Category Archives: Op-eds

Teena Lashmore

Opinion: Conference and Equality

By Teena Lashmore | Sat 8th March 2014 - 11:54 am

I was personally heartbroken when Nick Clegg was left with no option but to publicly apologise for the party’s inability to uphold free tuition fees.  As my career path requires further university study, I was going to be hit financially and immediately.

Initially I deferred and saved manically but I recognise I am disadvantaged and that my humble beginnings continues to snap at my heels.  Every day requires personal strength and good friends to overcome the obstacles of privilege but every so often, I feel compelled to ‘spell out’ what and how ‘disadvantages’ continue.

My PhD begins on the weekend of the …

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Nick Harvey

Nick Harvey writes: Making free school meals work

By Nick Harvey | Fri 7th March 2014 - 5:42 pm

school mealsYesterday in Parliament I joined with the Children’s Society to chair a roundtable to discuss the Government’s new free school meals policy.

Announced at last year’s Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference, from the start of the next school year (2014/15) all children at infant school in England will receive a free school lunch. The policy, which is projected to cost around £1bn over the next two years, will apply to all children aged 4-7 regardless of their family’s income.

Yesterday’s event brought together MPs with experts in the fields of education and nutrition …

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Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb writes: Protecting people’s health and care data

By Norman Lamb MP | Fri 7th March 2014 - 4:47 pm

In Government, as in opposition, Liberal Democrats have been staunch defenders of people’s right to privacy, campaigning against state intrusion into people’s private lives.  Our 2010 manifesto included commitments to scrap Identity Cards, block Home Office plans to snoop into people’s email and internet records, and remove innocent people from police DNA databases.  In Government, we have delivered: ID cards were stopped, the “snoopers’ charter” revived by Tories at the Home Office was killed off by Nick Clegg, and millions of people’s DNA records have been deleted from Police databases.

People have a fundamental right to expect personal information to be …

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Tom Brake

Tom Brake writes… Job sharing for MPs – an idea whose time has come

By Tom Brake | Fri 7th March 2014 - 12:02 pm

There’s something about our system of electing one person to represent one, relatively small part of the country which makes MPs very territorial. Their constituency is “their patch” on which no one else must trespass, and by extension we all find ourselves utterly consumed by the job.

The consequence is that politics becomes available only to people who are able to give themselves to it to the exclusion of all else. Working age women in particular have been seen to self-select out of the job, and many more simply never enter it. Westminster hand-wrings often about …

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Bill le Breton

Opinion: Sustaining the Recovery

By Bill le Breton | Fri 7th March 2014 - 10:44 am

A year ago to the day, here on LDV, I called the turn in the UK economy. We had experienced a double dip recession (later confirmed) and everyone was battening down the hatches for an unprecedented triple dip.

I wrote then in praise of Chancellor Osborne who the day before had authorized a briefing of two Financial Times journalists. Under the title Osborne to Hand Carney New Powers, they had written, ‘George Osborne’s Budget, will pave the way for Mark Carney, incoming Bank of England governor, to come to the rescue of the economy as …

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Giles Goodall

Opinion: Give British EU migrants back their votes

By Giles Goodall | Thu 6th March 2014 - 4:23 pm

We hear a lot these days about ‘EU migrants’: those strange and threatening people queuing at our doors to milk our famously generous welfare state – if you believe the dominant, fact-free, UKIP-inspired narrative, that is. But what about British EU migrants?

Figures recently uncovered by Lord Oakeshott show that there are 2.2 million British citizens living in other EU countries – almost the same number as other EU citizens resident in the UK. In many ways, this is not a surprise. We are a famously outward-looking country with centuries of globe-trotting experience. And who can blame those who decide to move south for a bit more sun?

EU free movement is a two-way street. It’s also one of the biggest benefits of our EU membership, both economically – being an inherent part of the single market – and in terms of personal freedom and opportunities. These are both things that we, as liberals, hold dear.

