Category Archives: Op-eds

Caron Lindsay

Martin Bell to be Lib Dem candidate in North Shropshire? Don’t hold your breath

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 7th November 2021 - 8:15 am

The Sunday Times (£) reports today that veteran journalist and anti-sleaze campaigner Martin Bell has been approached by the Lib Dems to be our candidate in the North Shropshire by-election.

The article by Caroline Wheeler and Gabriel Pogrund says:

One thing that may fill older MPs with dread is the symbolic spectre of Martin Bell, who ran against Neil Hamilton on an anti-sleaze ticket in 1997. On Friday, the 83-year-old was called by the Liberal Democrats, who offered him the chance to be their candidate.

This report prompted me to look out my copy of Purple Homicide, the account of his first foray into politics, in Tatton, in 1997, written by then Observer political correspondent John Sweeney. Disgraced Conservative MP Neil Hamilton was allowed to continue as the Conservative candidate after being implicated in the cash for questions affair. The title comes from his description of trousers worn by Neil Hamilton’s wife Christine to an encounter on Knutsford Heath as “a homicidal purple.” The Lib Dems and Labour stood aside to give him a better chance of unseating Hamilton.  The book is well worth reading if you can get hold of a copy.

Martin Bell’s victory over Neil Hamilton was one of many bright spots in the 1997 election. Often dressed in a white suit, he used his time in Parliament to argue for higher standards in public life. Bell stood against Eric Pickles in 2001 over concern about the influence of a local pentecostal church on the Brentwood and Ongar Conservative party but lost heavily. He had promised the voters of Tatton that he would serve for one term only and honoured that promise despite calls for him to stay. His departure paved the way for the election of George Osborne.

I don’t know if the Sunday Times report that we have approached Bell to be our candidate is true. But let’s look at what might happen if it was. I certainly wouldn’t mind him representing us, but I would not hold my breath. I like Martin Bell. His distinctive voice is one of the first I can remember as he reported on the Watergate scandal in the early 70s when I was a small child. I can’t see him entering a contest when Labour are not standing down. I also can’t see him agreeing to enter a contest that could end in him taking a party whip. I suspect he is probably unwhippable, even though our views are probably in alignment on many issues. That, by the way, is not in my view a flaw on his part.

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Lisa Smart

How YOU can send the Tories a message from North Shropshire

By Lisa Smart | Sat 6th November 2021 - 8:12 pm

It’s time to fire up the risographs, dust off the rosettes, and hit the doorsteps.

The sleaze scandal that has engulfed the Tories this week has reminded members up and down the country why Boris Johnson’s Government must be beaten. Politics must be better than this.

And the North Shropshire by-election is a great chance to send them a message they can’t ignore – and help cement the party back on the political map.

There was much speculation in the media yesterday about a possible “unity independent anti-corruption” candidate. On Friday morning, Labour ruled this out – so it’s not an available option.

This constituency is fertile territory for the Lib Dems. Labour may have finished second by default in 2019, but things have changed since then.

Most importantly, we have an enthusiastic and energetic local team who have picked up the baton to take the fight to the Tories. They’re the opposition on Shropshire Council and they deserve our support.

In May we finished second across North Shropshire – winning twice as many votes as Labour or the Greens. We came within a whisker of electing five councillors, with Labour nowhere. A casual glance at the seat’s profile makes clear Labour could never win here.

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Charles Quinn

ALDC by-election report: 4 September 2021

By Charles Quinn | Sat 6th November 2021 - 10:36 am

It has been a simply outstanding week for the Lib Dems – with a number of sensational performances and results in by-elections across the country at every level.

There was a double-helping of principle-authority gains from the Conservatives in West Sussex and Gloucester where both campaigns were helped by a Fighting Fund Grant from ALDC.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Climate people

By Tom Arms | Sat 6th November 2021 - 8:33 am

Climate change affects every single one of the7.8 billion people living on planet Earth and each one of them is an individual with homes, jobs, families, friends, dreams and aspirations.

Already these are being shattered by floods, fires, droughts, desertification and storms. Millions have already been affected. Below are a sample of specific cases that herald future problems for the rest of the world.

