Category Archives: Op-eds

Catherine Bearder MEP writes…Working with the new European Commission

By Catherine Bearder | Sat 19th July 2014 - 12:30 pm

While the UK media has been focusing on Cameron’s cabinet reshuffle and what it means for the Tories’ 2015 election strategy, an even bigger shake-up has been taking place in the running of the European Union. A bit like during the Lib Dem European election campaign, the most frequently heard words this week in Brussels and Strasbourg have been “jobs, jobs, jobs”, and this time it is all about our own.

The last time we were in Strasbourg two weeks ago the Parliament sorted out who got what …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged eu, european commission and Jean-Claude Juncker | 4 Comments

Opinion: Lib Dem ‘hypocrisy’ on bedroom tax unfair

By Patrick McAuley | Fri 18th July 2014 - 5:56 pm

I have to defend accusations my party is being ‘hypocritical’ over its stance on the Bedroom Tax.

Thanks to Liberal Democrats being in control in Stockport we were able to introduce a local policy with our hardship fund that meant our residents would not have to pay retrospectively if there was nowhere to move into. Therefore according to Chris Bryant or Labour’s definition there is no bedroom tax in Stockport.

In Stockport the Lib Dem-led Council used the powers at its disposal …

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33 Comments

Opinion: I’ve got the Orange Book blues

By Paul Reynolds | Fri 18th July 2014 - 2:39 pm

There have been many articles in LDV on the recent ‘Orange Book Two’ conference but I wanted to comment, by way of reflection a month later, on the sum of the more classical liberal ideas presented at the conference, particularly my slight feeling of, well, perhaps ‘emptiness’, as I left the conference for a flight at Heathrow.

The presentations and speeches were polished, interesting, stimulating, and full of fact-based insights especially on issues such as the dangers of an overbearing government and how the sheer volume of economic regulation …

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Tagged centre forum orange book 10 years on and orange book | 12 Comments

Opinion: How many all-male panels will there be at Autumn Conference?

By Daisy Cooper MP | Fri 18th July 2014 - 9:43 am

Personally, I’d like there to be none. And that’s why I have today written to Tim Gordon, CEO, and Tim Farron, party President, asking for a message to be sent to all internal and external organisations holding fringe events at Autumn conference, to remind them of the need for diverse panels, including gender balance. I’ve also asked that the same be done for all local parties who will soon be electing their Executives.

A while back, Mark Pack announced his decision to decline invitations to sit on …

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7 Comments

Ed Davey MP writes…Investing in green energy

By Ed Davey | Thu 17th July 2014 - 9:15 pm

Today I published the Government’s first ever ‘Energy Investment Report’. It shows how Liberal Democrats in Government have delivered on jobs and investment in energy – particularly green energy – and shows the plan we now have for this to continue for decades to come.

Let me be clear – investment in the energy sector has not been a ‘nice to have’. We inherited a legacy of energy underinvestment from Labour and we’ve spent the last four years turning this around. The sheer scale of the investment has already …

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Tagged energy, featured and renewable energy | 34 Comments

The Independent View: Assisted Dying Bill – Open Letter to Liberal Democrat Peers

By Greg Judge | Thu 17th July 2014 - 8:18 pm

Tomorrow will see the Second Reading of Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Lords and many Peers including Liberal Democrats have registered to speak on this issue of compassion and respect for choice at the end of life.

This Bill and its passage through your House will serve as one of the most important chapters of society’s story of compassion, we want you to know that your Party overwhelmingly supports you on legalising the choice of an assisted death for terminally ill dying people.

It has been reassuring …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged assisted dying bill, dignity in dying and featured | 11 Comments

The Gender Agenda #2: Helping women climb the rungs of the activist ladder

By Alice Thomas | Thu 17th July 2014 - 3:10 pm

I think we all got into politics for one of three reasons: principle, policy or people. When it comes to joining a political party, most Liberal Democrats reading this will know which category they fall into. Maybe it was the idea that ‘no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity’; for some it was policies born from those principles, like electoral reform or fairer parental leave; and for others, it was the local councillor who took the time to get to know them and help when they needed …

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Tagged the gender agenda | 19 Comments

Opinion: Assisted suicide – why the Falconer Bill must be rejected

By Helen Tedcastle | Thu 17th July 2014 - 1:28 pm

The issue of assisted suicide and euthanasia has been presented in the media in a highly emotionally charged way in recent years, with several ‘hard cases’ of non-terminally ill people wanting to die. This has resulted in confusion over what exactly is at stake in the forthcoming Falconer Bill and of course, hard cases make bad law.

