Category Archives: Op-eds

An open letter from working group & FPC members on Nick Clegg’s immigration speech

By Suzanne Fletcher | Tue 26th March 2013 - 4:45 pm

As members of the body setting up a review of Liberal Democrat policy on immigration and identity under Andrew Stunell MP, or members of the review itself, we feel the need to put a few facts in the public domain following Nick Clegg’s speech on Friday.

It would have been helpful had we been made aware of the contents in advance. It would have been very helpful if members of the Policy Working Group had been sent an embargoed copy of the speech the night before.

There was much in the speech that reiterated Liberal values on immigration; indeed much of it …

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Also posted in News | Tagged immigration, internal democracy and policy development | 22 Comments

Jonathan Portes writes: If you want to get serious about growth, you need to be positive about migration

By Jonathan Portes | Tue 26th March 2013 - 1:45 pm

On Monday, I did seven interviews on David Cameron’s immigration speech. Each time I’ve tried to get across one simple fact: that all the available evidence suggests that immigrants – and immigrants from the new EU member states, in particular – more than pay their way. That is, that they pay more in taxes than they cost in benefits and services; overall, from being a burden, they make it easier to finance our welfare state not harder.

It is that basic fact that all three party leaders should be explaining to their constituents. Instead, they seem to be engaged …

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Tagged economic growth, featured, immigration, migration advisory committee and niesr | 23 Comments

Changing culture is a long term project – the past

By Mary Reid | Tue 26th March 2013 - 12:15 pm

Over the years there have been many changes in legislation that have made the UK more liberal country and a safer place to be. Equal marriage is a recent example, a proposal that would have been inconceivable 50 years ago when homosexual acts between men were still a crime.

In my lifetime we have seen anti-discrimination policies enshrined in law in terms of race, gender, disability and sexuality; we have laws that protect children and that give women control over their own bodies. But all of these were only possible because of cultural shifts that had occurred in the decades that …

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3 Comments

Crunch time for secret courts – email the Lords tonight

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 25th March 2013 - 7:52 pm

This time tomorrow, the House of Lords will have voted on the Justice and Security Bill. These men and women have the future of fair and open justice in their hands.

If they pass the Bill as it stands just now, it will not satisfy the Joint Committee on Human Rights. That is serious stuff. It is counter-intuitive for any Liberal Democrat to be going against what that Committee, not to mention Liberty, Amnesty and every other human rights organisation, says. How many red flags do we need?

The amendments in the Lords will, if passed, ensure that secret courts are only …

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Tagged justice and security bill, ken macdonald and secret courts. house of lords | 3 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Youth petition Nick Clegg on immigration

By Sam Fisk and Kavya Kaushik | Mon 25th March 2013 - 2:06 pm

The Liberal Democrats are committed to building a stronger economy in a fairer society. We might be sick of hearing that phrase but it does sum up our party’s values pretty well.

Yet Nick Clegg’s speech on Friday would damage the party’s plans for a stronger economy in a fairer society.

If Nick Clegg truly wants to enable everyone to get on in life, he should re-consider this new illiberal stance on immigration.

Liberal Youth oppose Nick Clegg’s ’security bonds’ policy, which will stifle foreign entrepreneurship and investment in Britain. We should be encouraging people to start up businesses in here, which create jobs and economic growth. We …

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Tagged immigration, liberal youth and nick clegg | 46 Comments

Opinion: How I helped develop our £10,000 tax threshold policy

By Elizabeth Jewkes | Mon 25th March 2013 - 11:55 am

When Nick Clegg was first elected leader, he announced a new tax policy – to reduce the percentage paid from 20% to 16%. The policy was duly passed at the 2008 Conference. Another delegate mentioned to me that he would prefer to see the Income Tax threshold raised taking the lowest paid out of tax. ‘Too late now’ he said.

I took this as a challenge and looked for a way of changing tax policy. I didn’t have to wait long. Jo Swinson MP sent an email to Women Liberal Democrats asking for policy ideas for the Manifesto Day at the …

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Tagged nick clegg, tax threshold and vince cable | 8 Comments

Ethnic Minorities Liberal Democrats react to Nick Clegg’s immigration speech

By Lester Holloway | Mon 25th March 2013 - 10:55 am

Reaction to Nick Clegg’s immigration speech shows just how much our party values the cultural and economic contribution migration makes to Britain.

In fairness, Nick did say some positive things but the idea of bonds, thought to be for £1,000, on visitors from ‘high risk’ countries was inevitably going to write ‘tough-on-migrants’ headlines in the media.

No one wants overseas visitors to disappear into the unofficial economy or exploited by unscrupulous criminals, but we have a whole apparatus to deal with that already.

The Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats welcome Nick’s desire to double fines for employing illegal workers, but our membership and BAME …

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Tagged emld, immigration and nick clegg | 25 Comments

Opinion: Osborne’s mortgage scheme is the worst of both worlds

By David Thorpe | Mon 25th March 2013 - 9:53 am

Perhaps the best outcome from the Chancellor’s budget announcement that the UK Treasury is to underwrite billions of pounds worth of mortgages has been the muted reaction to it.

In a budget which was distinctly underwhelming, the Chancellor must have hoped that his latest attempt to ‘get the banks lending more’ would be hailed in the same way that previous populist capitalist measures, such as the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme were.

Most economic decisions are empirical, and there are valid points to make on either side of any argument.

But the Chancellor’s plan has nothing to recommend it. It will do …

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Tagged budget 2013 and economy | 54 Comments

Julian Huppert MP writes…A credible alternative to prison has always been a Liberal Democrat priority

By Julian Huppert | Mon 25th March 2013 - 8:43 am

For decades British Governments have been locking up criminals for 12 months or less, to watch them reoffend straight after they leave prison. Worse than that, the policy is costly, and holds little public confidence.

But when you look at how we treat women offenders, the situation is even worse.

Almost half of women serving 12 months or less will reoffend within the next year. And of all women in prison, 6 in 10 are there for six months or less; the vast majority of whom have committed non-violent offences. The last Government’s response was to increase the female prison …

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Tagged justice, prison, sentencing and women offenders | 3 Comments

Libby Local, Episode 14: “Team Libby”

By Libby Local | Sun 24th March 2013 - 2:20 pm

“I’m not at all political but I’ll help you if like.”

My standard doorstep smile broke into a broad grin. Half an hour and a pot of Earl Grey tea later, I had recruited myself a designer and copyrighter – @Demsburybess.

Correction. ‘Team Libby’ had gained a designer and copywriter. One of the first suggestions @Demsburybess made is that we have a team identity. Team Libby it is. I’m just a little self-conscious about the sobriquet but I’m really excited about it at the same time.

Team Libby is growing rapidly. Our helpers have been recruited through church contacts, in …

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Salmond promises childcare revolution after turning down Rennie’s plans for nursery education

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 23rd March 2013 - 7:30 pm

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond gave his keynote speech to SNP Conference this afternoon. There were three things in it that struck me as a Liberal Democrat.

A numbers game

Apparently a “yes” vote for independence would be a vote for a “prosperous economy and a just society.” Does this remind you of any phrase being used rather a lot at the moment by any Liberal Democrat who can be persuaded to do so? I wonder how prosperous an economy built on wildly optimistic estimates of oil revenues would be to start with.

Many nationalists have been complaining about their fixed budget doesn’t …

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Tagged alex salmond, childcare, Scotland, Scottish independence referendum and willie rennie | 6 Comments

2013: The Year of Vince

By Joe Otten | Sat 23rd March 2013 - 4:27 pm

Following Vince Cable’s gentle call for more capital spending – now reflected in the recent budget – Politics Home talks to the Business Secretary. In suitably glowing terms…

In many ways, his allies think 2013 is The Year of Vince. His once lonely call (in the Coalition at least) for more capital spending and reliefs has been heeded. His ‘responsible capitalism’ agenda will bear fruit this year with boardroom and shareholder changes. He’s outmanoeuvred the Treasury by getting a £1bn business bank – in return for a Tory policy on employee share rights that has been gutted by the

…

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Tagged business bank, green investment bank and vince cable | 6 Comments

Nick Clegg’s illiberal hat-trick: now immigration joins ‘secret courts’ and media regulation on the pyre

By Stephen Tall | Fri 22nd March 2013 - 5:55 pm

Today Nick Clegg made a speech on immigration. He was due to deliver it in February but decided to delay it until after the Eastleigh by-election: I guess it wasn’t an issue he wanted to stir-up for Ukip’s benefit. Or perhaps he realised that his position would be as well-received by many activists as a bucket of cold sick.

I have read it all the way through, which is more than it deserved. It’s a lazy, lazy speech. It genuflects in the direction of liberalism with some stirring …

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Tagged featured, immigration and nick clegg | 134 Comments

Nick Clegg’s speech on immigration: the good, the bad and the ugly

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 22nd March 2013 - 3:52 pm

The much-missed Conrad Russell said you should read something three times before you pass comment on it. I’ve done that with today’s speech on immigration by Nick Clegg. I’ve also had several cups of tea and am frantically hunting for some smelling salts to revive me. Leaders are supposed to lead and to challenge established thinking. I have no problem with him sticking his neck out on an issue if that is what he wants to do. It’s important that we listen to him and if we don’t like his ideas, to calmly and respectfully tell him so.