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Louise Shaw

Opinion: Let’s move to one-member one-vote

By Louise Shaw | Thu 6th March 2014 - 2:59 pm

Following on from Sue Doughty’s excellent invitation to the consultation session on one-member one-vote (OMOV) for our party’s important committees, I’d like to give my perspective as a young(er) member on why I will be supporting this move at conference this weekend.

Sometimes people on the inside of the party can forget what it’s like to be on the outside, and also what it’s like to be a new member. Imagine for a minute you’ve just joined the party, your eyes and ears full of ideas. You’ve joined the party because of a shining commitment to involving members …

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George Lyon MEP

George Lyon MEP writes…Brave mountain rescue teams should not have to pay VAT on essential, lifesaving kit

By George Lyon MEP | Thu 6th March 2014 - 11:59 am

We were navigating in near zero visibility in a white-out.

As I was navigating I put my foot out and onto nothing, and fell down about 800ft of sheer cliff.

You figure you have had it.

These are the words of 25 year old Scot Ollie Daniel, who plunged through snow while walking in the Cairngorms in January this year.

In Scotland we are lucky to have some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in the world. Walkers and climbers are a common sight in the Highlands and Islands all year round. But we know that these activities are not without risk.

Ollie was rescued …

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Caron Lindsay

So what’s happening at Conference? Part 3: The Fringe

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 6th March 2014 - 10:24 am

Here’s the third part of my guide to Spring Conference in York this weekend. Just think, this time tomorrow, we’ll be on our way. Anyway, part 1, the debates, can be found here and part 2, the training, is here.  Oh, and don’t forget to download your Conference App. It’s now been further developed and the issues I mentioned the other day are largely sorted.

It will certainly help you manage your schedule, but, as I sad the other day, it can’t make decisions for you when there are 10 things that you want to go to at …

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Kirsty Williams AM

Kirsty Williams AM writes… An important step towards minimum nurse staffing levels in Wales

By Kirsty Williams AM | Wed 5th March 2014 - 8:00 pm

Today, the National Assembly for Wales voted to give me permission to bring forward a Private Members Bill to set minimum nurse staffing levels in law.

I believe this is necessary in Wales because we currently have the highest number of patients per nurse in the UK, which means that all too often our nurses are unable to give the time to perform their role to their highest caring ability.

Evidence is increasing from across the world on the positive impact that nurse staffing levels have on patient care and the recruitment and retention of staff. Nurses who have fewer patients to …

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Stephen Tall

Lib Dems as ‘The Party of IN’ – Clegg’s pro-European strategy starts to pay off

By Stephen Tall | Wed 5th March 2014 - 7:10 pm

nick clegg v nigel farageKudos to Nick Clegg and his team, including his director of strategy Ryan Coetzee. The gambit of issuing a personal challenge to Nigel Farage to debate Nick on Europe has been accepted not only by the Ukip leader, but also now by the media. As Caron Lindsay reported here this morning – #NickvNigel – We have a date and #NickvNigel: We have 2 dates – any more for the Tour? – the two leaders will face-off both on TV and on radio within the next …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged , , , , , , , and | 53 Comments

Opinion: Tell us your views on a fair, liberal criminal justice system

By Geoff Payne | Wed 5th March 2014 - 4:51 pm

The prevention, detection and prosecution of crime and the sentencing and rehabilitation of offenders is one of the fundamental roles of the government and the independent judiciary. It is also something that matters enormously to the electorate. No-one wants to be a victim of crime. No-one wants to be accused of a crime they did not commit.  Many offenders would want to rehabilitate themselves and live a decent life in the future.

For too long, crime policy has suffered from an obsession shared by successive Labour and Tory Governments of seeking to be ever tougher than the last and yet completely …

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Keith Aspden

Opinion: York welcomes Spring Conference

By Keith Aspden | Wed 5th March 2014 - 2:25 pm

yorkAs the countdown to this weekend continues, I would like to say how pleased I am to be welcoming Spring Conference to York. I have been speaking to local party members, businesses and organisations like Visit York about the conference and it is clear that anticipation is building.

