the bonuses in the first place are pretty thin:

The role of being Returning Officer goes with having a job – typically council chief executive –  that is usually well paid to begin with (often six figure salaries) and where anyone taking on the job knows

…

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Posted in Election law, News and Wales | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Denbighshire County Council admits votes were counted wrong

By Mark Pack | Sun 20th May 2012 - 9:42 am

Voters had to take some care when voting in Prestatyn North on May 3rd, as the Labour candidate was called Paul Penlington and the Conservative Allan Pennington. But the council’s counting staff did not take the same care when it came to the count, as WalesOnline reports:

Returning officer and council chief executive Mohammed Mehmet said a block of ballot papers which should have been allocated to the Labour candidate Paul Penlington were “inadvertently” allocated to Tory Allan Pennington, who won the last of the three seats available on the ward.

Mr Penlington or Labour now have until May 24 to decide whether

…

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Posted in Election law, News and Wales | Tagged | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

If you’re earning over £60,000 should the state subsidise your rent?

By Mark Pack | Sat 19th May 2012 - 3:57 pm

The government is bringing back to life earlier talk about removing the rent subsidy for those in social housing whose household income is over £60,000.

At the moment, rents in social housing are capped at 80% of the market value, but with around 34,000 homes in England occupied by families with a household income of over £60,000 the government is commencing a consultation on removing the 80% limit for them:

Government research shows that as many as 6,000 social rented homes in England are lived in by people who earn a combined income of more than £100,000, including Bob Crow, leader of

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 36 Comments
Mark Pack

Where’s Steve Hilton to cut through red tape when you need him?

By Mark Pack | Sat 19th May 2012 - 11:50 am

Back in 2010 I took up the issue of paperwork gone mad at the Ministry of Justice, using a series of Freedom of Information requests to reveal the ludicrously over-bureaucratic safe driving polices in place at the MoJ:

Despite the government’s rhetoric of cutting bureaucracy, the Ministry of Justice – one of the largest Whitehall departments and responsible for many important administrative systems – is spectacularly failing to set a good example with its own hugely bureaucratic approach to health and safety when people are driving as part of their work according to information I’ve unearthed in a series of freedom

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Individual electoral registration: welcome changes to the details

By Mark Pack | Thu 17th May 2012 - 9:50 am

Over the weekend, I wrote about how welcome the ancillary details are in the newly published Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. Those are the “and Administration” part of the Bill, but the main act is electoral registration, with the Bill laying out details of the move to individual electoral registration across Great Britain, catching up with Northern Ireland.

I’ve written before about why individual electoral registration is a good policy, and hence has been long pushed for by the Electoral Commission and supported by all the main political parties. In brief, it is to do with principle (your right to vote shouldn’t depend on whether or not someone else fills in a form on your behalf), with fraud (individual registration will be a bit like putting window locks on, cutting crime by making it harder) and with the problem of landlords registering themselves rather than their tenants. You can read more about that in What’s the point of switching to individual electoral registration? but on to the Bill…

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Posted in Election law and News | Tagged , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

Police urged to investigate campaign against Labour and Lib Dem councillors in Milton Keynes

By Mark Pack | Wed 16th May 2012 - 8:55 am

Milton Keynes Liberal Democrats are asking the police to investigate campaign leaflets put out during this year’s council elections which attacked both Lib Dem and Labour councillors for their views on providing space for Travellers.

A series of leaflets were put out during the election attacking named candidates from the two parties, accusing them of putting too much effort into housing Travellers compared to “the homeless, OAPs, and the disabled”. Although the leaflets contained a name and phone number, they did not contain the election imprint information required by …

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Posted in Election law and News | Tagged | 29 Comments
Mark Pack

Which of the five Lib Dem reshuffle options will Nick Clegg pick?

By Mark Pack | Mon 14th May 2012 - 2:23 pm

Five scenarios for your delectation:

The Lib Dem night of the long beards

The drastic, dramatic and painful option. Clegg says the Liberal Democrats need David Laws’s expertise and media savvy at the heart of economic decision making, restoring him to Chief Secretary to the Treasury and expressing tearful regret that Danny Alexander is off out of the Cabinet, with a resting place as a new Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Cabinet Office where he will not have to handle quite so many tricky TV interviews.

Education, education, education

Too problematic to bring back Laws in a tax and cut role? Bring him …

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Posted in Humour and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , and | 45 Comments
Mark Pack

Police investigate electoral allegations in Hyndburn

By Mark Pack | Mon 14th May 2012 - 1:55 pm

The Lancashire Telegraph reports:

POLICE have launched an investigation into voting at this month’s local elections.

Labour officials have made a complaint about irregularities concerning proxy votes in Hyndburn.

A proxy vote is when votes are placed at the polling station on somebody’s behalf, usually when they are unable to leave the house or are on holiday and have chosen not to vote via post.

Police said they had also launched an investigation into claims constituency MP Graham Jones had intimidated voters.

They said this was not connected with the proxy votes allegations.

In three wards in Hyndburn there were more than fifty proxy …

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Mark Pack

A trio of very welcome election law changes on the way

By Mark Pack | Sun 13th May 2012 - 4:55 pm

Postal ballot paper being postedThe Queen’s Speech mentioned a Bill to introduce individual electoral registration (see this post if you’re not sure why individual electoral registration is a good thing). It also made vague reference to other electoral administration reforms. Now I’ve read the proposed Bill and seen what they are, I’m rather pleased – as they include three things I’ve often raised in previous election law consultations and on this blog.

First, extending the timetable for Parliamentary by-elections. As I’ve written before about this …

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Posted in Election law and News | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Leveson: it’s a good thing Nick Clegg was there

By Mark Pack | Fri 11th May 2012 - 8:25 pm

Today’s latest revelations from the Leveson Inquiry are a reminder of how wise it was to create a judge-led inquiry with wide terms of reference and powers. And who was it who did that when the Coalition Government was drawing up the plans, rejecting the talk of a lesser inquiry? Step forward, Nick Clegg.

PS I should have added that it was of course Lib Dem MP Adrian Sanders who was the first in the party to be calling for a judicial inquiry, following his experience on the DCMS Select Committee.

Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

More election fraud claims – and the TV show which set up a fake polling station

By Mark Pack | Fri 11th May 2012 - 8:25 am

In the London Borough of Camden, Hat Trick productions ran into hot water after setting up a spoof but official looking polling station immediately outside a real polling station, encouraging members of the public into coming to vote before revealing to them that the polling station was part of a prank for a political satire show.

Hat Trick also sent someone out door knocking, claiming to be a Liberal Democrat activist but really setting people up for more spoofs, to be caught on a hidden camera.

One Liberal Democrat supporter was called on at home by the fake Liberal Democrat activist, who …

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Posted in Election law, Local government and News | Tagged , , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

A five point plan to reform the media post-Leveson

By Mark Pack | Thu 10th May 2012 - 12:55 pm

As investigative theatre goes, the Leveson Inquiry has been top-notch. As a route to embarrassing individuals for their past performance, it has excelled. As a way of unearthing previously secret information, it has been gripping.

But as a route for reforming the media? That’s a rather different story.

Some things have already been achieved. The Press Complaints Commission has already been sent to the retirement home for failed regulators and politicians have already been shamed into distancing themselves from newspaper moguls. It will be a long time before Ed Miliband repeats this sort of photo op, for example.

There is, however, an awful lot left to do, especially as Lord Leveson has not been looking at the underlying causes. As I wrote much earlier in the proceedings:

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