Category Archives: Op-eds

Peter Ladanyi

HMRC is broken

By Peter Ladanyi | Fri 27th September 2024 - 6:37 pm

One of my concerns about the Liberal Democrats is that we resemble myself as student. We are rather better at spending money than working out where its coming from. Although we made some sensible tax proposals in our manifesto, we still ended relying upon the need to reduce tax avoidance and evasion and ‘resource HMRC accordingly’.

I have few problems with this position. Not least is the fact that every opposition party in my lifetime has argued it. Our record in coalition on avoidance was excellent; we forced through the General Anti Avoidance Rule (GAAR) which Labour had resisted. My perception is that this has reduced avoidance – certainly a lot of the tax boutiques that devised the more outrageous schemes have seen their businesses decline.

My real problem is that it is not just the complex stuff like arguing GAAR cases that HMRC has problems with and needs resourcing, but the basics. I currently work as a tax advisor dealing with the complexities of voluntary sector VAT, but previously worked in HMRC and its predecessor both in a local office and then for VAT Policy. I am still very much in contact with staff at all levels in HMRC. Unfortunately in a 40 year career I have never known HMRC in such a mess and as incapable of dealing with even the basics. I mainly cover VAT as its my area, but direct tax colleagues make similar points.

With VAT there are huge service failings. The public enquiry line takes hours to get through. I have clients waiting over a year for answers on basic VAT registration queries and as for complex questions such as approval for special VAT recovery methods, you can be talking 4 years – or never. In some cases the HMRC response to service delivery problems has been dramatic. New VAT registration forms causing a spike in calls to the registration helpline – answer: shut the helpline. In direct tax you should get your self assessment return in early but resource constraints mean the helpline only opens nearer the filing deadline. Is it really surprising that taxpayers make mistakes or take a lackadaisical approach to their tax compliance when they receive a service like this?

But the problem is not just administrative failure. There has been a reduction in the standard of technical knowledge at both an outfield and policy level.  Many officers do not understand the basics of the tax. This is clearly evidenced from some of the bizarre arguments that have got as far as the VAT Tribunal before being summarily dismissed. These are arguments that theoretically have gone through local reviews and HMRC Solicitors Office before reaching the Court.

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Mark Pack

Mark Pack’s September Report: Constructive opposition… and winning more elections

By Mark Pack | Fri 27th September 2024 - 10:23 am

What a conference!

Perhaps my favourite moment at our Brighton conference was having dinner with a member who had rung her partner to say how great the conference rally was. She had told him about how our MPs had stood to applaud the audience, thanking us all for our efforts to get them elected. ‘Were all our MPs there?’, he asked. ‘I don’t know. There are too many MPs now to be able to count them all!’ she replied.

Too many to count, more than enough for us to be rightfully on a high – and not as many as we should aim to have in future.

So there was plenty to celebrate at our Brighton Conference, as well as the party collectively turning our minds to how we build on that success.

As The Guardian editorial praising our conference concluded:

Running through his speech was Sir Ed’s idea of a “Liberal Britain”. This is a country where the banks and the wealthy are taxed to pay to fix the NHS, racism is abhorred, not weaponised, the EU single market rejoined and a cordon sanitaire erected around a Donald Trump presidency. The Lib Dem leader is gambling that this is territory that will become politically significant in the coming years and which other parties might struggle to seize. Given the election results, few may be willing to bet against Sir Ed.

Before we get to thinking more about our future, many thanks to all our staff, volunteers and suppliers involved in putting on such a successful event.

Where next?

As I said when moving the Federal Board report in Brighton, it was quite the contrast with the first one I moved as your President. Back then we had 11 MPs, now we have 72. But also we have gained more than 800 council seats since then, and now have a Lib Dem majority on more councils than before we went into coalition in 2010.

We have also taken important steps forward on our ethnic diversity – a key priority for the party, both at local level – where the list of Lib Dem council leaders is no longer an all-white list – and in Parliament – with a record number of MPs from an ethnic minority background.

Much progress, then, but more still to do.

At the heart of that is supporting our new MPs in firmly embedding themselves in their seats, and helping our whole Parliamentary Party show to the voters that the issues they campaigned on are now issues that they are acting on in office.

We also need to be starting to line up our next wave of Parliamentary gains as well as extending our run of gains in local elections. We made net gains in every round of local elections in the last Parliament, and we should aim to do so again, along with making gains in the devolved elections coming up in Scotland, Wales and London.

All that should be built on learning the lessons of what worked, and what was not so successful, this time. Hence the General Election Review which I reported on last time and which ran a very useful consultation session in Brighton.

There is now an online survey for everyone to send in their own views too: www.libdems.org.uk/ge-review

Constructive opposition

As Ed Davey said in his closing conference speech:

Back when I was first elected in 1997, Paddy Ashdown adapted the Serenity Prayer for a better, more constructive approach to opposition. Paddy’s Serenity Prayer went like this: “May we have the power to oppose what we must oppose. Courage to support what we must support. And the wisdom to know the difference.”

Conference, wouldn’t we all have loved Paddy to be here today for this moment? And I want to make Paddy’s same invocation for us today. For that is the power, the courage and the wisdom we will need in the years ahead.

Because it will fall to us to be the responsible opposition that any government needs. An essential role in our democracy. And a role that today’s Conservative Party simply cannot fulfil. They showed themselves to be totally unfit to govern our country – and the British people rightly booted them out. And the Conservatives are already showing that they are unfit for opposition too.

Our fabulous colleagues

One of my best tasks as your President is to present the awards at each of our Federal Conferences. It was such a pleasure to be able to publicly thank and praise our team of winners:

Belinda Eyre-Brook Award – Lucy Lennon

Lucy Lennon was recognised for her impressive local campaign efforts in Hull. In her first role after graduating from university, Lucy has been instrumental in helping us make strides against Labour in northern England, particularly by retaining control of the local council.

Over the past two years, Lucy has served as the local organiser, managing two local elections and two by-elections. During the General Election, she took on the task of running three Westminster constituencies and acted as agent for all of them.

In addition to her exceptional people skills, Lucy has mastered various technologies, including Fleet, Connect, Lighthouse, and Typeform.

She has even managed with aplomb the tough task of having our Director of Campaigns, Dave McCobb, as one of her candidates!

Her dedication and hard work made her a deserving recipient of this year’s award.

Dadabhai Naoroji Award – West Hertfordshire Local Party and Dacorum Council group

The overlapping West Hertfordshire Local Party and Dacorum Council group has achieved remarkable electoral success by engaging with all areas of their local community. They have assembled a diverse team of councillors and candidates, representing a range of ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and abilities.

Their hard work has demonstrated that minority communities not only want to join the Liberal Democrats but are also eager to further serve their local areas.