 Visit York estimate that this weekend will boost the city’s economy by more than £600,000. And I know that hotels, B&Bs, guest houses, and restaurants are reporting soaring demand.

Added to the short-term economic boost is the long-term impact that national exposure will bring. It is a showcase for York as a destination for conferences and events. York is a beautiful, well-connected city with the potential to hold many more big political and business conferences. This weekend should just be the beginning….

It is also a chance for our members in York to meet our ministers and MPs as well as councillors and campaigners from across the country. And as we all know, a chance for local party members to actually debate and decide national party policy.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable “considers all female shortlists for city firms.” Really?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 5th March 2014 - 12:30 pm

Yesterday’s Guardian ran a story which said that Vince Cable was considering all female shortlists for the boards of FTSE companies.

That headline was  at this stage over-egging that particular pudding. All he is doing is asking the Equality and Human Rights Commission to advise whether such a move would be legal.

That was in fact the eighth of ten recommendations in a report by Charlotte Sweeney who has worked has head of diversity for top banks, which reviewed the effectiveness of the Government’s voluntary code for city headhunters. It’s worth having a look at the whole report which is available …

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes…Nick Clegg has put Liberal Democrats far ahead of other parties on security and privacy

By Julian Huppert | Tue 4th March 2014 - 6:49 pm

This morning was a good day for Liberal Democrats. I and many others went to RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute to hear Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of our party, deliver a speech on security and privacy in the internet age.

He sent out a clear and strong message: the legal framework for the UK’s intelligence agencies and intelligence oversight structure is in desperate need of an overhaul, and this must start with an independent review, which he has commissioned.

His wider ambitions are set out in a piece for the Guardian today. The Tories are blocking changes …

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Tad Jones

Opinion: Drugs – Evidence based policy, liberalism and some Uruguayan political courage

By Tad Jones | Tue 4th March 2014 - 5:12 pm

drugsAre we seeing some change in the way societies view drugs?

Last December Uruguay legalised cannabis, and in the US, the states of Colorado and Washington legalised cannabis for personal use in 2012. The Netherlands has, for some time, allowed cannabis use in specialist coffeeshops. Of course, none of these examples have opted for free and unfettered access for all, but rather a regulated system where the authorities can exert control. The Uruguayan plan includes a user registry, a tax, and quality control, with the aim of reducing profits for organised crime, and reducing drug related violence.

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Adam Killeya

Opinion: Henry Ford and the coalition’s ‘localism’

By Adam Killeya | Tue 4th March 2014 - 2:55 pm

Brent Town Hall. Photo credit: stevecadman on FlickrFord famously commented that customers could have any colour they like as long as it’s black. It feels to me that at the moment we can have any localism we like as long as it’s blue.

Two particular events have provoked this thought. The first is that that council tax bills are about to go out and, under localism, a council cannot raise council tax significantly, including to protect services, without holding a referendum. However they can cut council tax and services without any such requirement. Furthermore, as councils have to pay for the referendum themselves, increasing council tax by a little over the limit is not financially viable. Therefore the referendum rules do not give local people more control so much as force councils to subscribe to Conservative ideas about the balance between services and taxation.

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Toby Fenwick

Opinion: Ukraine – Next Steps

By Toby Fenwick | Tue 4th March 2014 - 12:27 pm

ukraineAn international affairs policy wonk could be forgiven for thinking that April Fools’ Day had come early. After all, the last 72 hours have seen the Russian Federation occupy Ukraine’s Crimea, and apparently threaten to attack Ukrainian forces in Crimea if they don’t surrender. Such an action is in direct violation of the 1994 Bucharest Memorandum, the OSCE’s Helsinki Final Act, and Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

The use of force without the explicit authorisation of the UN Security Council has a very specific name: aggression. The Nuremburg Tribunal described aggression as the “supreme international crime”: aggression starts wars, destroys lives and is a visceral attack on the international rule of law.