In the sad case of Tony Nicklinson, lawyers argued that he had Article 8 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (respect for private life and family). In their view, …

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Tagged assisted suicide and lord falconer | 16 Comments

Opinion: Help stop lives being ruined by abusive practice of revenge pornography

By Hannah Thompson | Thu 17th July 2014 - 10:25 am

Next Monday, two amendments to criminalise revenge porn will go to the committee stage in the House of Lords.

For those who don’t know, revenge porn is non-consensual pornography. It’s where a person uploads an explicit image of somebody without their permission. Often the victim’s name and contact details are attached. Not only is it humiliating but it has the potential to reach out of the screen and destroy people’s lives.

The first amendment was submitted by a group of Liberal Democrats in the Lords. It states that ‘a person …

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Tagged revenge pornography | 12 Comments

Michael Gove: The Case for the Defence. And also the Case for the Prosecution.

By Stephen Tall | Wed 16th July 2014 - 3:24 pm

Unlike most Lib Dems, I am not a Gove-hater. But nor do I share the adulation those one on the Right bestow upon him. The man we must now call the former Education secretary was more complex than his critics allowed and more flawed than his fans admitted.

No-one should doubt Michael Gove’s passion for schools reform, nor his sincerity. For him it is much more than political: it is also personal. Two men have shaped much of the education agenda in the last 15 years: Gove and Labour’s Andrew Adonis, …

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Tagged andrew old, ben goldacre, dominic cummings, featured and michael gove | 21 Comments

The Independent View: The pupil premium may be starting to deliver – but beware false dawns of the past

By Helen Barnard | Wed 16th July 2014 - 2:24 pm

Today Ofsted deliver their verdict on the Liberal Democrats’ pupil premium policy, four years into its existence – a pledge which was on the front page of the party’s manifesto. In straitened times, this was a welcome commitment to focus limited resources on poorer children, and an explicit attempt to break the cycle of poverty.

There are positive signs that the additional resources being put in through pupil premium are being used better to improve the education of children from low income backgrounds, but not yet evidence that they are …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged david laws, education and pupil premium | 11 Comments

Lord Paul Tyler writes…Progress in Magna Carta’s Birthday year

By Paul Tyler | Wed 16th July 2014 - 11:56 am

In a week when the big news is about changed faces in government, there is also much manoeuvring in the political undergrowth about the rules which govern government: our constitution.

The House of Commons Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform (P&CR) has launched a debate on a written constitution for the United Kingdom. This has been a Liberal and Liberal Democrat objective for all my time in politics, but the question has always been how such a document would be drawn up, agreed and entrenched beyond the usual …

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Tagged constitutional reform, Scotland and Wales | 6 Comments

Opinion: Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill – A measure of humanity

By Toby Keynes | Wed 16th July 2014 - 10:25 am

When Lord Falconer put forward his Assisted Dying Bill, I had no idea it would generate so much interest. Similar bills have gone before the Lords before, and similar bills have failed, by a wide margin.

However, this bill is gathering a remarkable head of steam ahead of its second reading in the Lords this Friday, 18^th July .

The Church of England’s General Synod’s decision to reject the bill and call for a Royal Commission is reasonably predictable, but it’s becoming clear that opposition to the bill is far from …

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Tagged assisted dying bill | 18 Comments

Opinion: Violence And Peace In The Middle East – There Is Something We Can Do

By Jonathan Brown | Wed 16th July 2014 - 8:55 am

The recent murders of the Israeli and Palestinian children were in themselves terrible crimes but they also served to ignite the latest round of brutal violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Some media commentators are tempted to suggest that this is inevitable and un-resolvable but I don’t believe that to be the case.

I was surprised recently to discover – and then to find that I greatly admired – the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine’s 9 point plan for peace and the three principles that inform …

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Tagged israel, liberal democrat friends of palestine, middle east, palestine and peace | 13 Comments

Opinion: Assisted dying

By James Harper | Tue 15th July 2014 - 3:20 pm

The Assisted Dying Bill returns to the House of Lords this week following high-profile interventions by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby , and his predecessor-but-one, George Carey.

While the bill may receive a second reading in the Lords, it stands little chance of progressing in the Commons. This is because key MPs, including David Cameron and Nick Clegg, are firmly against it. I respect the sincerity of Cameron and Clegg’s concerns, but I also believe their stated views show that they have not approached the issue in the right way. It is vital that any debate in the commons is open and honest, and not skewed by prejudice or emotion. MPs could do worse than begin the debate by considering the views of the two archbishops, which actually advanced the quality of the public discourse quite significantly.

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Tagged assisted dying | 17 Comments

Opinion: The pressures of being a parliamentary candidate

By Phil Ling | Tue 15th July 2014 - 1:30 pm

It is with a sad, and heavy, heart that yesterday I heard of Sarah Yong’s decision to stand down as PPC for Somerton and Frome for personal reasons. What is even sadder is that people are demanding to know the personal reasons, either because the privacy of an individual is less important than what this means to the party or to show it’s not because of the party prospects. If an employee (even CEO) of an organisation stepped down for personal reasons it is normally respected and the organisation moves on.

