Chris Fox, the Lib Dem Chief Exec, has circulated this helpful summary of which of our policies are included in the agreement. It’s slightly easier to wade through than the full text, which we brought you earlier.
A Fair Start for Children
- Introduce a Pupil Premium to give all children a fair start.
Fairer taxes and Economic Reform
- A substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011 with a longer term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective
- Reform of the banking system, ensuring a flow of lending to businesses and a Banking Levy. An independent commission on separating retail and investment banking.
- Capital Gains Tax reform
Fair Politics
- Fixed-term parliaments and a referendum on electoral reform for the House of Commons.
- A power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing.
- A wholly or mainly elected House of Lords on the basis of proportional representation.
- Giving Parliament control of its own agenda so that all bills are properly debated.
- Enacting the Calman Commission proposals and a referendum on further Welsh devolution.
- A statutory register of lobbyists.
- A limit on political donations and reform of party funding in order to remove big money from politics.
- Radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups.
A fair and sustainable future
- Establish a smart electricity grid and the roll-out of smart meters.
- Establish feed-in tariff systems in electricity
- A huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion.
- The creation of a green investment bank.
- The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.
- Retention of energy performance certificates when HIPs are scrapped.
- Measures to encourage marine energy.
- The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient CCS to meet the emissions performance standard.
- Establish a high-speed rail network.
- Cancel the third runway at Heathrow and refuse additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.
- Replace the Air Passenger Duty with a ‘per plane’ duty.
- The provision of a floor price for carbon, as well as efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits.
- Make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence.
- Promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and restore biodiversity.
- Reduce central government carbon emissions by 10 per cent within 12 months.
- Increase the target for energy from renewable sources.
Pensions
- Restoration of the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011 with a “triple guarantee” that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%.
- Phase out the default retirement age and end the rules requiring compulsory annuitisation at 75.
- Implement the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman’s recommendation to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policyholders.
Civil Liberties
- Scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the ContactPoint Database.
- Outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
- Extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
- Adopt the Scottish approach to stopping retention of innocent people’s DNA on the DNA database.
- Defend trial by jury.
- Restore rights to non-violent protest.
- A review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
- Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
- Further regulation of CCTV.
- Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
- A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
- End the detention of children for immigration purposes.
8 Comments
Well let’s hope these policies materialise. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more discussion about the major transition between generations we are witnessing in the leadership of our country. After years of Baby Boomer Prime Ministers, and a Boomer-dominated Parliament, we now have a new generation in charge: Generation Jones…the previously lost generation between the Boomers and Generation X. We’ll probably have a GenJones PM in Cameron, or ultimately in David Miliband or Jon Crudas and Parliament now as more Jonesers than Boomers. Similar transitions have happened in other Western countries and it provoked a lot of media interest. In fact, it got so much media buzz after Joneser Barack Obama came to power that the associated Press labelled Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009.
This commentary about GenJones in The Independent last week has a very interesting take on the meaning of Clegg and Cameron’s identities as GenJonesers: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jonathan-pontell-cleggs-rise-is-the-sound-of-generation-jones-clearing-its-throat-1961191.html
I also found this site worth looking at to get a quick sense of GenJones in the UK:
http://www.generationjones.org.uk/
How sweet. Dave & Nick will let our MP’s abstain on the votes for the motions that frankly, turn my stomach.
It would also be extremely useful to have a similar list of the Conservative manifesto policies which AREN’T in the agreement. Is someone going to be putting that together as well?
My view on what is needed for economic reform
The Economic Imperative: The New Governments Challenge http://wp.me/pRHY4-17
This Channel 4 “FactCheck” is quite interesting, but very incomplete:
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/2010/05/12/conservative-and-lib-dem-promises-then-and-now/
Ofcourse, there’s no real mention of the issue that made people vote for a party that wasn’t the Conservatives. The Economy. Many people, particularly in Scotland, voted for Labour or the Lib Dems in the knowledge that it was a vote against installing David Cameron as PM, and in particular, all the savage cuts which that entails. The betrayal they feel now can not be underestimated. While senior Lib Dems smugly pat themselves on the back, many people who voted for them will be feeling utterly repulsed that they have, unwittingly, installed the Tories into Government. It’s all smiles now but when George Osborne’s cuts come into effect, Lib Dem MP’s cannot duck responsibility. They’ll rightly feel the force of the electors they have ultimately betrayed. I imagine many of the Lib Dem activists will become increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with this partnership as the party struggles between power and its conscience. I have never voted Lib Dem but it was a party I respected as there were some areas of policy I agreed with, and – most of all – it seemed a party that was principled. I never imagined that they would so shamefully sell out in the manner that they did. It does very much look like the party has sold their soul for a taste of power. I’m sure many of the electors who put a cross beside “Liberal Democrat” will not do so now in future, and for people like myself, this decision has confirmed that I will never trust nor support the party, a party which is inevitably heading for division. I believe Lib Dem MP’s are in denial about how badly this has went down with a large section of the public. I’m afraid it will all end in tears for the Liberal Democrats.
As a tactical voter, together with several million others it is now clearly a truth to be universally acknowledged; Lib Dem = Con
The difference between Labour and the Tories on the economy was, I suggest, largely illusory.