Rob Parsons

Let’s not be the radical party

By Rob Parsons | Tue 3rd July 2018 - 2:09 pm

I find the word “radical” increasingly difficult nowadays. It has become a shibboleth. Whatever is being pitched has to be framed as radical. And everybody knows exactly what it means and says so with great authority. The trouble is that the next person will, with equally great authority, give it a different meaning.

And also, it doesn’t tell us anything about the liberalness of the policies being proposed. I think most people will agree that Iain Duncan Smith’s approach to welfare benefits was radical. But I don’t think any liberal wants a policy that vindictive. (Or that incompetent.)

When you look at the things we are in favour of, many of them are not radical at all.

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Posted in Op-eds | 77 Comments
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We need to make it easier to move

By Collingwood | Tue 3rd July 2018 - 10:08 am

We are all aware of the issues surrounding property in the UK. According to the Resolution Foundation, as many as one third of millennials will be renting from cradle to grave. This is a serious problem that no party has ever really got to grips with.

When Labour were in Government, house building was one of the fewer policy areas that didn’t get much attention. All of the attention was on reforming public services, especially post-2001, rather than on housing.

Under the Conservative’s we have seen the introduction of initiatives aimed at helping people get onto the housing ladder. These include Help To Buy and the Lifetime ISA. However, we need to go further to improve the housing market.

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Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Tories claim credit for EU Directive giving greater rights to holidaymakers.

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 2nd July 2018 - 9:02 pm

So the Scottish and Northern Irish schools have broken up and people are starting to head for the sun. Although, to be honest, they might as well have stayed at home this year. I’ll bet you by the time I head to the Highlands at the end of August, the weather will have well and truly broken.

Anyway, I digress. Anyone heading on a package holiday will have greater rights today. This is not because of anything that the Tories have done, although they show they have the brassiest neck in the history of the universe by claiming credit for it.

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Jean Davis

Why I became a Climate Reality Leader

By Jean Davis | Mon 2nd July 2018 - 1:42 pm

For the past 15 years I have been a Liberal Democrat activist. I’ve been a local Party Secretary and Chair, fought local, Scottish, Westminster and European elections (and various referendums) as a campaigner and candidate, most recently as a Highland Councillor and Parliamentary candidate for Ross, Skye & Lochaber.

Following last years election I took some time out to reappraise my goals. There are a lot of areas for concern in the world but the question was where can I make a difference and what am I passionate about.

I concluded that I’m passionate about making things better …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 4 Comments

Bringing your spouse to live in the UK shouldn’t be this stressful

By L D | Mon 2nd July 2018 - 10:25 am

As I write this, I haven’t seen my wife for six months. We have been kept apart unlawfully, me here in the UK and her stranded in South Korea, following a Home Office error which saw her denied entry into the UK for ten years. Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy in action.

Our story is a simple one; I moved to Korea to teach English in 2013, I met my wife there where she worked as a bar manager, and we fell in love. I proposed on a cloudy mountaintop in 2017 and we immediately made plans to start a life together in the UK. It seemed a sensible choice; a life together in a country with better working conditions, higher salaries, a free health service and fresh air. We even went to Seoul’s registry office to marry three months in advance of our planned wedding day, because we knew we would need our marriage certificate early to prepare for her UK visa application.
We quickly became acquainted with the rules, regulations and flaming hoops set by our glorious, Tory-run Home Office. Yet despite the many obstacles piled up in front of my right to bring my foreign spouse to my home, we managed to meet all of the requirements and submitted all of the necessary documents. Everything was double and triple checked and then tied up with ribbons (literally in some cases). Everything from the sincerity of our relationship, my income, my job prospects, my wife’s health and her English ability would be scrutinized. But we weren’t worried, there was no reason we should fail.

I came back to the UK in January, ahead of my wife  and while we waited for her visa, so that I could take up work (as is necessary for such an application to be successful) and to set up our first home here. But then in March, inexplicably, an anonymous ‘Entry Clearance Officer’ from the Home Office declared our marriage certificate to be “not valid” and my wife was informed that she would not be allowed entry into the UK for a decade. Bearing in mind I was already in the UK and my wife was all packed up and ready to leave.

