Category Archives: Op-eds

Tahir Maher

To Brexit or Not to Brexit – That is the Question

By Tahir Maher | Wed 23rd May 2018 - 8:00 am

There is a lot of concern whether UK will be able to complete the Brexit process even though the Tories continue to push, somewhat aimlessly, for the March 2019 date to end our European Union (EU) membership. From the beginning, it was evident that the government was poorly prepared for the negotiations. There was some hope that a more pragmatic approach would prevail when they realised the enormity of the task and its impact on the economy. However, an ambitious yet weak Prime Minister who wants to stay in power at all cost with an ideology cabinet that she cannot control results in her obstinately pursuing a Brexit agenda that she doesn’t believe. May’s reckless government is making a bad situation worse.

There are circumstances in which Brexit could fail. First one is Europe itself. At the moment, the EU 27 countries have to all agree on the deal. No matter what the deal is, the Tories will sell it as a win-win for the UK. However, EU 27 won’t see it that way. They will consider the deal in the cold light of day and judge if it’s good for them (Spain, for example, is worried about the ramifications of any proposed deals for Ireland and Scotland re Catalonia and what happens to Gibraltar).

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Gordon Lishman

Community Politics is not a technique for winning local government elections

By Gordon Lishman | Tue 22nd May 2018 - 3:57 pm

There has been a bit of discussion recently on a couple of Party websites about community politics and whether that idea contributed to recent success in the local elections. But is this defining community politics as the delivery of multiple leaflets with bar charts and slogans?

The phrase “community politics” was coined in 1969 and it was adopted by the Liberal Party in 1970. In 1980, Bernard Greaves and I wrote the following:

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Joe from the Windrush Generation helped shape my liberal life

By Andy Boddington | Tue 22nd May 2018 - 10:16 am

Today is the anniversary of MV Empire Windrush arriving at Tilbury Docks.

This is a personal story. It is also a story about how my liberal views came into being. Above all, is a story about Joe. He died long ago but he still lives in my life. I want to tell this story because the Windrush Generation was so important. To me at least.

We are travelling back to 1962. I was seven and a sicky child. I was the weakest kid on the street. But when an ambulance drew up outside our council house, kids rushed to wonder at my sudden importance. I was taken to a sanitorium that seemed so far away. There I made my first black friend. A friendship that endured for years. Joe had come on a boat from Jamaica. The Windrush Generation.

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Elizabeth Jewkes

The abortion debate is more complicated than arguing the rights of mums versus babies

By Elizabeth Jewkes | Mon 21st May 2018 - 3:35 pm

It’s easy to assume the upcoming vote on abortion in Ireland is a black and white issue. A straight decision between the rights of an unwanted, unborn child versus the rights of a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant.

Actually, it’s much more complicated than that. Let me tell you my story, as the nearly mum of a much wanted baby.

I’ve never had morning sickness so it’s really only if I’m overdue, very short tempered, very hungry and along with that little blue line that I know I’m pregnant. At 12 weeks, I went to the hospital for my booking …

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Mark Valladares

Have you ever thought of becoming a Parish councillor?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 21st May 2018 - 11:28 am

Now I fully accept that, for many of our readers, the idea of Parish Councils is all a bit redolent of “The Vicar of Dibley” (albeit the cause of confusion between Parish Councils and Parochial Church Councils), but they can be a key element of rural campaigning.

I ought to declare an interest first, in that I’m a Parish councillor in mid-Suffolk, and have been for about six years. Mine is a small Parish, population about 270, with an annual precept of less than £6,000. But this tier of local government is widely varied, ranging from the likes of Hereford City …

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David Thorpe

Devolution – what is it good for?

By David Thorpe | Mon 21st May 2018 - 8:23 am

The idea of devolving power to the “lowest possible level” is about as unifying an idea as there is for Liberal Democrats. But, as often happens with the best ideas of politicians, the current system of devolution to the regions is failing spectacularly.

This is because politicians, across both old parties, who become mayors, when they fail to deliver an improvement, have the get out clause of claiming its all the fault of central government for not funding them properly.

The latest example of this trend is the recent declaration by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, that the blame for the current …

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Caron Lindsay

Actually, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP could help win a People’s Vote on the Brexit deal.

