In September, the BIS Select Committee unanimously delivered a devastating verdict on the pubcos for the third time running and lambasted them for repeatedly breaking promises to change their business practices. They also found unambiguously that ‘the tie’, as operated by them, is unfair to licensees, many of whom can’t earn minimum wage despite healthy turnover figures; is bad for pub customers who are overcharged for a pint, due to the hugely inflated prices the licensee has to pay for beer; and it is closing pubs that need not and should not close.
Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
A few weeks ago a campaign advert made by ONE, an organisation founded by Bono (of U2 fame) was banned from TV because it breaches political advertising rules.
Many people seeing this story for the first time might be quite pleased not to have to deal with the unbearable smugness of Bono on their TV screen again. But outside of any personal dislike of a particular celebrity, politician or political party is this an issue where broadcast regulations are simply out of …
I have moaned a lot about those spy cars and vans that patrol our streets, filming us in those brief moments when we’re not being filmed by omnipresent static CCTV cameras. I have even written about them here on Lib Dem Voice.
What annoys me in particular is the number of times I have seen them seeming to break the rules they are there to enforce. Take this example from southwest London, highlighted for me by Jason Hunter. These people are exercising power over us, filming us as we go peacefully about our everyday lives. I don’t like at all the idea that they might feel themselves to be above the law.
It may to some sound petty, but to me this is important. What I am driving at was summed up recently by Norman Baker in this vox pop interview at the Birmingham conference. Asked about the values of the Lib Dems his first instinctive answer is about ensuring the balance of power between the State and the individual is not too heavily weighted in favour of the State. Spot on.
It’s because I see this issue in this light that I was simultaneously annoyed and overjoyed when I spotted one of the vans parked in a restricted parking zone and across a cycle lane, whilst out walking the other week. I casually leaned against a nearby lamppost, whipped out my BlackBerry and shot this footage:
On Tuesday, I helped to launch a report ‘Keeping People with Diabetes out of Hospital‘. As a person with diabetes, I know only too well the pressure that our diabetes care services are under.
Whether I’m speaking to my Diabetes Specialist Nurse, to my consultant, or to my colleagues in Westminster, it is clear that the ‘diabetes epidemic’ is increasingly being recognised as of major concern. Of the 2.9 million people in the UK living with diabetes, a worrying proportion will suffer additional complications and will require hospital care. In the last year alone, another 130,000 people have been …
In 1951, the Liberal Party fielded just 109 parliamentary candidates. 1959 was better with 216. And in 1979, shortly before the foundation of the SDP, we were fielding 577 – virtually a candidate in every seat.
Most of us have grown up in a political landscape in which our party attempts to field a full slate, at all levels. In the darkest days after the merger, in first-past-the-post European elections cynically rigged against us, we fielded candidates throughout Great Britain even though we knew we would likely win no seats at all. Indeed, I still remember my excitement at the prospect …
By Paul Burstow
| Wed 2nd November 2011 - 12:53 pm
1,800 people with dementia are dying every year having been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, and I am determined to end this silent scandal.
For more than a decade I have been campaigning to reduce the number of people whose lives are cut short thanks to the routine long-term prescribing of drugs by GPs. These drugs have sedative effects which makes it easier to ‘manage’ dementia patients. But they are effectively a chemical cosh which have side effects and can have devastating consequences.
Last year, as minister for care services, I set an ambitious target to reduce the number of patients routinely given anti-psychotic …
Earlier in the year, I penned a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten – such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP.
There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure – those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are often …
If Dickens had invented a character called “Mark Reckless”, it might have looked a little contrived. The Conservative MP for Strood and Rochester has argued that Britain should withdraw from the EU, and claims that over half his Conservative colleagues support him.
And not since such Dickensian figures as Sir Leicester Dedlock or Artful Dodger has a character lived up to his name with such enthusiasm. For think how reckless it would be if Britain were to withdraw from the EU, a scenario which even Margaret Thatcher considered suicidal and which was once the lonely position of the lunatic, Bennite left.
