A quick follow-up to my post Paperwork gone mad at the Ministry of Justice, which highlighted the hugely bureaucratic approach taken by the MoJ to safe driving at work (in contrast to the approach of other government departments) and which was widely picked up in the media (see here, here and here).
The Ministry of Justice now tells me,
In common with all MoJ Health and Safety policies, the MoJ’s Safe Driving policy will be reviewed annually or where there is a significant change affecting it … This is a relatively new policy and we are planning a
Yesterday the House of Lords passed an amendment by four votes changing the legislation for a referendum on AV so that rather than the referendum having to be 5 May 2011 it would have to be held at some point before 31 October 2011.
The amendment does not require a date other than 5 May to be used, but it is likely to be overturned in the Commons – especially as the Electoral Commission has expressed its worries over the implications of the amendment. Today it issued a statement, “setting out its concerns about the implications of the amendment”. These are …
Liberal Democrat minister Lord Tom McNally not only repeated his support for libel law reform over the weekend, but also said it was an issue on which his ministerial career should be judged.
Speaking at an event to mark the first anniversary of the Libel Reform Campaign, Lord McNally declared the current state of libel law as “not fit for purpose” and went on to say,
We agree the law needs reforming and have been working on a draft Defamation Bill, which we hope to publish and put out for consultation in March.
This week we’re running a series featuring five of the most effective political adverts. Today it’s a trip back in time and across the Atlantic to a US Presidential campaign:
That too is true of probably the most famous political TV advertisement, the “Daisy Girl” advert screened but the once by the 1964 Lyndon Johnson Presidential campaign. It starts with a young girl innocently counting the petals on a flower, but then switches to an ominous voiceover counting down to zero. The screen is then filled with a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.
The advert played on fears that Johnson’s opponent, Barry Goldwater, was willing to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. The controversy resulted in the advertisement being pulled – but also in widespread media coverage which spread the advert’s message far and wide:
The newly published seventh edition of Chris Cook’s A Short History of the Liberal Party, this time covering events up to 2010, is much like the previous editions. That is, unfortunately, a case of damning with faint praise.
The book deserves some praise. Above all, it exists – and Chris Cook has been one of the few to regularly take to print to record the party’s history. There are very few other books which cover the history of the party and its predecessors all in one volume. It provides a detailed electoral record of the Liberals, Alliance and then Liberal …
Though the timing is rather politically convenient, bringing welcome news for Liberal Democrats just ahead of the tuition fees vote, the substance of today’s news on tax avoidance is very welcome.
Two steps are being taken immediately with another three to follow and, crucially, a study into introducing a General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) has also been commissioned.
This review will be carried out by Graham Aaronson QC and consider whether “it could deter and counter tax avoidance, whilst providing certainty, retaining a tax regime that is attractive to businesses, and minimising costs for businesses and HMRC”.
Today saw a weird piece of media face with an impostor conning several news outlets into reporting that Edinburgh West MP Mike Crockart was going to resign as a PPS and vote against the tuition fees increase. The impostor even got as far as being interviewed by the BBC on the World at One before the hoax was rumbled. His office said that, “Mike is still waiting to see what the final offer will be before he votes and that has always been our line”.
(Ironically just before this took place, I was in Millbank to appear on the BBC’s …
Although the BBC got rather excitable in its coverage of Friday’s legal defeat for ex-Labour MP Phil Woolas, talking about how the ruling was set to have a major impact on how elections are run in the UK, the reality is rather more prosaic. The law which Woolas broke isn’t new and nor has the case thrown up significant precedent or previously overlooked aspects to it.
There probably will be some candidates and agents whose eyes have previously skipped over the part of the guidance from their local returning officer, the Electoral Commission or their political party which makes reference to this law and who next time round will pay a little more attention to what the guidance says. But there will not be any rapid major rewriting of any of those sources of information – as warnings about this part of the law have regularly featured in all of them.
