Category Archives: Op-eds

Conference Preview: Saturday 14th September

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 9th September 2013 - 9:30 pm

I thought it might be helpful to have a wee mosy around the Conference agenda and highlight some of the must-see picks of each day.

You can always guarantee with a Conference agenda that there will be at least two things you want to do at any given moment. In fact, if it’s only two, that’s a bonus. On Saturday, I need to split myself into 10 to do everything I need to do.

The age old concept of divide and rule is alive and well in 2013. If you have two highly contentious consultation sessions likely to be attended by roughly …

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Also posted in Conference | Tagged autumn conference 2013 | 2 Comments

Opinion: HS2 is NOT Lib Dem policy!

By John Whitehouse | Mon 9th September 2013 - 3:18 pm

The Lib Dem transport strategy “Building a Fast Track Britain” agreed in 2008 is an excellent document which is well worth re-reading. Lib Dem proponents of HS2 constantly refer back to this strategy when declaring their support for the project.

But High Speed Rail (HSR) does not necessarily mean HS2. On the day that the Public Accounts Committee publishes yet another damning indictment of the project, it’s worth making clear that HS2 is certainly NOT in line with Lib Dem transport strategy:-

It will not help to reduce carbon emissions. Its ultra-high speed specification will result in much higher emissions than a

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Tagged high-speed rail and HS2 | 77 Comments

Julian Huppert writes… Ending food-crop-based first-generation biofuels

By Julian Huppert | Mon 9th September 2013 - 2:13 pm

The issue of food being used for fuel has become increasingly contentious. And decisions are fast approaching – in the European Parliament Liberal Democrat MEP colleagues are currently negotiating capping the use of damaging biofuels. Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat Transport Minister will also be taking up the issue in the Council of Ministers.

While first generation biofuels were lauded as the future it is now clear they cause more problems than they solve. The UK’s Gallagher Review in 2010 in fact concluded that in some cases biofuels can generate a higher carbon footprint than fossil fuels and contribute to deforestation. Subsidies …

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Tagged biofuels | 22 Comments

Opinion: Fracking cannot be at the expense of Climate Change targets

By Layla Moran MP | Mon 9th September 2013 - 1:03 pm

Next Sunday, conference will debate the Green Growth and Green Jobs motion (F10). This wide ranging motion includes, among other things, lines on fracking (56-58) which state:

Permitting limited shale gas extraction, ensuring that regulations controlling pollution and protecting local environmental quality are strictly enforced, planning decisions remain with local authorities and local communities are fully consulted over extraction and fully compensated for all damage to the local landscape

Like many of you I am skeptical about fracking for a number of reasons but primarily because I am absolutely committed to tackling Climate Change, and the lines in the motion do …

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Tagged climate change and fracking | 16 Comments

Julian Huppert: Trident – getting off the nuclear ladder

By Julian Huppert | Fri 6th September 2013 - 3:03 pm

I firmly believe that we do not want Trident. We simply don’t need the ability to blow up large parts of the globe. Frankly, the idea that we have spent decades with nuclear armed missiles cruising the oceans ready to fire on a moment’s notice seems absurd to me. I look forward to a world where we do not have such weapons, and where no one else does either.

Even those who believe that the MAD theory worked during the Cold War surely must accept that the world has changed – I am always amazed by those who still live in the 60s.

The Tories are still wedded to that position – they seem to display some bizarrely Freudian attachment to having missiles which can explode violently.

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Tagged conference 2013, featured and nuclear disarmament | 40 Comments

Keith House writes: Low carbon development, the Eastleigh way

By Keith House | Thu 5th September 2013 - 3:30 pm

This is the second of three extracts from the forthcoming collection of essays Green liberalism: a local approach to the low carbon economy. Similar collections will be published under Green Alliance’s ‘Green social democracy’ and ‘Green conservatism’ projects as part of the Green Roots programme, which aims to stimulate green thinking within the three dominant political traditions in the UK.

An international airport where two major motorways bisect may not, at a first glance, be the obvious place to start when looking for a council committed to the green economy. Add in support from the council for the managed growth of …

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Tagged green alliance, green liberalism and low carbon | 4 Comments

The Independent View: Legal Aid for children in prison. A disastrous day for liberal values

By Frances Crook | Thu 5th September 2013 - 1:59 pm

Today is a disastrous day for children in prison. The abolition of legal aid for children in prison will give a blanket of secrecy to child abuse.

The Howard League legal team has represented hundreds of children in prisons and privately run secure training centres to help them to progress successfully through their incarceration and to make sure the arrangements for their resettlement are safe and supportive. Legal aid to pay for this work is being abolished.

