Author Archives: Tim Starkey

Opinion: Making Prisons Work

By Tim Starkey | Thu 8th July 2010 - 11:15 am

On 30th June, Ken Clarke announced a big re-think of prisons policy. He argued that locking more and more people up isn’t working, that short sentences do nothing to rehabilitate offenders, and that more use should be made of community penalties.

This is music to Lib Dem ears and a welcome change from the macho posturing of recent Home Secretaries – but has he got his facts right?

Whilst a clear majority of those sentenced are given sentences of less than 12 months, short-term prisoners make up less than 10% of the prison population for the simple reason that …

Posted in Op-eds | 8 Comments

Opinion: Stuffing the House of Lords or reforming it?

By Tim Starkey | Thu 3rd June 2010 - 10:20 am

Last week’s announcement of new peers didn’t seem much like a “new way of doing politics”. On the Tory side, wealthy party donors were rewarded for their largess. On our own side, just two of the nine appointments were of people directly elected to the interim peers list, three owed their place on that list to being ex-MPs and four had not come from the interim peers list at all – so much for party democracy!

The statement in the coalition deal that “Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber that is reflective of the …

Opinion: A cap on immigration: illiberal and unworkable?

By Tim Starkey | Thu 27th May 2010 - 2:20 pm

The most illiberal policy in the Lib-Con deal is the plan for a cap on immigration. Now, we all know that as part of a coalition we have to put up with policies we dislike, the real problem with this policy is not just that we dislike it but that in the words of the IPPR, it is “unworkable” (see “The Limit to Limits: is a cap on immigration policy a viable policy for the UK?” March 2010). Here’s why:

1) A cap is a clumsy, inflexible mechanism, owing more to Soviet style central planning than to the needs of …

Posted in News | Tagged immigration | 29 Comments