Category Archives: The Independent View

Richard Carr

The Independent View: The General Power of Competence – Is the sky the limit?

By Richard Carr | Thu 8th September 2011 - 3:51 pm

As the Localism Bill moves into Report stage in the Lords, local authorities are getting ever closer to gaining their much discussed General Power of Competence (GPoC).

For Lib Dems the passage of the Localism Bill is an interesting moment. Many, one suspects, might echo the views of former Lib Dem LGA leader Cllr Richard Kemp who in January blogged his ‘support about 80% of the Bill, like the direction but have concerns about the deliverability of 15% of the Bill, and actively detest 5% of it.’

Though Kemp’s reservations were reserved for the provisions concerning elected mayors, Lib Dems …

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Peter Bradwell

The Independent View: Social media – no longer an easy target

By Peter Bradwell | Fri 26th August 2011 - 11:08 am

Open Rights Group, alongside 9 other human right groups including Amnesty UK, Liberty and Index on Censorship, yesterday wrote to the Home Secretary, Rt Hon Theresa May MP. We were responding to the Prime Minister’s comments that the Government will “look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”.

The letter was written to coincide with a meeting that took place at lunchtime yesterday between the Home Secretary and Twitter, Facebook and Research in Motion, to discuss what that …

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Laura Chappell

The Independent View: Vince needs to consider his legacy

By Laura Chappell | Thu 25th August 2011 - 10:20 am

Plan A is looking shakier than ever. After a slow climb out of recession, growth is now stalling and unemployment rising again, the approach taken thus far – cutting the deficit, and waiting for a spontaneous boom in the private sector – feels ever more risky, both politically and for our pockets. Vince Cable, who has always looked uneasy with a “plan for growth” that involves little except sitting back with fingers crossed, must feel increasingly unnerved.

And he’s right to be worried. His credibility is on the line and his legacy at BIS is yet to be secured. Now is …

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Faiza Chaudary

The Independent View: Not in my Name

By Faiza Chaudary | Sun 14th August 2011 - 11:07 am

The events of the last few days have been alarming and have raised many questions about our society. If you’re like me, you’re still trying make sense of the violence that we’ve seen in communities across England. As the leading independent voice for voluntary and community groups working with young people, my organisation has been inundated with calls and messages from our members expressing concern about the impact of the riots on young people, their image in the media and the programmes that are needed to support them.

There’s no escaping the fact that young people have been involved in …

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Ben Hammersley

The Independent View: Ben Hammersley writes… Let the Internet be so that good can flourish

By Ben Hammersley | Sat 13th August 2011 - 2:25 pm

It was only going to be a matter of time before the technology was blamed. The rioters, along with the rest of the western world, were found to have been using the dominant communication platform of the 21st century as, well, their dominant communication platform. The government’s response: give us powers to turn it off. As the Prime Minister said this morning,

So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and

…

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Laura Cronshaw

Independent View: Catch21 is helping demystify Parliament

By Laura Cronshaw | Tue 9th August 2011 - 12:48 pm

Here at Catch21, our sole aim is to engage and inform our vibrant and vocal electorate, in the ever changing world of politics. To provide discussion, discourse and good old debate in on-trend topics, and to enable the freedom of opinion and understanding to reach out from the House of Commons into our own comfortable common rooms.

In 2009, Catch21 set up the Uni-Q project, a political discussion show that gave students a chance to air their own political opinions whilst grilling willing MP’s. Mirroring the format of BBC Question Time, Uni-Q set off touring colleges and universities across the …

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The Independent View: NHS should routinely offer chicken pox vaccine to children

By David Carter | Mon 25th July 2011 - 2:21 pm

Chicken pox. One of those “mild” childhood illnesses that most of us assume just has to be endured at some point. Sure, it itches like crazy, but what’s the big deal?

That’s how I saw it until two friends of my four-year-old son went down with it in the same month. They described the misery their children went through, the sleepless nights for all the family, the seemingly endless quarantine. And worse: it can put children in hospital, and occasionally even kill them.

As the dreaded varicella zoster virus seemed to creep ever closer to my son’s unprepared immune system, I …

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James Baker

The Independent View: The bigger picture on privacy

By James Baker | Sat 16th July 2011 - 1:35 pm

Amongst the frenzy of the phone hacking scandal Philip Virgo has recalled operation Motorman. This investigation by the Information Commissioner and follow-up report What Price Privacy Now studies and provides details of the illegal trade in personal private information. Rather than being limited to the phone hacking scandal, the report suggests this trade was widespread between newspapers, private investigators and corrupt officials.

This report was presented to the previous government that failed to act upon it and halt the illegal trade in personal information. It is with unfortunate irony that members of that previous government including Lord Prescott …

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Martyn Williams

The Independent View: Nuclear subsidies – no thanks!

