Category Archives: Op-eds

Tony Dolphin

The Independent View: 10 ways to promote growth

By Tony Dolphin | Fri 25th November 2011 - 3:48 pm

Ahead of every recent budget and autumn statement, the right-of-centre think tanks have come out with a set of recommendations that support the broad thrust of government policy and argue for more of the same. True to form, earlier this week Reform made the case for sticking to Plan A on deficit reduction, abolishing the 50p tax rate and cutting workers’ employment rights.

But, with the economy having grown by just 0.5 per cent over the last year, and the Prime Minister hinting in a recent speech to the CBI that the government’s deficit reduction plan is being blown off course, …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Nick Clegg MP

Nick Clegg MP writes: We won’t let a generation fall behind

By Nick Clegg MP | Fri 25th November 2011 - 9:53 am

Having risen steadily since 2004, the number of unemployed young people hit the one million mark this month.

One million. One in five 16-24 year olds not in education, training or work, not because they are lazy or feckless, but because of factors well beyond their control.

It’s not good enough. Youth unemployment is an economic waste and a slow-burn social disaster.

We can’t afford to leave our young men and women on the scrap heap. We need the next generation to help us build a new economy.

When we chose to form this Coalition Government, Liberal Democrats knew that we would have to …

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Tagged | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

Missing: the people the Leveson Inquiry won’t be talking to

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th November 2011 - 7:45 am

“Follow the money”. It’s a cliché of investigative journalism for a very good reason. If you want to get to the heart of what is really going on, knowing who has paid what to whom frequently exposes the real action being hidden away behind warm words, evasive statements and muttered “no comments”.

It is also at the heart of many a public inquiry. Want to know why something happened? Who pays whom is again right at the centre of the story. Whether it is understanding drugs policy and the economics of the illegal market or looking at problems of rail safety, …

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Jenny Willott

Jenny Willott MP writes: Harrington – better assessments, better outcomes

By Jenny Willott | Thu 24th November 2011 - 3:24 pm

At our Conference in September, the Liberal Democrats unanimously supported a motion calling for changes to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) which accompanies it.

Speaker after speaker stood up to condemn the system left by Labour which subjected sick and disabled people to an ineffective, demeaning assessment process that was not fit for purpose. Many will remember the powerful speech by Shana Pezaro who condemned the WCA process as ‘utterly failing many people’.

The motion welcomed the first annual review of the WCA by Professor Malcolm Harrington, and the progress the Coalition Government has already …

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Phil Ling

Opinion: What right do politicians have to decide rules on their own jobs?

By Phil Ling | Thu 24th November 2011 - 2:25 pm

The party funding report by the Committee for Standards in Public Life was barely off the printers and politicians from all parties were saying they were broadly supportive, but more importantly could not back the main suggestion that state funding of political parties be increased.

Party funding will always be tough to square given the reliance of Labour on union money and the Conservatives (and increasingly the Liberal Democrats) on major donors. State funding is inevitable to reduce sleaze, real or inferred, and trust in politics. It only costs  the equivalent of a couple of first class stamps a year, …

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Mark Pack

The party’s back to front: why our political messaging is wrong

By Mark Pack | Thu 24th November 2011 - 10:55 am

Hearing both Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg speak several times at local Liberal Democrat events over the summer, something not quite right about their speeches was nagging away at the back of my mind.

It was not the delivery, for both have speaking styles which are excellently suited to the semi-formal audience of between 20 and 100 which is common at such events.