Cecile Rvanavaluna used to work in her local rice paddy every day. Now Madagascar’s rice fields—which take up a third of the East African Island’s agricultural land—are dust. Madagascar has been suffering a drought for a record 40 years. It is, according to the UN, the victim of the first climate induced famine.

Cecile and her family are being kept just above starvation levels by handouts from the World Food Programme. Other Malagasy’s are less fortunate. At least 30,000 are said to be dying from starvation. Many are reduced to eating cactus leaves which would otherwise be fed to livestock. With so many in a weakened state disease is rampant.

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Time to launch attack on Blue Fields of Shropshire

By Andy Boddington | Fri 5th November 2021 - 5:23 pm

The BBC and the Telegraph have been today reporting an idea that the opposition political parties could stand aside in the forthcoming North Shropshire by-election in favour of an anti-corruption candidate. It’s the Martin Bell strategy resurrected.

It is easy to see why this idea is attractive. Bell, the “Man in the White Suit”, won the Tatton seat as an anti-corruption independent candidate, with more than 60% of the vote. At the previous election, Neil Hamilton of cash for questions fame, had secured 55% of the vote. It was a dramatic and highly publicised drubbing by Bell. It was a stand against sleaze even if it did not stop sleaze.

Was that a one off? Or a strategy we can repeat in North Shropshire?

I don’t think it could possibly work in North Shropshire. And if we don’t field a Lib Dem candidate, we will undermine the growing strength of Lib Dem activists across Shropshire where we have 14 unitary councillors and are aiming for many more.

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Johnson sucked into a black hole after Paterson resigns

By Andy Boddington | Fri 5th November 2021 - 7:27 am

You can’t lose more credibility than this. Boris Johnson, distracted no doubt by glad handing world leaders at COP26 and his slap up dining with Telegraph grandees at the Garrick, arrived back at No 10 to find that he was swirling towards the black hole of political failure. His attempt to protect North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson from allegations of lobbying on behalf of his food industry paymasters failed. Big time.

Jacob Rees Mogg yesterday cancelled the review of loyal Tory MPs had voted for just hours before. Paterson, back on the hook and facing suspension, resigned.

Dominic Cummings once described Boris Johnson as “a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”. It is a cruel irony that Owen Paterson was shopping in a supermarket when he learnt that the wheels had come off his political career.

Boris Johnson, who had hoped that COP26 would be his finest hour, has perhaps made the biggest mistake of his political career and even his fellow Tories are raging.

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Steve Trevethan

How sound is our democracy?

By Steve Trevethan | Thu 4th November 2021 - 5:04 pm

The ongoing Paterson affair offers us the opportunity and motivation to analyse our fragile and imperfect version of democracy.

That MPs can, and sometimes do, receive large sums of money to represent the interests of organisations and individuals shows that, if unchecked and effectively unregulated, we are in, or on the way to being, a plutocracy and not a robust, deep democracy.

It would be more efficient to double the pay of MPs and ensure that they did not take monies from the fat wallets, individual or corporate.

The decreasing popular support of political parties makes them ever more likely to be taken over by the fat wallets, which also takes us along the path to plutocracy.

Limiting contributions to a ratio based on the minimum wage would limit this trend. Similarly, paying MPs on a ratio fixed to the minimum wage would bring a democratic facet to the relationship between the rulers and the ruled.

This might help mitigate the continuing inter-generational unfairness of recent decades. The “Deficit Myth” has been used to make tertiary education a commodity instead of an inter-generational gift. This has harmed tertiary education, of which there is not enough range, and impoverished recent generations who have been further harmed by rising housing costs, encouraged by HMG.

Democracy is more than an electoral system which returns a government for which the majority have not voted. One of the two parliamentary houses is not voted for.

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Mary Reid

Fighting institutional disablism

By Mary Reid | Thu 4th November 2021 - 1:14 pm

We should all have been shocked and embarrassed by the news that an Israeli minister was unable to access COP26 on Monday because she was in a wheelchair. This was followed by an attempt at victim blaming by Environment Secretary George Eustice who said that she should have told them about her access needs in advance. The Prime Minister eventually apologised, but used weaselly terms like “confusion” and “regrettable incident”.