By Martyn Williams | Thu 7th July 2011 - 1:54 pm

On Tuesday night in the House of Commons, the nuclear industry moved a significant step closer to getting their hands on an extra £1.3 billion of public money, courtesy of a coalition Government that promised no subsidy for nuclear power.

A Labour attempt to claw the money back through a windfall tax failed. And although this was supported by environmentally-minded Conservative MP, Zac Goldsmith, not a single Liberal Democrat MP gave their backing.

Admittedly there were notable abstentions. Sixteen Liberal Democrat MPs did not troop through the Government lobby to block the Labour proposal – including, intriguingly, Danny Alexander.

The issue …

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Ruthe Isden

The Independent View: Social care and the Dilnot Commission

By Ruthe Isden | Sun 3rd July 2011 - 2:19 pm

Last year’s Liberal Democrat manifesto promised that “We will establish an independent commission, with cross-party support, to develop proposals for long-term care of the elderly.” The new Government took swift action on this manifesto call, setting up an independent commission chaired by Andrew Dilnot in July last year. This week, the Commission on the Funding of Care and Support will present its recommendations on how social care funding can be reformed to ensure a sustainable and affordable care system for the future.

Age UK’s recent report, Care in Crisis, highlighted the serious issues plaguing our care system. At …

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Steve Shaw

Independent View: why we should all campaign for full recall

By Steve Shaw | Mon 27th June 2011 - 3:27 pm

For over six years now I have worked on Parliamentary campaigns such as the Sustainable Communities Act and the Climate Change Act. I have done this as an independent freelance, unaffiliated to any political party and always seeking cross party support.

This experience has given me a deep insight into our system of governance from the Ministers and senior civil servants at the top, whom I meet in Westminster and Whitehall, to communities at the bottom, whom I meet at campaign public meetings that I speak at across the country.

Our democratic system desperately needs reform. People increasingly feel disconnected …

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Kayte Lawton

The Independent View: Public support action on excessive pay gap

By Kayte Lawton | Thu 9th June 2011 - 2:42 pm

The clamour for action on excessive pay is growing, not least from some of our biggest business names. Sir Stuart Rose, of Marks and Spencer, recently suggested that the gap between CEO pay and the wages of ordinary workers might have got out of control, while the newly appointed President of the CBI, Sir Roger Carr, this week described ‘rewards for failure’ as “unforgivable”.

Yet the idea that very high salaries can be justified as long as they are deserved is called into question by research from the High Pay Commission, which found that executive pay has grown by 7 per cent a year in real terms over the last 10 years, compared to annual average real growth of just 0.8 per cent between 1949 and 1979. Researchers can find no evidence that UK firms have done better over the last 10 years than in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Nor is there any evidence that senior executives are significantly more mobile than ordinary workers or modern firms more complex to run, as many supporters of the rapid increase in top pay argue.

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Matt Boyes

The Independent View: The public does support the Big Society

By Matt Boyes | Mon 6th June 2011 - 9:53 am

David Cameron’s “re-launch” of the Big Society last week didn’t generate the revival of enthusiasm for the scheme that some had hoped for. Many people still claim not to understand the term “Big Society”, with critics continuing to suggest it’s little more than PR spin for budget cuts.

With the rise of faith-based organisations taking ownership of community services, and in light of Evan Harris’ warning about “proselytising on the public purse”, it’s clear that non-discriminatory, non-partisan, non-denominational and fair services are needed, both to support the more vulnerable members of the community, and to compensate for local council spending …

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Robert Hazell

The Independent View: Coalition Works! The inside story from the Constitution Unit

By Robert Hazell | Sun 5th June 2011 - 12:39 pm

The coalition is working well, but the Lib Dems could do better, is the overall message from the Constitution Unit’s first report on how the coalition works in Whitehall and Westminster. We are conducting a 12 month study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, with a research team of five, including two former senior civil servants, and one senior broadcaster. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have authorised access to all the key figures in Whitehall, and so far we have interviewed 90 ministers, special advisers, officials, parliamentarians, and external interest groups.

Everyone we interviewed in Whitehall says …

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The Independent View: Why Liberal Democrat HQ needs to agree with Nick on unpaid interns

By Gus Baker | Wed 1st June 2011 - 4:13 pm

The advertisement for multiple unpaid internships on w4mp.org by Liberal Democrat HQ is unfair, unreasonable and irresponsible. It directly contradicts Nick Clegg’s warning that the practice could lead to widening inequality in the UK. The party should follow the Deputy Prime Minister’s lead and pay its interns a fair wage.