That said, there are some legal points which the Woolas case has addressed and on which the High Court’s ruling gives clarity.
The most important is on whether or not the High Court can judicially review a determination made on a point of law by an election court for a Parliamentary election. Points of fact are settled by the election court, but in other cases where the facts are settled in one court, points of law can still be challenged in another court.
The High Court decided that it does have the power to do this, even though – as the ruling points out – there is already a process to refer points of law from the election court to the High Court (see paragraphs 59-62 of the ruling). This extension of the ability to query points of law with a body other than the election court itself is a welcome one as it provides a strengthened safeguard against the law being wrongly applied.
The other point on which this case may well be cited in future is its refinement of the law’s wording on what is banned. As the ruling says, “There is in our judgement a very significant difference between a statement that goes to the political conduct of a candidate and one that goes beyond it and says something personal about his personal character … Freedom of political debate must allow for the fact that statements are made which attack the political character of a candidate”.
If anything, the ruling widens the grounds for defence under this law rather than narrowing them.
This week we’re running a series featuring five of the most effective political adverts. Today it’s back to the 1970s and the then opposition Conservative Party:
In the summer of 1978 phone calls went out to members of Hendon Young Conservatives, asking them to turn up with their parents at a council car park for a secret project. Partly due to the short notice, less than a fifth of the hoped for 100 volunteers turned up, nearly causing the plans to be cancelled. Instead, some clever trick photography – melding together repeated images of those who did turn up standing in different …
Details of how the Electoral Commission proposes to administer next May’s referendum on the voting system (provided it passes Parliament) have emerged in a series of circulars issued by the Commission last week.
Some of the details are likely to gain widespread welcome, including the extra anti-fraud step of requiring that 100% of postal votes are given extra security checks against original records (the law only requires a minimum of 20% and although many elections see 100% checking, not …
The publication this week of the Police Reform And Social Responsibility Bill provided, amongst other matters, details of how the planned elections for Police Commissioners (or, strictly speaking, Police and Crime Commissioners) would be conducted.
The overall plan is to treat them like local elections, with the same electorate and the same polling day in May. However, the Bill also applies the ‘standard’ election system for existing directly elected executive posts to Police Commissioners, namely the supplementary vote.
This is likely to be controversial, both because the supplementary vote is very unpopular with many Liberal Democrats and also because the …
Labour MP Frank Field’s Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances, commissioned by the government and published last week has added to the debate over whether efforts should focus on increasing social mobility:
He proposes that the government switches focus from Labour’s anti-poverty measure, based on material income, to a set of life chance indicators.
He writes: “Poverty is a much more subtle enemy than purely lack of money,” adding that he does not believe poverty is the dominant reason why disadvantage is handed down from one generation to another.
Parenting is more important than income or schooling to a child’s life
The BBC is required to include Referendum Campaign and Party Political Broadcasts in some or all of its UK Public Broadcasting Services. There are currently no agreed criteria for Referendum Campaign Broadcasts (RCBs).
As a result, a consultation is currently being held on its draft criteria and the proposed system for handling complaints. The Trust is also consulting on the proposed editorial guidelines for the BBC’s coverage of the referendum. More details, including how to respond to …
Tom Brake MP for Carshalton and Wallington is taking is commitment to the Movember Campaign a step further. Unsatisfied with the run of the mill style of his current moustache, Tom is asking his constituents for input on how he should style his moustache as Movember nears its end.
Tom said, “I’m partial to one of the styles, but I promise to sport whatever tache my constituents vote for. If I find that it compliments my face well, I may even continue the look into December or the new year.”
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is interviewed today in the Independent on Sunday, with the report inevitably featuring tuition fees:
He says he is still determined to tackle social disadvantage and educational underperformance, and says that a £150m national scholarship scheme will give a year’s free tuition to 18,000 students on free school meals. Universities wanting to breach the £6,000 cap on fees, to charge up to £9,000, will have to give another free year to the poorest students.