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 20th May 2018 - 1:55 pm

Nicola Sturgeon was on the Peston show today talking about various aspects of Brexit. One thing struck me when she was pressed on the issue of a People’s vote of the Brexit deal. She said that the SNP won’t be the block to that but if there was to be another EU referendum, the big question for Scotland would be what would happen if we got the same outcome, where Scotland voted to remain and Wales and England voted to leave.

To be honest, I think it would be so much better if the SNP threw their massive campaigning energy behind securing a vote that means we can all stay in the EU. I reckon we could do a lot better than the 62-38 result. To be honest, the SNP sat the last one out. Our local SNP didn’t do much because they said they were tired after the Scottish elections.  It was the Lib Dems who ran the street stalls and did all the work.

It is unlike the SNP to be tired. For three years up to the Independence referendum in 2014 they were everywhere. They campaigned their hearts out. For the last month of the campaign, you couldn’t go to the shops to buy your rolls in the morning without seeing a posse with saltires and Yes leaflets. In that referendum, there was an 84.6% turnout. In the EU referendum, only 67% of people voted.

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The Voice

Liverpool Labour meltdown – what the Lib Dems are doing

By The Voice | Sun 20th May 2018 - 12:25 pm

Our group leader in Liverpool, Cllr Richard Kemp, has outlined the drama, fear and loathing, accusation and counter-accusation that is the rather sorry life of the city’s Labour administration at the moment. It’s almost like we’re back in the 80s. In no way does the Labour party sound like any sort of competent administration.

It’s quite a story.

I’ve been an active politician in Liverpool for 44 years but I have never seen anything like the farce that is being played out within the Liverpool Labour Group at the moment. Even when things were at their most rancorous in the Lib Dem Group, and we did have arguments, they were sweetness and light to what is happening with Labour at the moment.

Of the 10 people in the Cabinet on 2nd May only 5 are left. One we defeated, three have resigned and one has been sacked. The departures include the Deputy Mayor and one of the assistant Mayors. Labour’s enforcer-in-chief and best mate of the Mayor, Cllr Alan Dean, has also lost an election – this time inside the Labour Party!

Such change is absolutely unprecedented and shows the panic that is currently going through the Labour Group. But even more unprecedented is the way that this is all being fought out in public. Tweets, statements and requests for action are being openly paraded and sent to the press or in other cases leaked to the Press and Liberal Democrats.

The LIb Dems have a plan to provide some serious opposition, but Richard appeals for help:

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Michael Curry’s incredible sermon at the Royal Wedding – how to make poverty history

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 20th May 2018 - 10:56 am

One of the most talked-about highlights of yesterday’s Royal Wedding was the lively and passionate sermon preached by the Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church, Michael Curry. I doubt it was any accident that this man, who has a strong record in supporting same sex marriage, was chosen to deliver this address.

I don’t believe in God and didn’t find anything in his words to change my mind on that score. That didn’t stop me being utterly inspired by the message he brought to the heart of the British establishment.

His theme was “the power of love” and it asked us to imagine politics and government and business and commerce where love was the way. No child, he said, would ever go hungry again and poverty would be history. By the time he started talking about the benefits of human migration around the world, I was sold. This guy stood there in front of the British Royal Family and talked about revolutionary movements. It was utterly compelling. A lot of fire and no brimstone.

As it’s Sunday morning, and the BBC has kindly put the whole thing on You Tube, I thought it was worth putting up here. This man embraced the opportunity to address 1.9 billion people and made the most of it. Even if you have been avoiding all other parts of the Wedding, watch this. I’m sure you will feel at least a little bit inspired.

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Caron Lindsay

Wishing Harry and Meghan all the very best

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 19th May 2018 - 11:31 am

Laugh at me all you like, but I’m loving this Royal Wedding stuff. There are some truly awful things going on in the world at the moment, but for one day, I’m going  to smile, bask in the sunshine and watch two very happy people get married. Actually, I’m probably going to blub my way through it. The coverage had barely started this morning and I was filling up.

I’m slightly disturbed by the fact that someone I remember very clearly being born is now in his mid thirties, but I’ll cope with that. And, yes, a monarchy isn’t ideal, and …

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Janet Berridge

National Liberal Club to trial relaxation of dress code

By Janet Berridge | Sat 19th May 2018 - 8:55 am

After two years as the National Liberal Club’s first woman Chairman, I am proud to be stepping down just as the Club has agreed to experiment with relaxing the strict dress code it has had since 1979.