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13 Comments

Women bishops – at last

By Mary Reid | Tue 15th July 2014 - 11:49 am

All liberals, of whatever political persuasion, will welcome the news that the barriers to appointing women bishops in the Church of England have now been removed. There has been a lot of misinformation flying around, with the glib portrayal of the bishops as a crowd of geriatric misogynists, so a few facts might help to improve the debate.

The General Synod, which is the governing body of the Church of England, first approved the appointment of female bishops in principle in 2008. Since then it has been trying to agree on the provisions to be made for those local churches which will not accept them, just as it did when women were first ordained as priests.

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Tagged church of england and women bishops | 19 Comments

Opinion: The Rawnsley Challenge

By David Allen | Tue 15th July 2014 - 9:57 am

Andrew Rawnsley, in the Observer, describes the rumoured Westminster paedophile scandal and asks the question: “Whom do you trust? Comes an answer that is as popular as it is succinct: trust no one.”

Rawnsley wearily summarises why we have lost trust in bankers, doctors, intelligence services, police, bishops, supermarkets, media and celebrities – and above all, politicians of all sides, from Blair onwards. Then he gets more original. He identifies judge-led enquiry as a means of establishing who we can trust – and then shows how that option was kyboshed. When Hutton exonerated Blair (and when Blair recommended the Hutton process to his friend Rebekah Brooks), judge-led enquiry was discredited. Government, as often, has been slow to recognise the problem – as evidenced by the recent proposal that the sister of a previous Attorney-General should lead a historic child abuse enquiry.

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Tagged citizens juries and truth and reconciliation | 21 Comments

Norman Baker MP writes…Why the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill is compatible with human rights

By Norman Baker MP | Mon 14th July 2014 - 5:15 pm

As a party we care deeply about human rights. Left to their own devices, the Conservatives would have pulled us out of the European Convention. Thanks to the Liberal Democrats, we have stopped that from happening.

So I am concerned by some suggestions that the emergency legislation we published on Thursday isn’t compliant with the ECHR. This is simply not true.

As many of you will know, in April this year the European Court of Justice overturned the EU Data Retention Directive. They did so on the basis that this …

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Tagged DRIP and norman baker | 38 Comments

Opinion: Just remember we’re all human

By Marisha Ray | Mon 14th July 2014 - 2:30 pm

When young adults, who may even at the time have been members of prestigious universities and their more infamous clubs, became intoxicated and indulged in aggressive or loud and disturbing speech, violent actions or were simply careless and destructive, did we automatically assume that when they matured they would behave that way for the rest of their lives? We did not. Indeed some may still be thought fit to take part in the running of our country.

When young adults or older youths indulge in isolated incidents of unwise pyromania, do we say that they will be pyromaniacs for life? We do not, and in general they are not.

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Tagged civil liberties, Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill and surveillance | 11 Comments

Opinion: DRIP under the microscope – should Liberal Democrats support this Bill?

By Mark Pack | Mon 14th July 2014 - 12:59 pm

Unusually for me, I’m starting writing this piece without knowing what conclusion I’ll come to by the end of it. Normally it’s straight forward enough to marshal evidence, decide on view and then write it up (unless the curse of writers’ block strikes of course).

But the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (DRIP) takes the usual perils of journalism turning most stories into a simple good versus bad dynamic, throws in the paucity of expert mainstream coverage of many technical issues and adds a dash of juggling different uncertainties.

Certainly if …

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Tagged civil liberties, Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill and featured | 29 Comments

Lord Brian Paddick writes: The difficult balancing act between privacy and security

By Brian Paddick | Mon 14th July 2014 - 10:45 am

As a Liberal former police officer I am acutely aware of the difficult balancing act the government has to perform between keeping us safe and keeping our personal data safe. At the same time I see both the anxiety that those concerned with civil liberties have over the new legislation and the Government’s need to act to prevent a valuable crime detection tool slipping from our grasp.

So why the need and why the rush?

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Tagged civil liberties, communications data and Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill | 37 Comments

Vince Cable writes…Strengthening confidence in the UK’s takeover laws

By Vince Cable | Sun 13th July 2014 - 12:43 pm

The attempted but abortive Pfizer takeover bid for AstraZeneca has triggered a timely political debate in the UK about whether the safeguards in mergers and takeover legislation are adequate – especially when significant research and development assets are at stake. It is now clear to me that some changes should be made.

