Mark Valladares

Next week in the Lords: 8-11 October

By Mark Valladares | Fri 5th October 2012 - 8:52 am

Yes, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the House of Lords is back! And whilst I get to spend less time with my wife, legislation awaits. Will the death of Lords Reform change anything on the red benches? Just what are they going to discuss without it?

There are three Bills carried forward from before the summer recess;

As a gentle loosener after a summer of grouse shooting, light naps and memoir writing, Monday sees Day 6 of the Committee Stage of the Financial Services Bill, perhaps now …

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Nick T

LibLink: Richard Reeves on One Nationism

By Nick T | Thu 4th October 2012 - 4:37 pm

Over at the CentreForum blog, Richard Reeves, former Director of Strategy to Nick Clegg and now associate director of CentreForum, has a post discussing the “political movement that now sweeps all before it”: One Nationism.

Here’s an extract:

All the main political parties have now made their claim to be the true heirs to “One Nation” politics.

The Conservatives were ahead of the game by a century or so, of course. But in more recent years, non Tory leaders have turned to One Nationism to pitch for the centre ground: though none as audaciously as Ed Miliband this week.

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Nick T

“14 out of 15 trades unions fail the transparency test”

By Nick T | Thu 4th October 2012 - 2:55 pm

News reaches the Voice from Unlock Democracy, who have been carrying out investigations into the practices of the 15 unions currently affiliated to the Labour party. The research shows that 14 out of 15 trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party fail to explain to their prospective new members about affiliation and inform them that they have a legal right to opt out on their membership forms and website.

The top lines from the research are as follows:

  • Just 1 union (UNISON) mentions affiliating to the Labour Party.
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Mark Pack

Michael Gove declares war on curves (square corners are OK though)

By Mark Pack | Thu 4th October 2012 - 12:25 pm

Bizarre micro-management at its worst, courtesy of Michael Gove.

Now, it’s easy to see why he’s keen to seen if schools can be built at lower costs. It’s also easy to see how a bit more standardisation between different new school designs could reduce costs.

So looking for more standardisation in design? No problem.

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Nick T

Manchester Labour’s “crazy” decision to spend £425k on pop concert

By Nick T | Thu 4th October 2012 - 10:56 am

The decision of Manchester’s Labour-run Council to spend almost half a million pounds on a pop concert starring Alicia Keys has been branded “crazy” by Lib Dems in the city. Manchester City Council is currently in the process of making £296m of cuts to its budget over a two year period – cuts condemned as “ideological” by the Labour Council Leader Sir Richard Leese.

Here’s what the Lib Dem group leader on Manchester City Council, Simon Wheale, had to say about this use of scarce public money:

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Daniel Henry

Opinion: Four suggestions on the future of Lib Dem tax policy

By Daniel Henry | Thu 4th October 2012 - 9:28 am

Last week at conference I attended our consultation on tax policy. As the chair progressed through the paper, it was quite interesting to hear all the opinions put forward on it. I was planning to suggest some ideas for the committee to consider but unfortunately the chapters on corporation tax and financial taxes were left out, and I put my hand up too late to be called in the NIC and Income tax section. So instead, I’ve decided to put the ideas up here for debate instead.

Corporation Tax cuts for paying a Living Wage

Using corporation tax cuts to incentivise desirable business …

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Stephen Tall

What Lib Dem members think about means-testing pensioner benefits & a freeze on benefits payments

By Stephen Tall | Thu 4th October 2012 - 7:55 am

Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum before conference to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. More than 550 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Two-thirds back means-testing of some wealthy pensioner benefits

LDV asked: Nick Clegg has suggested introducing means-testing so that better-off pensioners would no longer be entitled to receive benefits such as winter fuel payments, free bus passes and television licences. Supporters argue that at a time of financial austerity such benefits for the wealthiest paid by general taxation are unfair. Opponents …

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Caron Lindsay

Another idea Ed Miliband is supporting that Liberal Democrats have heard – and done – before

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 6:55 pm

In Saturday’s Times (£), Ed Miliband talked about helping poorer households with their fuel bills. His “unprecedented scheme” where the party will mobilise communities to buy electricity at lower prices than individuals could manage.