Not only will this mean that children will not get the courses they need to address their offending or the local authority support to …

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Also posted in The Independent View | 13 Comments

Adrian Sanders MP writes…The Government must learn where it went wrong over Syria

By Adrian Sanders | Wed 4th September 2013 - 4:25 pm

The Government’s handling of the Syria crisis continues to raise more questions than it answered. I’m not sure if this is a response to the media coverage of the issue or a general surprise that the process of sanctioning military action would necessarily have to differ from that used ten years ago when invading Iraq.

Focussing on the domestic political situation, it is clear that MPs in general supported a robust response to the use of chemical weapons despite the understandable concerns of the public. The motions failed solely due to Ed Miliband’s rather devious pragmatism; something one doesn’t expect in …

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Also posted in Europe / International and Parliament | Tagged nick clegg, Parliament and syria | 76 Comments

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 4th September 2013 - 1:44 pm

Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Moore MP, writes a regular column for newspapers in his Borders Constituency. Here is the latest edition.

Jobs campaign

I recently launched a local jobs initiative as part of the Liberal Democrats’ ‘A Million Jobs’ campaign.

Apprenticeships are a really effective way of tackling youth unemployment because they enable young people to develop the training, skills and experience they need to enter fulltime paid employment. They also benefit businesses who gain value …

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Also posted in Parliament and Scotland | Tagged jobs, Michael Moore, syria and Westminster Notes | 1 Comment

Opinion: Innovation, Employment and the EU

By Richard Davis | Wed 4th September 2013 - 12:30 pm

Research, development and innovation are intrinsically linked to economic growth. In the UK we have a shocking history of underinvestment in science and research funding however this has been mitigated by the investment the EU has made into UK sciences, research institutions and innovative start ups. With the new EU funding programme Horizon 2020 coming into effect from next year there are high hopes for a new burst of innovation and the economic activity that brings with it.

The more innovation we have in the UK, the more people make things, the more our manufacturing sector increases and the more jobs …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged eu, innovation and skills and science | 3 Comments

LibLink…Tim Farron: From Whitehall to the Town Hall, why we must say Yes to Homes

By NewsHound | Wed 4th September 2013 - 10:52 am

This week the National Housing Federation is running a Yes to Homes week to encourage councillors to allow more homes to be built within their areas. From their website:

Just a small handful of people can block the new homes that are a lifeline for many. When they are the only people putting pressure on local politicians their views are heard loud and clear.

All too often the people who actually need homes are missing from local debates. That’s why we have launched the Yes to Homes campaign. We want to make sure people who do support more housing are included

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Also posted in LibLink | Tagged featured, housing, national housing federation, tim farron and yes to homes week | 25 Comments

Opinion: War is hell, but sometimes dictators leave us with no choice

By Daniel Furr | Tue 3rd September 2013 - 3:34 pm

The Mother of All Parliaments, one of the oldest democracies in the world, decided against condemning, and possible military action against, a brutal dictator, who used chemical weapons on his own population. I shall not critique the political fallout and alleged skulduggery or whether or not certain individuals played politics with the issue; my opinion is to express why intervention is required and why Britain needs to lead on Syria.

Assad has terrorised his own population with conventional and chemical weapons. Innocent people have been indiscriminately targeted; entire neighbourhoods destroyed, towns and villages laid waste and countless communities have been massacred. …

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Tagged syria | 110 Comments

Opinion: Even if this is the end of our ‘Special Relationship’, there is no need to mourn its passing

By David Gray | Tue 3rd September 2013 - 2:10 pm

It’s that old classic love story. Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl become infatuated with one another. Boy leads Girl into a series of illegal wars in the Middle East. You know the rest. (In the interests of gender equality, I should point out that you are more than welcome to switch around the genders in this analogy.)

But now, this one sided relationship has a new twist. Girl has said no to the Boy’s latest attempts to lead her into another bombing campaign, and Boy is angry. Boy storms out, and …

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Tagged syria and usa | 18 Comments

Opinion: Public Sector Equality Duty review…the countdown has started

By Robin Lynn | Tue 3rd September 2013 - 9:16 am

Those of us concerned about the fate of the Public Sector Equality Duty are starting to notice increased activity by interested parties. The Government has announced that the review will be published immediately after the summer recess. The review was carried out under the auspices of the Red Tape Challenge.

Announcing the Review last year Theresa May said:

Bureaucracy and prescription are not routes to equality. Over-burdening businesses benefits no one, and real change doesn’t come from telling people what to do. Today’s announcement strikes the right balance between protecting people from discrimination and letting businesses get on with the job.

Ms …

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Tagged Public Sector Equality Duty and theresa may | 3 Comments

Opinion: The whole country is talking about HS2, so why aren’t we?

