Category Archives: Op-eds

Bill Newton Dunn MEP writes…European cooperation is indispensable in the fight against organised crime

By Bill Newton Dunn | Thu 13th June 2013 - 4:11 pm

On Tuesday the European Parliament voted through an interim report calling for greater European cooperation to tackle organised crime, corruption and money laundering in the EU.

Hundreds of billions of pounds worth of taxes are lost every year across Europe due to organised crime, as well as millions of legitimate jobs which have been taken from hard-working citizens. Fraud, counterfeiting, smuggling and cyber-crime all have a drastic impact on the economy and are undermining efforts to promote jobs and growth. Britain is particularly affected, with half of Europol’s investigations into organised crime having links to the UK.

Organised criminals conduct …

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Also posted in Europe / International | 2 Comments

David Boyle writes… Choice works – so why not in legal aid?

By David Boyle | Thu 13th June 2013 - 1:24 pm

Choice is a funny thing. I spent seven months studying how it worked in practice when I was running the Barriers to Choice Review for the Cabinet Office.

Despite the rhetoric from parts of the left, I believe that people can improve public services by being able to choose between different providers.

I’m also only too aware how many people are excluded from that – by a lack of information or advice, by a lack of transport and any number of other factors.

I am also aware of the

…

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Tagged barriers to choice review and legal aid | 18 Comments

Opinion: Are current state pension arrangements fair?

By Adam Corlett | Thu 13th June 2013 - 8:44 am

Two stories jumped out at me this week as being deeply connected. Stephen Tall praised Ed Balls for not ignoring the huge chunk of welfare spending that goes to pensioners. Then, a new website from Public Health England reminded us of the country’s large health inequalities. These inequalities should give us extra cause to question the fairness of current spending on pensioners.

As Stephen wrote “Spending on the state pension will increase by nearly 20% in real terms between 2010–11 and 2017–18.” The challenge of an ageing population was present even before the financial crisis. It’s now …

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Tagged life expectancy, public health and state pension | 15 Comments

Helena Morrissey’s report: my first impressions

By Stephen Tall | Wed 12th June 2013 - 7:10 pm

I attended Helena Morrissey’s media briefing this afternoon, marking the publication of her independent inquiry report into the ‘culture and processes’ of the Lib Dems following the allegations of sexual impropriety levelled against the party’s former chief executive, Lord (Chris) Rennard.

I’ve not yet had chance to read the full report, so this post is based on a skim read only, together with Helena’s own summary of it to the assembled journalists.

First, Helena set the context: not simply of the specific allegations, but more widely of what she termed …

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Also posted in News | Tagged chris rennard and helena morrissey | 15 Comments

Facing the world

By Maelo Manning | Wed 12th June 2013 - 12:12 pm

Cissy Nasande is facing a potentially life changing operation on 15 June but is most concerned to stress how nice the British medical and charity staff are who tend to her. It is at moments like this in our friendship that I am reminded about how life can be just about compassion and kindness and is not always about politics.

Cissy has a severe facial disfigurement. A growing bone tumour is pushing her right eye forward. ‘Facing the World’, a wonderful charity for children with severe facial disfigurement, has brought Cissy …

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The Lib Dem narrative dilemma: forget about 2010, start looking forward to 2015

By Stephen Tall | Wed 12th June 2013 - 9:50 am

We Lib Dems are past masters of the squeeze message. “The Tories can’t win here: vote Lib Dem to keep Labour out”; “Labour can’t win here: vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out”.

But since 2010 we have become the victims of a just-as-vicious squeeze message. Labour says: “Lib Dems are propping up a toxic right-wing Tory government pushing through disgraceful policies (which we will quietly sign up to later — viz cutting child benefit for wealthier parents — once we’ve capitalised on public anger).” …

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Tagged featured, narrative, neil stockley and nick clegg | 53 Comments

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 12th June 2013 - 8:53 am

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.

The Queen

Last week, the Queen celebrated 60 years on the throne since her coronation in 1953. She has been a dedicated servant of the nation throughout these years and I am sure everyone in the Borders will want to join me in congratulating her on reaching this milestone. It was a real pleasure to meet representatives from my constituency in Dover House who had travelled to London for the thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey.

Referendum

As the debate surrounding …

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Also posted in Parliament and Scotland | Tagged Michael Moore and Westminster Notes | Leave a comment

Opinion: Gender quotas are the sensible way forward

By Flo Clucas | Tue 11th June 2013 - 5:01 pm

‘In every aspect of life in which women are undervalued, under-represented or exploited we are dedicated to achieving equality.’ (from the Preamble of the Constitution of Liberal Democrat Women)

John Stuart Mill would have been outraged that, in the second decade of the 21^st century, women are still under-valued, exploited and under-represented, for it was he, speaking in the House of Commons in May 1867, who advocated votes for women.

