Author Archives: NewsHound

NewsHound

LibLink: David Laws: George Osborne needs to prove his cuts won’t stall improvement in education

By NewsHound | Wed 11th November 2015 - 6:04 pm

As Schools Minister, David Laws introduced the Pupil Premium, extra money for disadvantaged kids in school to help close the attainment gap.

He has written for the Independent to say that the Government needs to do more to ensure that people have a route out of poverty:

The Government also needs a new drive to raise educational standards, and to keep the focus on improving attainment for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds – those who are much more likely to end up in poverty and on benefits. We are not going to address poverty and create opportunity while 60 per cent of young people from poor households fail even to achieve the old and unambitious target to secure five GCSEs at C grade or higher, including English and Maths. This figure is a national disgrace.

The last Government had a strong record on education – with the introduction of the Pupil Premium, swift action to tackle failing schools, and the clean- up of English’s discredited qualifications system. But there is nothing at all to be complacent about. If the country’s main anti-poverty and pro-opportunity strategy is now to rely on education and work, then we have got to do an awful lot more and more intelligently

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NewsHound

++ Breaking news: Adrian Sanders wins in Torbay

By NewsHound | Fri 6th November 2015 - 10:12 am

postcard3

Congratulations to Adrian Sanders, the former MP for Torbay, who won a local council seat in yesterday’s by-election, increasing the percentage of votes from 30% to a stonking 69%.  The by-election followed the sad death of long-standing Lib Dem councillor Ruth Pentney.

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NewsHound

Alex Carlile rejects suggestion support for intelligence agencies may have been influenced by business relationship with ex-spy chief

By NewsHound | Wed 4th November 2015 - 4:23 pm

Alex Carlile has rejected any suggestion his public support for the intelligence agencies may have been influenced by his business relationship with one of the UK’s ex-spy chiefs. Speaking to the Guardian he said:

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NewsHound

Draft Investigatory Powers Bill – the key points and link to the full text

By NewsHound | Wed 4th November 2015 - 1:13 pm

The Guardian has helpfully just published this handy guide to the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, just announced in parliament by Teresa May:

  • Requires web and phone companies to store records of websites visited by every citizen for 12 months for access by police, security services and other public bodies.
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NewsHound

By-election news – Jane Brophy selected for Oldham West and Royton

By NewsHound | Mon 2nd November 2015 - 8:10 pm

jane_brophyThe Lib Dems have selected Jane Brophy as their candidate in the by-election in Oldham West and Royton, caused by the death of Michael Meacher MP. Polling day will be 3rd December.

Although Meacher held the seat in May with a majority of nearly 15,000, the Liberal Democrats ran the council until 2011.  Elections in Oldham tend to be Labour/Lib Dem battles and are often close, so we will be fighting hard in the by-election.

Jane is an experienced campaigner and has been a councillor for over 15 years. She works for the NHS in Greater Manchester.

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NewsHound

What made Norman Lamb threaten to resign?

By NewsHound | Sat 31st October 2015 - 3:00 pm

Norman Lamb tells the Eastern Daily Press that he threatened to resign during his 3 year term as health and social care minister.

The issue was waiting time targets for mental health conditions – and he got his way.

You always had the feeling that Norman knew exactly what he was doing on mental health but never quite knew why. Then in March, the Sunday Mirror revealed that Norman’s son Archie suffers with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This is absolutely not about having all the tins facing the same way or the bed linen straight. It’s a daily nightmare for those people who are enslaved by its rituals which protect them from dark thoughts.

When his son Archie, now 27, was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) 12 years ago, the North Norfolk MP witnessed the problems patients in Norfolk and Suffolk continue to face.

He explained: “As a family we were faced with the problems in Norfolk of long waiting times and told he had to wait six months to start psychological therapies.

“For us that was too long and I gave up on the NHS at that stage. We paid for him to get access to counselling, but I’m acutely aware many people cannot do that. I don’t find that situation tolerable.