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Tagged acquisition, business and pfizer | 3 Comments

Cool politicians poll showcases the paucity of political debate

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 13th July 2014 - 10:15 am

I thought we’d scraped the bottom of the barrel when these photos of poor Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich led to him being mocked in virtually every publication in the UK. But it gets worse. The other day I sighed when I saw the headline “Ed Miliband is less cool than Sir Menzies Campbell”. Apparently YouGov has been spending time and money asking people how cool a group of current and former party leaders are.

Unsurprisingly, nobody makes it out of the negatives:

It’s certainly true than …

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Tagged Polls and yougov | 7 Comments

A longer read for the weekend… Edward Lucas on the threat posed to peace by Russia and what the West should do about it

By Stephen Tall | Sun 13th July 2014 - 8:45 am

Edward Lucas worked for Paddy Ashdown, has helped at by-elections, and was active in the National League of Young Liberals (NLYL) and the Union of Liberal Students (ULS). He’s better known, though, for being a senior editor at The Economist and an expert on energy, cyber-security, espionage, Russian foreign and security policy and the politics and economics of Eastern Europe. In 2008 he wrote The New Cold War, a prescient account of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In 2011 he wrote Deception, an investigative account of east-west espionage. And earlier …

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Also posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged edward lucas, featured, russia and ukraine | 64 Comments

Lessons must be learned from the Jo Swinson speculation

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 12th July 2014 - 2:20 pm

On Thursday, George Eaton of the New Statesman blogged that Jo Swinson was about to replace Ed Davey in the forthcoming Cabinet reshuffle.

Today, the Guardian’s Nick Watt says that this is not the case and Jo is expected to become Secretary of State for Scotland in September after the independence referendum.

Nick Clegg, acutely conscious that the five Liberal Democrat cabinet ministers are all men, is expected to promote the business minister Jo Swinson to the cabinet. But she is expected to succeed Alistair Carmichael as Scotland secretary after September’s independence referendum in September if, as expected, the pro-Union side prevails. Carmichael would be praised for his role in the victory as Swinson took charge on introducing greater devolution to the Scottish parliament.

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Tagged Alistair Carmichael, cabinet reshuffle, ed davey, george eaton, guardian, Jo Swinson, new statesman and nicholas watt | 36 Comments

LibLink: Norman Baker: Security and freedom in the internet age

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 12th July 2014 - 9:58 am

Norman Baker wrote an article for the party website which I thought you might find useful because it deals with some of the points raised in the questions to my mammoth post yesterday. I must warn you, though, that there are some examples of apostrophe abuse in it, so steel yourselves.

Many, if not most, people are concerned about the rush to get this legislation through in just two days. Norman gives his explanation of why he thinks it’s necessary:

No government introduces fast track legislation lightly, but the challenge

…

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Also posted in LibLink | Tagged civil liberties, communications data, norman baker and snoopers charter | 9 Comments

Baroness Sarah Ludford writes…How not to use Brussels for policy laundering

By Sarah Ludford | Fri 11th July 2014 - 7:20 pm

The new Data Retention and Investigatory Powers (DRIP) Bill responds to the European Court of Justice annulment of the 2006 EU Data Retention Directive.

The government asserts that the DRIP Bill only confirms existing law as it is broadly the same content as the 2009 regulations implementing the EU Directive. But as that Directive has been swept away, DRIP provides a new legal basis, and this will in fact be the first time that legislation to regulate retention of phone, email and internet records has been generated …

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Tagged civil liberties, communications data, Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill, featured and snoopers charter | 7 Comments

Opinion: State security measures can protect liberty not just threaten it

By Iain Sharpe | Fri 11th July 2014 - 3:08 pm

It is an unwritten law of Lib Dem debates on security issues that before long someone will quote Benjamin Franklin that ‘Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’

I have always been intrigued by the origins of this comment, primarily because taken on its own and literally, it is hyperbolic nonsense. Almost any form of government involves some tension between liberty and security. The state provides defence and police forces, but to do so levies taxes and circumscribes individuals’ freedom to use force to defend themselves.

There seems to be very little on the web about what Franklin actually meant. But an academic paper by Benjamin Wittes of Brookings Institute unsurprisingly reveals that Franklin’s aphorism was intended in a very different sense from that in which it is now so often quoted.

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Tagged civil liberties and national security | 7 Comments

Cable backs right to strike and opposes strikes

By Joe Otten | Fri 11th July 2014 - 11:57 am

Quoted in the Independent

We believe that getting round the negotiating table is better than striking.

We do not believe unions should be striking and causing mass disruption when everyone has been affected by similar pay conditions.

This reflects the fact that a better deal for one group of public sector workers would be paid for out of taxes on other workers, that the strikes if successful would not win a better deal for working people in general, rather for some at the expense of others. There is …

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Tagged employment rights, strikes and vince cable | 78 Comments

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