It seems …

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Tagged andrew stunell, immigration and nick clegg | 32 Comments

No braking at Gambon – a monetary policy guide for petrolheads

By Bill le Breton | Fri 22nd March 2013 - 11:48 am

If you had to choose a person from the following list, and only this list, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, would you choose James May, Jeremy Clarkson or Richard Hammond? Tough choice, but go on: indulge me!

The last time I wrote here, I predicted that the Quad had reached a turning point on monetary policy. I did this not on the evidence of Vince Cable’s New Statesman article, but on a report in the Financial Times that Osborne was set to change the regime imposed on the Bank of England.

Well, …

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Tagged economic policy, top gear and vince cable | 10 Comments

Time to throw an anvil at secret courts

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 21st March 2013 - 7:21 pm

Next Tuesday, which is both my nephew’s 14th birthday and the 32nd anniversary of the founding of the SDP, the Justice and Security Bill comes back to the House of Lords for consideration. Now, my esteemed colleague Mr Valladares has given a very helpful account of what the Lords can and can’t do. He goes on to suggest that the Upper House will often back down in the face of pressure from the elected Chamber.

If ever, though, there was a time for the peers to kick off, it is now, when the right to a fair trial remedy for …

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Tagged david howarth, house of lords, james carville, mark valladares and secret courts | 7 Comments

Scotland’s Day of Destiny clashes with 2014 Federal Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 21st March 2013 - 5:55 pm

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond announced today that the Independence Referendum would be held on 18th September 2014. Three and a half years of preparation and campaigning will come to an end and Scotland will decide whether its future lies within the UK or out of it. At the moment, the polls are looking pretty good for staying in the Union, but that is no cause for complacency. Every vote will have to be fought for across the whole country. It will be a very different sort of campaign.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that when you were deciding on …

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Tagged liberal democrat conference, Michael Moore, Scotland and Scottish independence referendum | 22 Comments

Roger Williams MP writes…Why I’m backing Tim Yeo’s Energy Bill amendments – and urging my colleagues to join me

By Roger Williams MP | Thu 21st March 2013 - 5:12 pm

It’s hard to believe, but more than a year has passed since Ed Davey stepped into Chris Huhne’s shoes at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Ed has spent much of that time fighting George Osborne and the Treasury to ensure that the Energy Bill – a once-in-a-generation opportunity to direct £110bn of investment towards a clean energy future – achieves its stated aims: cut carbon, secure our electricity supply, and rein in household fuel bills.

These are the aims of Liberal Democrats everywhere, and credit must be given to Ed for the vigour with he has pursued

…

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Tagged ed davey and energy bill | 11 Comments

Don Foster MP writes… Housing at the heart of the Budget

By Don Foster MP | Thu 21st March 2013 - 3:18 pm

House building fell dramatically following the financial crisis and hasn’t yet fully recovered. Last year 118,900 new homes were built in England. But with the number of households predicted to grow by 232,000 a year for the next 20 years and thousands currently unable to get onto the housing ladder, we need to build more than double that each year to keep up with demand, but we also need to tackle the sluggish housing market. That’s why housing was at the heart of the Budget yesterday, with more help for first time buyers and more money for affordable homes.

The …

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Tagged affordable housing, budget 2013, build to rent, firstbuy, green deal, help to buy and housing | 35 Comments

Cyprus bailout plan: good idea, badly implemented?

By Nick T | Thu 21st March 2013 - 2:33 pm

Cyprus’s parliament couldn’t have been much clearer in its rejection of the plan, negotiated between eurozone members, to bail out the country’s failing banks. As a result, Cyprus is now turning from Brussels to Moscow for a lifeboat, and it looks like a deal might be done. Russia is demonstrating once again that is never backward in coming forward to build (or buy) new strategic alliances.

Yet outside the markets pages of the Financial Times, the merits of the original plan seem to have been little-discussed, with the assumption being that the plan was a universally bad one. But actually the idea …

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Tagged banking and cyprus | 23 Comments

Budget 2013: Osborne crosses fingers and hopes ‘steady as she goes’ will come good by 2015

By Stephen Tall | Wed 20th March 2013 - 8:05 pm

Move along, nothing to see here… This was a steady-as-she-goes budget at a time when the economy is anything-but-steady.

Of course as Lib Dems it’s great to welcome the final push towards lifting all those paid less than £10,000 out of income tax. As my Co-Editor Caron Lindsay notes here, this is a policy direct from the front page of our 2010 manifesto to the Coalition’s budget. That’s no mean achievement — we know that because the Tories keep trying to claim it as …

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Also posted in News | Tagged budget 2013, featured, george osborne and tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 13 Comments

Why it’s worth being a member of the Liberal Democrats

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th March 2013 - 7:08 pm

Today, the Liberal Democrats fulfilled their key election pledge of raising the income tax threshold to £10,000.