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offender Bill has returned to the House of Commons this week. The problems with the Government’s proposed Legal Aid reforms have been apparent for a while. Some people will see their access to justice seriously curtailed, while the courts are likely to silt up with inexpert litigants-in-person. The chances of any money being saved – when considered in the round – are limited. In this context it is good to see reports that Liberal Democrat MPs Tom Brake and Mike Crockart are tabling amendments to seek to address some of the most …
The number of prisoners serving indeterminate sentences has rocketed since the 2003 Criminal Justice Act introduced the IPP (Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection). Within four years of its introduction, over 5,000 such sentences had been passed despite original government projections of just a few hundred.
To the horror of many liberals less than 2% of such prisoners have ever acheived parole and hardly any gained release at expiry of their sentence tariff. Most MPs will be familar with cases of constituents where IPP prisoners have served well in excess of their tariff and yet appear to have little prospect of release.
As a result many liberals will applaud the government announcement this week that the IPP sentence is to be replaced by a regime of Determinate Sentences and a “two strike” automatic life sentence reserved for the most serious offences.
At first sight this appears to be a victory for justice and a step towards reducing prison numbers. But the reality is less straightforward, and although the IPP has flaws these can be reformed — and if the sentence is made fit for purpose it has many advantages over the proposed reforms.
By Adam Corlett
| Tue 1st November 2011 - 10:55 am
At Conference, Danny Alexander repeated his view that the personal allowance for income tax should be raised beyond £10,000, saying:
In the next Parliament, I want us to go further; our aspiration should be that someone working full time on the minimum wage should pay no income tax at all. An income tax threshold of £12,500 – think what that would do to work incentives, think what it would mean for basic fairness. Let’s put that on the front page of our next manifesto.
The idea certainly seems popular within the party. But remarkably absent from these discussions is any mention of National Insurance. The very first point in our 2010 manifesto was “the first £10,000 you earn tax-free” but, while it later clarified it meant income tax (IT), it’s hard to see why the parallel income tax that is National Insurance (NI) should be treated any differently.
Last year I was probably the only MP to be elected while still living with my parents. Of course, I’d moved out of home and, like many others, had to move back again. It’s a symptom of the fact that housing policy in the UK is in crisis. We have millions of people languishing on social housing waiting lists, first-time-buyers priced out of the market
Monday, 31st October 2011, is ‘7 billion Day’, the day chosen by the UN to represent symbolically the world’s human population reaching 7,000,000,000.
In 1800, the world’s population was approximately 1 billion. We ‘achieved’ 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, by 1999 it had doubled to 6 billion, and it has taken 12 years to reach 7 billion. By the middle of the century the best estimates are that it will be around 10 billion. (You can find the UN’s figures here.)
Medical advances and public health measures have led to much lower infant mortality and much greater longevity. …
Liberal Democrats have long called for reform to local government finance. No matter what alternative systems we’ve proposed, the key element has always been that the revenue was raised locally, and decisions about how to spend that money were taken locally. As you would expect of a Government with a Liberal Democrat influence, the Coalition is adopting that same approach. The consultation on the relocalisation of Business Rates has just ended, and today’s announcement by DCLG of the Technical Consultation on Council Tax contains a number of positive news stories for Liberal Democrats.
It is worth buying Reassessing New Labour just to read James Purnell’s short preface. New Labour’s would-be philosopher king pretty much disappeared from view after Labour chose the wrong Miliband as leader. Purnell’s piece highlights perfectly the challenge Labour faces in coming to terms with its 2010 election defeat. It is brilliantly lucid in assessing why Labour lost. It is extremely limited in its analysis of how to recover. In particular it completely ignores the 500lb gorilla in the corner – the economy. I’ll come back to this in a moment.
Diamond and Kenny’s book brings together a range of contributions …
Ask many people what they think of the Lib Dems’ approach to law and order, and you’ll be told – erroneously – that we’re a soft touch.Our approach, traditionally evidence-based and less punitive than the populist authoritarian policies of Labour and the Tories, takes longer to explain. When we fail to do so, we risk being seen as the party that panders to criminals.