By John Whitehouse | Mon 2nd September 2013 - 1:44 pm

In recent weeks the national media has been full of HS2. A number of prominent politicians have expressed opposition to the scheme, others like George Osborne have rushed to support it, the Institute of Directors members said it should be scrapped, etc etc.

For those of us who have been “in the firing line” of this massive project for over three years already, this national media attention is overdue but very welcome. For far too long, any opposition to HS2 has been brushed off as “nimbyism”, with media images of posh people in grand houses being inconvenienced by a project that would upset their idyllic and privileged existences!

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Tagged HS2 | 55 Comments

David Laws writes… Tackling disadvantage must start before school

By David Laws | Mon 2nd September 2013 - 12:05 pm

When money is tight, where a party chooses to spend says something important about that party’s values.

So today is an important day for Liberal Democrats – as Nick Clegg launches our £760m investment to provide a free early years education for every disadvantaged two year old.

From today, for the first time ever, 130,000 two year olds from the poorest homes become eligible for a free place with a nursery or childminder. And we have announced that, from next year, this same offer will be extended to families earning less than £16,000, adopted children and those with special …

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Tagged childcare and early years education | 24 Comments

Opinion: Let’s have some facts on the ‘bedroom tax’

By Simon McGrath | Mon 2nd September 2013 - 8:47 am

One of the ‘facts’ about the ‘bedroom tax’ which is becoming increasing accepted is that 9 out of 10 disabled people affected by the ‘bedroom tax’ and refused a discretionary payment are going without food.

There is a rather good graphic, much shared, on Facebook illustrating this and it has been added to the Labour rhetoric of the all round wickedness of the Coalition.

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Tagged bedroom tax | 47 Comments

Opinion: The Syria Milishambles

By Westminster Insider | Sat 31st August 2013 - 10:01 am

Ed Miliband has once again done his best impression of a statesman. On Thursday morning, with bags under his eyes, he declared that he was tabling an amendment to the government’s motion on Syria. His amendment would require a ‘clear legal basis’ for military action, and a second vote in the House of Commons following the forthcoming UN weapons inspectors’ report.

The government’s motion, on the other hand, requires a ‘sound legal basis’ for action, and a second vote in the House of Commons following the forthcoming UN weapons inspectors’ report. Snap!

Miliband stumbled and stammered in the Chamber Thursday afternoon as he tried to draw a line in the sand between his amendment that wasn’t an amendment and the government’s identical policy.

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Tagged labour party and syria | 82 Comments

Opinion: Syria – We still have a responsibility to protect

By Jonathan Fryer | Sat 31st August 2013 - 9:07 am

Several speakers inThursday’s House of Commons debate on possible intervention in Syria referred to the developing concept within International Law of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Basically that means that when a government is unable or unwilling to protect its own people from humanitarian disaster then the international community has an obligation to intervene. Since R2P’s endorsement at the UN in 2005, it has generally been assumed that any such international intervention should have the backing of a UN Security Council resolution, which in Syria’s case would have been impossible, given that Russia and maybe also China would have vetoed …

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Tagged syria | 54 Comments

Julian Huppert writes: A local approach to sustainable transport

By Julian Huppert | Fri 30th August 2013 - 3:30 pm

This is the first of three extracts from the forthcoming collection of essays Green liberalism: a local approach to the low carbon economy. Similar collections will be published under Green Alliance’s ‘Green social democracy’ and ‘Green conservatism’ projects as part of the Green Roots programme, which aims to stimulate green thinking within the three dominant political traditions in the UK.

A sustainable and low carbon transport system is something which UK governments have historically struggled to achieve, thanks to years of poor forward planning and systems which revolve heavily around cars, a highly inefficient mode of transport. But mobility patterns are …

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Tagged green alliance, green liberalism and transport | 6 Comments

Independent View: Cable should revisit Mill’s Principles of Political Economy

By Mathew Lawrence | Fri 30th August 2013 - 2:03 pm

Cable should revisit Mill’s Principles of Political Economy

With new analysis this week showing as many as 50,000 women lose their jobs each year while taking time off to have a baby, insecurity appears to be the new normal for British workers.

From mothers losing out whilst on maternity leave, to the rocketing growth of zero hour contracts on which as many as 1m people are now employed, millions of people face instability at work. These bad employment practices combined with the on-going squeeze on wages means that over half of people say they struggle to keep up with bills. As conference approaches, Vince Cable would do well to consider these issues as matters of pressing importance.

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged capitalism and economy | 11 Comments

Baroness Falkner on Syria and intervening abroad

By Kishwer Falkner | Fri 30th August 2013 - 1:03 pm

I join Paddy Ashdown in feeling depressed about my country today.

In my near thirty years as a Liberal Democrat I have heard two tropes consistently from campaigners: that policy is irrelevant and that foreign policy is particularly irrelevant. Yet it is foreign policy above all that shapes our party’s fortunes.