“It got to the point where Archie couldn’t walk down the street, he was worried there would be something sharp on the pavement. He found it hard to leave the house. In that situation you are constantly checking things because of the dark thoughts in your mind, which you simply can’t escape from.”

He then talked about the targets he introduced and other things he’d done as health minister:

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NewsHound

LibLink: Tim Farron Why we must stop the Tories hitting the most vulnerable

By NewsHound | Sat 31st October 2015 - 12:30 pm

Tim Farron has shown great self discipline. In an article for the Mirror about this week’s tax credits showdown in the Lords, he turns his fire, rightly, on the Tories. He only slips in one sly dig at Labour:

Sadly Labour wouldn’t support our move to scrap the cuts altogether, but we joined with them to force a delay.

It isn’t ideal, but it is a chance to tell the government it should improve its plans.

If Labour wouldn’t support the move when they are led by a proper leftie, you wonder if they ever would.

Tim looks at why these tax credit cuts are so bad:

These cuts to tax credits hit people exclusively on low pay .

People who are doing the right thing- who are working- but in low paid work.

People who find themselves having to plan their spending carefully- who get to the end of the month and are having to watch where every penny goes.

These are simply the wrong people for the Conservatives to be taking money from.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Cllr Peter Thornton: Harold Macmillan built our house

By NewsHound | Thu 29th October 2015 - 3:10 pm

Peter Thornton is the Liberal Democrat leader of South Lakeland Council. Their area includes Tim Farron’s Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency. Housing has long been one of the priorities of the Liberal Democrat administration. Peter writes for the Huffington Post comparing the current Conservative thinking on housing to that of their predecessors in the 1950s and 1960s. Harold Macmillan built his family home, he said, on the instructions of Winston Churchill:

This was a generation who knew that setting targets and making speeches was not enough to make things happen. Production, supply lines, labour forces, these were also needed to win wars and also to build the homes that we needed.

Macmillan made sure brickworks were at full production, he organised supplies of softwood from abroad and he divided the country into ten regions, each with it’s own targets. He realised that public housing, Council Houses as we all knew them, was the most efficient way to build homes quickly for the people who needed them.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Ed Davey: The Tories are trying to kill off our renewable energy boom

By NewsHound | Sun 25th October 2015 - 10:25 am

Former Lib Dem Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey has condemned the way that the Conservatives governing alone are trashing all he did to create a boom in clean, planet-saving renewable energy:

My experience as energy and climate change secretary – in the months I spent battling George Osborne over the budget for investment in low carbon, and in the daily attrition with Eric Pickles over onshore wind – was that many Conservatives simply regard their commitment to climate change action as something they had to say to get into power. With some honourable exceptions, most Conservatives I worked with seemed to view Lib Dem green energy policies as part of the political price they paid for the coalition.

Happily, the Conservatives cannot undo much of what the coalition achieved: from the trebling of the UK’s renewable power capacity to the 27 contracts I signed in March for more renewable power plants to be built over the next few years, the Lib Dems’ green legacy stands. I have heard that the chancellor has asked if he can get out of the contracts I signed. But he can’t. So I’m looking forward to Conservative ministers opening onshore and offshore wind farms that I commissioned.

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LibLink: Nick Clegg: The Tory assault on housing associations is another betrayal

By NewsHound | Fri 23rd October 2015 - 1:10 pm

Nick Clegg has a new regular Evening Standard column and in the latest edition, he talks about housing.

After a look at the history and importance of housing associations, Nick writes about how he and Danny Alexander secured assurances that housing associations would receive support to continue building more houses for rent. These assurances have now been trashed now the Tories have a majority:

Five years ago I dissuaded the Conservatives in Coalition from fiddling with social rents to cut the housing benefit bill because it would have had a disastrous effect on the ability of housing associations to raise the money

…

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NewsHound

Tim Farron on Swim Deep, Wild Beasts and Everything Everything

By NewsHound | Thu 22nd October 2015 - 3:56 pm

Everything Everything @ LatitudeRemember that awkward moment with Ming and the Arctic Monkeys? This is not a problem we’re going to have with Tim Farron. In fact, he’s more likely to introduce us to bands we’ve never heard of. When he took his dog Jasper fell running the other night, he was listening to Everything Everything.