Nor was it about the consistency of message: without either lapsing into robotic repetition of the sort that served Ed Miliband so badly in his notorious public sector strikes interview, both in their different ways were echoing the …

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Prateek Buch

Opinion: Lib Dems should welcome and put into practice most of the High Pay Commission’s recommendations

By Prateek Buch | Wed 23rd November 2011 - 2:27 pm

Some bald statistics before the ranting begins: In 1979 the top 0.1% of earners took home 1.3% of the national income; by 2007 this had grown to 6.5%. In 1979 the top 1% took home 5.93% of the national income; by 2007 this had grown to 14.5%. In 1979 the top 10% took home 28.4% of the national income; by 2007 this had grown to 40%. In 2010 alone, executive pay in FTSE 100 companies went up by an average of 49%, against a 2.7% rise amongst employees in these firms. Top bosses now take home nearly 7% of total …

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Paul Burstow

Paul Burstow MP writes: The hidden potential of early diagnosis

By Paul Burstow | Wed 23rd November 2011 - 11:53 am

To be told that you or a loved one has cancer is likely to be one of the most gut-wrenching moments of anyone’s life. To be further informed that the chances of survival are low is devastating. But if more people knew they could live a fuller life for longer, we could ease the impact of that devastating time.

Last week I commissioned health officials to conduct a scoping exercise into early diagnosis across the health service. The plan is that research will help us to understand what, if any, evidence exists as to the extent of delayed diagnosis and its …

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Samuel Barratt

Opinion: The importance of social liberalism

By Samuel Barratt | Tue 22nd November 2011 - 9:55 am

The debate regarding the importance and roles of ‘social’ and ‘economic’ liberalism can, on occasion, be misrepresented. Whether deliberate or incidental the relationship between the two philosophies can sometimes be presented as discrete, zero-sum options. I believe they should be considered as dialectic.

In The Orange Book, a publication that is almost Frankensteinian in how it’s perceived and what it actually contains, David Laws offers definitions for social and economic liberalism, that broadly serve well in discussion, they are:

    “economic liberalism: ‘the belief in the value of free trade, open competition, market mechanisms, and the effectiveness of the

…

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Tagged , , and | 38 Comments
Andrew Stunell MP

Andrew Stunell MP writes… Today’s Housing Strategy will deliver the homes and growth we need

By Andrew Stunell MP | Mon 21st November 2011 - 2:23 pm

The long-awaited Housing Strategy was announced this morning by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. It’s an important document, and it sets out the coalition’s stall on how we intend to get the housing market – and in particular housebuilding – moving again.

It’s been a long-established view that we have a housing crisis in the UK. Although new starts were almost a third higher in 2010-11 than they were in 2008-09, there were just 103,000 new build housing completions in England last year. Meanwhile the latest household projections suggest that the number of households will grow by 232,000 …

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George Kendall

Opinion: Why Conservatives should consider defecting to the Liberal Democrats

By George Kendall | Mon 21st November 2011 - 9:50 am

Perhaps you want the UK to pull out of the European Union, and maybe you’d like the UK to switch to the old American healthcare system, where the uninsured poor would have minimal treatment. Perhaps you think the solution to youth crime is, not rehabilitation, but locking them away for as long as possible.

If so, you probably wouldn’t be very happy in the Liberal Democrats.

But maybe you are a Conservative supporter who wants Britain to make a contribution to the EU, not by pulling out, but with reforms that make it more accountable and …

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30 Comments
Mark Hofman

Opinion: Do Banks Rule the World?

By Mark Hofman | Sun 20th November 2011 - 2:05 pm

Last week many of us may have witnessed the sickening spectacle of watching a city trader declaring that Goldman Sachs rules the world… among other insights, such as how he lays awake at night fantasising about another economic depression.

If money rules the world, then surely whoever rules the world controls the money supply?

Many of us would, therefore, assume that the Bank of England creates money and regulates its supply to the economy, thereby controlling inflation and interest rates. However, whenever we look to finance a house, car, business project, etc, we invariably turn to the banks (in the …

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Don Foster MP

Don Foster MP writes… It’s time we talked about toilets!

By Don Foster MP | Sat 19th November 2011 - 11:45 am

Here in the UK, a toilet is a necessity that we are lucky enough to take for granted – a subject for humour, or something we’d prefer not to talk about.