During my time, we have taken many leaps forward as a home for liberalism: a 15% growth in membership, driven by large-scale Lib Dem recruitment; an array of transparency measures and governance reforms; and a swathe of exciting and stimulating events drawing on the liberal tradition from the world over. But I’m aware that we haven’t always lived up to our liberal mantra – as a club founded as an inclusive home for liberals – in having a strict dress code that was first introduced as a temporary measure 39 years ago.

At Wednesday’s Annual General Meeting, members voted by 49 votes to 36 to relax the dress code for a trial period this summer, so that men will no longer be forced to wear a jacket and tie. (Women continue to enjoy a much greater degree of latitude in their dress, provided it is smart – we trust our women members, and I hope we can trust our male members, without having to tell them what to wear in the 21st century.) There was a stormy debate, with sincere, passionate opinions aired on both sides – opinions which I respect, since they were expressed with sincerity. What is important is that members and their guests should have CHOICE: no one is obliged to abandon a jacket and tie, but they are at liberty to do so – except in the Dining Room – during that trial period.

When the club was founded by Gladstone in 1882, it had no dress code – apart from a stipulation that members should not turn up naked, or in their pyjamas! This continued for the next 97 years, and it was only in 1979 that the club introduced its first dress code. The club was going through a difficult time in the 1970s, having been defrauded and asset-stripped by its chief executive and being the subject of various police investigations. At the time, it was felt that the one thing the club could do to draw a line under the difficult times was to introduce a dress code. But the vibrant, confident liberal club today is not the vulnerable, scandal-ridden shadow it was 40 years ago, and I don’t think our reputation rests any longer on asking men to wear a piece of silk around their necks at all times. In an age when both the House of Commons and the House of Lords have dropped a necktie requirement, the club’s 1970s dress code seems ever more out of date.

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Matt Dolman

This Mental Health Awareness Week and beyond, remember to say ‘no’ once in a while

By Matt Dolman | Fri 18th May 2018 - 11:55 am

For this year’s stress-themed Mental Health Awareness Week, I wanted to write about my experiences with mental health and campaigning and some of the lessons I’ve learned. Hopefully, some of it is useful for others in the party. 

To start off, I think it’s fair to say that most Liberal Democrat activists are campaigning for love, not money. 

That description certainly applies to me. I’m one of those people who loves to get out and knock on doors, man the phones, and rush through last-minute print runs. Politics is exciting, and a great doorstop conversation is almost as sweet as the first beer at the end of the day. 

And that makes the one-month deferral of the election in one of Southwark’s council wards something of a treat for me – after all, who doesn’t want to fight a very winnable by-election in the sun?

However, the extension is a bit of double-edged sword on a personal level. I say that because, several times in the last year, despite how much I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve had to slow down and step back from the campaign. Partly, that’s because I wanted to focus on looking for a new job, but equally it’s because I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things I’d volunteered to do. 

In short, I’ve come to appreciate that I need to occasionally say ‘no’ and put my wellbeing first. 

This is a lesson I think many activists could do with learning. It’s taken me a while to crack. Back in 2014, I got a job as Constituency Organiser in Eastleigh, a bastion of Liberal Democrat campaigning. I wasn’t, in truth, the strongest addition to the team, lacking in experience and parachuted into a well-established operation with less than a year to go. 

This wasn’t exactly ideal, and I can’t say it did wonders for my mental health. I’m grateful to Rachel Palma Randle, who appropriately is now the party’s Director of People, for scooping me up after a serious wobble and making sure I got the support needed to make it through the campaign.

Looking back, what I lacked – in addition to a clue about how to do the job – was an appreciation of how to work smart, when to ask for help, and when to say ‘no’ to things that ultimately weren’t a priority. 

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Olly Grender

Renters need fairer access to affordable credit

By Olly Grender | Thu 17th May 2018 - 1:30 pm

The poverty premium is taking a crippling toll on people who can least afford it. It’s estimated that every year those living in poverty pay an extra £490 for the basics of energy, phones, white goods, food and furniture. But how can it be fair that the poor pay more?

The problem is that the rental payments of Britain’s 11 million renters aren’t recorded or recognised in the same way that mortgage payments are. This means some of the least well-off pay the most to borrow. All the while, over two-thirds …

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Andrew Brown

International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

By Andrew Brown | Thu 17th May 2018 - 12:25 pm

On this day in 1990, the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its list of ‘mental disorders’. Since 2004 the anniversary of this has been used to promote awareness of the legal and cultural discrimination LGBT+ people still experience around the world.