The scheme will be run by iChoosr, which will negotiate on consumers’ behalf with big power companies. The more people who sign up, the harder the bargain they will be able to drive. It will be tried out in three areas, starting next month, with the aim of securing cheaper bills by the New Year. Volunteers will leaflet the pilot areas with an emphasis on reaching

…

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Opinion: The Arab Spring – a liberal paradox?

By Charles Beaumont | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 4:25 pm

What should a liberal make of the Arab Spring as it becomes a bloody winter? The recent wave of violent protest at a mindlessly Islamophobic YouTube video is not an isolated incident. In Tunisia in June, hardline Salafists attacked an art gallery and a trade union office. Since Egypt’s revolution there have been regular attacks on Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. An Islamist-dominated panel reviewing Egypt’s constitution is likely to water down women’s rights, making child marriage easier and withdrawing from international conventions protecting women and children(£). Husni Mubarak, Egypt’s former President, must be wailing “I told you so” …

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The Voice

Nick Clegg: “Turkish entry into the EU is a strategic necessity”

By The Voice | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 3:23 pm

Nick Clegg is on a trade mission to Turkey today, and has announced £500m of business deals and £1m of funding for the Turkish Red Crescent in Syria.

He wrote this morning in Turkey’s Sabah newspaper, on the Turkish economy, trade between Turkey and the UK, visas for Turkish travellers, and the the response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. You can read the article in Turkish over at Sabah; the English translation is below:

This summer for a few, glorious weeks the United Kingdom became the centre of the world as we hosted the London Olympic and Paralympic

…

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James Harper

Opinion: Immigration service must do more to protect human dignity

By James Harper | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 2:25 pm

The UK Border Agency’s recent decision to hire G4S and Serco to deliver the housing scheme for asylum seekers is not only a bad one in its own right. It is symptomatic of the deep inadequacy of an organisation that exists purely to deal with people, but which lacks the same standards and people-focused ethos we expect of other organisations responsible for looking after human beings.

Last week we discovered that asylum seekers in the Midlands have had their doors painted red by the company responsible for housing and accommodating them, G4S. G4S did not think this would be a problem. …

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Kirsty Williams AM

Kirsty Williams AM writes: Welsh Liberal Democrats will fight for more for disadvantaged children

By Kirsty Williams AM | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 1:36 pm

Yesterday the Welsh Labour Government submitted its £15 billion draft budget which reveals its spending plans for the next year.

In its current form, the Welsh Liberal Democrats cannot support this budget as we don’t believe it goes far enough to tackle the problem of making sure that children from deprived backgrounds get the fair start in life they deserve.

Last year, the Welsh Liberal Democrats vastly improved the Welsh Government’s budget by agreeing to support it in return for the introduction of a Welsh Pupil Premium. Despite failing standards in our schools and an ever growing spending gap per pupil when compared …

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NewsHound

Spotted outside Labour Conference – a reminder of how Lib Dems cut taxes for poorest

By NewsHound | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 1:23 pm

Labour conference delegates and Manchester residents will see an interesting sight as they pass the Conference Centre.

With many thanks to Liberal Democrat Kat Dadswell for tweeting the picture, the Voice brings to you:

 

After Ed Miliband’s “one nation” speech yesterday, the Liberal Democrats fight back with a graphic demonstration of how much income tax has been cut for those earning the minimum wage. Struggling low paid workers handed £1018 to Alistair Darling in 2010. Their tax bill will be just £573 in 2013.

This is part of the Fairer …

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Mark Pack

How progressive is the new tuition fees system?

By Mark Pack | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 12:25 pm

University campusThe Institute For Fiscal Studies (IFS) has been running its calculators and slide-rulers over the new system, and here are some of the key points that it has concluded:

  • “The new system eventually saves the taxpayer around £760 million per year, driven by a dramatic cut in direct public funding to universities.”
  • “But for universities, this cut is more than offset by almost £15,000 in additional fee income per graduate – a 140 per cent rise over the old system. Thus the total amount spent – from both private and public sources – on higher education is expected to increase as a result of these reforms.”
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Karen Wilkinson

Opinion: Conference showed Liberal Democrat heart, soul and backbone

By Karen Wilkinson | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 11:26 am

I joined the Liberal Democrats in 2009 in the fug of the expenses and media scandals. The media wasn’t giving me a window, just leading me into a maze of distorted mirrors. With a slap to the forehead, it finally dawned on me that democracy is not something we wait to have thrust upon us at an election every 4-5 years, but something which we do. If I wanted to find out what was going on, I would have to go and look for myself. And if I wanted to change any of it, I would have to put my …

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Mark Pack

You don’t have to go to conference to be a conference rep

By Mark Pack | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 10:25 am

Vince Cable and Paddy AshdownNot only do you not need to be a conference rep to go to conference, you don’t need to go to federal conference to become a federal voting conference rep.