This dedication culminated in the election of the first Liberal Democrat MP of East and South East Asian descent.

The efforts of the group and Local Party show that focusing on improving our ethnic diversity is not something just for large urban areas.

The award was collected by Councillor Simy Dhyani and Victoria Collins MP.

Harriet Smith Award – Rosemary McCrum

Rosemary has been the cornerstone of her Local Party for decades. She has guided them through challenging times, taken on nearly every activist role imaginable, filled in when needed, and often juggled multiple responsibilities at once. Rosemary provided the foundation upon which their success has been built.

Her dedication and commitment were crucial in keeping the Local Party running and played a key role in their achievements this year, including an overwhelming victory in the local elections and the election of the area’s first Liberal Democrat MP.

The Woking party triumphed electorally this year, and nominating Rosemary for this award was a small way of recognising the immense contribution of this modest individual in helping them get there.

Patsy Calton Award – Julia Cambridge

Since 2017, Julia has served as Vice-Chair of the Campaign for Gender Balance (CGB), working tirelessly to support, mentor, and encourage female candidates across the party. She has been a steadfast advocate for selecting women in winnable seats, and many of the newly elected female MPs can attest to the impact Julia has had in helping them overcome traditional barriers to selection and election.

In addition to her efforts, Julia has been a dedicated councillor and Mayor for the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, playing a crucial role in the campaign team that successfully retained the Richmond Park seat in the General Election.

This year, the Liberal Democrats reached a record high in female MPs, with women making up 44% of the Parliamentary party. This achievement highlights the importance of Julia’s work in supporting women candidates to compete on equal footing with their male counterparts over the past few years.

Donna Harris, Chair of Liberal Democrat Women, the official party body which presents this award, came on stage to hand it to Julia.

Penhaligon Award – North Cotswolds and Tewkesbury local party

In April 2019, the Tewkesbury Liberal Democrats had just two councillors, both of whom were stepping down in the upcoming local elections. However, during the 2019 Local Elections, the team made a strong push, resulting in the election of eight councillors. Later that year, they displaced Labour to become the main opposition to the Conservatives in the General Election.

Their success continued in both County and Local Elections, and by May 2023, the Lib Dems had elected 16 councillors, ousting the Conservative administration and appointing a Lib Dem Leader, Deputy Leader, and Mayor.

With the 2024 constituency boundary changes, Tewkesbury joined forces with neighbouring colleagues to form the new North Cotswolds and Tewkesbury Local Party.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of local activists and volunteers, many of whom are now elected representatives, the North Cotswolds and Tewkesbury Liberal Democrats have seen rapid and steady growth – and this momentum is set to continue.

The award was collected on behalf of this impressive team by Babs Farmer.

President’s Award – Paula Yates

Paula has dedicated over four decades of service to the Party. Since joining the Liberal Party in Carmarthenshire in 1982, she has held numerous roles, including local councillor, Council Leader, Parliamentary Candidate, and President of the Welsh Party. She continues her commitment as a member of the Welsh Party Board.

Throughout her career, Paula has faced these responsibilities – and the challenges they bring – with determination, energy, and an unwavering sense of humour. One of her greatest strengths is her ability to treat members with understanding and respect. Her quiet words of wisdom so often head off problems and I have been very grateful for her support in the time we were Federal Board colleagues.

Paula’s immense contributions over the years make her a truly deserving recipient of the President’s Award.

And next time…

We are incredibly fortunate to have such devoted members, and their commitment continues to inspire us all. If you know someone who you feel deserves an award, look out for the nomination process on the website in January for our Spring Conference awards.

Our love and condolences

Tragically, during our Conference, Robin Bradburn, leader of the Lib Dem group in Milton Keynes, passed away. A minute’s silence was held in the main hall in his honour.

Robin was a renowned public servant who campaigned tirelessly in his area. He will be remembered by all those who knew him as a thoughtful, caring and compassionate man.

I am sure I speak for everyone in sending our love and condolences to his family and friends.

New Federal Appeals Panel member

Conference confirmed the appointment of Rebecca Williams to fill a casual vacancy. Thank you Rebecca for putting your name forward and to everyone else who applied.

Missing conference already?

Our Spring 2025 Federal Conference will be in Harrogate, on 21-23 March. More details, including accommodation booking link, at the bottom of our conference page here.

 

Do you have questions on any of this report, or other Lib Dem matters? Then please drop me a line on [email protected]. Do also get in touch if you would like to invite me to do a Zoom call with your local party or party body.

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Buddy Anderson

If we want to “finish the job” on the Tories, we shouldn’t move to the left

By Buddy Anderson | Thu 26th September 2024 - 10:25 am

According to The Economist,

“If the Liberal Democrats want to replace the Conservatives, they must move further right on the economy”.

This was instantly backed unsurprisingly by the Liberal Reform group, the last of the so-called Orange Bookers, a dominant force during the Clegg years. Every time these guys support or share anything, it usually causes outrage from the grassroots, who have historically been more progressive than the politicians. As someone from the right of the party, I’m always perplexed at how much anger Liberal Reform generate. I very happily accept most Lib Dems’ identity as centre-left, but parties that reach the greatest heights of politics are broad churches. Those, like myself, who often dare support these ideals are often scoffed at for having short memories, and forgetting what happened in 2015. But have we?

Under Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems secured over 6.8m votes in 2010, the highest number of votes the party has ever received to this day. Most political commentators blame what happened in 2015 on broken promises, notably tuition fees, rather than ideology (which hadn’t really changed that much in those 5 years). In fact the majority of the Lib Dem seats were lost to the then centre-right Conservative party. The Lib Dems did adopt a more centre-left stance at the next GE in 2017 and the number of votes they received went down further. I don’t think anybody wants me to attempt to unpack 2019. Now with this in mind, I am fairly sure that I am not suffering acute memory loss at the sprightly age of 35. However, my interpretation of events is clearly at odds with the ever-progressive grassroots of the party.

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Paul Reynolds

Fixing Britain ?

By Paul Reynolds | Wed 25th September 2024 - 8:26 am

There has been a flurry of books published recently, on the subject of ‘broken Britain’.

Some look at the big picture of why ‘nothing seems to work’, like  ‘Great Britain?’ by Torsten Bell,  and ‘Failed State’ by Sam Freedman (featured at a Liberal Reform fringe at Conference). Others address more specific problems, like ‘Bad Buying’ by Peter Smith or ‘Fixing Broken Britain’ by Alun Drake. There are some scandal-specific books too which draw broader conclusions, like ‘The Great Post Office Scandal’ by Nick Wallis, ‘Death in the Blood’ by Caroline Wheeler, and ‘The Rise & Fall of DfID’ by Mark Lowcock & Ranil Dissanayake.