The Black Lives Matter movement has alerted us all to the concepts of institutional and structural racism. They remind us that discrimination does not always result from hatred or prejudice, or even unconscious bias, on the part of an individual, but can sometimes be the result of built-in and unintentional practices within organisations, and indeed within society itself. We need to take on the same thinking when discussing the needs of people with disabilities.

Institutional and structural disablism can be very evident to those who experience it, but invisible to those who don’t.

Let me give you a small example. My husband has a rare neurological condition which affects his mobility and balance, amongst other things. He uses a walking stick but doesn’t need a wheelchair. We like to go out for short walks in the local parks and commons, and we are always on the look-out for somewhere to sit halfway through. We do find a number of seats but too often they are benches without backs and arms – which means my husband can’t get up from them. So the people who could benefit most from the provision of seating are often unable to use them.

The diagram of a person in a wheelchair is the universally understood icon for provision for disabled people – it’s seen on parking spaces, toilets, entrances and exit buttons. And indeed a wheelchair is the most visible sign of disability.  So when planners and designers are thinking about disabled provision they usually focus on wheelchair accessibility. But of course, most disabilities, like my husband’s, are less visible, with the result that places can be far less accessible than they should be.

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Michael Berwick-Gooding

What we should have been saying in our response to the budget

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Thu 4th November 2021 - 9:42 am

On Thursday I received an email from Dan Schmeising giving me a link to an “exclusive budget briefing” setting out our reaction to Wednesday’s budget.

The budget briefing states:

  • Provide at least the full recommended £15 billion to fund the catch-up needed in Education over three years.
  • “Double the Warm Home Discount on energy bills and extend it to everyone on Pension Credit and Universal Credit”.
    Why haven’t we included extending it to the legacy benefits? The Warm Home Discount is currently a £140 refund on a person’s energy bills if they receive particular benefits.
  • Implement (it is implied) our 10-year plan to insulate homes.
  • “Invest £150 billion into a Green Recovery Plan to promote active and zero-emission travel, protect our countryside and clean up our air. This will be paid for by taxing the wealthy and frequent fliers – not the less well-off”.
    We don’t say we want to do this over three years and if we want to split the money evenly into £50 billion a year or invest £30 billion in the first year, £50 billion in the second and £70 billion in the third. We don’t say how much the extra taxes will raise.
  • Restore spending 0.7% of our Gross National Income on Overseas Development Aid.

The budget briefing includes, “The Local Government Authority projects councils will be facing an £8 billion black hole in their budgets by 2024. The Tory Government has responded with… £4.8 billion.”

This £4.8 billion is £1.6 billion a year. But we don’t say we would provide the £8 billion and we should.

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Commons loses moral compass with Paterson decision

By Andy Boddington | Wed 3rd November 2021 - 8:15 pm

Today MPs today set a new low standard for democracy in the UK. Conservative MPs voted to maintain an image of sleaze against promoting an image of integrity. Instead of suspending Owen Paterson, MP for North Shropshire, they suspended Commons Committee on Standards instead. The Conservatives in the House of Commons have lost their moral compass.

Boris Johnson, boosted by his role as host of COP26, is currently a superhero in Invincible mode. Believing that nothing can harm him, he ordered “his MPs” to vote to protect his ally, Owen Paterson, against allegations of lobbying for companies for which he is a well paid consultant. They didn’t all obey.

Despite a handful of Johnson’s troops rebelling, the authority and integrity of the House of Commons took a nose dive today. Most Conservative MPs voted for their own interests and pockets after Boris Johnson decided that protecting Paterson was more important than protecting the integrity of the Commons.

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Sarah Green has her first Prime Minister’s Question!

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 3rd November 2021 - 6:25 pm

The newest Lib Dem MP, Sarah Green, had her debut PMQ today.

The headquarters of the Epilepsy Society is in her constituency of Chesham and Amersham so it was fitting, during COP26, that she highlighted the need to fund research into the effect of climate change on people with health conditions like Epilepsy.