In the UK that we have come a long way towards achieving equality – and yet we know that, for many, there is still a stigma around their sexuality or gender identity. Imagine being a teenager struggling to reconcile same-sex attraction with the teachings of their parents, or religion. Think about why you may not know many people who are openly bisexual, or those who have multiple partners in consensual polyamorous relationships. Consider the workings of the “spousal veto” which insists a trans person’s husband or wife must consent in order for them to gain gender recognition.

IDAHOBIT is about celebrating the diversity of human sexual and gender expression and challenging the barriers to people living their lives as openly as their cis, straight peers.

In the UK, this year’s day takes place against a backdrop of the current media storm over self-ID for trans people. This is the proposal to reform the Gender Recognition Act such as to reduce the hoops that trans people have to go through to replace their birth certificates. Despite what you may have read, it’s not a licence for any man who wants to perv at naked women to walk into the female changing rooms at the local swimming pool. There are, after all, already rules against that sort of thing. It is merely the UK catching up with such notoriously socially liberal states as Ireland.

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Kirsten Johnson

Mental Health Awareness Week 2018

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 17th May 2018 - 8:15 am

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week. The theme is this year is stress. Stress can pervade our lives, but one aspect is stress at work. Keeping a mentally-healthy workforce is best for everyone: the employees, the business and the customers.

Being self-employed as a musician, workplace stress has a slightly different connotation. I’m preparing this week for a solo piano recording on Friday. It can be highly stressful and intense, but I’ve done enough of these projects to know how to manage my stress.

And it is in managing stress that workplaces are now realising they need to put provisions in place. Stats show that mental ill-health cost UK businesses £35 billion last year. A massive sum, made up of absences for illness, lost productivity and staff turnover. And it doesn’t take into account the personal cost to each of those who suffer mental ill-health. Mental Health First Aid is being rolled out in many businesses.

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Katharine Pindar

Time to appeal to youth, and to enrol more students

By Katharine Pindar | Wed 16th May 2018 - 9:00 pm

Liberal Democrat members on campuses, tell your friends. Parents and grandparents, contact your offspring at University. Teachers and lecturers, get active on Facebook and What’s App!

A lot of young people won’t have heard yet. But Sunday’s Observer broke the story – that student organisations representing almost a million young people studying in UK colleges and universities are starting a campaign for a ‘People’s Vote’ before a final Brexit deal can be implemented, and I believe they will be a potent voice.

They want another referendum, on the proposed deal with the EU. From 60 of the country’s universities and colleges, student union leaders have now written to their local MPs asking them to back the idea. They argue that promises of the Brexiters haven’t been fulfilled, and point out that there are now thousands more young people eligible to vote. They plan a big summer campaign.

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Gordon Lishman

Alderdice Review: Campaigning or Enforcing?

By Gordon Lishman | Wed 16th May 2018 - 5:00 pm

The Party is coming to terms with the implications of John Alderdice’s review: “Race, Ethnic Minorities and the Culture of the Liberal Democrats.”  We spent much of last Saturday’s Federal Board awayday talking about how to take it forward.

A natural default option is an argument: “wouldn’t it all bit a lot easier if we could just tell people what to do and they’ll do it”?  There was a similar feeling about how to get people to go to target seats during the last two General Elections.  It is, of course, an unconvincing argument in a Party full of Liberals working as volunteers.

I was reminded of a campaign we ran many years ago in the Liberal Party. It was a “Party Education Campaign” about gay rights*. In the early 1970s, there were a lot of Liberals who were very uncomfortable with the idea and also, believe it or not, some Parliamentarians whose religious views affected their position.

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Paul Walter

UK participation in Eurovision 2019 in Israel would condone “outrageous human rights violations”

By Paul Walter | Wed 16th May 2018 - 4:21 pm

Embed from Getty Images

I’m just back from Lisbon where I was lucky enough to have a stageside position for the Eurovision Song Contest last Saturday. Apart from a nasty stage invasion during Surie’s performance (with which she dealt brilliantly), the whole thing went without a hitch.

Portugal were Eurovision Song Contest entrants for 53 years before they won it in 2017. As a result, they were desperate to welcome everybody to their country and to put on a fantastic experience. That they did. Apart from anything else, Lisbon must have been the most LGBT+ friendly capital city in the world during the last week or so.