NME have picked up on an interview he did with The Big Issue North in which he talked about his musical tastes:

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Jo Swinson supports size 6 model who was told she was “too big” for her agency

By NewsHound | Mon 19th October 2015 - 1:50 pm

Last week model Charli Howard hit the headlines when she wrote an open letter to her modelling agency who had told her that at a mere size 6, she was too big to work. From the Independent:

“The more you force us to lose weight and be small, the more designers have to make clothes to fit our sizes, and the more young girls are being made ill. It’s no longer an image I choose to represent,” she wrote.

Howard’s letter made headlines globally and comes after a number of models have openly criticised the fashion industry for body-shaming by telling them they need to lose weight.

In yesterday’s Sunday Times (£) former Equalities Minister and Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson was quick to give Charli her support, telling the paper:

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NewsHound

LibLink: Kath Pinnock: Lib Dems have stood up for the needs of very young children

By NewsHound | Fri 16th October 2015 - 4:24 pm

You can sense Kath Pinnock’s frustration about the Government’s Childcare Bill as she outlines how she and the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords tried to force the Government to add some detail into the proposals in an article for Politics Home. It was pretty basic stuff that needed fleshing out as well – like the level of funding available for councils to provide 15 hours of childcare a week. Quality and training standards weren’t outlined – and nor was there even a definition of who was eligible.

Liberal Democrats tabled several amendments to deal with these issues at both Committee stage when debate takes place on the details and at Report stage when the Government is held to account if it hasn’t listened to concerns and made changes. Time and again during detailed debate we challenged the Government Minister to declare the level of funding that would be available. Every time we were told to wait for the announcement from the Chancellor in his funding review in November. And every time, we responded that this was not good enough. We have a responsibility to very young children to make sure there was enough funding for quality childcare. We pushed that to the vote and, with Labour Peers, the Government was defeated.

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NewsHound

In video: Nick Clegg on Newsnight

By NewsHound | Wed 14th October 2015 - 7:22 pm

In case you missed it, here’s Nick Clegg talking on last night’s Newsnight about the EU referendum. When asked whether hope or fear would win the day for the In campaign, he said that the simple fact was that it was in our national interest to be part of the EU.

He also said that he regretted sitting next to David Cameron at PMQs for five years, saying it looked like we were passive rather than architects of many aspects of the government’s programme.

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LibLink: Tim Farron: Cameron and Corbyn stance on Brexit “downright pathetic”

By NewsHound | Wed 14th October 2015 - 12:32 pm

Tim Farron has put up a stonking case for Britain to remain in the EU over on Politics Home and denounced the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition for their stance on the issue:

On my mantelpiece there is an old black and white photo. It’s of my Uncle Morris at 14, the same age as my daughter is today.
It was taken in 1934 and in six years, he was dead, shot down over Beachy Head.

A generation ago there were nuclear weapons pointed at Britain on the soil of countries that today are our partners in the EU. Now we are sitting round a table together.

If these were the only reasons for staying in the EU they would pretty much clinch it for me.

What is the European Union? I’ll tell you – it is the most successful peace process in world history.

As such events show we toy with European disunity at our peril. Being a supporter of the European Union is not always easy. Some of the institutional structures and decision-making are hard to defend – indeed in many cases I wouldn’t want to.

But the case for Europe isn’t about institutions. It’s about partnership with our neighbours. It’s about a vision of how we address the great challenges of the 21st century: economic globalisation and protectionism, resource depletion and climate change, terrorism, crime and war.