Simply, aggression is international gangsterism of the highest order.

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David Boyle

Opinion: How to balance the UK economy

By David Boyle | Tue 4th March 2014 - 10:41 am

A-Co-operative-bank-sign-007I was a bit flummoxed after being taken to task on Lib Dem Voice last week for being anti-business. What had I done? I had been criticising payday loan companies for hoovering up money away from local companies.

There are two underlying problems here, confusions which muddy the political debate on business.

The first is the misleading idea that somehow all business is always on the same side.  Organisations like the CBI claim to speak for business while actually promoting the interests of the biggest.  It isn’t the way the world is.

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Caron Lindsay

Have you downloaded your Spring Conference app yet?

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 3rd March 2014 - 1:01 pm

The new Liberal Democrat conference app is now available on both Google Play and Apple’s app store. The instructions for downloading it in the Conference agenda are not ever so clear as they don’t tell you what its called –  Lib Dem Spring Conf 2014.

If you have a Blackberry or a Windows phone, you need to go here.

I downloaded mine this morning with more than a little apprehension. You see, it’s never worked for me before. I have always had problems getting the “My Schedule” part of it to work. To me, that part is the whole point. …

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Gareth Epps

Opinion: Pubs v Pubcos, which side are you on, Mr Cameron?

By Gareth Epps | Mon 3rd March 2014 - 9:57 am

Dear Dave,

The last time we spoke was in the Tite Inn at Chadlington, a great village pub with a landlord who I and others helped get rate relief for to keep the last pub in the village going.  We know you appreciate pubs – when the phone-hacking scandal was rife, you bolted to Charlbury Beer Festival, though you needed practice at Aunt Sally.  Maybe you’ll have more time to do that soon.

Fast forward a decade or so and you have a big decision in front of you.  With over 100 pubs a month closing due largely to the overpricing …

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Caron Lindsay

Farron: It’s Lib Dems v UKIP in European elections

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 2nd March 2014 - 9:43 am

Last year on the eve of Spring Conference, we reported Tim Farron’s controversial interview in House magazine in which he described activists as cockroaches and said the party was in a critical state. He certainly got into a bit of trouble from Them Indoors, but, as Stephen Tall pointed out:

The language is colourful: that’s Tim for you. He could give dull, measured interviews that are risk-free. But it’s not his way. And I don’t think many activists would want him to be anything other than himself. It is precisely because Tim is un-spun, a straight-talker who takes his role

…

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Caron Lindsay

Can everyone please just play nice? Briefing against other Liberal Democrats and insulting party activists is never going to help.

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 1st March 2014 - 4:33 pm

carmichael and teddy bearWe’ve had some pretty strange and random articles appearing all over the place about who might replace Nick Clegg. The least strange and random was of course this by my co-editor Stephen Tall.

People who know Graeme Littlejohn have generally been laughing their heads off at the notion that he’s been brought in as Danny Alexander’s Head of Office as some Machiavelli who’s going to win him the leadership. That’s been in a couple of papers now and I’m just wondering who on earth is spreading this stuff. Actually, I do have some ideas, but these are better kept to myself for the time being.

Yesterday, it was the turn of Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael to get the Leadership Speculation Treatment, by Thomas Byrne over at the New Statesman.:

Carmichael has managed to avoid falling prey to the left/right divide emerging more clearly in the party as it gets used to power. “He could be a compromise candidate… post-coalition we need someone to hold the party together. Alistair might be the guy,” one Lib Dem told me. As chief whip for the Lib Dems before becoming Scottish Secretary, he will know where the bodies are buried. Not only did this position make building a relationship with all the MPs in the party compulsory, it also meant he commanded their respect. Don’t mess with Carmichael.