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John King

Options to Remain

By John King | Mon 2nd July 2018 - 8:10 am

An option to remain in the EU is an essential part of any people’s vote. But should it be just one option? That immediately creates a disadvantage compared to the Brexiters, who habitually have at least two options on the table – for example, a negotiated settlement or leaving with no deal.

On the surface of it, a 3-way vote might seem workable:

  • Remain in the EU
  • Accent the negotiated settlement
  • Leave with no deal

Indeed, some might argue this would favour Remain, since the Leave vote would be split. If the alterative voting system …

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 2 July 2018 – hot, sexy liberalism?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 2nd July 2018 - 7:50 am

I’ll be honest, I’m struggling today. Despite being half-Indian, I really rather prefer temperatures in the lower twenties Celsius. But as the burning sun beats down on most of us, Liberal Democrat Voice does not rest.

As the Government staggers from one attack from within to the next, and as senior Ministers overtly start their campaigns to replace Theresa May, what are Liberal Democrats to do? We’ve got a contribution which offers an interesting perspective on that from James Porter.

If there is a people’s vote, what should we want to see on the ballot paper? John King has been thinking about …

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Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #522

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st July 2018 - 9:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 522nd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (24-30 June, 2018), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

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Caron Lindsay

Baby Hames has arrived!

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st July 2018 - 4:50 pm

Just announced by Jo Swinson on Twitter!

We are delighted to welcome Gabriel Peter Kelvin Hames to the world. He arrived, happy and healthy, at 5:53am on Friday, weighing 7lb. Gabriel has two overjoyed parents and one very excited big brother.

Later she had some thanks:

…

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The Voice

Wishing David Ford a happy retirement

By The Voice | Sun 1st July 2018 - 11:45 am

David Ford is enjoying the first day of his retirement today. He’s been such a wise, sensible voice in Northern Ireland politics for over quarter of a century.

He explains to the BBC why he’s decided that now is the right time to step down from the Assembly.

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Caron Lindsay

How to break through when you have little money and a well-established opponent

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st July 2018 - 10:05 am

One of the stories of the week has been the stunning victory of 28 year old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the primary in New York’s 14th district.

She unseated an incumbent 10 term senior congressman, Joe Crowley, the fourth ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. He certainly seems to have been very complacent.

How did she do it, and what can we as Liberal Democrats learn from this? The New York Times has an analysis of why she won:

She flipped the levers of power he was supposed to have — his status as a local party boss and his

…

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Caron Lindsay

Why we need to Demand Democracy…

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 30th June 2018 - 7:45 pm

Today, Make Votes Matter have held Demand Democracy events around the country and Liberal Democrats have been out there campaigning for a fairer voting system.

Vince …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 17 Comments
The Voice

Caroline Pidgeon highlights Oyster “cash mountain”

By The Voice | Sat 30th June 2018 - 6:15 pm

So, Transport for London has £321 million of our money and is keeping quiet about it. Lib Dem Assembly Member and former Mayoral Candidate Caroline Pidgeon has made the headlines by uncovering the fact that TfL is sitting on this vast sum of money on Oyster cards which haven’t been used for over a year.

From the BBC:

Ms Pidgeon, chair of City Hall’s transport committee, put the “soaring” figure partly down to the number of people switching in recent years to making contactless payments with their bank cards.

She said: “TfL never stops bombarding us with advertisements and information campaigns,

…

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Caron Lindsay

Review: Yes we (still) can, by Dan Pfeiffer

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 30th June 2018 - 11:43 am

I have avoided reading too much by former Obama staffers because, as I watch the racist, misogynist monster in the White House play havoc with the most basic of human rights, I just get too sad. I definitely appreciated what we had while we had it, making its loss acute. Similarly, watching The West Wing  feels a bit masochistic sometimes.

There is very little point in languishing, though. Obama’s people survived 8 years of a Republican onslaught, from actual bare-faced lies and fake news to serious national and international crises. It stands to reason that they have a lot to teach …

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Caron Lindsay

What chance for British people to retain their EU citizenship?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 30th June 2018 - 10:04 am

I guess it is unsurprising, but there has been a jump of more than six times in the number of British people seeking citizenship of another EU country. 