And Boris Johnson wasn’t even horrible in his response.

I was annoyed that so many MPs talked over Sarah’s questions. It was very disrespectful, particularly on a question that was higher quality than many asked in these sessions.

The text of the exchange is below:

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Caron Lindsay

Disaster for the Democrats in Virginia

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 3rd November 2021 - 8:44 am

It’s not fun to wake up this morning to discover that Virginia has elected a Trump-endorsed Republican as its governor. Glenn Youngkin is projected to defeat former Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe by 2.7%.

What on earth has gone wrong?

It’s a bit of a perfect storm made up of a new way that the Republicans have found to frighten people into voting for them and the failure of Joe Biden to deliver what would have been a very popular series of measures, including paid family leave, mainly because of the failure of two right wing Democrat Senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

It’s a year since we all spent 5 days on tenterhooks waiting for confirmation that Trump was on his way out. I certainly wasn’t filled with unbridled optimism that Joe Biden was what the country needed, though I thought that his long experience in Congress would be enough to get his legislative programme through.

Just imagine if Joe Biden had been able to hit the stump in Virginia saying he’d put in a $3.5 trillion package which included, for the first time, measures that we in Europe take for granted. Things like paid family leave and a tax credit that would take children out of poverty. Opinion polls suggest that these measures are popular across the political divide, so failure to deliver them will surely bring disapproval.

If Biden had had a good story to tell, there would be no void for the malevolent right to fill with poison.

The toxin of choice in this case was a faux argument about “critical race theory”, something that isn’t even taught in Virginia’s schools.

From The Guardian:

McAuliffe’s all-out effort to portray Youngkin as an acolyte of Donald Trump proved less effective than the Republican’s laser-like focus on whipping up parents’ fear and anger about culture war issues in Virginia’s schools.

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David Boyle

The hypocrisy of COP26 and those that sponsor it

By David Boyle | Mon 1st November 2021 - 5:38 pm

There is a trust problem about the COP26 meeting, currently happening in Glasgow and deciding the fate of the world.

That is hardly surprising given that – bizarrely, on the eve of a hugely important climate conference, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced billions in road spending, cuts to taxes on polluting domestic flights and cancelled long-delayed fuel duty rises.

But still, that isn’t the only problem about COP meetings in recent years: the other problem is who governments choose as partners.

Polluters like Air France, gas and electricity company Engie and carmakers BMW and Renault were among the sponsors of COP21 in Paris …

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Michal Siewniak

Hope, prejudice and the power of change

By Michal Siewniak | Mon 1st November 2021 - 12:07 pm
  • How many times did I, you or anyone you know, has “written someone off”?
  • How many times, before someone spoke, we already ”knew” the other person?
  • How often do we label or stigmatise other humans?

A few days ago, I was quite lucky to meet someone, still very young, whose journey can be an inspiration to many of us:

  • Lost her mother at the age of 14
  • Didn’t finish school
  • Was kicked out from her house
  • Lost contact, for two years, with her siblings

More importantly, Jamala Osman lost a sense of belonging and a purpose in life. Many would say; “there is no way back”, her life …

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Sarah Lewis

Electoral reform: It’s not enough to believe in it…

By Sarah Lewis | Sun 31st October 2021 - 10:08 am

Why, as Lib Dems, we must campaign for proportional representation

As Liberal Democrats, electoral reform is in our DNA. That’s why we welcome the ongoing efforts of our ally organisations such as the Electoral Reform Society, Make Votes Matter, and Unlock Democracy. After all, we know that we cannot  bring about the change we want to see by acting alone.

As Lib Dem members our involvement in cross-party campaign efforts is all to the good. I encourage any who are not yet active in these groups to sign up today!

But I believe that we also need to campaign for electoral reform as Liberal Democrats. Why?

First, because it is Party policy and it reflects our core values.