London is an expensive place to live. The Evening Standard recently found that the average rent in the city had broken the £1000 per month barrier. The internships advertised on w4mp.org last 4 months. That means the cost of getting work experience with the Liberal Democrats could well …

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Kate Hudson

The Independent View: Alternatives to Trident replacement must include the possibility of no nuclear weapons

By Kate Hudson | Sat 28th May 2011 - 12:23 pm

Since Liam Fox made his announcement last week that while Trident replacement design is going ahead, the Lib Dems will also be looking at alternatives, there has been a flurry of derision about the latter initiative. Most obviously this comes from Liam Fox and the hard–line pro-nuclear lobby who just want to rubbish it. But criticism of Lib Dem efforts also comes from some anti-nuclear quarters and I am not convinced that this is totally reasonable.

From my point of view, it would be very easy to have a pop at the Lib Dem leadership for not backing CND’s maximum programme …

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Danny Dorling

The Independent View: The richest 1% will soon have a record share of our national income

By Danny Dorling | Wed 25th May 2011 - 11:48 am

Just before the general election Nick Clegg complained that the gap between the mean average incomes of the richest fifth as compared to the poorest fifth in Britain had risen from 6.9 to 1 in 1997 to approach 7.2 to 1 towards the end of Labour’s 13 years in power. This shift took the UK one quarter of the way towards becoming as unequal in income as the world’s most unequal large affluent country, the United States.

Within the last 15 months the emergency budget, the March 2011 budget and the comprehensive spending review combined have moved Britain far faster towards …

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The Independent View: Where is the promised aid money being spent?

By Joanne Crouch | Tue 24th May 2011 - 11:52 am

In the run up to the 2011 G8 summit in Deauville, France, this May, international humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide is pushing for commitment and clarity on the agricultural aid promises pledged by G8 members  in the 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila.

Back then, the British Government alongside the other G8 countries committed $22 billion in aid to be distributed over three years as part of the L’Aquila Global Food Security Initiative. The British commitment in particular was for £1.1 billion. These numbers may appear substantial, however they pale in comparison to the $30 billion per year that the UN Food …

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Anthony Butcher

Independent View: Time for Lib Dems to ditch STV

By Anthony Butcher | Sat 21st May 2011 - 6:14 pm

With the loss of the AV referendum, electoral reformers across Britain are now looking at what went wrong and what changes they can make for the future to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We need our political parties to do the same, and that means a re-evaluating their electoral reform policies.

As absurd as it is, the perceived complexity of AV was a significant factor in its rejection by the public. The whole concept of preferential voting has now been tainted for a generation as overly complicated. If we are to engage the public interest in the future we need to …

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Andy Atkins

The Independent View: Lib Dem green credibility in crisis

By Andy Atkins | Sat 14th May 2011 - 10:58 am

The environmental credibility of the Liberal Democrats is under threat.

Its general election manifesto was easily the most ambitious of all the main parties, with the environment firmly at the heart of every policy area.

So our hopes were high when the party joined forces with Cameron’s Conservatives last year  – and higher still when one of the new Prime Minister’s first acts was a promise to lead the greenest Government ever.

Twelve months on the picture looks much bleaker.

Friends of the Earth asked the former chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, Jonathon Porritt, to review the Coalition’s first year in office. His assessment was pretty damning.

Little or no …

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Matt Boyes

Independent View: Help residents recognise their councillors

By Matt Boyes | Thu 12th May 2011 - 10:48 am

With councillors starting new terms following the local election, now is a great opportunity to review how they communicate and get involved with people in their communities. This is actually quite a challenge. Would you be surprised to hear that over two thirds of voters are unable to identify any of their local government representatives? Worryingly, despite the hours of work and campaigning that councillors invest in their local areas, most people admit that they wouldn’t be able to pick them in a line-up. That’s what we found in our Connecting Communities Report, having surveyed over …

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Neal Lawson

The Independent View: What now for any progressive alliance?

By Neal Lawson | Wed 11th May 2011 - 2:47 pm

Rounding off our trio of post-election views from the other parties (see here and here), we have Compass’s Neal Lawson.

So what now for any progressive alliance? Let’s start with an honest assessment of the hole we are in. Labour is now as divided between pluralist and tribalists as it is between those who think the markets needs come before those of society and those who turned social democracy on it head under New Labour. Labour did OK in the North but badly in the South, it did OK in Wales and atrociously in Scotland. The Greens have …

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The Independent View: Good News for Lib Dems in Devon and Cornwall boundary changes?

By Jackie South | Mon 9th May 2011 - 3:26 pm

After the polls, some perhaps more welcome news for the Liberal Democrats.

I’ve recently started running a series of articles on the allthatsleft.co.uk website that set out how the boundary changes in 2015 could play out and what this would mean for the political parties.

On Tuesday, I looked at the impact of changes for Devon and Cornwall.  These two counties will be linked in the next review, creating a controversial trans-Tamar seat linking parts of both counties.  The two counties are set to lose one seat between them, falling from 18 to 17.