I look at these figures with more than a touch of envy. One of the worst things about Brexit is losing my EU citizenship. It’s not just about freedom to travel. It’s about belonging to an organisation that has democracy, peace and human rights at its heart. The EU flag is the only one I have ever felt comfortable wrapping myself in. There is somewhere on the internet a video of me …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 18 Comments
Rebecca Hanson

In praise of being a by-election candidate

By Rebecca Hanson | Fri 29th June 2018 - 11:55 am

It’s 18 months since Jamie Reed resigned as the MP for Copeland, forcing a very unexpected by-election.

I’d never intended standing for parliament.  I was very content running my own business and being a local (lowest level – unpaid) Councillor, campaigning on a local issue I was passionate about (keeping our maternity services).

Copeland was not a winnable seat (we had no Lib Dem councillors there and all the Lib Dems were in Stoke fighting Nuttall) but by-elections command a lot of party and media attention, so being the candidate gave me the chance to do many things I couldn’t have done in an unwinnable seat in a general election for example:

– Copeland contains Sellafield – the hub of the nuclear industry.  Our nuclear experts were very worried about the consequences of the UK pulling out of the Euratom agreement as part of Brexit.  Lord Teverson and Baroness Featherstone helped me get this issue rapidly on the Westminster agenda.  Because I was raising it in Copeland, the main party candidates had to know about it so their parties had to help them and this issue quickly gained cross party attention.

– I was also very concerned about a particularly toxic academy issue we faced.  The other candidates didn’t properly understand it but by raising it again and again and explaining it in depth at hustings I was able to make sure they did.  To her credit, Trudy Harrison (the elected Conservative MP) has got herself onto the Education Select Committee and is working hard on this issue.

– I was able to drive forward my work on our maternity issues with the help of Norman Lamb, Baroness Brinton and the local media.

 – I was able to be a role model for the kind of evidence-based inclusive democracy I believe in, for example I was able to set up hustings in areas that felt neglected.

I got high level training on working with the media and plenty of experience.  I got the support of very experienced politicians and my fantastic agent Andy Sanger and so was able to learn a great deal very quickly.

The credibility I gained during the by-election meant that I was elected to Cumbria County Council last May.  From there I’ve been able to continue to protect maternity services and I’ve been able to have a positive impact on more issues than I can count.  

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Lord Navnit Dholakia

How transgender people are treated in prison

By Lord Navnit Dholakia | Fri 29th June 2018 - 10:25 am

One of the questions that has been voiced on Twitter recently in the debate about trans women has been the case of the Soham murderer, who in 2002 as Ian Huntley murdered two ten year old school girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and was jailed for 40 years. A number of tabloid newspapers have reported that Huntley is transitioning, and wishes to be called Lian. Incidentally, the prison service has said several times that Huntley is not planning transition.

There are those who say that giving any trans prisoner with a violent past the rights to move to a woman’s prison and mix with women puts women prisoners at risk. They have even tried to say that the Liberal Democrats in supporting trans rights, do not care about women’s rights in prison.

I see that Sal Brinton has written about the Liberal Democrat policies on trans matters, and I wanted to write about the formal process that the National Offender Management Service insists on for the care and management of transgender offenders, designed to both recognise the rights of trans people in prison, but also ensuring the safety of other prisoners and staff. Their policy can be found here,

Pages 12-13 sets out the protocol relating to sentenced prisoners. It says that there will be an initial Local Transgender Case Board after a prisoner declares, and can provide evidence, that they are living in the gender the offender identifies with, and will, as appropriate, make arrangements for transfers to other parts of the prison estate.

With prisoners who might also be deemed a risk to other prisoners, there then has to be a Complex Case Board called for Transgender Offenders, which will look at the complexity and specifically assess the risk of harm prior to making decisions about prison location. The views of the offender must be presented to the Board, but there are a number of healthcare and psychology leads there to ensure that any move to a women’s prison would be safe.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: F-*-*-k Business

By Tom Arms | Fri 29th June 2018 - 8:55 am

F-*-*-k Business”. That was the response of Conservative British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson when told that one of Britain’s biggest employers—Airbus—was planning to move out of the UK if his country left the EU Customs Union. The expletive was actually uttered privately, but the mercurial Boris has refused to deny it and in politics absence of denial is the same as claiming ownership.

The shocking thing is not the foreign secretary’s choice of words. His audience is used to the colourful language of this self-confessed admirer of Donald Trump. It is the sentiment behind it and the axis shifting policy change it represents.