After making the case that this is no world for isolationism to be a good idea, he then criticises David Cameron for effectively putting party before country:

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Ten Lib Dem council leaders call for borrowing powers to build council houses

By NewsHound | Wed 14th October 2015 - 11:38 am

Terraced housing
Ten Liberal Democrat council leaders, including the party’s local government spokesperson Watford Mayor Dorothy Thornhill, have written to the Guardian to call for the government to allow councils to borrow money to build council houses to deal with the “national emergency” in housing provision:

As Liberal Democrat council leaders we are outraged at the government’s short-sightedness in selling off council homes to pay for the right-to-buy extension to housing associations (PM warns councils over housing provision, 12 October). We have a vast shortage of affordable homes, which constitutes nothing short of a national emergency, and yet the government is seeking to make quick financial gains by disposing of properties that could provide much-needed homes for generations. Forcing right to buy on housing associations was the wrong policy before the election and it remains the wrong policy now. Shifting homes from one tenure to another without addressing our failure to build enough homes overall is like rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship.

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Major funding boost for ALDC

By NewsHound | Mon 12th October 2015 - 2:46 pm

aldc-logoWe’ve just heard the excellent news that the Association of Liberal Democrats Campaigners and Councillors (ALDC) has been awarded £480,000 from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd (JRRT) .

The funding will be over five years and will expand ALDC’s team of Development Officers. They are the people who travel around the country to help local parties.

We’ve received comments from two Tims.

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LibLink: Nick Clegg: Britain should stick to diplomacy if it really wants to help Syria

By NewsHound | Fri 9th October 2015 - 11:58 am

Nick Clegg has been writing in the Evening Standard about how he think the UK can best help Syria:

The impression the Conservatives seem to give is that they wanted to take military action all along but were thwarted in doing so by the Labour Party — or because they didn’t have a majority in Parliament of their own.

This is not true. The decision not to bomb Syria was taken by Cameron and myself and discussed across both sides of the Coalition. The logic was simple: there was no coherent ground campaign in Syria to which air strikes could usefully contribute.

…

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LibLink: Tim Farron: Ignore the spin – social housing is still under threat from the Conservatives

By NewsHound | Thu 8th October 2015 - 1:43 pm

Tim Farron has put David Cameron’s new housing policy under the microscope and found it wanting. We should take notice of what he says because he knows a lot about housing, the issue that brought him into politics and has made his number one priority. Writing in the New Statesman, he says:

This is still an economically illiterate and socially divisive policy with devastating consequences, which was flung into the Conservative election campaign in a last minute attempt to grab some votes by invoking memories of Thatcher.

Firstly, selling off housing association homes does nothing to address the national emergency in housing. The huge shortage

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LibLink: Jo Swinson: Shared grandparental leave risks dads missing out

By NewsHound | Thu 8th October 2015 - 12:18 pm

Jo Swinson has cast a critical eye over George Osborne’s plans to extend parental leave to grandparents in an article for Personnel Today.

As minister responsible for introducing shared parental leave just 6 months ago, Jo explained why they hadn’t included grandparents at that time:

When the legislation was being debated in Parliament we looked carefully at extending leave to non-parents, and rejected that change for good reasons. If it is no longer to be about developing parental bonds, then why draw the line at grandparents? Shouldn’t leave then be shareable with aunts, uncles or friends?

Important though other carers and relatives are, parents have a unique role in a child’s life.  Shared parental leave is also about addressing the historical lack of workplace provision for men to fulfil their roles as fathers.

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LibLink: Tim Farron: The Tory conference is ignoring the humanitarian crisis unfolding on our doorstep

By NewsHound | Wed 7th October 2015 - 1:24 pm

Tim Farron has written for the Independent about how the Tory Conference is ignoring the humanitarian crisis. This was written at the same time as Liberal Democrat Chief Whip went to Calais with a car full of items donated by Liberal Democrat staff.

They will say, over and over, that Jeremy Corbyn will bankrupt your country, steal your job and surrender to Britain’s enemies. They might even have a go at him for not singing the national anthem. And while I might agree that the Islington North MP lives in an economic fantasy land – a land far removed from fiscal reality – these Tory tactics are a smokescreen; and not a particularly sophisticated one. You can bet your bottom dollar they won’t be talking about the biggest single issue facing Europe today – the refugee crisis.