In the coming weeks, months and years he will need to “grit my teeth, display a bit of resilience, and explain calmly and
A quick update on the case of electoral fraud in Walsall, where father and son were charged. The father, Conservative councillor Mohammed Munir was cleared in September. His son, also a Conservative Party member but not a councillor, has now however been convicted.
Ali Hayder Munir has received a three month jail sentence after admitting to two charges of faking proxy vote applications in the run up to the 2008 elections for Walsall Council. The fake applications involved identifying real but unregistered people and then making electoral registration and proxy vote applications on their behalf. The government’s plans …
There is an arrogance at the heart of our politics that is going to make it difficult to really understand why we lost. It is an arrogance that says that we alone own morality and that we alone want the best for people. It says that our instincts and our motives alone are pure. It’s an arrogance that belittles others’ fears and concerns as “isms” whilst raising ours as righteous. We then mistakenly define ourselves as being distinctive from our opponents
A new film from Tim Farron MP on what he wants to do when he takes over as President of the Liberal Democrats on 1 January (and watch out for an exciting close-up of the back of my neck):
Here’s your starter for ten in our Saturday slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
With the news that Ed Miliband wants to give the public a share of the votes in future Labour leadership elections, and with the Conservative Party already having run several open primaries in which the public could vote for Parliamentary candidates, the Liberal Democrats are currently the only one of the three main parties looking to keep such party elections in the hands of party members only.
Should the Liberal Democrats stick to that position or should the rules for leader and/or …
A press release from the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee (the body that draws up the code with the Press Complaints Commission implements) brings the news:
From next year, corrections involving the Press Complaints Commission – which oversees press self regulation in the UK – will be agreed with the PCC in advance, under new rules agreed by the Editors’ Code Committee, which reviews the Code…
Code Committee secretary Ian Beales said: “This amendment is designed to help kill the myth that newspapers and magazines routinely bury corrections. Research conducted by the PCC has shown this to be untrue – nearly 85%
Yesterday the Electoral Commission published information about the campaign spending by UK political parties during the 2010 general election. Buried near the end of the release was this news:
Two third parties – ‘UNISON – The Public Service Union’ and ‘Searchlight Information Services Ltd’ – failed to submit their spending return on time. The Commission has issued Searchlight Information Services with a fine. The Commission will issue UNISON – The Public Service Union with a fine when they submit their return.
The overall figures showed spending down from its heights of 2005, with 43 parties spending just under £32m for 2010 …
Nick Clegg is seeking cabinet approval for his plans to secure an end to the practice of detaining children in immigration removal centres, with government sources suggesting he wants to see no children in detention by the spring…
Clegg will promise a timetable before Christmas for ending the practice, but he will say he is unable to announce a final deadline as the policy is wending its way through the cabinet home affairs committee.
He is also said to be limited by the pace of working out humane alternatives to locking up families with children who
In news this morning Home Office minister and Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone said that the government would be looking to get voluntary agreement from industry for gender pay audits, which would reveal cases of unreasonably disparity in pay between men and women. An attempt to introduce voluntary agreement previously fell apart under the Labour government.
There is also unimplemented legislation on the statue book to allow for mandatory pay audits. The legislation was introduced by Labour, but not brought into force (nor were they any immediate plans from Labour to do so).
Whilst the government is not moving straight away to …
Yesterday saw the publication of the interim report from Will Hutton’s Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector, commissioned by the government.
The bald headline from the report is one of modest reform: moving toward recommending the introduction of a 20:1 maximum ratio between the top and bottom salary in any public body. This ratio is more generous than existing pay arrangements, but it is more radical than that superficially makes it appear.
First, the ratio has been increasingly and is likely to continue to do so, particularly with public sector structural reforms the government is planning. So introducing a cap that looks modest now may yet have a radical impact in the future.