The British conservative party has always been the party of business and financial probity. The Labour Party has been the big-spending, squeeze them til the pips squeak, conscience of the nation. It is the traditional home of the social ideologues who are more concerned with correcting perceived social injustices than they are worried about securing the source of the money which pays for their corrections.

But Boris Johnson’s expletive indicates that the Tories are as ideologically driven as Labour has ever been. It is being steered by a coterie of European-hating politicians who are prepared to sacrifice Britain’s finances at the high altar of Brexit.   The ideologues have staged a coup in the British conservative party.

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Mary Reid

On feisty and ditzy women

By Mary Reid | Thu 28th June 2018 - 3:00 pm

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Helen Mirren once told the Daily Express:

Two phrases I hate in reference to female characters are ‘strong’ and ‘feisty’. They really annoy me. It’s the most condescending thing. You say that about a three-year-old. It infantalises women.

I’ve been pondering on a long list of words that are only ever used to describe women. ‘Feisty’ is top of that list, but there are many more that worm their way into our everyday conversations.

At work women in senior positions are described as ‘ambitious’, ‘bossy’, ‘strident’, ‘shrill’, ‘abrasive’, ‘pushy’, ‘sassy’, ‘bitchy’ or ‘bolshy’. In contrast, women lower down the pecking order are said to be ‘bubbly’, ‘airhead’, ‘cute’ or ‘ditzy’. These are all words that are rarely used about men and they all have negative connotations.

There is also that give away phrase ‘very intelligent, but …’ (a variant of which pops up in the Helen Mirren interview), which implies that bright women must have compensating features, such as a sense of humour, to be acceptable.

And of course, we all know that the word ‘hysterical’ derives from the Latin for a womb, so can only be used of women, along with ‘hormonal’, ’emotional’, ‘highly strung’, ‘sensitive’, ‘illogical’ and ‘irrational’, not to mention ‘menopausal’.

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Layla Moran “Airbus shows businesses are running out of patience with our Government”

By Mary Reid | Thu 28th June 2018 - 12:25 pm

Layla Moran has been writing on Huffpost on the fallout from Airbus’s announcement that it will pull out of Britain (with the loss of thousands of jobs) if there is no transition deal on Brexit.

She writes:

The difficulty for those of us campaigning against an extreme Brexit ripping us out of the world’s largest market is that not enough people feel that the economy is nose-diving.

…

Take Airbus. It is looking for a breakthrough later this week at the European Council meeting, or else. It was a brave announcement, that if we don’t secure a decent trade deal, it is likely to move factories and jobs abroad – brave not for the act of leaving but for coming out and saying it.

…

So why did Airbus risk such an announcement? Because this wasn’t a threat. This was the first stage of its disinvestment from the UK; the risk of a no-deal Brexit is now simply too great, and too soon. Even a company the size of Airbus cannot afford to risk £1billion a week.

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Edward Robinson

The inspiration for European integration is part of British history too

By Edward Robinson | Thu 28th June 2018 - 9:54 am

Two years on from the EU referendum and Walter Benjamin’s haunting observation that “the very past itself is at stake” seems appropriate.

What sort of future Britain will have depends, to a large extent, on how a working majority of voters and politicians understand her past. For, as the UK’s former judge on the European Court of Justice, Sir Konrad Schiemann, noted in a 2012 lecture on the EU as a Source of Inspiration, “what you find inspiring depends to a degree on where you come from and what you’re looking for”. Born in 1937, Schiemann was probably the last CJEU judge to have experienced the Second World War. Growing up in Berlin hiding from British bombs and then, via Poland and the Lancashire Fusiliers, landing up as a law student in Cambridge, Schiemann is clear where his generation were coming from and what they were looking for. His generation of Brits (and many of those that followed) understood the preamble to the European Coal and Steel Community as being part of their history too, despite Britain not having been a signatory to it.

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Lord William Wallace

Brexit: It isn’t all over yet – not by a long way!