This was a “bucket list” trip for me. A one-off. Any temptation to become an annual Eurovision camp follower was cut short with the prospect of a 2019 contest in Israel.

From a musical point of view, Israel deserved to win last Saturday. The scoring system is, nowadays, fairly balanced between national juries and the vote of viewers throughout the 42 participating countries. So, they won fair and square.

On Sunday I was resolved to resist any 2019 Eurovision trip to Israel. While I might one day tour Palestine, Israel and Jordan as a triplet itinerary, visiting specifically Israel for Eurovision would feel like condoning injustice.

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Tahir Maher

Evening with Vince Cable

By Tahir Maher | Wed 16th May 2018 - 1:15 pm

Wokingham Borough local party invited Vince Cable to a question and answer session on Saturday 12th May 2018. It was good to see members from Wokingham, Reading, Newbury, Maidenhead, and Bracknell who came to meet and listen to Vince. Councillor Clive Jones asked wide-ranging questions with supplementary questions from the audience.

Some of the main points addressed by Vince were: –

  • Vince mentioned his meeting with the head of National Union of Students (NUS) and how the NUS talked about the neglect of further education (FE);
  • Vince highlighted the importance of vocational education and giving people a second chance;
  • FE education was different to University education as you pay cash up front for FE unlike for university courses when you start to pay after you start earning money. Vince also said that he was looking at how to reform both further education funding and university education funding and he hopes to have a proposal ready for the September conference;
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Tahir Maher

Fantasy Frontbench – University College London (UCL)

By Tahir Maher | Wed 16th May 2018 - 12:00 pm

University College London has started a Fantasy Frontbench to debate major current issues. The first in their series was “Should Climate Change be UK’s Top Policy Priority?”. The guest speakers were Natalie Bennett (previous leader of the Green party), Ahir Shah (a comedian), Professor Mark Maslin (Geography professor at UCL) and Dr. Emily Shuckburgh (climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey). About 120 people attended including children from local schools.

Before the discussion started, the audience was asked the question, and the result was 52% for Yes and 48% for No (to which Ahir commented that this was considered an overwhelming majority these days).

Each member of the panel had two minutes to put their case: for or against the motion. Interestingly Natalie started with “Climate change should not be the dominant policy priority but be one in a combination of high priority policies” – after a gasp, the indicator went to 43% for Yes and 57% for No.

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Joe Otten

Do you want chips on your shoulder with that g…?

By Joe Otten | Tue 15th May 2018 - 12:45 pm

So I learned a new word yesterday, which may or may not be a racial slur against angry white men of a certain age who voted for Brexit.

Being a white man myself, approaching a certain age, occasionally angry about bad grammar, Brexit, Trump, Corbyn, Putin, the senseless loss of life in the middle east… – I felt I ought to know whether it is a racial slur or not. It doesn’t matter if I’m angry about different things – I needed to know whether to be offended. So I asked the source of my discovery: Twitter.

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Improving consumer knowledge in the energy industry

By Collingwood | Tue 15th May 2018 - 8:57 am

As a liberal, I am not in the business of banning many things. I subscribe to the idea that knowledge is power, and that by providing consumers with more information, positive outcomes can be achieved. For a market to be competitive, consumers must have information, and we know that competitive markets improve outcomes across the board.

In the food industry this has already happened. If you look on a packet of crisps, it will show you how many calories there are, how much salt as well as a whole host of other nutritional information. According to this report, the US is going to start labelling GMO foods with a smiley face. 

Because of this, consumers are able to make choices and we are seeing a downward trend in calorie consumption. However, we don’t do this in a lot of other markets, including the energy industry.

With the energy industry, it is difficult for consumers to get information about the product that they are buying. Consumers are using comparison sites, which help to an extent, but unless each utility company is researched, it is tricky.

This is where policy makers can come in, and it could act as a nudge mechanism for consumers.

YouGov surveyed 2,000 UK consumers and found that consumers would pay on average up to 10 per cent more for a sustainable product. The same report, which can be found here, found that 40 per cent of consumers already consider the sustainability of the product when they buy.

This is where we can reform the energy industry. Not with price caps like Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have put forward, which would only serve to reduce the supply from smaller energy providers. 

Instead, we could compel energy providers to produce some sort of guidance for the consumer regarding the sustainability of the product. Which countries are the main producers of the energy? Is it sustainable? What method of extraction was used to get the energy? That type of thing. 

