Liberal Democrat Voice

Reminder: Last chance to stand in Liberal Youth England regional chair contests

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 6th November 2013 - 11:14 am

Liberal Youth England has vacancies for 3 regional chairs in the following areas:

London
Western Counties
Yorkshire and the Humber

By-elections for these positions will be held at the Liberal Youth Winter conference in Cardiff next weekend.

Regional chairs are am responsible for establishing, organising and supporting Branches and Societies in the region, acting as a regional point of contact for the Executive, media, campaigns, events and Federal Party purposes.

All members of the party in England under the age of 26 are eligible to stand.

If you’d like to stand for election, simply email me(for I am …

Posted in News | Tagged liberal youth england | Leave a comment

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Opinion: Liberal Youth Scotland campaigns against SNP cuts to student bursary cuts and college places

By Hannah Bettsworth | Wed 6th November 2013 - 9:50 am

Student finance. Mention those two words to most students and you’ll either get people moaning about the amount of forms they have to fill in, or excited about how rich they are at the beginning of the month.

However, at the end of the day, you have to pay it back. Unless you vote SNP. That was the message they gave graduates in 2007. Strangely enough, I still seem to have a student loan and quite a substantial amount of money to pay back. They knew they couldn’t afford it and scrapped the pledge in their first budget. It was a …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged liberal youth scotland, Scotland and student finance | 1 Comment

Lord Brian Paddick’s maiden speech

By NewsHound | Wed 6th November 2013 - 8:20 am

It is a tradition for LDV to bring its readers copies of our new MPs’ and Peers’ first words in Parliament, so that we can read what is being said and respond. You can find all of the speeches in this category with this link. Last Tuesday, Lord Paddick made his maiden speech in the House of Lords during the debate on the Second Reading of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill. His words are reproduced below.

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, was confusing my name with my current state of mind. …

Posted in News and Parliament | Tagged brian paddick and maiden | 2 Comments

Manifesto 2015: Join the debate

By Helen Duffett | Tue 5th November 2013 - 5:10 pm

Following David Laws’ call for proposals for the Liberal Democrats’ 2015 Manifesto, the first submissions from members are now up on the Manifesto Website.

Watch this space for more members’ ideas to be discussed. Or submit your own idea and maybe you’ll see it up there soon!

Posted in General Election and Online politics | Tagged general election manifesto | 2 Comments

Study shows that UK benefits from immigration from European countries

By Mary Reid | Tue 5th November 2013 - 4:25 pm

Liberal Democrats celebrate the fact that immigrants make a substantial social contribution to UK society, and they have long suspected that immigrants make a net financial contribution as well. That claim is now backed up by a recent study undertaken by University College London, and reported by the BBC.

In a paper for the Centre of Research and Analysis of Migration, authors Christian Dustmann and Tommaso Frattini conclude that:

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Centre of Research and Analysis of Migration, Christian Dustmann, featured, immigration and Tommaso Frattini | 33 Comments

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Andrew Stunell writes … Removing discrimination from electoral campaigns

By Andrew Stunell MP | Tue 5th November 2013 - 3:34 pm

Last week the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Electoral Conduct published its recommendations. The Liberal Democrats played a leading part in this inquiry and we are pleased to report that our approach to tackling discrimination is rightly credited in the findings of the all-party panel.

Electoral campaigning in Britain is, the Inquiry found, generally a positive and democratically enriching process. There are however a number of areas in which better frameworks for action could be introduced which would make Britain not just a responsible democracy but one that is world-leading in facing down discriminatory electoral conduct.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged discrimination and electoral conduct | 10 Comments

Opinion: Labour’s Living Wage really means the State taxes the poor more

By Alisdair Calder McGregor | Tue 5th November 2013 - 2:38 pm

This is – according to the Labour Party – the start of “Living Wage week”, a soundbite policy of the kind we’re now used to hearing from Labour.

Superficially, the idea of the Living Wage is simple and tempting. Figure out how much it costs to live, and force employers to pay that much.