Take the SDP split over Europe – that got me into the party in ’85. Then came our opposition to the UK’s ban in letting in Hong Kong residents before the handover to China – several of my friends joined too, and it put Paddy Ashdown on the map. In the 90’s it was Bosnia and subsequently Kosovo that made us carry a uniquely and sometimes lonely flag for freedom and humanitarian intervention – last night the same isolationist Foreign Secretary of that period was arguing against doing anything in Syria – some things don’t change! We subsequently made the right call on Iraq, and will shortly see the trial of Seif Gaddafy in Libya – who threatened to stamp out Libyan dissenters as cockroaches. Despite current troubles, on balance I am proud that we averted that.

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Also posted in Parliament | Tagged featured and syria | 41 Comments

Syria: A Reply to Stephen Tall

By Bill le Breton | Fri 30th August 2013 - 11:49 am

Stephen, as an internationalist you should applaud and accept the outcome of the democratic House of Commons last night. Do not be ashamed. Be proud. Do not be dismayed. Be hopeful.

The biggest destroyer of lives and life chances is anarchy. Anarchists work to bringing the whole house down. That is their objective. The rule of law is anathema to them.

I quoted earlier in the week, Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austrian precipitated the loss of 21 million lives and, if you see the Second World War, the Cold War and the dominance of Stalin as a …

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Also posted in Parliament | Tagged syria | 28 Comments

Letter to Nick Clegg – Secret courts and bedroom tax

By Iain Donaldson | Fri 30th August 2013 - 9:57 am

Dear Nick,

Following the vote in Parliament last night the Prime Minister demonstrated how to graciously step back from a position and accept the will of our democratically elected representatives that Britain should not engage in the folly of military intervention in Syria.To step back, accept that you have lost the vote, and so quickly return to the task that parliament has set is not in my view a sign of weakness, it is a clear sign of strength and dignity that will serve the Prime Minister well.

At our Spring conference this year you faced two major votes where you disagreed

…

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Tagged bedroom tax and secret courts | 6 Comments

Opinion: Syria vote – A step change in Britain’s relationship with the world

By Andy Boddington | Fri 30th August 2013 - 7:33 am

Yesterday’s Commons vote on intervention in Syria is a landmark. And a surprise.

All day I had been reading the pundits in the national press and listening to the BBC. No one expected the government to lose the vote. Least of all the government.

My view is that is one of the most significant votes in our recent history.

This perhaps – hopefully – is the moment when we stop believing we are a world power. At long last we, or at least our parliament, believe that we cannot bomb our way to peace. This could be the point where we believe our best interests, and those of the world, lie in using our financial and political resources to promote a world that works without war.

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Tagged syria | 19 Comments

The Independent View: Concerns about lobbying bill are not alarmist

By Ros Baston | Thu 29th August 2013 - 7:00 pm

So the pot has addressed the kettle again. Tom Brake and Chloe Smith have accused 38 Degrees of being either alarmist or scaremongering about the effects of Part 2 of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Perhaps they would like to add the famously hysterical Electoral Commission to their list of doom-mongers, as they have also expressed serious concerns.

Mr Brake and Ms Smith claim that Part 2 will save the UK from unaccountable big-spending American-style Super-PACs. No alarmism there, then – especially when the only thing preventing this horror is that non-party spending …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged 38 degrees, lobbying and tom brake | 2 Comments

Opinion: An open letter to Nick Clegg on Syria

By Iain Donaldson | Thu 29th August 2013 - 5:20 pm

Dear Nick,

Today Parliament is considering international action in Syria and you will take the most important decision of your leadership of the Liberal Democrats.

It would seem to me that there are four clear questions that must be answered before any military intervention is launched in Syria.

Is there compelling evidence of Assad’s guilt?

If compelling evidence of Assad’s guilt emerges, has an international arrest warrant been issued under international war-crimes law?

Have all non-military avenues for extradition to The Hague failed?

Has the Security Council sanctioned the necessary action to execute the arrest warrant?

Right now there appears to be no compelling evidence of Assad’s …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged syria | 39 Comments

Opinion: A no-fly zone offers the best chance of success in Syria

By Toby Fenwick | Thu 29th August 2013 - 4:04 pm

The conflict in Syria has continued with greater or lesser public notice for more than two years now. In this time thousands have died, millions have been displaced within Syria and into neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. And the international community has done little or nothing, hamstrung by Russian support for Assad, Chinese support for non-intervention, and ultimately, lack of western interest.

The large-scale chemical attack in a Damascus suburb claiming at least 300 lives at once changed everything and nothing. Everything, in that such an egregious violation of the laws of armed conflict, along with President Obama’s previous warnings of …

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Tagged syria | 9 Comments

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