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Tom Arms

World Review: Coups, budget, Brexit, hypersonic China, dictatorships and weaponizing energy

By Tom Arms | Sun 31st October 2021 - 8:33 am

This year the world seems to be suffering from a pandemic of coups. Myanmar, Guinea, Mali, Chad Ethiopia (although technically it is a civil war) and now Sudan. There were also attempted coups in Madagascar and the Central African Republic. It is not surprising. The combined forces of covid-19, Jihadism and long-standing ethnic divisions are taking their toll and the first victims are almost always the poorest countries. Sudan is a prime example. The per capita income is just under $4,000 a year. It ranks 181 out of 225 countries in the wealth stakes. In Sudan’s case neither covid nor Jihadism appear to have played a direct role in the military power grab, although both contributed to general dissatisfaction. It seems, however, the prime driver was good old fashioned greed coupled with fear and a hunger for power. For the past two years the country had been in a political transitional period following the removal of Omar al-Bashiri. The military was gradually returning control to civilians, in particular to Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. But according to the military, problems arose when competing civilian politicians tried to develop individual power bases within the army, thus raising the spectre of civil war. Their argument carries little weight with either Washington or Brussels, both of whom have cut off aid to Sudan. The Western capitals are concerned about Sudanese developments because of the danger of the civil war in neighbouring Ethiopia spreading into a destabilised Sudan and the combined problems of the two countries destabilising the upper reaches of the Nile River basin and the Horn of Africa.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Climate Change Outliers

By Tom Arms | Sat 30th October 2021 - 8:33 am

COP-26 in Glasgow has been organised because of the general recognition that international cooperation on an unprecedented scale is required to prevent the Earth which we all inhabit from alternately sinking beneath the waves or burning to a crisp.

Every country has to agree to concerted measures to reduce carbon emissions in order to keep global temperature rises down to 1.5 degree centigrade. It is a classic case of a chain being only as strong as its weakest link.

The need for action was highlighted this week by a report from the UN Environment Programme that commitments agreed so far would result in temperature rises of 2.7 degrees centigrade. This would spell disaster for almost every inhabitant of this planet.

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More than 57,550 deaths may be linked to austerity

By Michael Berwick-Gooding and Katharine Pindar | Thu 28th October 2021 - 12:25 pm

It wasn’t only Covid that killed people before their time. In just the four years after the Coalition between our party and the Conservatives was formed in 2010, the spending squeeze may have caused 57,550 more deaths in England than would have been expected.

Research from the Centre for Health Economics at York University reached this conclusion after studying the cuts in Government expenditure between 2010 and 2015. The research has been reported in the online journal BMJ Open.

The research revealed that real spending on social care and public health rose between 2001-02 and 2009-10, but fell between 2010-11 and 2014-15. This total spending gap attributable to austerity of 15.08% is said to have been likely to have caused 23,662 additional deaths. Meantime real spending on health care rose less between 2010-11 and 2014-15 compared with between 2001-02 and 2009-10 creating a 13.64% spending gap.

The researchers reckoned that a 1% decrease in health care spend would generate 2484 additional deaths, so the loss of 13.64% between 2010/11 and 2014/15 might have caused 33,888 additional deaths. They also figured that a 1% decrease in social care and public health spend would generate 1569 extra deaths. So the ‘loss’ of 15.08% between 2010-11 and 2014-15 might have caused 23,662 additional deaths. Adding these together they calculate a total of 55,550 additional deaths. It is pointed out that their “calculations assume that all health benefits occur contemporaneously with spend, which is unlikely to be the case”.

It also needs to be noted that “primary care and specialised commissioning spending were not included in the measure of overall healthcare spend, because responsibility for these returned to central government in 2013, while data on local spend for these services is not available.” It is likely that the cuts to primary care and specialised commissioning spending and to benefits over the same period would have caused some extra deaths, but the report does not quantify them.

Some of us recognised at the time that austerity was the wrong policy, but now those Liberal Democrats who were in the Coalition government need to recognise the effect their supporting austerity had on the British people.

Does the party need to take action to ensure we never do this again? What can the party do?