Labour’s chosen method of doing this is to offer employers tax breaks – for a year – if they comply with the Living Wage rather than the national minimum wage. However, as pointed out by the Adam Smith Institute, what we are actually dealing with is …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged adam smith institute and living wage | 33 Comments

Opinion: In defence of consumption taxes

By Daniel Henry | Tue 5th November 2013 - 1:20 pm

Whenever the “cost of living” comes up as a topic, we often hear lists of consumption taxes that can be reduced to lower it. Most recently have been the green levies on energy bills; last year a big deal was made about fuel duty; the year before it was the top rate of VAT. Some people even argue that taxes on cigarettes and alcohol hit the poorest and should be cut back.

I’m certain that there’s all sorts of taxes that we’d like to lower, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and any tax we lower requires us to raise another tax or cut spending elsewhere. Wealth taxes, and even a high rate of land value tax, would only raise so much, so if we’re to cut tax then we’re going to have prioritise.

My position is: whichever consumption tax you’d like to reduce, we’d be better off using the revenue to raise the Income Tax and Employee NI thresholds. This is for three reasons:

Posted in News | Tagged featured, income tax and vat | 43 Comments

Julian Huppert writes … Immigration Bill: Update

By Julian Huppert | Tue 5th November 2013 - 10:44 am

I thought it might be useful to let you all know where we’ve reached with the Immigration Bill. Today, we start to discuss each clause in detail in the Bill Committee, which I’m serving on.

I’ve tabled a whole series of amendments, to try to move the Bill back towards the sort of thing that we would like to see.

I’ll be suggesting that students shouldn’t pay the NHS levy – they already contribute to our economy by coming here to study, and we don’t want to drive them away to countries we compete with. I’ll also argue that people who’ve been …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged child detention, immigration bill and NHS levy | 4 Comments

Opinion: The Case for Community Banking

By Selwyn Runnett | Tue 5th November 2013 - 8:57 am

There are signs that the banking crisis may be coming to an end. The old TSB has re-emerged, Lloyds may be returned wholly to the private sector. William & Glyn’s may also re-emerge with investment, from amongst others, the Church Commissioners for England.

So, if we ignore RBS, the banking sector looks like it can get back to solid day-to-day retail banking, can’t it? Well, not quite. Retail banking is now disappearing from our local communities with only local credit unions filling the gap.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged banking | 9 Comments

Opinion: You don’t have to wear a red poppy

By Richard Church | Mon 4th November 2013 - 6:42 pm

This week there is a bit more pressure on all of us to conform. You would think, watching the telly, that wearing a poppy is compulsory, it isn’t. Of course, the expectation to conform by wearing a symbol in a lapel is nothing to the expectation placed on young men 100 years ago.

This year I discovered a letter from my great grandfather, Wesley Church, published in his local paper, the Northampton Echo, in 1917, condemning people for throwing stones at a conscientious objector who was on his way to attend a tribunal. He wrote: ‘There are hundreds who are …

Posted in Op-eds | 30 Comments

Emma Gilpin-Jacobs appointed as Director of Communications to the DPM

By The Voice | Mon 4th November 2013 - 4:57 pm

News reaches the Voice that Emma Gilpin-Jacobs has been appointed as Nick Clegg’s new Director of Communications. It’s an impressive appointment given Gilpin-Jacobs’s stellar CV, which includes time spent as Global Director of Communications for the Financial Times. You can learn a bit more about her from this interview with Management Today from earlier this year.

Nick Clegg’s chief of staff, Jonny Oates, had this to say in announcing the appointment:

Emma has extensive experience in the communications field. She was Director of Global Communications for the Financial Times Group for seven years, Time Warner’s International Director of Public Affairs for six years as well as having worked for a number of years as a journalist and in communications consultancy.

She will be based in the DPM’s office and will head up the Liberal Democrats’ Communications Team in government. Lena Pietsch will take on the role of Public Relations Director within the Communications Team, working with Emma on public relations initiatives for the DPM.

Emma will work closely with Ryan Coetzee and the communications team at LDHQ, to ensure that the implementation of our strategy is fully aligned.