It is not just specific sectors like health, economics , transport, housing/planning, and education where astonishing dysfunction has been exposed. There has also been much emphasis on institutional problems; the turbid executive function, extreme centralisation, opaque administration, systematised ‘corruption’, absent civil servant competences, catastrophic procurement practices, a permissive approach to monopoly … and much more.

Most concerning perhaps at a time of severe financial constraints is the breathtaking neglect of value-for-money in governmental spending which all these books highlight; where lobbying and ‘generating the big juicy contract’ seem to dominate administrative behaviour too often.

Will Parliament enthusiastically set about addressing the problems set out in these books? Judging by the policy clumsiness of the Labour government, and the cynical anti-immigrant obsessions of the Conservative Party and Reform, this seems depressingly unlikely.

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David Brunnen

General confession of collective culpability

By David Brunnen | Tue 24th September 2024 - 3:00 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Speaking with authority and gravitas will no longer suffice.

All that remains, in this post-Elizabethan era, are dwindling fragments of respect.

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Paul Walter

Postcard from Bologna – ‘the most liberal city in Italy’

By Paul Walter | Tue 24th September 2024 - 1:00 pm

Like most Italian cities, Bologna has its fair share of churches, including the exceptional “Seven Churches” Basilica of Santo Stefano (above). All the churches, as is the Italian way, are chock-full of fine art.

But the reason for my postcard is to highlight the fact that Bologna is regarded as “the most liberal city in Italy”. It hosts the oldest university in the world, it has been at the Italian forefront of human rights campaigning across the decades and it even has its buildings painted red, it is said, to reflect its socialist leanings. It reputedly has the best public transport and health systems in Italy.

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Darryl Smalley

It’s time to march into the council estates

By Darryl Smalley | Mon 23rd September 2024 - 2:22 pm

I’ve long been one with a penchant for fighting Labour.

I grew up on Lincoln’s famed Tower Estate. Growing up I was surrounded by real poverty, and the consequences of that poverty. I remember the fire engine arriving to extinguish a car that had been set alight just a few doors down. Our neighbours (who’s children I played with) disappeared one day – they’d been operating a cannabis farm from their council house and got caught (my bedroom wall had been occasionally warm to touch…).

Our Labour district council had long withdrawn from the estate. Crime was high, deprivation everywhere, …

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John Medway

Can we do all that we want to do?

By John Medway | Mon 23rd September 2024 - 10:10 am

At the beginning of the General Election campaign, I wondered whether the protagonists would engage with the big global issues that face us. I’ve been reminded of this by Anatol Lieven’s recent article in the Guardian, “I’ve studied geopolitics all my life: climate breakdown is a bigger threat than China and Russia”.

He opens with a good account of the scale of the problem of global warming. The crux of his argument is near the end:

At present, the mainstream left in Europe and North America appears to believe that it is possible to reshape economies to limit carbon emissions and to increase spending on health and social welfare and to radically increase military spending to confront Russia in Ukraine and elsewhere.

It isn’t possible. The money simply isn’t there. The result of pursuing all three goals simultaneously would be to fail at all of them; as demonstrated by the latest political developments in France and Germany, where a populist backlash is undermining support for Ukraine and climate action.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 23 September – so much for the first hundred days…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 23rd September 2024 - 7:30 am

What a difference a week makes. From the almost unbridled joy of a Liberal Democrat Conference where we celebrated a huge infusion of new MPs and a sense that, after more than a decade of pain and struggle to be seen as relevant, we’re bystanders at a Labour Conference where, rather than celebrated a glorious victory, there’s a sense of defensiveness already.

Caron has already covered the rather bizarre mess that Keir Starmer has gotten into over the £100,000 worth of gifts that he has received and declared in recent years. And I entirely understand that there is a perceived political advantage to getting the bad news out of the way early – most keen observers of the last year of the Sunak administration will have already concluded that the sheer scale of unfunded commitments they made would make the task of an incoming administration a difficult one.

But instead of one hundred days of action, it all gives an impression of a leadership rather spinning their wheels even if they are, in reality, possibly doing quite a lot. The media won’t help that – their unfriendliness towards a Labour government can be taken as read. We’ll see if they can do something about changing the narrative over the next couple of days…

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Caron Lindsay

The most annoying thing Keir Starmer has done this week

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 22nd September 2024 - 10:13 am

Keir Starmer and Labour had earned the right to a bit celebration in Liverpool this week. Having turned Labour around from an utter mess to a party with the size of majority nobody should ever have, their Conference in Liverpool could have been an even bigger celebration than our display of sunshine and unbridled joy in Brighton last week.

However, the mood in Liverpool becomes gloomier with each headline.

And while some of the headlines are definitely the right wing press making trouble, others are signs of serious trouble within the Government.

Let’s take the fuss about the clothes first. Starmer,  his Deputy Angela Rayner and Chancellor Rachel Reeves tried to stem the damage from reports that they had taken thousands of pounds for work clothing from wealthy donors by announcing that they would no longer do so.

I find it difficult to muster up anything other than mild irritation about this. It absolutely does not look great to people who are struggling to pay the rent every month and there is an argument that this should have been blindingly obvious to those who benefitted from these generous donations. When you are taking a vital help with energy bills from poor pensioners and not doing anything about social care, you need to really think about how out of touch you can look if you are seen to be throwing yours or someone else’s money around. And they should maybe have seen that it would have been lumped together with everything we’ve heard about Tories in a recent years in a file marked “sleazy politicians.”

There is no equivalence between the profligate, venal, corrupt behaviour of the Tories, doing things like handing out billions of public money to their mates and the stories we have seen about Labour. Many people, on whose votes they rely, won’t necessarily look at the detail and see the massive difference in scale. They may well be propelled into the arms of populists as a result. And given that some of those populists earn an almost six figure sum for a few hours’ work a month on the media, there is an irony there.

As far as the clothing is concerned, maybe that is a bit on us as well. It is perfectly possible to look smart by picking up a dress and jacket, or suit from some well known High Street stores, but we all have unconscious biases about how people look that have been fed by the media for years. We also know that those biases apply much more to women than they do to men.

When it comes to Keir Starmer’s box at Arsenal, I can see his point of view on this. If he were to stay in the stands, the security would undoubtedly cost a fortune and we’d all be complaining about that. You can see why he thinks that having a box is less disruptive and solves that problem. Going to the football is something that he has long done with his son, who is not going to be a boy forever and I can’t find it in my heart to grudge him that.  In isolation, I don’t think anyone would have really bothered about this. The trouble is it’s being lumped in with all the other stuff.

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John Barrett

Ten years on from the Independence Referendum – what has changed?