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Chris Perry

A “mending” not a “minding” service

By Chris Perry | Thu 28th October 2021 - 9:59 am

With so much media and political attention on social care there is a danger that social work, which is a very undervalued resource, may be further marginalised. This article attempts to demonstrate that social work and social workers are vital to a “mending” rather than a “minding” service.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s social work was regarded as a valuable resource and social workers seen as “agents of change”. Since then, social workers have been increasingly regarded as “gate keepers” assessing the eligibility for practical help and rationing of services.

The Seebohm Report which led to the establishment of Social Service Departments in 1971 recognised the value of social work. It did not, however, create the “one door to knock on”, it promised, as a multi-disciplinary / inter-agency response is often required. This was subsequently recognised with the establishment of Area Child Protection Committees (post Maria Caldwell), Mental Health procedures, “Community Mental Handicap Teams”, and Youth Justice Teams etc.

The undoing of much of the public sector was down to the Thatcher years and more particularly, in respect of Health and Social Services, to Sir Roy Griffiths and his mistaken belief that people were motivated by and could be controlled by money. This led to the introduction of the contract culture with the purchaser / provider split which Sir Roy thought would create a level playing field to facilitate a mixed economy of care thereby forcing quality up and prices down. It has subsequently been proven to have had the opposite effect and led to over-prescription taking away the ability of carers to react in situ to changing need. It led to greater fragmentation with different components of a “package of care” bought from different providers.

Social Workers were deployed on the “purchasing side”, assessing the need for specific services (often responding to “presenting problems” rather than the “underlying problem”) which led to several social services departments providing “minding” rather than “mending” services with an ever-increasing workload of dependent people.

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George Cunningham

Lib Dems Abroad: Supporting Afghans fleeing Taliban

By George Cunningham | Wed 27th October 2021 - 7:01 pm

At the Lib Dems Abroad first-ever Global Conference successfully held last weekend, I announced that a flight took off from Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan that morning carrying around 200 Afghan female judges and their families bound for Athens. A first flight of Afghan female MPs arrived in Athens a few weeks ago. Another flight is expected to take more Afghan female judges and their families bound for Abu Dhabi.

However, these are the last flights envisaged for Afghans trying to flee their country in the face of the Taliban and also vengeful criminals released from prison by the Taliban who seek retribution for their previous sentences by Afghan female judges.

On board that flight to Athens were the four family members of Gul Ahmad Kamin MP, leader of the Afghan Civil Democrats, a group with whom Lib Dems Overseas has been working with for several years in the Afghan Wolesi Jirga or Parliament. And we have now succeeded in getting the leader’s family out. We will work on gaining the UK government’s support for their resettlement in the UK.

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Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler’s valedictory speech: The Tories and integrity

By Paul Tyler | Mon 25th October 2021 - 4:14 pm

I chose to initiate a short debate, on the integrity of our electoral process for my final “valedictory” speech in the House of Lords.

After so many years of working with leading reformers in other parties – Robin Cook and Ken Clarke, for example – I deplored the lack of cross-party co-operation that this government have created. They have made few attempts to conserve the union, the reputation of Britain around the world or the rule of law, but also the traditional purpose of their own party. Ministers even wish to opt out of the European Convention on Human Rights, that Churchill worked so hard to create.

Of the Johnson Junta I summed up:

It is this cavalier relationship with the truth that divorces today’s Conservative Party from its past and betrays the legacies of Macmillan, Heath, Major, and, yes, even Thatcher.

Their Elections Bill will increase elusive foreign investments, being deliberately partisan, overturning work done since 1883 to prevent the rich buying constituencies. This aims to reverse the judgement of the Supreme Court in 2018 that reinforced those safeguards. The Bill also attempts to remove the Supplementary Vote from the PCC and mayoral elections, replacing it with First-Past-The-Post (FPTP). This move makes a mockery of the government’s own manifesto pledge “making sure that every vote counts the same – a cornerstone of democracy.”

I ended with a challenge:

I plead with true Conservatives – in both Houses and beyond – to reclaim their party.   For many years, I have had staring at me on my desk the reminder of Edmund Burke: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing’.