Posted in News | Tagged emma gilpin-jacobs | 9 Comments

Liblink… Vince Cable: Europe is an anchor for British business

By Joe Otten | Mon 4th November 2013 - 12:23 pm

For centuries, Britain has developed economically through being an open, outward-looking country. Today, the economy has a high level of global integration. The UK is the world’s fifth largest exporter of goods and services, and we attract more foreign direct investment than any other European country.

…Vince Cable, writing in the Guardian.

Posted in LibLink | Tagged cbi, european union, jobs and trade | 2 Comments

Tim Farron writes… British businesses say we must stay in the EU. Let’s go out and make that case.

By Tim Farron MP | Mon 4th November 2013 - 8:20 am

UKIP and the many Conservatives who say we should pull out of the EU might want to keep a low profile today. The CBI, which represents some 240,000 businesses up and down the country, has published a landmark report in support of Britain’s EU membership. It found that 8 out of 10 of its members would vote to remain part of the EU, including 77% of small businesses, and concluded that the overall benefits of EU membership massively outweigh the costs. In fact, each of us is thought to be around £1225 better off a year thanks to …

Posted in News | Tagged european union and jobs | 23 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #351

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd November 2013 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 351st weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (-, 2013), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, 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:

Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment

Why do so many Liberal Democrat MPs not claim for energy costs?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd November 2013 - 3:49 pm

There’s a new expenses scandal in the offing. Today’s Sunday Mirror headline screams that 340 MPs are getting their second home energy bills paid. Yes, energy bills are a hot topic at the moment but let’s look behind the hyperbole.

Of course, MPs are paying their own energy bills in their homes out of their salaries. What is being paid by the public purse is the cost of their accommodation in either their constituency or London. If you’re going to do the job of an MP properly, you need two bases. It stands to reason, therefore, that the second base …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged mps expenses | 48 Comments

LDV’s Sunday Best: our 7 most-read articles this week

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd November 2013 - 1:19 pm

Many thanks to the 14,700 visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…

Opinion: Russell Brand – a turgid mess of a manifesto (56 comments) by Jack Williams

Updated: Full list of Lib Dems standing in our held seats and top 50 targets (2 comments) by Stephen Tall

Time to do away with Lib Dem Friends of Israel and Friends of Palestine (37 comments) by Leon Duveen

Lewis Baston’s 2015 Election forecast: Labour 36%, Conservatives 34%, Lib Dems 16% (16 comments) by Stephen Tall

Opinion: What is with the Liberal Democrat love affair with …

Posted in Site news | Leave a comment

Nick Clegg’s Letter from the Leader: Miriam delights children at Great Ormond Street

By The Voice | Sun 3rd November 2013 - 11:44 am

A more personal letter this week, as you can see from the headline. An insight into the day to day life of a party leader and Deputy Prime Minister, along with a lovely video of him and Miriam at the Great Ormond Street Hallowe’en party. Then you have the message that the Liberal Democrats have once again delivered in Government – with more powers to Wales – and an account of a trip to the pub with Sheffield students. He ends with a challenge to readers – to sign up a member of the party or join themselves.

Half term week has taken me out and about across the country, talking about everything from Halloween pumpkins to the finer points of fiscal devolution.

Miriam and I had a real treat attending a Halloween party at Great Ormond Street Children’s hospital, where patients, parents, nurses and doctors alike were in costume, and ready for fun, whatever the illnesses they were battling.

Posted in News | 3 Comments

Opinion: We need to grab our current luck and champion the Lib Dems

By Liz Leffman | Sun 3rd November 2013 - 10:03 am

Far too often, information about the work our ministers are doing reaches us, and the general public, through a cloud of white noise created by the media. The information that we local activists get from Lib Dem HQ can be drowned out by what we read and hear elsewhere. It’s often difficult to tease out our ministers’ achievements in government from the work of the government as a whole. But in the past few weeks we seem to have found a way of dispersing our uncertainty and showing the public that we stand for something tangibly different from our coalition partners.

The discussion about energy policy offers a way of unlocking the conundrum we have faced for the past two and a half years. How do we remain constructive partners in coalition, while reassuring voters that we are different from the Tories?