Yet for billions of people around the world, sanitation is a serious issue. With a staggering 2.6 billion – nearly 40% of the world’s population – living without basic, safe sanitation, it’s time we talked about toilets. It’s a shocking fact that diarrhoea, caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation, is the biggest killer of children under five in Africa. In fact, globally it kills more children every year …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Alex Marsh

Opinion: Will fixing the planning system improve the housing supply?

By Alex Marsh | Fri 18th November 2011 - 10:25 am

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Britain has a housing problem. There are problems of shortage and, consequently, access and affordability.

There are three principal mechanisms for dealing with significant housing shortage and indirectly reducing the affordability problems that go with it: (1) You can reduce the number of households needing to be housed; (2) You can increase the number of properties available; and (3) You can improve the utilization of the existing stock of properties.

You can try to do something on all three fronts. A couple of weeks ago LibDemVoice co-editor Mark Pack identified six …

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Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb MP writes: Why we need to keep an open mind on Hinchingbrooke

By Norman Lamb MP | Thu 17th November 2011 - 11:53 am

Last week’s announcement that the management of Hinchingbrooke Hospital would be transferred to Circle Healthcare was always going to be controversial – a hospital with debts approaching £40million, whose situation had become so perilous that it had to be rescued by an external provider. Both Labour and Unison quickly exclaimed against this as ‘privatisation,’ despite the fact that the Labour Government had initiated the tendering process.

Circle is a 49% employee-owned organisation, different from the traditional private company. It makes them a part-mutual organisation run in the same manner as John Lewis. Put simply, they are part-owned and part-run …

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Malcolm Bruce

Malcolm Bruce MP writes: How UK Aid is being spent in the developing world

By Malcolm Bruce | Wed 16th November 2011 - 1:54 pm

Malcolm Bruce MP in Bangladesh
Photo courtesy of The Gavi Alliance.

I have just returned from Dhaka, Bangladesh, where I was part of a parliamentary delegation looking at Bangladesh’s rapidly improving healthcare system and in particular their immunisation programmes, which the UK Government through bilateral aid and the GAVI Alliance is helping to support.

Pneumonia and diarrhoea together account for about 40% of all under 5 mortality in the world and yet most of these cases could be prevented through the use of vaccines.

The GAVI Alliance was established …

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Stephen Williams

Stephen Williams MP writes: How to damage tobacco brands

By Stephen Williams | Tue 15th November 2011 - 4:23 pm

The Australian Senate has just passed landmark legislation in the long fight to prevent young people from starting smoking. From next July, all cigarette packs sold in Australia will look the same: a murky green box with big health warnings and the brand name in a standard font. The tobacco industry desperately fought the plans with millions spent on adverts, dubious research, front groups and legal action. But despite their unprecedented campaign, the idea is widely supported by the public and was passed unanimously in the Australian House of Representatives.

Now it’s our turn. The Coalition Government understands …

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Tagged and | 54 Comments
David Hennigan

Opinion: The Lib Dem leadership’s attitude to the Police Commissioner elections is baffling!

By David Hennigan | Tue 15th November 2011 - 2:15 pm

“Liberal Democrats – soft on crime” was the headline that has often screamed off Labour leaflets over the last decade. Indeed, in the latter stages of the 2010 General Election, Labour strategists used that message to squeeze the Liberal Democrat vote when we were on 29%.

Looking at the partial, last-minute collapse in our vote, it’s difficult to argue that this line of attack didn’t work. The ‘soft on crime’ attack was used against us in the Oldham East and Saddleworth By-election. Labour’s Christmas Card to constituents in Oldham even featured a snowman with a police …

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Nicola Prigg

Opinion: A New Approach to our Union

By Nicola Prigg | Tue 15th November 2011 - 11:45 am

The current approach to the United Kingdom doesn’t work.