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 27th June 2018 - 3:00 pm

Several comments on LibDem Voice last week argued that we’re all too late to stop Brexit: ‘it’s a done deal.’  Except that it’s not: we have a government that still has no clear idea of what future economic relationship it wants to have with the EU after we leave, and no coherent proposals for managing our future borders with the EU.  9 months from the date on which the UK is committed to leaving, Theresa May is holding together a divided Cabinet by endlessly postponing hard decisions that would trigger resignations from one side or another. The odds are rising on a political crisis towards the end of this year, as hard Brexiteers call for Britain to crash out of the EU without a deal, the Prime Minister promotes a formal exit which will leave us still following EU rules for an extended transition period (‘Brexit in Name Only’, or BRINO), and business protests that they lack any guarantees about future rules to encourage investment in Britain.

Remember what No.10 was saying about the timetable a year ago?  To manage an orderly exit, we would negotiate a package of measures with the EU by June 2018, to be agreed at the June EU Council.  That would allow time for the necessary legislation in the UK, and ratification both here and in other EU states, to be completed before March 29th next year.  We are now reaching the June European Council, after months in which David Davis has assured us that the negotiations ‘are making good progress’, and find that there is no package and little attention to Brexit on the agenda. Number 10 is now briefing the media that there may be ‘serious’ negotiations at the October European Council, but that agreement on key issues may be postponed until December.

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Tahir Maher

Knife Crime

By Tahir Maher | Wed 27th June 2018 - 12:00 pm

Tories cheered when a reduction in Police budget was announced. Conservatives were going to cut funding, and the Police were going to keep their coverage and levels of activities by better utilisation of their resources. Even when the Police warned that crime would go up with the proposed cuts, the budgets were reduced. The consequence has been an increase in crime. Eventually, the Tories will have an epiphany that if they provide more funding to the Police, they will have more resources to fight crime. They never learn.

Knife crime went down from 2011 to 2015. But in 2017 alone it went up by 22% from 2016, and this was across the country, the 22% equates to just under 40,000 offences. There are many suggestions as to why there has been an increase in knife crime. Government critics have sited reduction in stop and search, closing down of children centres and cuts in the number of Police officers. In England and Wales, there are 21,000 fewer police officers now than there were in 2010 and in that same period council spending on Youth services has fallen by more than £750 million.

Others suggestions relate to drug and gang wars being the reason why youngsters carry knife. Social media is another reason given because these youngsters can have a massive following on platforms like Facebook and with significant followers backing down is not seen as an option.

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Tahir Maher

Telling Tales

By Tahir Maher | Wed 27th June 2018 - 7:38 am

The government is keen to play up the supposed benefits of Brexit. We are now getting to the ‘business end’ of the negotiations and as expected all is not as it seems. The government is talking up walking away with no deal instead of an accepting a bad deal (a bad deal would be an admission of its failure to negotiate with the EU) with the Brexit dividend that will be used to provide the NHS with a birthday present. Regarding the dividend, the Institute of Fiscal Studies made it clear that this was twaddle.

Just over a year ago the Office for Budget Responsibility (the governments’ official forecaster) estimated that as a result of lower economic growth because of Brexit tax revenue would fall by 2020/21 by £15 billion. It should also be noted that UK’s growth has gone from the faster-growing economy in G7 to the lowest other than Italy’s. This fall in revenue significantly surpasses our net contribution to the EU. The Institute of Fiscal Studies notes that there will be less rather than more money for the NHS and other services.

If we take our commitment to pay the agreed £45 billion plus a long-term obligation to pay pensions identified (until the need is exhausted), government’s commitment to support agricultural and the scientific research in universities – where then is the dividend for the NHS?

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Paul Walter

A dose of reality in the heart of one of the states that swung it for Trump in 2016

By Paul Walter | Tue 26th June 2018 - 6:06 pm

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Last year I had the privilege of boarding the Amtrak Hiawatha special from Chicago, Illinois to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to enjoy a visit to friends there. “Don’t mention politics” warned my host beforehand “My husband voted for Trump”. A lovely time ensued with only a tangential mention of Bernie Sanders, followed by a hasty subject change onto the safe topic of the excellence of Milwaukee’s many and varied beers.

But, of course, my host’s husband was not alone in Wisconsin. Whereas Obama won the Badger State by a handsome 205,204 votes in 2012, Clinton lost its ten juicy electoral college seats to Trump by 22,748 votes.

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The Voice

Vince Cable outlines pragmatic steps to boost housing supply.