By John Barrett | Sat 21st September 2024 - 12:25 pm

This weekend is ten years on from the results being declared following the Scottish Independence Referendum, and for those Liberals, like me, who voted Yes to Independence, much has changed since then.

I read much of what was written about Scotland’s Future in the White Paper and elsewhere, and wrote a number of articles at the time about my own thoughts. In the end, I decided that the SNP’s economic forecast for an independent Scotland was complete nonsense, but still thought the risk was worth taking, of voting for an independent future, for a number of reasons.

The first being that it is not often in life you get a chance to start again, and I did not think the existing system of governance in the United Kingdom by first past the post would ever change. North of the border, PR was the norm at Council and Scottish elections and back then the European elections too. In relation to Europe I believed, unlike most in the Liberal Democrats, that a pro-European Scotland could be dragged out of Europe by a vote in the rest of the UK for Brexit, something that later became all too clear. Ten years ago, I believed that the “independence” being offered by the SNP was much closer to our long-standing policy of a Federal UK than the status quo we ended up with after the No vote won the day. In the end, I accepted that I was on the losing side and remained in the UK, later to be taken out of the EU, against the vote of most Scots.

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Nell Jerram

The Cass Review is biased and flawed and Lib Dems should not support it

By Nell Jerram | Sat 21st September 2024 - 10:30 am

The UK trans community is concerned and dismayed that some Lib Dem parliamentarians seem to be excessively supporting the Cass review.

The Cass review might superficially appear to be reasonable and balanced, and few of us will closely read all 388 pages in order to form a different view than we are hearing from our broadly anti-trans media. But from a transgender perspective the signs of subtly biased language are clear from the start. Firstly, in the Chair’s Foreword:

“I have faced criticism for engaging with groups and individuals who take a social justice approach and advocate for gender affirmation, and have equally been criticised for involving groups and individuals who urge more caution.”

Why is caution ascribed only to the anti-trans side? In fact, caution is a major motivation for the pro-trans side, given the levels of anxiety and depression that can be experienced by those with gender dysphoria, reaching in some cases to suicidal thoughts.

The Foreword also introduces transition and detransition on an apparently equal footing. Yet in reality, all my experience points to detransition cases being a tiny fraction, with the vast majority of transitioners feeling happier as a result. Data backs this up with <1% of those regretting undergoing Gender Affirming Surgeries, making it among the least regretted surgeries carried out.

Another surprising note, from very early on in the review, is how it bemoans the “culture war” context and “toxicity” and exhorts for this to stop. Certainly we are in the midst of a culture war, and on more fronts than just transgender awareness, and that is sad and unfortunate, but why would this affect a scientific process such as the Cass review purports to describe? Surely, a scientific process would only accept input from experts presenting their views on the basis of evidence, and would simply discount anyone arguing a culture war point of view or exhibiting toxicity?

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Mary Reid

Lib Dem councillor calls for online participation in Council meetings

By Mary Reid | Fri 20th September 2024 - 1:43 pm

When lockdown hit us we all turned to Zoom or one of its online rivals to maintain our working and social lives. Local Councils worked out ways of carrying out essential business online, and that included formal Council meetings, although it did require emergency government legislation. In fact, all levels of Government, from Westminster to Parish Councils, met online, or held hybrid (mixed virtual and in-person) meetings, during the pandemic.

The House of Commons adopted hybrid meetings as soon as the technologies for viewing and voting were in place.

In May 2021 Councils were told the emergency legislation no longer applied and that they had to return to fully in-person meetings. This did cause concern for a number of reasons. Social distancing was still in place, and many Council chambers were not large enough to hold all the councillors and officers seated 2 metres apart. Also, some councillors were clinically vulnerable and were still shielding, or were doing so to protect a family member. Not surprisingly, there were many calls for hybrid meetings so people who needed to stay away could participate remotely.

Even Jackie Weaver, of Handforth Parish Council fame, said that it was a dreadful idea to end virtual meetings.

There was also some anger that the Commons continued to hold hybrid meetings for several more months after Councils were forced to stop them.

The Local Government Association has been campaigning for hybrid and virtual meetings ever since. There was evidence that virtual and hybrid meetings had widened participation by both councillors and the public, whereas fully in-person meetings had reduced it.

Over a year ago the BBC reported that councillors in 10% of councils were standing down because of the inflexibility.  Reasons cited included disability, illness and caring duties. We should also mention County Councils and large rural District Councils where travelling to meetings can be very time consuming.

The issue has not gone away. This week a Lib Dem councillor, Jennie Jagger, got the unanimous backing of Worcester Council to call for options for remote participation in Council meetings. In Jennie’s case she is pregnant and concerned about how she will manage with a young baby, but she points out that a flexible approach will allow people with disabilities or full-time jobs to participate as well as those with caring responsibilities.

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Mark Valladares

Labour’s Employment Rights Bill – whither Liberal Democrat constructive opposition?

By Mark Valladares | Fri 20th September 2024 - 9:31 am

It looks as though Steve Darling, the Party’s newly appointed spokesperson for Work and Pensions, is going to have an early baptism in his new role, with an Employment Rights Bill expected to come before Parliament sooner rather than later.

As a reminder, this was what our manifesto said:

Modernise employment rights to make them fit for the age of the ‘gig economy’, including by:

  • Establishing a new ‘dependent contractor’ employment status in between employment and self-employment, with entitlements to basic rights such as minimum earnings levels, sick pay and holiday entitlement.
  • Reviewing the tax and National Insurance status of employees, dependent contractors and freelancers to ensure fair and comparable treatment.
  • Setting a 20% higher minimum wage for people on zero-hour contracts at times of normal demand to compensate them for the uncertainty of fluctuating hours of work.
  • Giving a right to request a fixed-hours contract after 12 months for ‘zero hours’ and agency workers, not to be unreasonably refused.
  • Reviewing rules concerning pensions so that those in the gig economy don’t lose out, and portability between roles is protected.
  • Shifting the burden of proof in employment tribunals regarding employment status from individual to employer.
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Mary Reid

Up to 750,000 people disenfranchised in General Election

By Mary Reid | Thu 19th September 2024 - 3:36 pm

The Electoral Commission report on Voter ID in the General Election found that 16,000 would-be voters were turned away by polling officers because they did not have approved ID. But the picture is much worse than that, because many people simply did not turn up at the polling station because of the ID rules, or were stopped by the greeter and never returned. In fact, the Electoral Commission reckons that 750,000 people might not have voted in the General Election because of the need for Voter ID.

The report also found that while most people were aware of the requirement for Voter ID, 29% of people aged 18- 24 did not know about it and 24% of people from ethnic minority communities were unaware. In general, the impact was felt greatest by those two groups plus voters in social grade C2DE.