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Will Parker

Liberal Democrats must think big and long to thrive. Craving exit from Brexit does neither.

By Will Parker | Mon 14th May 2018 - 8:12 am

The Liberal Democrats are not in a good place. They haven’t been for some time, but there’s now a risk that recovery will never come. Since 2015, the party has failed to rebuild support. Tim Farron talked of a “Lib Dem Fightback” which proved to be anything but, now Vince Cable is declaring the Lib Dems a “well-kept secret” – not much of a boast.

The rise in membership has been a success story and the party had a very decent showing in May’s local elections. Yet the big picture is one of a rot left untreated. The local …

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William Powell

Lady Shirley Hooson: An obituary

By William Powell | Fri 11th May 2018 - 11:55 am

Credit: Powys County Times

Montgomeryshire and the Welsh Liberal tradition will not see her like again

‘The end of an era’ is without doubt an over-used phrase when assessing much loved and respected figures who have died, but when Jane Dodds and I took our places in the China Street Welsh Presbyterian Chapel last Saturday, 5th May to celebrate the life of Shirley Hoosen (nee Hamer), that is precisely what we were witnessing.

Lady Shirley Hooson was the widow of the late Liberal MP for Montgomeryshire, Lord Emlyn Hooson, who served the county for 17 years between 1962 and 1979.

She dedicated most of her adult life to the service of her native Llanidloes, serving as a member of the Llanidloes Town Council for more than four decades, from 1974 to 2017, including a term as mayor. She stood down from the council just a few weeks after her 90th birthday, becoming an Honorary Alderman of the town, in recognition of her long and loyal service in June 2017.

Lady Shirley was also a longstanding member of Montgomeryshire District Council for Llanidloes from its inception in 1973 until its absorption into the Powys Unitary Authority in 1996, serving as Vice Chair of the Council. The demise of Montgomeryshire District Council was a matter of bitter regret to her, only surpassed by the threat of abolishing the historic parliamentary seat of Montgomeryshire, currently being promoted by the Boundary Commission.

Glyn Davies, Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire since 2010, was amongst those to pay tribute to Lady Hooson:

Lady Hooson and her great late husband, Emlyn, were wonderful people who gave much of their lives to Llanidloes and Montgomeryshire…She was a key support to him throughout his hugely successful political career. Over the last three years, after she had lost the ability to speak, I valued meeting her more than ever. We simply did not need words to communicate. Llanidloes and Montgomeryshire has lost one of its greatest ever champions.

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Caron Lindsay

A mistake from the Coalition years that we must never repeat

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 11th May 2018 - 10:25 am

I still think that we did the right thing to go into Government. We did a lot of good on mental health, the environment and education and we stopped the Tories from doing a whole load of nasty stuff that they proceeded to do the minute we were out the door.

However, we made some howlers of mistakes. It would be very strange if we didn’t. Some of them were completely avoidable. And one in particular, I can’t just let pass.

Recently, Polly Mackenzie, then a Special Adviser to Nick Clegg, was celebrating the Lib Dem plastic bag tax.

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Caron Lindsay

Fancy being in charge of the party’s finances?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 10th May 2018 - 5:17 pm

Peter Dunphy, the Chair of the Party’s Federal Finance and Resources Committee, is stepping down after four and a half years in the role.

He’s been an incredibly wise pair of hands, steering the party through some pretty torrid times. The change from being a party of Government with nearly sixty MPs to a party with just eight required careful handling. We’ll miss him in the role. On stepping down, he said:

In case some of you don’t already know I will be standing down as Chair of FFRC and therefore Registered Party Treasurer on 1st July.

I originally notified Party Officers including

…

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Paul Hindley

A 21st-Century Liberal Approach to Education

By Paul Hindley | Thu 10th May 2018 - 2:39 pm

Education has always been of special importance for liberals and Liberal Democrats throughout the ages. It has been one of the best vehicles for enabling individuals to obtain their full potential, develop their talents and make the most of the opportunities that they are presented with. It is with this in mind that Helen Flynn and John Howson’s chapter is so warmly received in the latest publication from the Social Liberal Forum, ‘Four Go In Search of Big Ideas’.

Flynn and Howson rightly place great emphasis on the need to improve early years education. They call for a highly funded early years sector that is equipped with the staff necessary to develop the learning of schoolchildren and identify any potential barriers that they may face in future learning. These teachers would need to be well educated and properly trained. The authors identify that educational inequalities emerge even before children start their formal education at the age of five. The socio-economic inequalities faced by children from the poorest backgrounds need to be tackled with extra funding from the very beginning.

