A detail from the government’s current consultation on introducing elected police commissioners:
Commissioners will have a set four yearterm of office and term limits of two terms. The Government intends to apply the existing framework for the conduct of local government andParliamentary elections including the recognised eligibility criteria for standing for public office, in preparing for the first set of elections in May 2012. We are considering the appropriate voting system, and believe that a preferential voting system is the right option. (Source: section 2.12 in Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the people)
General Sir Richard Dannatt’s memoir of his time in the British army manages somehow to be both fascinating and banal.
Fascinating because of the detail he provides to back-up his severe criticism of Ministry of Defence civil servants and politicians, Labour ones in particular but Gordon Brown above all, for failing to fund the army sufficiently for the jobs they demanded of it. Banal because, despite his long experience of counter-insurgency and peace-keeping operations starting with Northern Ireland in the 1970s, his repeated message through the book is one of ‘give the army more money, give the army more time’.
The annual allowance for tax-privileged pension saving will be reduced from £255,000 to £50,000, and the lifetime allowance will be reduced from £1.8 million to £1.5 million. This will replace the complex proposal legislated for by the last Government in the Finance Act 2010.
“Tax-privileged” is a tax break to you and me by the way. The governments estimates that in a normal full year these changes will bring in an extra £4 billion and affect around 100,000, four out of five of whom have incomes of over £100,000.
Reducing tax breaks for the most well off has long …
Just as plays have a classic three-act structure, so too do tricky political decisions: first you rule out a potentially popular alternative, then you put out the bad news and finally you sweeten the pill as you try to avert people’s worst fears.
Tomorrow we’ve got a new guest editor running the site for a day, Scottish Lib Dem blogger Caron Lindsay. She’s the third in our series of guest editors, following Mark Valladares and Linda Jack.
I’m really looking forward to reading the posts Caron’s already talked about having ready to publish. Do come back tomorrow and see how Caron adds a different perspective and touch from the usual on here.
We have a couple more guest slots lined up later this year already but if anyone else would like to be a guest editor for the day, please drop an …
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 of information requests.
The MoJ has two specially produced full colour booklets, a flowchart, an FAQ document, more than six different forms and training sessions for managers in how to make the whole system work all in the …
The subject of child detention for immigration purposes was raised by Liberal Democrat peer Roger Roberts in Parliament yesterday. I’ve expressed my frustration often enough at how journalists sometimes get in the way of the news with their insistence on introducing, talking over and then summarising what other people are saying, rather than letting us hear the actually words for ourselves. So taking a leaf out of my own book here is full transcript of the question and follow-ups from Hansard:
Asked By Lord Roberts of Llandudno: To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will end child detention in …
There are good reasons for having laws that require local councils to be politically impartial in their publicity work. The Mayor election currently underway in Tower Hamlets has shown, once again, the big problem with the existing rules (for English and Welsh councils).
The council wanted to include a 200 word statement from each nominated Mayor candidate in the latest council newspaper. With the option open to every nominated candidate, this would have been a fair and useful step. However, the restrictions …
You might have thought that scrapping central government targets would result in local bodies being able to cut at least some of their own monitoring and reporting setups. But in an Alice in Wonderland style twist, Home Secretary Theresa May’s decision to scrap the “confidence target” for the police has been followed by the Met Police setting up a new “Confidence and Satisfaction Board”.
In June Theresa May announced that the police would be judged on cutting crime, ending both the set of performance targets bundled up as the Policing Pledge and also ending the judging of police by whether or …
Science is all about process, context and community, but reporting concentrates on single people, projects and events … Hundreds of interesting things happen in science every week, and yet journalists from all over the media seem driven by a herd mentality that ensures only a handful of stories are covered. And they’re not even the most interesting stories in many
The Coalition Government has had its fair share of tensions over major policy areas, including most notably and most recently welfare reform and the future of Trident.
Despite being a coalition, the tensions have not been between the two parties in coalition; rather, they have been along shifting lines that cut-across parties. On welfare, for example, it was IDS, backed up by Nick Clegg and Oliver Letwin, arguing against George Osborne for sufficient funding to make radical welfare reform a genuine reform rather than a glorified word for cuts. On Trident, Osborne and Clegg have been on the same …
Here’s your starter for ten in our Saturday slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
An easy question to ask, a rather harder one to answer. The news during the week about plans to change child benefit has seen many stories in the media about people on well above average income who are described as “middle class” rather than, say, “rich”.
Does this matter? Does “middle class” imply “not rich”? And is it not about money anyway (a point Millennium Elephant forcefully made earlier in the week)?
Pitched primarily at a business audience, Stever Robbins’s new book 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More is also highly applicable to political activists and public officials.