This is a topic I have written about before. On the day after the local elections in 2023, when Voter ID was first introduced, I asked: “Voter ID – did it prevent electoral fraud or did it interfere with voters’ rights?“. The answer came the following month with another report from the Electoral Commission: “14,000 voters turned away – but probably many more“. Then a month later a letter appeared in the press from eminent ethnic minority actors and artists, calling for the abolition of Voter ID because of its disproportionate impact on people of colour: “Actors and artists back the abolition of Voter ID“.

There are two possible responses to the latest findings. Either increase the types of acceptable photographic ID or abolish Voter ID altogether.

The Electoral Commission recommends that “The UK Government should undertake and publish a review of the current list of accepted forms of ID, to identify any additional documents that could be included to improve accessibility for voters.” At the moment travel passes for older people are acceptable but bizarrely those for young people are not. They also suggest that any voter who does not have a acceptable form of ID should be able to take a registered voter with them to the polling station to attest for them.

The other option – embraced by the Lib Dems, is to abolish Voter ID altogether.  Its original purpose was to stop impersonation – when someone fraudulently claims to be someone else and steals their vote. This is a crime, of course, but one that seems to happen extremely rarely. Between 2019 and 2023 only 11 people were convicted of it.

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Ben Wood

Your freedom is my freedom: Remembering our distinctive philosophy

By Ben Wood | Thu 19th September 2024 - 12:19 pm

One of the unalloyed pleasures of the 2024 Election Campaign was speaking to friends about policies, which, it seemed to me, represented the very best of us as a Party. We called for a fair contribution from the energy companies, Social Media giants, and higher rate taxpayers to repair our mental health services and social care system while strengthening the safety net for carers. We campaigned against the pollution of our beloved waterways, the diminution of the Health Service, and threw our weight behind a national strategy to tackle the often-invisible blight of loneliness.

However, something niggled at me throughout the Campaign: How do we draw our policies and positions together into a coherent whole? After all parties are not just shopping lists of policies, they embody traditions of thought and feeling which transcend the electoral cycle. I was left thinking: What are we trying to say cumulatively about our Party and the society of which our movement is part? It seems to me that the Manifesto was a beginning in answering some of these questions, but the existential query of ‘what we’re for’ still feels unsatisfactorily blurry, even after all the stunning electoral victories in July.

What do we need to do in order to weave our policies together? The answer it seems to me lies in renewing our distinctive Liberal Democrat understanding of freedom.

In a powerful article from December 2022, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams argued that the thing that most blights contemporary Britain is endemic social insecurity. People are going hungry, millions of jobs in the economy are failing to meet basic financial needs, individuals, families and communities are struggling to keep their heads above water. Williams dusts off a slogan from the Covid-19 pandemic, ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’ and asks us to apply it to the economy. What would it mean if we adopted a systematic understanding of communal security? The answer, thinks Williams, is that we would end up with a more expansive vision of acting and choosing.

As Williams writes:

It is not just that insecurity literally threatens lives; it is also that all those things financial security makes possible – the freedom to celebrate, to plan for your children, to give gifts to people you love – become monstrously complicated. Living with any fullness or imagination recedes over the horizon when choices are all about survival.

Williams’ point is helpful for Liberal Democrats as we navigate this new Parliament and its choices and trade-offs. For us Liberty has always been about the safety to live and care in community. This is where we differ so drastically from Trussite Libertarians and orthodox Thatcherites. We cherish the freedom to love and care, give and create, imagine, and yes, make our lives gloriously complicated. Not everything can or should be reduced to the bottom-line. Liberty should never be narrowed down to personal earning-power, property-rights, tax cuts, or consumer goods.

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Rodrigo Palmer

Please, give young people like me a reason to hope and dream again

By Rodrigo Palmer | Thu 19th September 2024 - 10:07 am

The freedom to hope and dream is a precious thing. It is something which I treasure. The ability to wonder and aspire is something that us young people are constantly reminded to do. But I find it hard to dream. I found out about the climate crisis when I was about 12/13 years old and as the curious person I am I decided to read about it. I would read these IPCC reports trying my best to break them down and understand them. I distinctly remember the beginnings of the climate movement, Greta Thunberg talking about it, and I was so curious to find out more.

Once I truly understood it, I felt depressed. I felt trapped. It felt hopeless, like something beyond my control. Then I found politics. Politics I felt was a way in which I could use that hopelessness and turn it into passion, hope and drive to push for the solutions we need. I did all I could: I presented assemblies in school about the climate crisis, I successfully lobbied my school to implement a long-term sustainability strategy, I chaired a local climate action summit in which young people came together to discuss climate solutions. These are all things I am immensely proud of.

Looking at this government, I see no hope at all, no vision. They are not taking the climate crisis seriously, few people are. There doesn’t seem to be an urgency. If we were, it would be all over the headlines. We would be implementing long-term plans, we would stop our investments in fossil fuels, we would be investing in infrastructure. Don’t take it from me: the solutions are all there – there are experts who have devoted their livelihoods to advising, lobbying and pushing for the change we need. We just need to listen to them. These people have been banging their head against a brick wall for decades, they deserve the attention they have been asking for.

As the third biggest party, we have a responsibility to the people of this nation to tell it to them like it is. For example, we have an obligation to tell this government that investing £1 billion pounds in carbon capture is not good enough. Instead, we should use that money for technology which we know works: wind farms, solar panels. Trees – they capture carbon too! I am not against development in technology, but we frankly do not have the time. This is urgent. The Climate and Nature Bill is a great start, but we must do more. We need a long-term, cross party sustainability plan to reduce emissions to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

I will only be free to dream, hope and aspire once we truly take this seriously. Right now, I do not feel free. I look to the future with dread, with sadness. Just like those who were in East Berlin, I feel trapped and frightened. I can see the solutions are so close, just like those in East Berlin could see freedom and prosperity so close, but they were trapped. All I can see are barriers, massive barriers in front of me. The day that we finally take this seriously – and treat the crisis as a crisis will be the day my Berlin wall falls, and it will be one of the happiest days in my life. I will finally be free, and be able to dream.

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Chris Moore

Where Next?

By Chris Moore | Mon 16th September 2024 - 11:45 am

Post-General Election, there has been a slew of articles, in Lib Dem publications, about our strategic direction. Three interlinked commonplaces come up time and again. All, in my view, are wrong.

Let’s take them one by one.

1. There are not many plausible targets left.

In fact, there are twenty-five plus seats where we are in obvious contention. The majority are located in our southern heartlands and adjoin existing seats, easing the use of regional organisers and help from other local parties.

But twenty-five isn’t many, you may say.

Here is a short list of our best General Election results in seats since World War II.