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Hannah Bettsworth

European health policy and the Conference on the Future of Europe

By Hannah Bettsworth | Mon 25th October 2021 - 12:53 pm

On the 23rd of October, the Liberal Democrats Abroad and the Liberal Democrats European Group held a discussion session with Irish Senator Timmy Dooley about the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe’s contribution to the Conference on the Future of Europe. Mr Dooley underlined the importance of hearing British views on Europe’s future, to help learn the lessons from Brexit, meet citizens’ expectations, and shape the EU into an organisation that the British people would be excited to rejoin.

In health, he mentioned the disillusionment caused by an initially slow response to vaccine procurement. Things have vastly improved since then, although, this is an important opportunity to take stock of what Europe does in health – and what else we might like it to do.

Firstly, on pharmaceuticals. Manufacturers can apply to the European Medicines Agency for EU-wide marketing authorisation for their products, but that doesn’t  automatically mean they’ll be available across the EU. Medicine pricing and reimbursement decisions are up to the Member States of the EU. Some have joined together to evaluate the impact of these newly available medicines and decide pricing, such as the Beneluxa group. Is there more Europe can do in this area? Should such coalitions expand to include other EU members – and could the UK get involved?

Europe also offers manufacturers incentives, based on market exclusivity for their new product for a period of time before competing medicines can come into play. The European Commission is examining changes to the rules, which could make these incentives conditional on EU-wide product availability or meeting health needs not yet addressed by existing products. At the same time, it seeks to make the process of getting market authorisation more efficient and less expensive, while maintaining high standards. Should it reform these incentives to influence manufacturers’ behaviour, and if so, how can the EU balance those two issues in a way that works for manufacturers and patients?

The Commission is also reviewing the rules on children’s and rare disease medicines, for similar reasons – how can we incentivise these treatments and make sure patients can access them?

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Michael Berwick-Gooding

An Alternative Budget – a budget for the poorest in society

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Mon 25th October 2021 - 10:20 am

Embed from Getty Images

Rishi Sunak will be presenting his autumn budget on 27th October. Currently inflation is rising with wages increasing up to 7% in some sectors, quantitative easing is due to end at the end of the year. Rishi Sunak has stated he wants to reduce the deficit.

The economic outlook is not clear, but I think Rishi Sunak should assume that the increase in inflation will only be short-term and the government and the Bank of England will not need to take any action to reduce inflation. The ending of the Covid support schemes will reduce government spending by £100 billion. While household savings have increased, I don’t believe all of these savings will be spent into the economy next year, or will be large enough to make up for the £100 billion being removed from the economy.

Therefore I believe that the Chancellor should not remove all of the £100 billion from the economy but should commit to continue to spend up to £40 billion of it. I suggest he should make the following changes above the normal upgrades and what has already been announced.

Benefits are due to increase in line with the inflation rate of September which was 3.1%. The triple lock on pensions has been suspended for next year, so instead of pensions increasing by 8% (the expected increase in earnings) they will be increased by 3.1%. As the party now supports a UBI we should be moving towards the idea that a couple receives twice the amount as a single person. Therefore I would make an exception for the couple’s Guaranteed Pension and instead of increasing it by 3.1%, increase it by 8% to £291.92 a week. This would move it from being 1.53 times the single rate to 1.6.

Party policy to scrap the ‘bedroom tax’ and the benefit cap should be implemented.

If the Local Housing Allowance rate was restored to the 50th percentile more than 32,000 households would be lifted out of relative poverty including more than 35,000 children (based on Crisis 2019 figures). Therefore the Local Housing Allowance should be increased to the 40th percentile from April 2022 and the 50th from April 2023.

These four measures should remove many pensioners from poverty.

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Charles Quinn

ALDC by-election report: 21 October 2021

By Charles Quinn | Sun 24th October 2021 - 10:29 am

It was a quiet week for by-elections – with only three principle authority local by-elections taking place on Thursday. However, it was still a great week for the Lib Dems – holding two principal authority seats in Birmingham and Horsham.