It looks as if the changes could be to the Liberal Democrats’ benefit.  I …

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Iain Dale

The Independent View: Iain Dale on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems

By Iain Dale | Sun 8th May 2011 - 10:27 am

When LibDem MPs return to Westminster this week they could be forgiven for having a collective panic attack. In their 22 year history they have never had such an onslaught of the political heebie-jeebies as they experienced at the hands of 12 million grumpy voters this week.

Cleggmania has turned into Cleggophobia. Every policy Nick Clegg touches now is seen to be toxic.

Westminster pundits are already writing him off as a political busted flush. But then again, these are the very same commentators who didn’t see the SNP landslide coming in Scotland. They are the same people who predicted the Tories …

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Rupert Read

The Independent View: How to implement full Lords reform, now that the referendum is lost

By Rupert Read | Sat 7th May 2011 - 5:21 pm

Rupert Read, the Green Party Co-ordinator – East of England, writes:

Dear LibDems

It was good to work with you, and with LabourYes, with UKIP, with people from all parties and none, during the referendum campaign just concluded. We – the YES side – have been defeated by a farrago of money, lies and the worst of propaganda.

What to do now? The answer, surely, is that it is time to press hard for real full Lords reform, with PR as the electoral system. That would be a true prize. It is the very least the Tories can deliver for you / for …

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Stuart Wilks-Heeg

The Independent View: Is it time to rethink postal voting?

By Stuart Wilks-Heeg | Wed 4th May 2011 - 11:54 am

Allegations emerged recently of voters in Rochdale being asked to hand postal ballots for the local elections to party representatives to complete and submit to the Returning Officer. A decade ago, this might have made the national news, but now such stories are probably too familiar to make the headlines.

While electoral fraud is not rife in the UK, the scale of the problem is almost impossible to estimate. One thing is for sure – the Rochdale case does not represent an isolated local difficulty.  Based on joint reporting by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers …

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Greg Muttitt

The Independent View: What the Chilcott Inquiry has missed – the role of oil in the Iraq war

By Greg Muttitt | Tue 3rd May 2011 - 10:23 am

While change sweeps the Middle East and fighting escalates in Libya, the Chilcott Inquiry continues to consider the lessons of the Iraq war. The Inquiry has taught us more about the timing, process and legality of key decisions, but the elephant in the room remains the role oil played in those decisions.

“The oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it,” said Tony Blair in February 2003. His protestations were sufficiently effective that in media and parliamentary debates, raising the oil issue became a sure-fire route to losing credibility. And so Chilcott, who …

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Jim Killock

The Independent View: How to legislate for the digital economy

By Jim Killock | Thu 21st April 2011 - 11:56 am

“What to do about copyright?” In many ways this is a tired, fraught, complex and frustrating debate. It involves lawyers, economists, policy makers, campaigners of varying stripes, international legislation and huge corporate interests. It has been raging for hundreds of years. Change can be painfully slow. That means every so often it is important to revisit your principles.

Organisations such as Open Rights Group believe in the astonishing potential of the internet to expand our creative, economic and democratic horizons. And we believe that this potential is partly dependent on a flexible system of copyright that facilitates the reuse of the …

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Sarah Mulley

The Independent View: Rifts on immigration demonstrate real challenges for the Government

By Sarah Mulley | Fri 15th April 2011 - 5:42 pm

David Cameron’s speech on immigration has unleashed a wave of criticism and debate, both inside and outside the coalition government.  Although some of the fallout tells us more about the political dilemmas facing coalition partners who must now fight an election campaign against each other than it does about immigration, today’s discussions have neatly illustrated some of the challenges facing the Government on this issue.

The first is how to best engage in the public debate.  David Cameron is right to say that “the role of politicians is to cut through the extremes of this debate & approach the subject sensibly …

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Jim Killock

Independent View: Website blocking should not be on the cards

By Jim Killock | Mon 28th March 2011 - 3:15 pm

Lib Dems are wisely taking a detailed look at whether website blocking would lead to excessive legal claims and censorship of legitimate material, or if it could be employed to reduce copyright infringement.

Ofcom, too, has been asked to look at whether the policy is “practical”. We at Open Rights Group met them to say: no it isn’t. And the collateral damage to people’s rights is likely to be very high.

As it stands, copyright holders can already go to Court to ask for websites to be blocked, as the result of previous lobbying. But they don’t use this legal

…

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  • David Allen
    A clear, credible, principled strategy from the Yorkists! Makes a welcome change. Sadly, followed by twenty below-the-line posts, providing nearly twenty ve...
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    so we get a permanant increase in costs for these subsidies based on ( alleged ) windfall profits. Its another big increase in spending -how is it to be paid ...
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    Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...