Of course, that isn’t the case. We believe in policy that actually works to reduce crime and recidivism, using all possible means to rehabilitate those who resort to illegality, while reiterating the importance of the …
The weekend is often over in the blink of an eye, and come Monday morning it’s off to work for the masses. The daily commute, whether it be by any means of transport, is often chaotic, crowded and frankly rather unpleasant for many.
It is a self – evident truth that our transport network is overcrowded. Even now with unemployment rates not seen for a generation, many of us will struggle for hours every day to travel to our respective workplaces.
Can the government help?
The government could assist by offering business rate reductions for employers willing to facilitate their employees working from home.
In just over a decade, cyberspace has completely changed the way we live and work. Access has grown from 16 million internet users in 1995 to nearly 2 billion today, more than half of whom are in developing countries. On November 1st and 2nd, we will be hosting the London Conference on Cyberspace. The first of its kind, it will be a high profile event attended by the Foreign Secretary, Hillary Clinton, and high level delegates from over sixty countries.
The rapid development of a globally networked world offers enormous opportunities as well as challenges. When …
I’m a candidate in a council by-election in the Hillhead ward in Glasgow. I’m a Liberal Democrat, and the ward has a big old university slap bang in the middle of it. You’d think I’d be bricking it, wouldn’t you? After the tuition fees betrayal, students hate the Liberal Democrats, don’t they? Well they might do, but I’d like to explain how the real villains in Scotland are the SNP.
The SNP are in fact imposing thousands of pounds of up-front fees on each and every Scottish student and their families. “But the SNP have preserved free tuition!” I hear …
The climate is changing – and yet seemingly not in our own house. I (and presumably some of the Lib Dem Voice readership) have applied for Lib Dem internships, and there seems to be no concerted effort to clean up our party in this regard. I am white and middle-class and was only able to apply for internships over …
On electoral reform and the Coalition, the Lib Dem narrative goes something like this: “Nick Clegg presented an inspiring, comprehensive reform agenda to make voting fairer. Then Cameron came along and cherry-picked it. He rejected some of our ideas, but accepted others, including fixed-term parliaments, Lords reform (in principle), and, er, the AV referendum. Taking our usual view that half a loaf is better than no bread, we signed up. What’s wrong with that?”
What’s wrong, I suggest, is that we didn’t stop to think about Cameron’s own agenda, and what the Tories actually aim to achieve from their “reforms”.
Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
Over the last three years Obama has had to concede much of his programme to Republicans in Congress. His healthcare reforms had to be significantly watered down even before Republicans won back the House of Representatives in 2010. And the reforms themselves have since acted as a lightning rod for criticism of the President.
Obama is struggling to get the economy going again amid continued turbulence in the global economy and unemployment is staying stubbornly high despite the massive £800 billion stimulus package. …
By David Thorpe
| Fri 28th October 2011 - 11:55 am
Two pieces of economic data have emerged on the British economy over the past week, and while they paint a somewhat contrasting picture of the economic climate, the main picture which emerges is that the Coalition’s strategy is broadly correct.
The latest inflation statistics show that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is now about 5%, significantly higher than the Bank of England’s target of 2%. It seems to me that the Coalition’s single greatest error on the economy since coming to power has been to underestimate the rate of inflation.
But in this they have not been alone. The received wisdom …
The government’s plan to improve social mobility has been dealt a series of blows over the past week. New education data show that trends towards a more ‘socially mobile’ Britain are pointing in the wrong direction.
Nick Clegg launched the government’s social mobility strategy last April, promising to ‘open the doors of opportunity’ to children from disadvantaged homes as they move into adulthood. Children from poor homes are half as likely to achieve five good GCSEs as their better off peers, and they account for less than one in a hundred Oxbridge students. Clegg rightly pointed out that …
Social mobility means more than whether people are in the same income group as their parents. It also means that the lives of people “below” look more like those “above” them as time goes on.