Flynn and Howson propose a professional College of Teaching that would be a watchdog for professional standards in education in a similar way that the British Medical Association is in regard to the NHS. This is very much needed if the public is to continue to have faith in the professionalism and high standards of the UK’s education sector. In a similar vein, Flynn and Howson also suggest having Chief Education Officer in government who would help to guarantee best practice and develop evidence-based policy.

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Kirsten Johnson

The Learning Disabilities Mortality Review Annual Report

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 10th May 2018 - 12:22 pm

The Learning Disabilities Mortality Review Annual Report was published recently by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership. In it are harrowing statistics of people with learning disabilities dying far too young.

The report highlights the extraordinarily high incidences of preventable death. The Connor Sparrowhawk case has brought this to public attention recently: a young man with learning difficulties left in a bath unattended, he drowned whilst having an epileptic fit.

Between July 2016 and November 2017, 1311 deaths were put forward for review, often by a Learning Disability Nurse. Of those, 27% …

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Chris Lee

Radical Ideas for the Future

By Chris Lee | Thu 10th May 2018 - 10:17 am

At the moment, virtually all of our policies – save for our stance on the EU – amount to tinkering at the edges of a flawed, if not broken, political system. This is a result of the fact that there is generally a fair amount of consensus within mainstream politics on a number of key issues.

All parties agree that we need to build more housing, that we need more funding of schools, the NHS and the police, and that we need to protect the environment. The major policy debates at the moment concern immigration, nationalisation of public infrastructure, the EU, education and public sector borrowing – most of which are couched in simple binary yes/no terms, depending on whether you support Labour or the Tories.

Rather than trying to join in the political consensus or meet Labour and the Tories halfway (e.g. see our current policy on housing), I genuinely believe that we have an opportunity to pursue an alternative set of policies that will mark us out as distinct.

Along with electoral reform and being pro-European, six policy ideas from various places within the liberal political tradition, come to mind:

1. A national housebuilding company

A national construction company set up to build houses, with the government taking a majority stake and offering financial guarantees. Instead of just pledging a high-sounding number of homes to be built each year and leaving it to the private sector, a government-backed company would have the opportunity to take responsibility for recruiting and training construction workers (with a focus on British workers), building homes and maintaining homes – with profits going back to the Treasury.

Combined with relaxing the rules preventing local authorities from borrowing to fund social housing, a national housebuilding company would be an exciting yet pragmatic way of building homes while balancing the risk and reward of construction projects.

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Kirsten Johnson

Children’s mental health – the Government is not getting it right

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 10th May 2018 - 8:00 am

I’m following up my post from February on children’s mental health and the Government’s Green Paper on the issue.  Yesterday, the Education Committee and Health & Social Care Committee issued a joint statement saying that

The Government’s proposed Green Paper on Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health lacks ambition and will provide no help to the majority of those children who desperately need it.

Having three teenage girls, this rams home. The girls tell me of the myriad of mental health issues going on around them – peers self-harming; experiencing psychosis; anorexia; depression; anxiety; the list goes on. This is their world, it is our world, and we are failing our young people.

The Government is rolling out Trailblazer pilot schemes, but it is too little and not being done quickly enough. Hundreds of thousands of children are missing out on the help they need now. I recently spoke with someone who works in CAMHS and she lamented the lack of provision locally for the girls she was working with. Staff know the pressures, parents are living with the pressures, young people are suffering needlessly.

The need for more resource in schools to support young people was highlighted, with the report saying existing CAMHS staff could not do any more than they are already doing. People are stretched to capacity.

Participants in the workshops highlighted exam pressure as being a major cause of mental ill-health. The report suggests the Government needs to commission a study on the effect of our exam-based system on mental health.

Young people excluded from school are far more prone to mental ill-health, but the Green Paper does not address this issue. How can we better meet the needs of these young people?

A major worry for many parents is the transition from children’s to adult mental health services. It is not happening. Young people are falling through the gaps and not receiving the services they need as they enter adulthood. Currently, young people transition at 18, but the report suggests that 25 would be a more appropriate age. What is scary is that seemingly a third of young people drop out of mental health care when they turn 18 and don’t make the transfer to adult services.

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