It provides a fair pay benchmark which campaigners, pressure groups and the public can use more widely. Whatever is decided to be the formal extent of its applicability, there is nothing to stop people pushing for its wider adoption and there is good evidence that pay at the very top of the private sector has got out of control, increasing far faster than profits, turnover or other performance would justify. Partly because of the number of firms who set their top pay saying that it must compare well with the rest of the sector, there has been a self-reinforcing upward spiral in pay as everyone pushes up everyone else’s top pay.
A 20:1 ratio would still allow for generous top pay, but stop that cycle – if it ends up applying more widely. Whether or not that happens is not just a matter for central government. For example, even if the government holding the majority of shares in a bank does not mean the 20:1 ratio applies to that bank, that doesn’t stop a campaign to introduce such a ratio. The use of the 20:1 ratio across large parts of the economy will provide a clear benchmark that will make those sort of wider campaigns more effective.
It’s easy to see how over time the 20:1 ratio could become a standard applied to suppliers to the public sector, by ethical investment funds, by good corporate practice lobbyists and more.
The full report (or at least the executive summary) is well worth a read, particularly for information such as this graph:
Conservative MP Rob Wilson’s book on the formation of a coalition government in May 2010, 5 Days to Power: The Journey to Coalition Britain, plays up the drama of the events, talking of how “Gordon Brown and David Cameron were both determined to do whatever was necessary to secure the position of Prime Minister” as if the story is one of a cliff-hanging drama which could have gone either way.
Whilst the outcome is certainly significant for British political history, what the book is far less convincing on is that there was really any serious chance of a Labour – …
During last winter’s snow I blogged a few times about the legal scare stories about how people shouldn’t sweep away snow from outside their home (you can be sued! the world will end!), how clearing snow is traditional in Britain (sort of) and how some companies that tell us at great length about how much they care about local communities miss taking the obvious steps to show such care during a snow fall – clearing the snow from outside their premises.
On Saturday 50 phonebanks are opening in cities across the country as the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign launches the most ambitious voter contact programme in British political history.
The total capacity of the 50 phonebanks is set to exceed that of even the Conservative and Labour Party national phonebanks at their peaks, with volunteers phoning voters to persuade them to back a fairer voting system in next May’s referendum.
In addition to the phonebanks, a virtual phonebank will be launched in the new year letting …
In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett claimed that egalitarian societies benefit rich and poor alike. Crime rates are lower, infant mortality is reduced, obesity is less prevalent, education
Newly elected Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron (who takes office on 1 January) was the guest speaker last night at the Islington Liberal Democrats AGM, so I took the chance to film this short piece:
Yesterday, I blogged my initial reaction to the Wikileaks publication of the US diplomatic cables:
And the big news from the Wikileaks revelations is…
… that it turns out the world as told through secret US diplomacy is, er…, pretty much the same as the one we always thought.
That’s a view that looks to be holding up even as more details come to light. Many are fascinating, many fill out details of stories, but – so far at least – what they are doing is filling out stories we already knew rather than containing major revelations or over-turning what was previously …
Steve Trevethan Might we have a definition of government debt?
Might we have a definition of democracy?...
David Raw @ Tristan Ward. Given your views on carers, I would strongly advise you to remain healthy and not to grow old....
Katrin Harding Thanks for grasping this issue! On the consultation sessions- I’d love to join one but the timings are impossible as a parent of young children. I’m happy t...
Peter Martin @ Kira,
The words you quoted were from Peter Davies'. Not me. I wouldn't agree with raising VAT on energy to 15% right now. I'd leave it as is.
The point ...
Peter Martin “‘why can’t social care and NHS spending be treated as ‘investment’’. Of course, that wont wash”.
I'd agree if were talking about re...
In addition to the phonebanks, a virtual phonebank will be launched in the new year letting …
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Conference booked
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Are Labour going to cross another red line?
Steve Trevethan 
David Raw 
Katrin Harding 
Peter Martin 