It’s often assumed that it is only worth becoming a conference rep if you are going to go to conference, and as a result local parties further away from the venues in particular often do not elect a full slate of conference reps. However, whilst this is the primary role for voting conference …

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Posted in Conference and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 6 Comments
Simon McGrath

Opinion: Making our party more democratic and participative

By Simon McGrath | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 8:55 am

We Liberal Democrats pride ourselves on being the most democratic Party in the UK. We were the first (and so far the only) major party to have members electing the leaders in a one member, one vote, election.  Our Conference is not just a rally; it actually makes Party policy and key committees are elected by members, not appointed by the Leader.

But we are failing to make use of technology to deepen our members’ participation in the Party.

Firstly our main conference is still dependent on people travelling from around the country to stay for 5 days debating policy, but this disenfranchises many …

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Stephen Tall

The top campaigning lesson from Ed Miliband’s speech: repetition is what you need

By Stephen Tall | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 8:25 am

“We are the One Nation party,” Nick Clegg will tell the Liberal Democrats in his speech to their spring conference tomorrow.

Remember this headline? Probably not. Yet it dates from March 2012, just six months ago.

So what happened? Two key things, I suggest. First, Nick’s ‘One Nation’ message was drowned out by the furore over the NHS reforms which dominated the party’s spring conference this year. Secondly, it was one line among many which was uttered and quickly disappeared, like a whispered greeting on a windy day.

There was some snarky commentary from journalists who heard Ed Miliband …

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Stephen Tall

What Lib Dem members think about EBacc, academies and free schools

By Stephen Tall | Wed 3rd October 2012 - 7:55 am

Lib Dem Voice polled our members-only forum before conference to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. More than 550 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

Narrow backing for replacing GCSEs with EBacc

LDV asked: Nick Clegg and Michael Gove this week announced that the GCSE exams in England will be replaced by a new qualification in core subjects called the English Baccalaureate Certificate from 2017. This will mean a single end-of-course exam sat by almost all pupils and one exam board for core subjects. From …

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Stephen Tall

LibLink: Jonathan Portes on wealth taxes & ensuring the ‘rich’ pay their fair share

By Stephen Tall | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 8:25 pm

Jonathan Portes, director of NIESR and former senior Treasury official, is not a Lib Dem — he recently contributed to LibDemVoice to critique the Coalition’s economic policy — but he is addicted to robust evidence. And the recent spate of right-wing commentators rubbishing the Lib Dems’ call for increased wealth taxes to help tackle the current economic crisis has roused his ire:

The Liberal Democrats call for a “mansion tax” (that is, a higher rate of council tax for the most expensive properties), possibly supplemented by some form of wealth tax seems to have provoked a peculiarly illogical misuse of

…

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Antony Hook

Opinion: The Ryder Cup is symbolic – Europe is stronger together – and it’s more entertaining

By Antony Hook | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 5:45 pm

The 2012 Ryder Cup involved a classic sporting comeback and a heart-stopping close finish. Team Europe came from kilometres behind to beat the USA 14.5 to 13.5.

The Ryder Cup is one of those sporting events, like football’s World Cup or the Olympic athletics, that interests people who normally take little notice of sport.

I think the interest in such big events is because:

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Geoffrey Payne

Opinion: Why Richard Reeves is wrong about the ‘Nanny State’

By Geoffrey Payne | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 4:30 pm

When I joined the Liberal party in the 1980s, no one then used the term ‘Nanny State’. Originally it was a term the political right wing started to use; I do not recall when exactly. The terms betrays its upper case origins, a class that can afford to pay for a Nanny to look after the children.

Richard Reeves has recently published a Demos book that was handed out at the ‘What is Cleggism?’ fringe meeting at the Brighton conference last week. His use of the term ‘Nanny State’ is not new for the Liberal Democrats; I noticed Ed Davey use …

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Jeremy Browne MP

Jeremy Browne writes … My liberalism has a simple objective: to promote the freedom and ambitions of every individual.