And they’ve produced a nifty little picture to tell us about it. And we should rightly be proud.

This doesn’t tell the whole story, though. How did this get in to our manifesto in the first place? Did it fall out of the Orange Book and hit David Laws on the head? I have to say there’s no clue in either of the emails I’ve seen from Danny Alexander today.

Actually no. It came from …

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Tagged liberal democrats, lizzie jewkes, raising tax threshold and tax threshold | 30 Comments

The Independent View: Osborne’s small beer budget

By Daniel Wright | Wed 20th March 2013 - 6:32 pm

There are, at most, 777 days until the next UK General Election. Today’s Budget was the last real chance to introduce measures that will have time to create a real impact before then. This, however, was not a Budget designed to alter the path of the economy in any dramatic way: the Coalition has never veered far from the course set at the Spending Review almost three years ago. Instead, this was a narrow Budget, full of small measures.

That is not to say that this Budget is not important in terms of the next election. Small as its measures were, …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged budget 2013 | 2 Comments

Danny Alexander MP writes… Budget 2013: putting Liberal Democrat principles into practice

By Danny Alexander MP | Wed 20th March 2013 - 4:36 pm

Today’s Budget delivers Liberal Democrat policies to help families with the cost of living and invest in the future of our economy, while making responsible choices to deal with the financial problems Labour left us with.

The announcement that the Coalition will increase the personal allowance to £10,000-one year ahead of schedule-is a huge victory for the Liberal Democrats. At the last General Election, we made big tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes the centre piece of our manifesto. We have delivered that promise-helping deliver a strong economy in a fairer society, so everyone can get on in …

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Tagged budget 2013 | 14 Comments

Devils, details and the tax threshold beyond 2014

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th March 2013 - 3:04 pm

There is no doubt that today is a very good day for the Liberal Democrats. The party has delivered a major pledge from its 2010 manifesto, as this infographic from Mark Pack shows:

This is not an idea that fell out of the Orange Book. It came from Elizabeth Jewkes, an ordinary member. I wonder how she feels today. It goes to show that being a member of this party can give you opportunities to make a real difference to people’s lives.

To deliver on such a pledge …

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Tagged budget 2013, elizabeth jewkes and tax | 13 Comments

Ed Davey MP writes: Hinkley Point – we need to have all low carbon options in play

By Ed Davey | Wed 20th March 2013 - 2:00 pm

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing our planet – if we don’t tackle it we will continue to see extinction of species on an industrial scale, parts of our world will become uninhabitable for humans, and we will see increasing conflict between nations over scarce resources and the mass migration of impoverished peoples. We need to step up to this environmental challenge and use all of our ingenuity and resourcefulness to meet it head-on.

As the Secretary of State I’m determined …

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Tagged featured, hinckley point and nuclear power | 30 Comments

My highlights of Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th March 2013 - 11:56 am

I’m a bit bleary eyed today. One conference is exhausting, two on successive weekends is positively foolhardy. Following that up with a trip to London for Federal Executive is craziness.

I spent the weekend in Dundee where Scottish Liberal Democrats held their main Conference. Over three days, there were no fewer than twelve policy debates, some of them incredibly powerful or controversial. Here are my highlights.

The Secret Courts debate

Yes, I’m biased as I proposed the motion rejecting the Government’s proposals, but the debate itself was very high quality. Liberal Youth co-chair Kavya Kaushik won the Russell Johnston award for the best …

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Also posted in News | Tagged mental health, Scotland, Scottish liberal democrat conference, secret courts, tavish scott, vince cable, wilie rennie and willie rennie | 2 Comments

Opinion: Withholding taxes are long overdue

By Jonathan Hunt | Wed 20th March 2013 - 10:53 am

If George Osborne really wants to find enough dosh to get Britain out of the mess he has created, our advice should be: Go after the tax-cheating multinational corporations.

It is about time these cross-border pirates were put in their place. And one place to be urgently put is paying tax on the profits made from operating businesses in countries outside their home base.

While no-one knows how exactly much money they are cheating us of, estimates vary from somewhere between £10bn and £20bn. Given that the Economist quotes a total worldwide figure of some $20 trillion lost in avoidance and evasion, that …

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Tagged corporate tax avoidance and tax | 45 Comments

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 20th March 2013 - 9:51 am

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

Green Deal

Despite the fact that we are now well into March, it seems that there is no let up in the cold snowy weather and I know that at this time energy bills remain a major concern to my constituents. To help people reduce these bills and cut down their energy use, the Government has taken action and introduced a scheme called the Green Deal. This enables people to improve the energy efficiency of their …

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Also posted in Parliament and Scotland | Tagged brazil, green deal, Michael Moore, press regulation, trade and Westminster Notes | Leave a comment