Yet, here we are 150 years later, still trying to have equality in our society. Yes, we have women’s suffrage, but at the present rate of change, we will not have a gender balanced Parliament until 2050.

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Tagged Liberal Democrat Women and women | 42 Comments

Opinion: Decriminalising drugs

By Joe Bourke | Tue 11th June 2013 - 2:15 pm

The 2011 Liberal Democrat conference passed a motion calling for all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs to be scrapped, the introduction of a regulated market in cannabis, and the expansion of heroin maintenance clinics for the most fervent users.

The UK Drugs Policy Commission (UKDPC), published its final report in 2012. According to UKDPC, the cost of implementing current policy on illicit drugs is at least £3bn a year, but a lack of evidence for what works and provides value for money, and politicians’ unwillingness to act on available …

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Tagged drugs and drugs policy | 13 Comments

Opinion: Prisoner voting rights

By Tom Nicholson | Tue 11th June 2013 - 8:55 am

This week, the Supreme Court is considering the legality of the Government’s ban on prisoner voting. A majority of MPs are set against even limited suffrage for prisoners. The idea makes David Cameron “physically sick” and Jack Straw believes “those who break the law cannot make the law.”

Many supporters advance the same perfectly sound arguments, particularly from a human rights perspective. But a strong, pragmatic case for full prison enfranchisement can also be made by assessing this most populist of policies against the aims of sentencing in the criminal …

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Tagged prisoner voting | 9 Comments

Opinion: We must resist illiberal responses to the Woolwich murder

By Prateek Buch | Mon 10th June 2013 - 6:04 pm

The Social Liberal Forum is urging Nick Clegg to continue resisting the pressure from Conservative and Labour Parliamentarians for a “Snooper’s Charter” as a result of the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

At our recent Annual General Meeting, the SLF passed a motion urging the Liberal Democrat leadership to “resist all intimidation and blandishments by the Conservatives and others to support such legislation and to retain our outright and… to campaign vigorously against all threats to restrict our long-held liberties and rights from unauthorised State surveillance.”

Condemning the murder in …

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6 Comments

Well done, Ed Balls. He’s opened up space for a proper welfare debate. Lib Dems now need to claim that space.

By Stephen Tall | Mon 10th June 2013 - 3:45 pm

Ed Balls has done us all a favour. His announcement last week that if he were Chancellor he would put a stop to winter fuel allowances for well-off pensioners means Labour has joined the Lib Dems in saying we need to focus the welfare budget where it’s needed most, not keep on re-distributing from the worse off to the better off in the name of universalism. It’s why I chose him as my 38th Liberal Hero.

And yesterday he was at it again, highlighting quite how much of the welfare budget the state pension represents — some £74 …

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Tagged bedroom tax, ed balls, housing benefit, legal aid, nick clegg, pensions, steve webb, triple lock, welfare, welfare reform and winter fuel allowance | 13 Comments

Opinion: Choose Life

By Tahir Maher | Mon 10th June 2013 - 10:27 am

The spring conference at Brighton 2012 proposed a motion (F20) on Medically Assisted Dying which was carried and I was the only one who spoke against it. Now Lord Falconer has introduced a Bill on Assisted Dying for which I feel compelled to make a case against. On the wall at Lib Dem head office it say “The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity“.The motion and …

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Tagged assisted dying | 23 Comments

Opinion: Arming the Syrian Rebels

By Joe Bourke | Fri 7th June 2013 - 10:30 am

The Independent reported this week that Cameron faces serious Cabinet split over arming Syrian rebels.

Nick Clegg is said to have warned at a recent meeting of the National Security Council that supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army might only escalate the conflict, killing many more people without any realistic prospect of decisive victory and that it could be “next to impossible” to ensure that British arms do not fall into the hands of Islamist militants.

A Whitehall source said Mr Clegg did not believe “there was a military-only solution to Syria” and would not back any attempt to arm …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged foreign affairs and syria | 34 Comments

Are employment levels one of the “better stories” of the Coalition, as Fraser Nelson claims? Not really.

By Stephen Tall | Thu 6th June 2013 - 2:15 pm

The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson is — rightly — very hot on politicians being accurate in their use of stats. For instance, he’s — rightly — called out both Nick Clegg and David Cameron for confusing (whether accidentally or deliberately) the terms ‘debt’ and ‘deficit’, claiming the former is falling when they mean the latter.

However, Fraser is sometimes a bit casual with facts himself — for instance, wrongly claiming that an old report for the Department for Education ‘proved’ the pupil premium was flawed when it did no such thing.

And today he makes a point of highlighting …

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Also posted in News | Tagged david bell, david blanchflower, david cameron, employment rate, fraser nelson, nick clegg, niesr, ons and unemployment | 10 Comments

Would PR spell the end of the Liberal Democrats?