The current approach treats each home nation as an individual, yet this approach leads to everyone pulling the centre in every direction. It leads to infighting, or to one country taking control and dictating to the others how they should be run. Neither result leads to a strong union.

We currently have the Scotland Bill going through Parliament devolving more powers to the Scottish Parliament; Wales passed a referendum giving its citizens the ability to pass primary legislation; and Nick Clegg has set up a commission to address the …

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Glyn Ley

Opinion: Forcing payment for internships could actually reduce opportunities

By Glyn Ley | Tue 15th November 2011 - 9:25 am

There has been plenty of talk recently about the unfairness of Westminster internships and calls for all internships in Parliament and in political parties to be paid. I understand the good intentions behind this argument but am concerned about the effects this could actually have on opportunities.

There are two issues being discussed around internships and it’s important not to get them confused. The first is the issue of informal internships – Daddy getting you an exclusive internship because he plays golf with somebody influential.

This is what Nick Clegg is talking about when he says that “it should be what …

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Tagged | 13 Comments
Sam Barnett

Opinion: Lib Dems should embrace the ‘Occupy’ spirit

By Sam Barnett | Mon 14th November 2011 - 12:20 pm

A small group of idealists, pitched up at a famous London landmark, arguing for radical change. Surrounded by hostile press trying to catch them out and making outlandish (or just plain false) accusations, they stay, grimly determined to make their voices heard by the public, the press and the powerful.

Yes, it’s Occupy London, but I could also be talking about the Parliamentary Liberal Democrats.

Maybe I’m naïve, but I see that we have more in common with Occupy than meets the eye. Let’s look at how our actions and beliefs match up with Occupy’s initial statement:

1. The current system is …

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Tagged , and | 39 Comments
George Kendall

Opinion: A deficit is a deficit is a deficit… Or is it?

By George Kendall | Mon 14th November 2011 - 8:45 am

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is an independent body, created to help us hold the government to account. It’s their job to check the government clears the structural deficit within this parliament. So it’s pretty important that we understand what is meant by “structural deficit”.

But what exactly is the structural deficit?

The word “deficit” is bad enough. A lot of people confuse it with “debt”, and that’s not just in inadvertent typos. However, if you stop and think, it’s not so bad. ‘Debt’ is what we owe, and ‘deficit’ is how fast our debt is increasing.

The structural deficit isn’t so …

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Tagged and | 19 Comments
Peter Lesniak

Opinion: The United Kingdom of Benefits and Welfare Dependence

By Peter Lesniak | Sun 13th November 2011 - 2:45 pm

In the absence of law and order, human life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” according to Thomas Hobbes. We would then live in the ‘state of nature’ with unlimited freedoms and unlimited chaos. To avoid this, civil society has subjected some of its rights to a sovereign, through what Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau call a ‘social contract’. The idea of subjecting part of our freedoms in return for security and welfare has been developed in late 17th and early 18th century and has served as a basis for creation of current political ideology.

Centuries passed and political systems …

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67 Comments
Greg Mulholland MP

Greg Mulholland writes… Here is Lib Dem ministers’ chance to save the pub

By Greg Mulholland MP | Sun 13th November 2011 - 11:05 am

There has been much talk about the demise of the great British pub. People up and down the country are now sadly used to seeing boarded up pubs, many with rather optimistic to let boards outside.

There are many reasons given for the closure of pubs, but a closer look at the names on the To Let boards, often written in small writing, reveals the most fundamental. The names Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns, the two largest pub-owning companies in the land, with around 12,000 pubs between them, are finding it harder and harder to find people to take their …

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Kiron Reid

Opinion: Why do Liberals (and Greens, and Conservatives) fund the Labour Party?

By Kiron Reid | Sun 13th November 2011 - 8:45 am

Why are Liberals, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Socialists, Plaid Cymru, and non-party supporters funding the Labour Party?

“In 2008, an overall financial contribution of £646,000 (2007: £646,103) was made to The Co operative Party”. The Co-operative Group website.