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Tom Arms

World Review: Troubles in Poland, Nigeria, Brazil & the US, and Colin Powell

By Tom Arms | Sun 24th October 2021 - 4:20 am

In this weekend’s commentary on world affairs, LDV’s foreign correspondent Tom Arms reviews the conflict between Poland and the Commission over the primacy of EU law. Nigeria is in a bigger mess than usual as corruption is exacerbated by Jihadism, the pandemic, a rapid rise in gang violence and a resurgence of Biafran secessionism. Brazilian senators are investigating Bolsonaro’s responsibility for 600,000 Brazilian covid-19 deaths. In the States, Trump aide Steve Bannon will go to prison for a year for contempt of Congress. Colin Powell who died this week, was universally recognised as a decent and honest man.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Saving the world & political incompetence

By Tom Arms | Sat 23rd October 2021 - 8:31 am

A perfect storm appears to be gathering over Glasgow to obstruct the COP26 Climate Change Conference which starts on 31 October. Two hundred countries, 100 hundred world leaders and 30,000 participants from politicians to climatologists, to diplomats to businesses and to pressure groups will turn the Scottish city into a logistical nightmare for a fortnight. But that is an insignificant issue and a tiny price to pay if the world’s governments come up with a workable plan to reduce global temperature rises to the target of 1.5 degrees centigrade by 2050 or, hopefully, sooner. Unfortunately, that appears increasingly unlikely for a host of reasons. Top of the list is the world economy. It is in a mess.

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Jeremy Hargreaves

Federal Policy Committee seeks members for a new working group

By Jeremy Hargreaves | Fri 22nd October 2021 - 6:16 pm

As part of the next stage of our programme of future policy development, firmly focussed on how we can attract voters to support us, FPC has now approved the creation of a new working group to develop our proposals for creating a much fairer society.

We are therefore now looking for applications from party members to join the group, which you can do here, by the deadline of Wednesday 3 November.

The prime role of the group will be to develop policies which communicate our core values such as fairness, and also liberty, equality and community, in ways which help to get as many Liberal Democrats elected, locally and nationally.

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David Brunnen

Democracy – now on the Risk Register

By David Brunnen | Fri 22nd October 2021 - 3:06 pm

An appreciation of Lord Puttnam’s recent address – The Shirley William’s Memorial Lecture: POWER AND FEAR – THE TWO TYRANNIES.

Was anybody listening?

If so, what did they hear?

If they heard, then what, exactly, did they understand?

Timing is everything.

In the heat of intense political clamour, unleashed as one of their own was murdered, the calm authoritative voice may have been lost in that moment.

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Hina Bokhari

Everybody included – why democracy and diversity are two sides of the same coin

By Hina Bokhari | Fri 22nd October 2021 - 11:33 am

At a recent event hosted by Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform, I was asked to speak about two topics that I feel very passionately about: democracy and diversity. In terms of democracy, I have been actively involved with the campaign for Proportional Representation for many years because I believe that our current system of First-Past-The-Post means that all votes are not equal: a vote in a marginal seat has a much bigger impact than a vote in a safe seat. In terms of diversity, I believe that we should welcome people from many different backgrounds to the campaign for PR by making an effort to being inclusive and open.

With this in mind, it was great to have an opportunity to be a panel speaker with someone so experienced as Lord Paul Tyler, the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Constitutional and Political Reform in the House of Lords. Paul has given so much to the campaign for electoral reform, both as an MP and in the House of Lords.

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David Gray

The right to online anonymity must be protected

By David Gray | Thu 21st October 2021 - 9:59 am

There are plenty of lessons to be learnt from the horrific killing of David Amess. People are right to call for a less divisive tone to political debate; Brendan Cox’s article was particularly moving in its calls for more civility and understanding between opposing political sides. Part of this may well be more enforcement against online abuse, and perhaps pressuring social media companies to act faster when it comes to people using those platforms to threaten others. These things will be debated in time and rightly so.

Emotions are running high and there is an understandable desire to create a legislative legacy for Mr Amess. Jo Cox’s death prompted the creation of organisations such as More in Common, which works towards creating more united societies. Close friends of Amess seem keen to stress his focus on ending online abuse, and are rightly raising this as an issue that should be amplified in the light of his death.

But we must tread very carefully in the next few weeks.

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