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged 2015 general election and grassroots activism | 8 Comments

Nick Clegg stops Theresa May’s £3000 immigration bond

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd November 2013 - 9:26 am

Way back in March, in a speech that, to say the least, was not well received in the party, Nick Clegg proposed that some people visiting Britain from “high risk” countries should pay a bond. He said:

One idea, which appeals to me, is a system of security bonds. And so I’ve asked the Home Office to do some work on it with a view to running a pilot before the end of the year.

Posted in News | Tagged go home vans, home office, immigration, nick clegg and theresa may | 5 Comments

In the next month 21 seats will short-list their wannabe Lib Dem MPs

By Stephen Tall | Sat 2nd November 2013 - 5:20 pm

Here’s the full list of selection contests in the coming month available for Lib Dems on the approved parliamentary candidates’ list, together with the closing date for applications.

The following seats have selections in progress and are currently advertising for candidates:

Altrincham and Sale West (1st November)
Bootle (1st November)
Sefton Central (1st November)
Spelthorne (1st November)
Stratford-On-Avon (1st November)
Stretford and Urmston (1st November)
Brent Central (15th November)
Chester (15th November)
Crewe and Nantwich (15th November)
South West Wiltshire (15th November)
Wythenshawe and Sale East (15th November)
Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (16th November)
Hemsworth (17th November)
Morley and Outwood (17th November)
Normanton (17th …

Posted in Selection news | Leave a comment

What’s being debated in our members’ forum this week?

By The Voice | Sat 2nd November 2013 - 12:45 pm

LibDemVoice has two parallel sites. The first is our public blog, the thing you’re reading now. The second is our private members’ forum, which only current Lib Dem members can access.

If you’re a member and want to chat with fellow party members about any issue that’s on your mind, then why not sign up? In addition, you’ll be included in our regular surveys’ of party members’ views.

Here’s some of the most active discussions this past 10 days:

What would you like to see in 2015 manifesto?

The end of the British breakfast as we know

…

Posted in Site news | Leave a comment

Huppert warns against “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 2nd November 2013 - 11:15 am

It’s become a truth universally acknowledged in the Liberal Democrats that wherever there is a threat to our freedoms, Julian Huppert will be there trying to thwart it, whether that’s convenient for the party leadership or not. Most of the time, it has to be said, it is convenient for the leadership, but it’s worth remembering that if it hadn’t been for the combination of him and some angry bloggers, we might be in a world where the Communications Data Act of 2012 had been passed.

And so it was on …

Posted in News | Tagged civil liberties, intelligence, julian huppert, martin horwood and security | 7 Comments

Stephan Shakespeare: “It is becoming harder for any party to win an outright majority”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 2nd November 2013 - 9:45 am

There’s a terrific post in today’s Times by YouGov chief executive Stephan Shakespeare assessing 10 things you need to know about the electoral scene. What makes it fascinating is his summary of quite why 2015 is, in so many ways, hard to read.

For instance, Labour has a small lead in the polls for an opposition party 18 months out from the election – but a small lead may be enough given the current boundaries.

But, set against that, is the fact that voters don’t regard Ed Miliband as prime ministerial and think a Labour victory would make for a …

Posted in News | Tagged stephan shakespeare and yougov | 41 Comments

UPDATED: Full list of Lib Dems standing in our held seats and top 50 targets

By Stephen Tall | Sat 2nd November 2013 - 9:00 am

We’re 18 months from the May 2015 election so I thought it’d be useful to keep a running check on how candidate selection is going in our held and key target seats…

I published a first draft of this list a week ago, and asked readers to help me update it – many thanks to those of you who commented here, on Twitter, via Facebook and by email and text. I thought it would be helpful to re-publish the list now we have much fuller information about (re-)selections in our held seats and the top 50 targets for the party.

Here’s a snapshot of how the party’s doing in getting people in place in the battleground seats that will determine the extent of Lib Dem influence in the next parliament:

Held seats: 23/57 MPs re-selected (40%); 7/57 MPs retiring (12%) – 3 potential successors selected.

Top targets from Labour: 7/23 candidates selected (30%); 5/23 currently in process (22%). 52% will be selected within next couple of months.

Top targets from Tories: 12/27 candidates selected (44%); 2/27 currently in process (7%). 51% will be selected within next couple of months.