2024: 64 gains
1997: 28 gains
1983: 12 gains
2005: 11 gains

All the rest were single figure gains or losses. In historical terms then, we clearly do have enough targets to be getting on with.

2. There is little else left to gain without significantly increasing vote share.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my Conference day: 16 September 2024 – “who are all these people, and where did they come from?”

By Mark Valladares | Mon 16th September 2024 - 9:26 am

Next month, I’ll have been a Liberal, and then Liberal Democrat, for forty years, something I occasionally find hard to credit, but my body reminds me of from time to time. I’ve seen a lot, and met a lot of people in that time. What that means is that there are plenty of people that I run into at Federal Conference who I know, or who know me, and it’s always nice to find out what they’re up to, running councils, or doing serious things elsewhere.

But what’s noticeable is the astonishing number of people who I don’t know, and don’t …

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Caron Lindsay

The reality of the crisis in our NHS

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 15th September 2024 - 9:12 pm

Today Lib Dem Conference debated health and social care and passed an 11 point plan to deal with the crisis the NHS faces.

The debate was unsurprisingly one of the most heavily subscribed at Conference.

Regular readers will know that Leicestershire Lib Dem Mathew Hulbert’s lovely mum Jackie passed away in 2022 two days after an eleven hour wait for an ambulance.

He had written a speech for the debate today but was one of many who were not called.

He sent us his speech and you can read it below.

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Caron Lindsay

Caling all trans allies in Brighton – show support at 1pm today

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 15th September 2024 - 10:58 am

Jude Parker spent two days this week sewing a huge trans Pride flag with the help of Douglas, her much loved sewing machine. It’s pretty massive 15 metres and weighs 4.5 kg. She carried it to Brighton along with the rest of the merch for the LGBT+ Lib Dems stall. It was a real labour of love in response to the blow of hearing that an anti trans group had been allowed to have a stall at Liberal Democrat conference.

This flag will be unfurled outside the Brighton Centre at 1pm today in a show of solidarity with trans people in our country and in our party. Everyone who supports trans rights is welcome to show support.

We are proud of our history as a party that has always stood up for LGBT+ rights, as we’ve stood up for women’s rights, for racial equality and human rights generally. It’s in our core.  So what on earth are we thinking allowing in a group that does not align with our values?

This group have been wanting to have a stall for some years and we have turned them down. In fact, the Federal Conference Committee turned them down again for this Conference. Unfortunately, the legal advice the party sought was apparently clear that we could be liable for significant costs and damages if, as was considered likely,  this group sued us.  They seem to have the resources to do so, and, unfortunately, LGBT+ people in the party do not have access to such deep pockets. So, FCC was over-ruled and they were given a stall.

There is surely an issue around access to justice in all of this. If only the rich can take action which sets legal precedents, there is a clear power imbalance which should worry us.

Some would argue that the party should have said, as Harry Willcock famously did in 1950 when asked to show his ID card “We’re liberals and we’re against this sort of thing.”

I can definitely see the logic in that and a bit of me wishes we had the courage to stand up against an unfair and illiberal law, even if the sums involved in defending a legal action makes me, as a recovering state party treasurer, wince with pain. Even if you win your case, you rarely get all your costs back and it’s expensive and time consuming.

Our conference exhibition is our shop window to the world. A law which compels us to include people who do not share our values on the grounds that they have a “protected belief” seems ridiculous. As a political party, we surely should have the right to choose who sits in our shop window.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 15th September 2024 - 9:35 am

United States

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene WAS the female darling of the Republican far-right. No longer. The new girl on the block is 31-year-old Laura Loomer who is so far to the right that right-wing Ms Greene has called her “mentally unstable and a documented liar.”

Ms Loomer is also emerging as a confidante of Donald Trump. She travelled on his plane to the 10 September presidential debate in Philadelphia and is said to have fed him the story about immigrants eating pets in Ohio.

She continued with the former president to New York and was with him when he attended the bipartisan services to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attack. This despite the fact that Ms Loomer has claimed that 9/11 was an “inside job” perpetrated by the Deep State liberal elite.

Laura Loomer loves right-wing conspiracy theories. In her playbook the mass shootings at Last Vegas, El Paso and Parkland were all staged by the anti-gun lobby. The winter storm that disrupted the Iowa caucus was created by meteorologists hired by Deep State Democrats to help Republican candidate Nikki Haley.

Ms Loomer proudly identifies as an “Islamaphobe.” When told that 2,000 Muslim immigrants had drowned while crossing the Mediterranean, she tweeted: “Good. Here’s to 2,000 more. “

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have all banned her for spreading hate speech and misinformation, although Elon Musk reinstated her account. She has also been banned by the online banking services Paypal, Gofundme and Venmo. The taxi services  Uber and Lyfft have barred her from using their vehicles because of her attempts to ban Muslim taxi drivers. She is suing all of the above – unsuccessfully.

Twice Ms Loomer has run for Congress for a Florida seat. Twice she lost and twice she was endorsed by Donald Trump. She has written for Alex Jones’s Infowars; The Geller Report which pushed the Obama birther lie; Rebel Media which describes as a counter-Jihad platform and Veritas, a major broadcaster of conspiracy theories.

Ms Loomer denies that she is a White Supremacist but proudly admits to being a White Nationalist. She is not a Christian nationalist because she is Jewish and has been the target of death threats from the anti-Semitic wing of America’s far right.

Her loyalty to Donald Trump is rock solid. She told the Washington Post: “If Trump doesn’t get in I don’t have anything. Ms Loomer attacked Florida governor Ron de Santis and his wife for daring to challenge the former president and has advised Trump that he should make a list of those who have challenged him in the courts and elsewhere and, when re-elected president, “execute them for treason.”

United States – more

What if Trump loses? Will there be a repeat of January 6 when rioters stormed the US capitol in a vain attempt to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory?

Unlikely. But only because this time around Biden – not Trump – controls the security apparatus. And he has put in place an array of measures to protect not only the capitol building, but the entire metropolitan area of Washington DC.

No. If there is a threat to the election it will be in the voting booths, the counting rooms, the election boards and the courts.

As in 2020, Trump is planting the seeds for a legal challenge in case the vote goes against him. This time his objections will be based on illegal immigrants voting for Harris. He told a rally in Las Vegas this summer that “the only way they can beat us is to cheat.”

In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee has put 102 election deniers on local and state election boards. In Georgia, for instance, the election deniers control the state-wide board and have already introduced rules that allow them to delay voter certification while they conduct “investigations” into “unspecified irregularities.”