By Nick T | Thu 6th June 2013 - 12:23 pm

It is one of the biggest yet most under-appreciated ironies of British politics that the policy that unites the Liberal Democrat party membership in its most fervent rapture — the introduction of proportional voting to Westminster elections — is also, probably, the thing most likely, if implemented, to lead to the end of the party is we know it.

That is not to say that PR would necessarily lead to the break up of the party, but it is undeniable that majoritarian electoral systems force together the relatively broad coalitions that are the pre-requisite to winning elections.

The way in which individuals …

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Tagged electoral reform, featured and the economist | 39 Comments

Opinion: Feeling at home with housing policy

By James King | Thu 6th June 2013 - 9:04 am

With the general election less than two years away, it is increasingly important for the Lib Dems to pursue ‘differentiation’ from our coalition partners. This includes advancing clear and specific Lib Dem proposals that we will seek to deliver this side of the election. But we should also start highlighting priorities which will form the basis of our pitch to the electorate in 2015.

The emerging agenda includes support for wealth taxes, defence of EU membership and the protection of civil liberties. These issues are as important as ever, but at this stage our platform seems light on ‘social liberalism’ and …

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Tagged 2015 general election and housing | 13 Comments

Registers and recall: I support them both. But they’re not going to clean up our democracy

By Stephen Tall | Wed 5th June 2013 - 7:25 pm

The weekend’s revelations that two Labour peers and an Ulster Unionist were filmed offering to lobby ministers for cash, following hot on the heels of Tory MP Patrick Mercer’s resignation of the Tory whip over similar allegations, has re-ignited the question of how to clean up Parliament.

Two proposals are being pushed, both of them originally pledged in the Coalition Agreement.

Register of lobbyists

First, there’s a register of lobbyists, intended to bring greater transparency to the way in which professional lobbyists seek to influence government decisions. This is one of Unlock Democracy’s top campaigns:

If we don’t know

…

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Tagged alliance for lobbying transparency, david cameron, douglas carswell, john rentoul, nick clegg, parliamentary reform, register of lobbyists, right of recall, unlock democracy and zac goldsmith | 12 Comments

Opinion: London is not a foreign country

By Kirsty O'Brien | Wed 5th June 2013 - 11:00 am

London is a world city so it’s no wonder tens of thousands of Scots like me call it home. Some come to work for a while then head home, others put down more permanent roots and stay for the long-haul. I can’t speak for all of them but I don’t know anyone who has considered the move a ‘migration’. Leaving Scotland is a wrench but you don’t feel you’re moving to a foreign country.

I love this city – I love how busy, diverse and vibrant it is.

…

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Tagged better together, Scotland and Scottish independence referendum | 8 Comments

Labour and Tory MPs have a new twist on an old game. Block democratic reform. Then criticise lack of democratic reform

By Stephen Tall | Wed 5th June 2013 - 10:25 am

Labour and Tory MPs have a new favourite hobby. It’s one they’ve been practising for decades, but they’ve really refined their art in the last three years.

Basically it works like this…

A political scandal happens. Abuse of expenses by MPs or cash-for-questions/honours/favours, that sort of thing. Everyone demands reform. This must never happen again, they say. Cross-party talks are immediately convened. Then re-convened a few months later once the pressure’s off a bit. And finally they’re abandoned once they’re sure people have got bored with it all and …

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Also posted in Parliament | Tagged kevin brennan, lobbying, lords reform, nick clegg and party funding | 10 Comments

Opinion: Evidence-Based Policy and the Culling of Badgers

By Craig Brown | Tue 4th June 2013 - 5:47 pm

Tomorrow, our MPs will have the opportunity to vote in an Opposition Day debate on government plans for a badger cull. It is almost unheard of for the government to lose an opposition day motion, the last one being on settlement rights for veteran Gurkhas in 2009 – the first time since 1978. I have it on good authority that our parliamentary party has made up its mind that badgers are to be culled in the UK.

I would like to make a few things clear before I get into the meat of this post. Firstly, I’m not an ‘animal lover’ …

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Tagged badger cull | 14 Comments

Opinion:The Ministry of Justice’s latest reforms to legal aid will cut access to justice, not the deficit

By Jonathan Featonby | Tue 4th June 2013 - 3:49 pm

Tuesday 9 April 2013 was Be Kind to Lawyers Day – it was also the day that the Ministry of Justice launched its consultation on proposals to further reform the legal aid system in England and Wales. The proposals will affect both civil and criminal legal aid and, while the changes to criminal legal aid have attracted some media coverage, the changes to civil legal aid have received scant attention.