Stever Robbins’s book covers familiar ground for personal improvement and business books – how to do more and do it better in less time. Its light touch and emphasis on detailed practical advice raise it above the field – as long as you like the distinctive humour peppered with references to zombies, cats and tall tales about himself.
I’ve not yet had time to fully digest all 176 pages of John Hutton’s interim report on the future of public sector pensions, but here are some parts which have stood out so far and look to be the key issues for the future:
I have been struck both by the enormous complexity of the subject matter, as well as by the degree of misunderstandings and confusions that surround any debate about it. My report tries to dispel some of these myths. It is mistaken to talk about ‘gold-plated’ pensions as being the norm across the public sector. In the most part, the pensions that are paid out to public service employees when they retire are fairly modest by any standard, although in part these reflect part-career or part-time working. For some people these modest pensions now look over generous because of the changes that have taken place in the private sector over the last 30 years or so, where pensions have become generally much less valuable than they used to be. Fewer people in the private sector are also contributing to a pension. I hope these negative trends can be reversed and I fully support efforts to do so.
This downward drift in pension provision in the private sector does not however provide sufficient support or justification in my view for the argument that pensions in the public sector must therefore automatically follow the same course … I have therefore rejected a race to the bottom as the only answer…
Final salary schemes, which are the norm across much of the public sector, primarily reward high earners who progress rapidly through the salary scales…
All these past reforms , the current pay freeze and planned workforce reductions will reduce the future cost of pensions. The gross cost of paying unfunded public service pensions is expected to fall from 1.9 per cent of GDP in 2010-11 to 1.4 per cent of GDP by 2060 …
However, these measures will take many decades to fully affect the costs of pensions in payment, which are heavily influenced by existing pensioners, the vast majority of whom are still in pre-reform schemes. The Commission estimates that gross expenditure on unfunded public service pensions will remain close to current levels as a proportion of GDP over the next decade…
The increase in longevity also means that these pensions are now likely to be paid out for longer, increasing the overall costs. These extra costs, despite recent reforms, have not been equally split between employer and employees…
The most effective way to make short-term savings is to increase member contributions and there is also a clear rationale for doing so…
Evidence to the Commission has also made it clear that current pension structures, combined with the requirement to provide comparable pensions (‘Fair Deal’), are a barrier to non-public service providers, potentially reducing the efficiencies and innovation in public service delivery that could be achieved.
The lack of long term cost increases (as a proportion of GDP), the way the schemes particularly benefit those who end up in the best paid jobs and the view that decreasing private sector pension schemes is no reason for the public sector to follow suit all look towards a final report that may recommend many changes of detail but will not propose radical reductions in overall public sector pension provision.
Here is the report in full – and do post up a comment if you spot something significant somewhere in the details:
The possibilities of better use of technology to improve government have often come up on this site, so readers may find of interest what the Cabinet Office’s Draft Structural Reform Plan (a set of priorities for each department) says on the matter:
3.1 Increase powers of CIO to drive the integration and improve value for money of ICT infrastructure
i. Set up infrastructure for new CIO office and increase central CIO powers
ii. Start the roll out cross-departmental asset register on a common ICT infrastructure
iii.
Ed Miliband’s campaign chief breached House of Commons rules by sending a Parliamentary letter to voters during the general election campaign, anti-sleaze watchdogs have found…
Mr Khan was reported to the watchdog after it emerged that he had sent a mailshot using Commons notepaper and pre-paid envelopes to inform voters that he could no longer deal with constituency cases during the dissolution of Parliament…
Mr Lyon said that although it was clear Mr Khan had tried to keep constituents informed, one effect of the letter was to appear to be canvassing “support for his
One of the major achievements in the Coalition Agreement is the commitment of the Conservatives to support not merely a “wholly or mainly” elected Upper House but also one elected by proportional representation no less.
The timetable has started to slip, from the original agreement’s decision to “come forward with a draft motions by December 2010” to talk about draft legislation in January and then, slipped in near the end of Nick Clegg’s conference speech, the intention that the first elections will not be held until the latest possible moment while still keeping the commitment to act in this Parliament – …
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 convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.
Just go to our email sign up page to start getting these emails. You can also sign up for a special once-a-week email, bringing …
Spend time talking to Liberal Democrat members about how the party should or shouldn’t go about selecting its Westminster Parliamentary candidates and pretty soon you’ll hear someone say, usually in the context of whether or not we have too many male white candidates, “But it should be about selecting the best person for the job”. Even people who argue for either positive action or positive discrimination frequently accept the underlying assumption – but argue that to get the best person for the job requires a broader vision, taking into account wider discrimination in society and so on.
As Helen reported earlier today, there is now a third person publicaly in the running to be the Liberal Democrat candidate for London Mayor – Jeremy Ambache.
With his Facebook page having only just gone up, it unsurprisingly only has 4 fans so far at the time of writing. Lembit Opik’s page is continuing to edge up – now at 225 fans – but, on Facebook at least, he’s been quickly and clearly overtaken by Duwayne Brooks who has 381 fans for his Mayoral bid.