Posted in Selection news | Tagged general election 2015 | 13 Comments

Susan Kramer: “The whole plan for HS2 has included benefits for Scotland”

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 2nd November 2013 - 8:29 am

Transport Minister Susan Kramer came to Glasgow yesterday to talk about the benefits HS2 will bring to Scotland, even though it’s not as yet planned to come all the way north. It will cut journey times by an hour and bring economic benefit apparently.

She spoke to the BBC here:

Posted in News | Tagged HS2, susan kramer and transport | 16 Comments

The Independent View: What’s wrong with HS2?

By Penny Gaines | Fri 1st November 2013 - 4:14 pm

High speed 2 easily cleared its first parliamentary hurdle yesterday, with just 34 MPs voting against the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill – 350 voted in favour. Here Penny Gaines argues the case against HS2 is still strong.

High Speed 2 will cost £50bn, including the trains. But it is an environmentally damaging vanity project, with a constantly shifting rationale for building it.

The current argument is that speed is irrelevant for the case for HS2, but that our existing railways are nearly full and the only option is to build a new high speed railway. This argument does not stand up to scrutiny.

Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged high speed 2 | 46 Comments

Liberal Youth England seeks 3 regional chairs

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 1st November 2013 - 3:51 pm

Liberal Youth England has vacancies for 3 regional chairs in the following areas:

London
Western Counties
Yorkshire and the Humber

By-elections for these positions will be held at the Liberal Youth Winter conference in Cardiff next weekend.

All members of the party in England under the age of 26 are eligible to stand.

If you’d like to stand for election, simply email me (for I …

Posted in News | Tagged liberal youth england | Leave a comment

Op-eds

What’s on at Conference today? (Caron Lindsay)
Lib Dems need a 25-year vision that sets out how we’ll change Britain (Phil Wainewright)
Observations of an ex pat: Kompromat (Tom Arms)
A different story of hope for Liberalism in the 21st Century (Steve Mason)
Victoria Collins MP writes.. The ask that changes everything (Victoria Collins MP)

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Victoria Collins MP writes.. The ask that changes everything

To get Britain growing, we must cut business costs

Bobby Dean MP writes: The resilient state

Sarah Olney bids to become candidate for Mayor of London

Reminder: Last chance to stand in Liberal Youth England regional chair contests

Opinion: Liberal Youth Scotland campaigns against SNP cuts to student bursary cuts and college places

Lord Brian Paddick’s maiden speech

Manifesto 2015: Join the debate

Study shows that UK benefits from immigration from European countries

Andrew Stunell writes … Removing discrimination from electoral campaigns

Opinion: Labour’s Living Wage really means the State taxes the poor more

Opinion: In defence of consumption taxes

Julian Huppert writes … Immigration Bill: Update

Opinion: The Case for Community Banking

Opinion: You don’t have to wear a red poppy

Emma Gilpin-Jacobs appointed as Director of Communications to the DPM

Liblink… Vince Cable: Europe is an anchor for British business

Tim Farron writes… British businesses say we must stay in the EU. Let’s go out and make that case.

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #351

Why do so many Liberal Democrat MPs not claim for energy costs?

LDV’s Sunday Best: our 7 most-read articles this week

Nick Clegg’s Letter from the Leader: Miriam delights children at Great Ormond Street

Opinion: We need to grab our current luck and champion the Lib Dems

Nick Clegg stops Theresa May’s £3000 immigration bond

In the next month 21 seats will short-list their wannabe Lib Dem MPs

What’s being debated in our members’ forum this week?

Huppert warns against “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”

Stephan Shakespeare: “It is becoming harder for any party to win an outright majority”

UPDATED: Full list of Lib Dems standing in our held seats and top 50 targets

Susan Kramer: “The whole plan for HS2 has included benefits for Scotland”

The Independent View: What’s wrong with HS2?

Liberal Youth England seeks 3 regional chairs

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Victoria Collins MP writes.. The ask that changes everything

To get Britain growing, we must cut business costs

Bobby Dean MP writes: The resilient state

Sarah Olney bids to become candidate for Mayor of London

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