By Jeremy Browne MP | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 3:40 pm

Jeremy Browne writes in The House magazine:

My liberalism has a simple objective: to promote the freedom and ambitions of every individual.

Their freedom from persecution, from fear, from ignorance and from enforced conformity. And their ambition to reach their full potential.

Personal freedom requires the state to be the servant of the people; never their master. But that does not automatically mean that liberalism always benefits from having a small state.

With the reflex authoritarianism of the Blair/Brown years, liberals have often become accustomed to regarding the state as a threat to liberty. Under Labour we saw a steady erosion of freedom: …

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Mark Pack

A graph, a dip, a policy: why the nursery premium is so important

By Mark Pack | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 2:25 pm

Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton saw the a motion passed calling for the party to investigate the practicalities of introducing a ‘nursery premium’. At first glance this sounds like an obvious extension of the party’s existing pupil premium policy. Delving more closely into the data, however, shows that it is more than simply an obvious extension; it’s necessary to remove what is a bizarre anomaly arising from how other policies fit together.

Here is the extra assistance which is given for the education of children from the most deprived backgrounds in England for each age band from 1 year-old to 18 years-old:

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Tom Brake

Tom Brake writes … Lib Dem Conference is so much more than just political war-gaming

By Tom Brake | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 1:00 pm

Before departing for Conference in Brighton this year, I happened upon a blog post on Prospect which bemoans the way in which Party Conferences have evolved from being policy-making platforms into gory showcases for Party brands in the mould of late 90’s movie ‘Primary Colours’ staring the fleet-of-foot John Travolta. Instead of serious politics, they’ve become simply a form of political mood music, so the accusation goes.

Sadly it’s all too easy to write off modern politics as less cerebral than it once was. But having authored a detailed policy paper about police reform and debated complex justice issues from …

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Glyn Ley

Devon and Cornwall select Brian Blake for Police and Crime Commissioner election

By Glyn Ley | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 10:55 am

Devon & Cornwall Lib Dems have selected Brian Blake as their candidate for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections on November 15th. Brian is an excellent candidate, having served for 31 years in the Police Service across the region in both counties, finishing his career as a Detective Chief Inspector.

After retiring from the Police, Brian worked for 13 years for the Ministry of Defence, involving personnel vetting of military, NATO and UK Government employees working abroad.

He is the only person to have announced their candidacy to have experience of …

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Tim Purkiss

Opinion: Reflections from Brighton 2012

By Tim Purkiss | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 9:45 am

While it might be a stretch to say that the 2012 Lib Dem conference in Brighton was an unmitigated success, it is hard to come away from the conference without feeling a little better about life and about the party.

Certainly the only consistent low point of the week was being blown sideways by the gales sweeping in from the English Channel. (On reflection I think it may have been a mistake for me to tell friends that the weather is always good in Brighton!)

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Geoff Crocker

Opinion: The Conflicts of Economic Policy

By Geoff Crocker | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 8:45 am

Nick Clegg’s conference speech committed Lib Dems to manage debt out of the economy and implement a fair tax regime. But the objectives of economic policy often conflict with each other.

Let’s take it that there are three objectives for current economic policy:

  1. to reduce deficit and the debt it accumulates
  2. to inject demand into the economy
  3. to have a fair tax system

In the following table, I’ve had a try at evaluating recent and proposed economic policies against these objectives.

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Stephen Tall

New poll gives a boost to Lib Dems – but will it last?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 2nd October 2012 - 8:20 am

An interesting poll from ComRes in today’s Independent appears to show a post-conference boost for the Lib Dems at the expense of Labour:

As UKPollingReport’s Anthony Wells sensibly reminds us, this is just one poll: it might just as easily be a blip or a rogue as a sign of real recovery. BUT it is still interesting:

1) I’d expect the post-conference boost to fade away as the media focus …

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David Thorpe

Opinion: Pensions for property scheme is profoundly flawed and illiberal

By David Thorpe | Mon 1st October 2012 - 4:54 pm

One can just imagine the proposed pension for property scheme (which Nick Clegg has announced) being the product of committee thinking, for, typical of the produce of many committees, it tries to cram all of the trendier topics of the day into one proposal, resulting in something which is less than the sum of its parts.

The current scheme, the product presumably of the Liberal Democrats’ desire to create popular policies which differentiate us from the Tories among the voters of middle

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