By The Voice | Tue 26th June 2018 - 12:03 pm

In a keynote speech today (below, in full) Vince Cable analyses the failures of the housing market in terms of the poor incentives to developers and banks, and the effect of the planning system, and offers some pragmatic solutions to boost supply and tackle the shortage of housing that is pricing many young people out of homes altogether.

The text below is quite long but you can use these links to jump straight to the analysis of the housing market, building for social rent, the compulsory purchase of housing land for affordable housing, existing stock, comments on the green belt, and homelessness.

Also reported in the Guardian.

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Joe Otten

IFS announces: peak pensioner and falling inequality

By Joe Otten | Tue 26th June 2018 - 9:27 am

An article by Paul Johnson at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and also published in the Times, begins

It can take a while before policy responds to new realities, in part because it can take time before those new realities are recognised. Policy has nothing like adapted to the collapse in home ownership among the young. We continue to treat pensioners as though they need free travel, winter fuel allowances and the like, despite the fact they are on average now the best-off demographic group in the country. The squeeze on middle earners that started in the early 2000s was barely noticed at the time.

This is so obviously and painfully true to any Liberal Democrat who may have dared to point out that income inequality fell during the coalition and is now (as Johnson points out) no higher than it was 30 years ago. The left wing grievance industry decided in 2010 that inequality was going to rise and has stuck to that line ever since, indifferent to the truth.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 39 Comments
The Voice

Lib Dems condemn “betrayal” of Swansea Tidal Lagoon cancellation

By The Voice | Mon 25th June 2018 - 9:21 pm

It was a project which would power 150,000 households for 120 year, a program of lagoons at Swansea, Newport, Cardiff and Colwyn Bay which would create over 34,000 jobs in Wales alone. And Wales does need jobs. It was championed by the Lib Dems in Government, but, as has happened with so many Lib Dem ideas, it’s been cancelled today by the Tories.

Coming on the same day as the the vote on Heathrow expansion, you would be forgiven that the Tories really didn’t give a hoot about what David Cameron is alleged to have once described as “green crap” – and he was one of the more progressive ones.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have condemned the decision as a huge missed opportunity and another example of the Conservatives’ neglect of Wales.

The lagoon was strongly backed by the government commissioned Hendry review in January 2017 and is supported by businesses, councils, MPs and AMs from all parties. The lagoon would have acted as a pathfinder project for other lagoons across Wales including Newport, Cardiff and Colwyn Bay.

Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds was furious that the opportunity to make Wales a world leader in green energy had been thrown away:

The Conservatives’ rejection of the Swansea Tidal Lagoon is a disgrace. The Swansea Tidal Lagoon would be a vital first step in making Wales a world leader in green energy, bringing untold environmental and economic benefits to the community, Wales and the UK.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats have consistently supported the Swansea Tidal Lagoon as a key part of our plans to develop an innovative, radical and ambitious green economy in Wales. It is deeply disappointing the Conservatives do not share our ambition.

When Ed Davey was Secretary of State for Climate Change he was totally behind the project. He called the cancellation an “historic mistake.”

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Judy Abel

With more money coming to the NHS do we need to rethink how it’s spent?

By Judy Abel | Mon 25th June 2018 - 12:42 pm

While some of the major health think tanks such as The King’s Fund say the announced 3.4% increase in annual NHS spending is not enough – and I would agree with that – can we at least use the additional NHS funding more efficiently? I would say it might be worth looking at changing some long-established patterns of patient care.

Let’s start by looking at primary care. Currently it is estimated that around half of all GP appointments are for just two kinds of conditions – musculoskeletal (MSK) problems (accounting for a fifth of all GP appointments) and mental health problems …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 35 Comments
Catherine Royce

Assisted dying – an expression of individual freedom

By Catherine Royce | Mon 25th June 2018 - 11:08 am

This resolution proposed by PLC, Partido Liberal de Chile and supported by D66 of Netherlands and LIBG Liberal International British Group was hotly debated during the Human Rights Committee session at the 200th Executive Committee meeting of Liberal International held at the headquarters of the Free Democratic Party of Germany in Berlin this weekend.

Despite strong reservations from several delegates to the original wording and a proposal to refer back, a ŷlast minute re-write during the session which addressed all of the reservations expressed led to success, with a large majority of delegates voting for the resolution during the following …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged and | 7 Comments
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