They will simply not discuss developing a proper international plan to help the hundreds of thousands of migrants scattered across Europe or the millions of people trapped in Middle Eastern tented camps. But with this help and support must come a diplomatic strategy to deal with nations like Syria whose barbaric civil war is uprooting millions of people.

Diplomacy is not done at the barrel of a gun or from 30,000 feet it is done by supporting moderate opposition and working with regional actors to make sure we do not play into the IS narrative. Together with a humanitarian response must come a diplomatic strategy. One strand cannot work without the other.

He outlined the action he wants to see:

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LibLink – Giles Wilkes: £93bn of corporate welfare? What nonsense

By NewsHound | Mon 5th October 2015 - 3:40 pm

Giles Wilkes, who was a special adviser to Vince Cable and chief economist at CentreForum, is now a leader writer at the Financial Times (which usually charges an online subscription). One of his recent editorials has been transferred to the free blog section so we are able to bring it to you.

Labour should be wary of giving credence to a very suspect number.

The £93bn figure now routinely used to evaluate the scale of “corporate welfare” in Britain is badly misleading. If the Labour Party is to re-establish its economic credibility, it needs to give the number a very wide berth.

First of all, the very concept of “corporate welfare” is tricky and question-begging. When applied to individuals, welfare is easy to understand – it means payments from the state provided on the basis of need.

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Catherine Bearder to Nigel Lawson: Pulling out of the EU would mean losing power and influence over our future

By NewsHound | Fri 2nd October 2015 - 4:00 pm

Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder has written to the Times (£) to respond to Nigel Lawson’s article which argued that the UK should leave the EU:

She wrote:

Sir, Lord Lawson’s argument for EU exit may be eloquent but it is fanciful. It is true that the 19 countries of the eurozone are going to have to move closer together. But that makes it even more imperative that Britain, as the financial capital of Europe, defends its economic interests in the EU’s single market as a whole.

Half of our exports go to the rest of Europe and even if we were

…

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LibLink: Tim Farron’s introduction to Black History Month

By NewsHound | Fri 2nd October 2015 - 1:48 pm

bhm-logo600Tim Farron has been writing at the Black History Month website about what the event means to him:

As a Liberal Democrat, one of my most deeply held beliefs is that everyone should have the opportunity to achieve their ambitions and become anything they want to be.

So many of the people who we will remember this Black History Month embody this ideal.

People like Winifred Atwell, the first black artist to have a number one single in the UK or John Kent the first black police officer. People like Mary Seacole, the pioneering nurse who overcame prejudice in order to go and treat sick and wounded soldiers in the Crimean war.

To me, part of the importance of Black History Month is that it reminds us of the invaluable work of so many black and minority ethnic men and women, who have fought discrimination and injustice to secure freedoms and opportunities for future generations.

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LibLink: Paddy Ashdown – While Russia launches airstrikes Britain’s position on Syria remains an inglorious failure of diplomacy

By NewsHound | Thu 1st October 2015 - 2:25 pm

Paddy Ashdown has been writing in the Independent about this week’s developments and diplomatic stand-offs regarding Syria. He said that the west has allowed its influence to be diminished by successive failures:

We bluster in the UN, Washington and London about willing the ends, but we have nothing left but bombs to will the means. The levers to make things happen in Syria now lie in Moscow and Tehran – all we are left with is a bomb-release button at 30,000ft.

This is a diplomatic failure of inglorious proportions. Historic proportions, too, since the result will inevitably be another ratchet down in the West’s influence, already grievously diminished by our failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. One would have thought that we would have learnt the lessons of those defeats. But, still – sadly, stupidly – when the West sees a problem in the world its first instinct is to bomb it.

He asks what some great foreign secretaries of the past would have done:

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LibLink: Tim Farron: Not satisfied with snatching their milk in the 70s, the Tories now seem set to steal the lunches of children

By NewsHound | Wed 30th September 2015 - 3:09 pm

Remember how Mrs Thatcher put an end to free school milk in the 1970s? Our parents really should have known then, shouldn’t they? Anyway, the Tories appear to be getting ready to ditch the free school meals introduced by the Liberal Democrats two years ago.