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Stuart Bonar

Opinion: Do people not care about civil liberties?

By Stuart Bonar | Sat 1st March 2014 - 10:54 am

It is inevitable that amongst the images of more than 1.8 million Yahoo! users hoovered up by GCHQ there are photos of children, and surely – given the scale of it – of children in their bedrooms. Yet where is the outcry?This latest discovery from the Snowden files is not simply the next chapter in the story of how every aspect of our online lives has been monitored over recent years. It also blows apart the standard defence used so far that only metadata – who called who when, but not the content – has been gathered up and …

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Prateek Buch

Opinion: On child poverty targets, on which I agree with David Laws

By Prateek Buch | Sat 1st March 2014 - 9:16 am

“A fair, free and open society, in which… no one shall be enslaved by poverty.”

The fundamental basis of our party’s constitution – its very soul – is the elimination of poverty. We may disagree amongst us on how best to achieve this ambitious goal, but there’s little dissent on having it as a goal, particularly when it comes to the blight of children growing up in poverty.

As Caron made clear, we find ourselves in government with a party that doesn’t share many of our values – rarely is this crystallised as starkly as this week’s battle over child poverty …

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Liberal Youth seeks your views on improving further education

By LY Working Group on Further Education | Fri 28th February 2014 - 11:25 am

LY campaigning in WestonYesterday Nick Clegg made an announcement on Further Education. This is a response from members of Liberal Youth’s working group on Further Education.

Nick Clegg’s announcement yesterday was largely focussed on improving careers advice, severely damaged as a result of the scrapping of Connexions, and giving those who haven’t gone to Higher Education an equal chance to those who have. Nick talked about creating a ‘one stop shop’ website for 16 year olds to help them plan their next move, similar to UCAS but will include information about apprenticeships, …

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Caron Lindsay

David Laws challenges Tories on child poverty

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 28th February 2014 - 9:28 am

The frustrations of being in government with the Tories are no greater than when they are concerned with issues of poverty and vulnerability. Many Liberal Democrats have ongoing concerns about welfare reforms which remove support from people who need it. However much we might try to console ourselves with the fact that we are making a difference with things like free school meals, the raising of the tax threshold, extra childcare for the poorest, an early start to education for the poorest 2 year olds and making sure that the whole country enjoys the benefits of the economic recovery and …

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Louise Furness

My work placement with Chris Davies MEP

By Louise Furness | Thu 27th February 2014 - 1:18 pm

Louise Furness recently spent a week on a work placement with North West MEP Chris Davies. Here she tells us about her insight into life in Brussels.

Monday: Walking into the European Parliament for the first time is quite something. It is an impressive complex and a hive of activity – and this is supposedly a quieter period as fewer proposals are put to Parliament and MEPs spend more time in their constituencies in the run-up to the elections. The week began with a team meeting, during which Chris discussed his diary with Carly and Joana from his office. This …

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Caron Lindsay

So what’s happening at Conference? Part 2: The Training

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 26th February 2014 - 4:45 pm

A Liberal Youth training sessionPart 2 of my quick guide to Conference features the training programme that’s on offer on Saturday. You can read Part 1 on the debates here.

The biggest problem with Conference is that there simply isn’t enough time to do everything you want. There aren’t enough hours in the day, even if you dispense with sleeping to catch up with friends and go to all the debates and fine meetings and training sessions you want. That’s not just because many of the things you want to go …

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg and Vince Cable highlight Liberal Democrat achievements in higher education

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 25th February 2014 - 9:47 pm

When I went to speak in the St Andrew’s University debate last week, I did a bit of what I described as getting the tin opener and the worm can perilously close to each other, but pointed out that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds were twice as likely to go to university as they were 10 years ago. I also pointed out that those graduates on the lowest incomes would be paying much less than they were under Labour.

I was greatly assisted in preparing my remarks by Stephen Tall’s piece in January on the latest data in which …

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