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Caron Lindsay

Conference Day 1 highlights

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 14th September 2024 - 7:39 pm

I’m usually in the pub during the rally and catch up on You Tube later. Tonight I listened to Al Pinkerton open the event while I was chopping coriander stalks to go in a chlli. So far, after Al, we’ve had Max Wilkinson’s shocking admission that he doesn’t like Abba, Pippa Heylings describing some doorstep encounters and  Josh Babarinde describing the experience of having his mother and Ed Davey critique his bungee jump and Sarah Olney talking about her terror on that rollercoaster.

I am missing Conference terribly. The livestream is fine, but it’s nothing compared to being in the auditorium …

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: The Debate

By Tom Arms | Sat 14th September 2024 - 9:27 am

Trump lost. In the words of his acolyte Senator Lindsey Graham: the debate was a “disaster.” Not surprisingly, Trump has refused to debate Kamala Harris again, making it one of the few times that he has turned down the opportunity to blow his horn.

The former president did land a few punches in Tuesday’s verbal brawl. In fact if you listen to the first and last ten minutes then you might come away thinking that Trump won.  But the political theatre will be remembered for how he was mocked, rattled and lied, lied and lied.

Millions around world sniggered or guffawed when the former president claimed that immigrants were eating the pets of the residents of Springfield, Ohio.

He was clearly rattled when Kamala Harris invited viewers to attend one of his rallies and added the pointed observation that numbers of attendees are dropping and people are leaving early, bored with his rambling monologues. Rubbish, he retorted, and then falsely claimed that Kamala Harris paid people to attend her rallies.

The lies came fast and furious – Millions of criminals are flooding across America’s borders. In reality, of the 1.4 million illegals who entered the US in the past year, 14,700 were found to have a criminal record or .01 percent. They were immediately deported. Among native-born Americans there were 16.5 violent crimes for every 100,000 in 2021.

Violent crime, claimed Trump, was going through the roof (again, he said, because of immigrants). Wrong. According to the FBI homicides were down 26 percent in 2023 and violent crime as a whole is at its lowest level in 50 years.

Abortion is a hot election issue. Trump claimed that the Democrats want abortions in the ninth month of pregnancies and are killing babies after they are born. This earned a gawp of disbelief from Kamala Harris and was quickly corrected by moderator David Muir.

Inflation, according to the former president, “is the worst in US history.” It was bad. It reached 9.7 percent. But it has been higher five times since they started keeping records.

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Michael Bukola

Sunday Trading Reform: Open All Hours or Keep Sunday Special

By Michael Bukola | Fri 13th September 2024 - 5:27 pm

Party conference this year will be a moment of celebration, after our stunning General Election results – but it will also be the occasion where we look forward, and develop our responses to the host of massive challenges facing the nation.

Yet, reading through the agenda, as we prepare to gather in Brighton, I see that the first policy motion is to further reform Sunday trading laws. Should this really be a key priority?

The motion describes Sunday, the traditional day of rest, as ‘outdated social norms’, a reference to cultural norms that have largely faded from public consciousness as the country evolves towards patterns of lifestyle where consumerism, overindulgence, and social media are more evident. That feels far removed from the collective fellowship, reflective contemplation and communion enjoyed by millions seeking direction and salvation – at least where I live, in the London Borough of Southwark, along the Old Kent Road, where these values still very much matter today.

We should not forget why Sunday trading laws were introduced in the first place: the ‘Keep Sunday Special’ campaign was introduced in part to protect the Sabbath. Epitomised by the Parliamentary Tory rebellion, when 72 backbenchers defied a three-line whip and defeated Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980’s. Liberal MP, David Alton, led the charge of Mrs Thatcher’s only parliamentary defeat on the Shops Bill of 1986.

Look, it is fairly obvious that there are millions of people who do shop on Sunday. So, on exactly what basis should they be prevented from doing so?

In fact, there are a host of non-religious reasons for limiting Sunday retail trade – a point highlighted by the breadth of the broad coalition behind the famous 1986 campaign to oppose liberalisation.

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Tony Vickers

Budget Challenge from Lib Dems: Capture Land Values

By Tony Vickers | Fri 13th September 2024 - 2:32 pm

According to ONS, the land value alone of UK accounts for 60% of its net worth and is “the most valuable asset in the economy, estimated at £6.3trillion (2020).

It accounts for 98% of all non-produced non-financial assets and these – as a proportion of all national assets including those produced (buildings, goods and services) or ‘financial’ (such as stocks and shares) – rose from 39% in 1995 to 58% in 2020. Almost all that rise in non-produced assets was due to increased residential land values.

The role of land wealth in our economy is commonly overlooked. Yet the cost of land, and access to it, affects all aspects of life. Land has no cost of production. Its value only arises from our demand for homes, businesses, food production, leisure, public services, transport etc. The same applies to all natural resources – oil, gas, minerals, the radio spectrum, solar energy, wind, water, rivers, oceans, etc.

In 2018, helped mainly by ALTER and its allies in the Coalition for Economic Justice (CEJ), a new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Land Value Capture (LVC) was set up. Vince Cable was its first chair and the then Chair of ALTER, Joe Bourke, acted as its Secretary. He still does.

When Vince stepped down from Parliament, John McDonnell took over the Chair. The Labour Party has an active group of MPs – mainly on the left and including Jeremy Corbyn – who support Land Value Tax, called the Labour Land Campaign. The Green Party is a member of CEJ – north and south of the border. The SNP also supports it.

An APPG can’t exist without support from members of the governing party in the Commons and plenty of Conservative MPs in the last Parliament across a wide spectrum in that party also favoured various forms of LVC, albeit few backed LVT as strongly as the Liberal Party did in the 20th century. Tory led governments consistently blocked all efforts to implement any form of LVC throughout that time.

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Brandon Masih

VAT cuts – is it really a fair deal for musicians?

By Brandon Masih | Fri 13th September 2024 - 11:55 am

Cast your minds back to the pandemic, it was a time, would you believe it now, where Rishi Sunak was a very popular Chancellor. This was a period, where at the time, Sunak had introduced “eat out to help out” to public praise for wanting to stimulate the economy after the end of the first Covid lockdown. Even with doubt of its effectiveness in those two summer months alongside the potential contribution towards rise in Covid infections afterwards, it remains in the minds of people as a move to get things to bounce back.

Less talked about from that time is the VAT cut on hospitality, tourism and other attractions, from the standard rate of 20% to the reduced rate of 5%; first from July 2020, to January 2021, then to end of March then up to end of September. Then Rishi created a special rate of 12.5% up until end of March 2022. Much like the chopping and changing of corporation tax, this is emblematic of the previous Conservative government not giving long term certainty on what they intended to do with tax. I would suspect* that this VAT cut, as opposed to many single type of product VAT reclassifications like with sanitary products and e-books, would have had an effect on price cuts to consumers and demand stimulation, owing to the not insignificant share of public consumption going towards the industries benefiting from the cut in VAT, and the fact it would last for nearly two years.