The civil legal aid changes fall into two categories and they represent a fundamental shift in the relationship between the state and those who are affected by its actions. Firstly, there will be a residence test which will require individuals to be in the UK at the time of the claim and to have been “lawfully resident” for at least 12 months.

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Tagged legal aid and ministry of justice | 8 Comments

Opinion: My marriage will be different, but equal, my Lords and Ladies…

By Ed Fordham | Tue 4th June 2013 - 2:26 pm

It has been said that people who vote against the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill will be ‘standing on the wrong side of history’ – as those of us who know and study history accept, only time will tell. But yesterday, as we led the Equal Marriage Vigil outside the House of Lords I was struck that we were witnessing and perhaps even making history.

What occurred at our Vigil can be variously described as glorious, fashionable, tuneful and positive. In short we gathered together the LGBT+ communities and their families …

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Tagged equal marriage and same sex marriage bill | Leave a comment

Ed Balls shifts Labour’s position closer to the Lib Dems: is this the start of a Lib-Lab realignment?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 4th June 2013 - 11:15 am

Ed Balls’ speech to Thomson Reuters yesterday grabbed headlines for its concession that paying a winter fuel allowance to the wealthiest 5% of pensioners could no longer be justified. The likely saving — at c.£100m a year, no more than a rounding error in the national accounts – may be modest, but the symbolism is significant.

This is Labour accepting (at long last) the new normal of austerity: current departmental spending will continue to be reduced in the next few years even as the long-hoped-for economic …

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Also posted in News | Tagged ed balls, featured, nick thornsby, vat and vince cable | 27 Comments

Sarah Ludford writes …Creating EU Data Protection rules that safeguard both privacy and jobs

By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP | Tue 4th June 2013 - 10:29 am

As those who read this LibDem Voice article by Peter Bradwell of Open Rights group will know, I am currently the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) group ‘shadow rapporteur’ on the draft EU Data Protection Regulation in the European Parliament.

I was not originally expecting to play a major role on this particular piece of legislation. But when my German FDP colleague Alexander Alvaro unfortunately suffered a serious car accident in February, the ALDE group appointed me as his interim replacement. I unwisely promised a response to Peter’s article ‘soon’! – but the last few months of negotiations have been very demanding. The new Regulation, unlike …

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Tagged ALDE, Data Protection Regulation and european parliament | 2 Comments

Opinion: The lobbying scandal is nothing of the sort

By Alexander Ehmann | Tue 4th June 2013 - 8:49 am

In recent days the rhetoric regarding lobbyists has notched up a few gears. These attacks have come from a surprising range of critics. Yesterday morning Lorraine Kelly on Daybreak suggested to Tom Brake MP that we should ban lobbying altogether and shortly afterwards Lord Oakeshott likened lobbyists to mosquitoes.

I am a lobbyist. My job requires me to talk and debate issues with politicians, civil servants and others on a daily basis. There is a great deal of twaddle talked about lobbying. Some of the nonsense is puff peddled …

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Tagged lobbying | 10 Comments

Stephen Gilbert writes … Liberal Democrats should be proud of the Energy Bill

By Stephen Gilbert MP | Mon 3rd June 2013 - 7:00 pm

The Energy Bill will, today and tomorrow, be going through its Report Stage and Third Reading in the Commons. Ed Davey set out clearly on Lib Dem Voice why this is so important for decarbonising our power sector and keeping on the lights at an affordable price for consumers. As a party we should be pleased that there is general cross-party support for the bill as it is vital that we maintain as far as we are able cross party consensus to provide the certainty for investors for our transition …

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Tagged ed davey and energy bill | 6 Comments

Opinion: A liberal future for police and crime commissioners

By Nick O'Shea | Mon 3rd June 2013 - 5:55 pm

I was the Lib Dem candidate for Police & Crime Commissioner in Surrey, although I am yet to be convinced that such roles are necessary or desirable as the right way to tackle the problem, or even if ‘we’ understand what the ‘problem’ is. But our government set them up, they are a publically elective post, and we are in the business of standing for public office.

PCCs were the Tories’ solution looking for a problem: they were determined to put these posts into place whatever the situation, irrespective …

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Tagged police and crime commissioners | 12 Comments

EDMWatch #2: Beer, moths, space and human rights

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 3rd June 2013 - 4:45 pm

We take a regular look at the Early Day Motions tabled by MPs. These are basically House of Commons petitions and are used to raise awareness of an issue. One of the biggest elements of an MP’s postbag or inbox is a pile of requests from supporters of a particular organisation or charity to sign a particular EDM. As a rule, ministers don’t sign EDMs. A look at EDMs can be a useful insight into what’s on MPs’ minds.

The second week of the parliamentary session saw a flurry of motions, going up from 71 to 155.

Most popular

The most …

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Also posted in Parliament | 1 Comment