Tim Farron has written for the Huffington Post making it clear why he thinks that free school meals are important:

Children from all backgrounds, rich and poor sitting down for lunch together, ending any stigma of young pupils having to admit they receive free school meals is a good thing. I will not sit by while the Conservatives equivocate on this. My party is utterly opposed to it’s removal.

The Tories are taking an axe to the education budget at the expense of children’s learning.

Not satisfied with snatching milk in the 1970s, they now seem set to steal the lunches of children.

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Former Lib Dem Councillor tells his story of coming to UK as a teenage refugee

By NewsHound | Wed 30th September 2015 - 9:07 am

We’ve heard a lot of Liberal Democrats urging a compassionate response to the refugee crisis but for former Brent Councillor Paul Lorber, it’s personal.

He told the Brent and Kilburn Times about his family’s escape from Czechoslovakia and how he found safety in the UK:

He said: “I had no wish to go. I had a happy childhood in Czechoslovakia and did not want to leave all my friends and everything else I had known.”

His parents, who had both survived the horrors of Nazi concentration camps in the Second World War- his mother Auschwitz Berkenau and his father Sachenhausen- knew the risks of bringing up a Jewish family under a violent dictatorship and wanted a secure future for their sons.

After their first attempt to cross the Austrian border was blocked by a stand-off with a Russian tank his father was forced to falsify exit papers which claimed he was taking them on holiday to Yugoslavia…

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Kelvin Mackenzie offers Stephen Tall £5000 to fulfil his pledge to run down Whitehall naked…

By NewsHound | Tue 22nd September 2015 - 11:55 am

Remember that pledge of Stephen Tall’s that he’d run naked down Whitehall if we were down to 24 seats in the election? Well, he has been reminded about it every time he’s appeared on the Daily Politics since. Back on the programme yesterday, he was put in an awkward position when former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie offered £5000 to charity for Stephen to do it. So long as the legal issues can be overcome, there doesn’t seem to be a way he can get out of it now. From the Telegraph:

Stephen Tall, co-editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, was asked on the BBC’s Daily Politics show why he had not yet delivered on his promise to run nude if his party lost half of its seats.

The Sun’s former editor Kelvin MacKenzie, who appeared on the same show, then offered Mr Tall £5,000 to complete the challenge.

Mr Tall and Mr MacKenzie shook hands on the promise that he would carry out the task in return for the money being donated to his chosen charity.

See the exchange on iPlayer here.

Stephen took to Twitter to repent in 140 characters.

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Jo Swinson ‘mistaken for secretary’ by government official

By NewsHound | Mon 21st September 2015 - 5:02 pm

Jo Swinson Opening Glasgow ConferenceThe BBC reports:

Former minister Jo Swinson has spoken of the “delicious” moment she was mistaken for a secretary by a senior government official.

The ex-Lib Dem MP, an equalities minister in the coalition government, was speaking about the difficulties faced by women in the workplace.

She said the official was mortified when he realised his mistake.
She also revealed that her then boss Vince Cable skipped a diversity training seminar she had set up.

Ms Swinson said she had set up a session for business department ministers and senior civil servants on avoiding “unconscious bias” in the workplace but that she was “the only minister that turned up”.

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LibLink: Sir Nick Harvey: Only the Lib Dems can fill the void left by Labour

By NewsHound | Sat 19th September 2015 - 5:46 pm

Former North Devon MP Nick Harvey writes for the Mirror that the Liberal Democrats have a great opportunity in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s election and sets out what we must do to take advantage of it:

Socially, we must fight unfair benefit cuts which hit the weakest and undermine the working poor.

We must expose the chicanery of a “living wage” which will barely match the existing “minimum wage” if inflated in line with past trends.

Economically, we campaign unequivocally for Britain’s membership of the world’s largest market, the European Union, and for global efforts to liberalise trade fairly.

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