Then you must wonder what further analysis the Culture, Media and Sport Committee considered when they released their report of May this year on Grassroot Music Venues (GMVs), calling for a temporary VAT cut… only on GMVs, which are venues with capacity below 1000 people.  The evidence, in fact, is simply the assertion that a VAT reduction would have saved events cancelled last year, and that the Covid era VAT cut meant that there were 100 more shows coming out of the pandemic, and that success can therefore be targeted to GMVs.

Within the statements given from industry we do however see a recurring theme, that being the VAT threshold distorting decisions on whether to go through events at GMVs. The problem of UK’s high VAT registration threshold, now at a turnover of £90,000 per year, means that small businesses hold off on taking on additional sales, events etc. to avoid needing to be VAT registered. Dan Neidle, Institute for Fiscal Studies and Adam Smith Institute have all at various points, called for action on lowering the VAT threshold, to alleviate these distortions in business decision making. Yet, the evidence provided to the committee, and the subsequent recommendations, have been to just do a targeted and temporary VAT cut.

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Ruth Bright

The milk of human kindness

By Ruth Bright | Fri 13th September 2024 - 9:43 am

“Reading the room” is a vital skill in politics. It is that knack of understanding, just clicking with an atmosphere or individual and knowing how to make a spontaneous pitch or knowing when to tone it down. Kwasi Kwarteng, with almost endearing under statement said in a recent interview that it was a skill that his old boss Liz Truss did not have.

If you are instinctive about reading the room you can make a lot of money in business or even in politics, but in low paid work like care (£21,000 a year if you are over 21, less if you are under 21) it is an essential part of your role. Yesterday I visited a residential home I know well. You cannot miss the atmosphere when you go in the door. It is warm, friendly, giggly even, with in-jokes and gentle humour. The care staff (not a single one of them, incidentally, British born) have an uncanny knack of pre-empting small mishaps and instinctively knowing when a vulnerable resident is not quite themselves.

What is also striking, as someone who had to use the NHS a lot two years ago, is that my friends working in care seem to have retained this extra something, what Lord Darzi, in his report, calls “discretionary effort” in a way that seems largely lost in the Health Service.

As an inpatient in the last 2 years I have experienced things that would have resulted in disciplinary action against a careworker:

  • Shouted at by a nurse when I tried to use the “wrong” toilet on the ward.
  • Blanked and ignored to my face by a doctor when I politely complained to him that I had been waiting five and a half hours in the ward prepped for an operation.
  • Subjected, under general anaesthetic, to an intimate procedure conducted by a surgeon without specific consent. (This matter was investigated by the police and is now with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman)

Not a single Lib Dem Voice reader will be surprised by this small list. All of you will have your own and have experienced worse.

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Shaun Roberts

A step change in the fight for PR

By Shaun Roberts | Thu 12th September 2024 - 6:16 pm

The 2024 General Election was the most disproportionate in our history.

Or to put it another way, people didn’t get what they voted for, not even close!

As a result, for a few weeks at least, electoral reform became a real talking point in the media and amongst the public. The door that leads to Proportional Representation, which has been locked shut for more than a decade, is slightly ajar.

That’s something the Liberal Democrats, who have been campaigning for PR longer than anyone, need to exploit. With a record number of MPs, there are more Liberal Democrat Parliamentarians than ever to push the case for PR forward in this Parliament.

Even better, there are more allies in this battle than ever before. Research conducted by democracy organisations shows that more than 250 MPs in the House of Commons have indicated support for PR for Westminster elections. Fewer than 150 MPs have declared their opposition.

There has never been a Parliament like this one when it comes to support for PR.

Furthermore, support for PR from political parties has never been higher. The Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Reform back PR. Within the Labour Party, both the trade unions and party members have strongly supported PR for Westminster elections. There have even been rumblings about growing support for PR in the Conservative Party after their record defeat in July.

And crucially, every public opinion poll shows clear support for electoral reform, with the same polls confirming that trust in politics has never been lower.

The respected British Social Attitudes survey showed in its most recent report that support for changing the voting system had never been so high, nor trust in government to put country before party so low.

All the ingredients for change are there, but for one very important thing.

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Mary Reid

How Lib Dems pioneered e-petitions

By Mary Reid | Thu 12th September 2024 - 2:40 pm

So congratulations to the three Lib Dem chairs of Select Committees. But I expect some of you are wondering about the Petitions Committee, now chaired by Jamie Stone. It was only set up in 2015 and its job is to review all petitions submitted to the UK Parliament, either through the Parliament Petitions website or as traditional paper petitions. Paper petitions have to be presented to Parliament by an MP, but e-petitions go straight to the Petitions Committee. An e-petition which reaches 10,000 signatures receives a written response, whilst those that attract 100,000 signatures are considered by the committee for debate.

The vast majority of petitions to Parliament are completed online, and you may not be surprised to learn that there is a strong Lib Dem history behind the development of e-petitions.

Over twenty years ago the Bundestag developed the first system for online petitions to Government. This was followed by the innovative Scottish Parliament (under the Labour/Lib Dem coalition), who commissioned a petitioning system from the pioneering International Teledemocracy Centre at Napier University. The term “teledemocracy” never caught on and was soon replaced with “e-democracy”.  Those two were at the time the only e-petitioning systems in the world – this was before public systems like Change.org appeared.

At that stage Westminster and local government in the UK had fairly rudimentary websites (in fact, some councils did not have them at all), which were largely information-giving and not transactional. However paper petitioning to local Councils was well established in many areas (though not all), and Lib Dems were not bashful in collecting signatures on issues that mattered to them.

The Government had set up a series of National Projects whose aim was to transform local government using the power of digital technologies. The projects focussed on many aspects of local government business including online planning portals, systems for payments, schools admissions, e-procurement, benefits, plus the underlying customer relationship management.

In 2003 I was asked to chair the National Project on Local e-Democracy in England, which carried out action research into techniques for increasing citizens’ understanding of, and participation in, local authority decision making.  We pioneered webcasting of council meetings, consultation portals, local issues forums (long before social media), blogging for councillors and we encouraged councils to provide all councillors with web and email facilities. If you check councillors and council meetings on most council websites you will probably be using a system developed for our project.

Within that mix we drew on the experts at Napier University to set up the first e-petitioning systems for local government in the world. The two local authorities that trialled it were my own council of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (Lib Dem controlled) and Bristol City Council (NOC with Lib Dem Leader).  Both re-examined their petitioning policies to make sure they encompassed online ones. Community groups were contacted to explain the new system and e-petitions started to appear.

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