Most of the twentieth century saw a clear demarcation between blue and white collar workers. Blue collar workers were paid less, and their lives were much less secure. They were more likely to be on short-term contracts – labourers were often hired by the day. Their work involved a greater risk of injury, and thus loss of work. They were less likely to have unemployment insurance and a company pension. The employment conditions for white collar workers were much more reliable – and that, as much as the difference in income, meant that white collar workers were able to buy a house, giving them a security not enjoyed by blue collar workers.
Sometimes the toughest speaking gigs for MPs is when they are talking to a friendly audience – but something interesting is happening behind them. So it was a few months ago with Julian Huppert talking to Putney Liberal Democrats. Very thoughtful speech, well received by the members and supporters present – but Julian had to struggle to avoid being upstaged by the cute, preening, attention-seeking cat paddling back and forth behind him.
When Tim Farron came to speak to Haringey Liberal Democrats last night, there was no cat to distract – but instead the minor drama of the stalwart member who …
Last week, it was revealed that an undercover Metropolitan police officer, Jim Boyling, had been arrested and tried for a public order offence under his cover name, Jim Sutton. Yet at no time during the trial did he reveal the fact that he was using a false identity. At the time, in 1996, he had been posing as a member of the non-violent, pro-cycling ‘Reclaim the Streets’ campaign.
At the trial, Boyling would have given evidence under oath about who he was and what had happened – while maintaining a false identity. He had allowed himself to be arrested, charged, prosecuted and potentially convicted of a criminal offence. As it turned out, he was found not guilty. But Sutton’s police minders were prepared to allow him to face possible conviction for a criminal offence – an offence committed by a serving undercover police officer, giving evidence on oath with the benefit of privileged legal advice that he shouldn’t have had.
As is customary in my family, any major news event (especially one in the Arab world) is first alerted to us by a text or call from my mother. While neither of my parents are party political, politics has permeated every hour of our family life for a long as I can remember. These days, usually as a result of either BBC World News or Al-Jazeera being the TV channel of choice at all times.
My father is currently operative as the EU head of ‘mission’ (in as much as one can exist) in Libya and so we have been watching …
By Lee Chalmers
| Wed 26th October 2011 - 10:23 am
The Telegraph reports today that a leaked paper advises the Government to consider changing the law to make it easier to dismiss ineffective workers without risk of being sued for unfair dismissal. The report’s author, Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist, apparently believes that Britain’s employment laws are a serious factor in affecting the success of companies and that freeing managers up from having to consider unfair dismissal claims would encourage growth. He claims:
The rules both make it difficult to prove that someone deserves to be dismissed, and demand a process for doing so which is so lengthy and
Social mobility is core to the Coalition and Nick Clegg personally. It means that your birth plays little or no role in determining your life outcomes. It is the opposite of feudalism. Economic mobility is an important part of social mobility. Where you end up economically is determined by your ability and hard work, for sure, but also by whether you get a good education, good advice, and – for some – by whether you inherit.
Government should concentrate on what it can do, in this case education. Kids from poor backgrounds generally do much worse at school – and so they end up poor later on. Government can improve school results for such kids relative to others: Labour did it – a bit.There is big variation in this across the country, so every local authority except one should be ringing up those who are doing better and learning from them.
David Evans Mick,
While acknowledging that you successfully retrained as a primary school teacher and that on another occasion you taught, probably very successfully in...
Mick Taylor I requalified as a primary school teacher from being a secondary teacher. There were, and may still be, one year courses for this purpose and I imagine that cou...
Jana “ One practical solution would be to make it much easier for primary school teachers to requalify and go to work in our secondary schools”
Really? Most p...
Michael BG Peter Davies,
In the report the IPPR suggest that the 2% could start being paid by pensioners from the personal allowance (£12,570) level. From this income ...
Michal Simon @Sarah Dyke
You have highlighted an important problem. Climate change is already hitting farmers in practical ways: wetter winters, flooded fields, longer drou...
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The AI world and some fallacies about it
Yet another government makes a mess of local government reform
The Joy of Six 1574
Front Street looking great
Should the Reform UK leadership take responsibility for violence at their conference?
David Evans 
Mick Taylor 
Jana 
Michael BG 
Michal Simon 