Every non-Labour supporter should read this.

My friend Keith Turner told me a couple of years ago that he didn’t bank with the Co-operative Bank because they funded the Co-operative Party. I had seen nothing about this and thought it unlikely given that our party have had an affinity deal with the Co-operative Bank for years.

I was upping my holdings in the Bank …

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Carl Quilliam

The weekend debate: Are Lib Dems too pro-European?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 12th November 2011 - 8:45 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

With the looming debt crisis in the Eurozone and Eurosceptics from across the political divide baying for blood, the LDV weekend debate couldn’t resist the pressure any longer.

So, with people openly talking about the possibility of the end of the Euro as we know it, and Europe seemingly in crisis, are Lib Dem Ministers taking the right decisions for the party and the country as a whole?

The party has long been …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged , and | 59 Comments

Opinion: Saving School Transport

By Sarah Osborne & Antony Hook | Fri 11th November 2011 - 8:55 am

County councils all over England are making deep cuts to school transport that Liberal Democrats are right to fight against. School transport cuts are bad for child safety, bad for working parents and bad for congestion on local roads.

The cuts, which mostly have come into effect this term or will over the next 12 months are, in most cases, to reduce school transport to the very least permitted by statute. That means it is being axed for everyone who is not on free school meals or who lives more than 3 miles (2 for primary children) from their nearest …

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David Boyle

David Boyle writes… The missing explanation of public service failure

By David Boyle | Thu 10th November 2011 - 10:15 am

The doyen of Liberator magazine, Simon Titley, just sent me through a cutting from the Leicester Mercury which gives us just a glimpse at the reasons why public services became so expensive under New Labour.

The report tells us of the unused regional fire control centre for the East Midlands, standing empty in Castle Donington, but still costing £5,000 a day to run, with burgeoning interest accruing in the PFI contract. It wasn’t just the dream of regional government, or the manifest problems of PFI, that caused the problem here. It was another example of a huge …

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The Voice

That’s the way to do it! How Liberal Democrats made the running on the Localism Bill

By The Voice | Wed 9th November 2011 - 10:15 am

Annette Brooke MP and Lord (Graham) Tope are the Lib Dem Co-Chairs of the Parliamentary Policy Committee on Communities and Local Government, and led the Lib Dem response to the Localism Bill. Here they outline what they, working with colleagues in the party and many beyond, helped achieve.

Last night the Localism Bill completed its final stage in Parliament and is set to become law when it achieves Royal Assent next week.

As Co-Chairs of the Parliamentary Policy Committee on Communities and Local Government, it has been our job over the last ten months to lead on the Bill for the party. We’ve helped shepherd it through both Houses of Parliament, and have led a Lib Dem team that in many ways has made the running on the Bill.

We’ve had strong engagement with Coalition ministers, who engaged with us constructively, particularly Greg Clark, Baroness Hanham and our very own Andrew Stunell, who was very helpful and willing to work together with us to improve the Bill considerably.

Colleagues in local government were also a constant source of help and good ideas, which never ceased to better inform our Bill team as the process went on.

Where we started from: “a good bill in theory, with several flaws in practice”

When it was first introduced, I think many Liberal Democrats would agree that it was a good bill in theory, with several flaws in practice.

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Also posted in Parliament | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and | 13 Comments
Emily Davey

Opinion: Four ways we can tackle the housing crisis

By Emily Davey | Wed 9th November 2011 - 8:45 am

Housing is moving up the agenda -– and looks like being a key issue in next year’s London elections. The Greater London Authority now has more powers over housing and given London is still dogged by a lack of affordable homes to rent, lease or buy, despite the recession, it’s reasonable for Londoners to expect the next Mayor and Assembly to take action.

Building more homes in a time of public sector cuts will be a challenge, and even using what we’ve got more efficiently will take a lot of cash. So we will need a range of ideas if we’re …

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