One for the bureaucratic irony files this. The Information Commissioner has announced that 33 public sector bodies have so regularly broken the rules on responding to Freedom of Information requests that they have been put in special measures.
The 33 bodies are all being required to fully document how they handle future requests and report monthly to the Information Commissioner on how they are doing are complying with the rules. Their record will be reviewed in three months time.
Look for examples of sensible government attitude towards copyright and the Pentagon may not strike you as an obvious starting point. But for years the US military has had a very enlightened attitude towards its official photographs: the photos are paid for by the public so the public should be able to use them for free. The British military has also moved towards much more sensible policies on such copyright matters in recent years.
Aside from such piecemeal advances, there has been a debate going on about the general application of “Crown Copyright” and what, or shouldn’t, be allowed to be …
Carrot or stick? It’s a common policy debate – do you get the best outcome by punishing or encouraging?
At the moment, it most frequently comes up in political debates over the environment, and in particular recycling. Can recycling levels best be raised by encouragement, such as discounts for recycling more of your waste, or by threats, such as legal limits on how much you can place in your bins?
It is a question that can be applied much more widely, which is why I was interested …
On Friday I mentioned how the old Liberal Democrat policy of integrating and simplifying the tax and benefits systems is getting a revival courtesy of Iain Duncan Smith. The former Conservative leader turned Work and Pensions Secretary has been arguing hard for the funds to introduce a simplified universal benefit that also is more generous than current rules to people in low-paid jobs. This would mean that people who currently find that taking a job makes them worse off, or only marginally better off, than being unemployed thanks to loss of benefits would lose less of their benefits and so …
‘We are setting out clear rules banning councils using taxpayers’ cash to lobby government and this includes publicity stalls at conferences,’ Shapps said. He also called for councils to disclose how much taxpayers’ money is being spent on overall comms.
The appointments of various LibDem MPs to be PPS to ministers have been rather low-profile, so in case you have missed any here is the complete list:
Gordon Birtwistle – PPS to Danny Alexander
Mike Crockart – PPS to Michael Moore
Duncan Hames – PPS to Sarah Teather
Jo Swinson – PPS to Vince Cable
Jenny Willott – PPS to Chris Huhne
and in addition Norman Lamb as Chief Parliamentary and Political Adviser to Nick Clegg is also his PPS.
Congratulations to Annette Brooke, Liberal Democrat MP for Mid Dorset & North Poole, for winning MP of the Year in the Dods & Scottish Widows Women in Public Life Awards.
The accolade was awarded by a panel of judges which included Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, Dame Suzi Leather, Chair of The Charity Commission and Dame Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive of Oxfam.
The judges said that Annette Brooke deserved to win thanks to her record of “tirelessly lending her wisdom, position and huge skill to help hundreds …
Unusual political times indeed courtesy of the front page of today’s Times. For a long time a central part of Liberal Democrat welfare policy was to integrate and simplify the tax and benefits system. The policy faded away from the party’s priorities, partly because the details were never that straightforward; for example, how do you integrate a system based on weekly payments and assessments (benefits) with another one based on monthly and annual payments and assessments (tax, particularly income tax and PAYE)?
A large chunk of that policy is now very much back on the political agenda, as ConservativeHome reports:
Tristan Ward @ David Allen
"PFI won’t help stop the planet burning"
Who said anything about PFI - I didn't.
The private money that is building (not enough) house...
Nick Baird With regard to client-side image scanning, the danger of mission creep are real, but I have other concerns. One is whether this is truly a practical and effecti...
Tara Foster Hi Simon
"Has the author not heard of girls sharing pictures with boys who then share with their friends ? of boys and girls tricked in to sharing pictures w...
Sarah Agreed. We are far too smart as a party to abandon our liberal values to pretend that social media and photo bans will be effective. The method by which we woul...
Simon McGrath The author, rather oddly says "Anthropic’s latest model, is reported to be three times better than its predecessor at biology "
He seems to think this is a b...
The council wanted to include a 200 word statement from each nominated Mayor candidate in the latest council newspaper. With the option open to every nominated candidate, this would have been a fair and useful step. However, the restrictions …
3.1 Increase powers of CIO to drive the integration and improve value for money of ICT infrastructure
…
At the moment, it most frequently comes up in political debates over the environment, and in particular recycling. Can recycling levels best be raised by encouragement, such as discounts for recycling more of your waste, or by threats, such as legal limits on how much you can place in your bins?
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Good news on political donations?
Conference booked
New chair of North Northamptonshire Council stands down over social media posts
Are Labour going to cross another red line?
Tristan Ward 
Nick Baird 
Tara Foster 
Sarah 
Simon McGrath 