Mark Pack

Local liberal heroes: Roger Hayes

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd November 2011 - 11:45 am

Earlier in the year, I penned a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten – such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP.

There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure – those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are often …

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Jasper Gerard

Opinion: The modern Conservative party – how very Reckless

By Jasper Gerard | Wed 2nd November 2011 - 10:05 am

If Dickens had invented a character called “Mark Reckless”, it might have looked a little contrived. The Conservative MP for Strood and Rochester has argued that Britain should withdraw from the EU, and claims that over half his Conservative colleagues support him.

And not since such Dickensian figures as Sir Leicester Dedlock or Artful Dodger has a character lived up to his name with such enthusiasm. For think how reckless it would be if Britain were to withdraw from the EU, a scenario which even Margaret Thatcher considered suicidal and which was once the lonely position of the lunatic, Bennite left.

Amid …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged , and | 10 Comments
Stephen Tall

Should councils be able to cap the number of second and holiday homes in their area?

By Stephen Tall | Wed 2nd November 2011 - 8:55 am

Earlier this week, the Lib Dems’ Communities and Local Government Minister Andrew Stunell wrote here on LibDemVoice about the Coalition’s measures to increase councils’ powers to cut tax relief to those with second homes:

… our plans to allow local authorities to charge an Empty Homes Premium – up to an extra 50% of council tax – on any property that has been vacant for two years or more. Crucially, we are retaining the exemptions for properties empty as a result of the death of an owner, or if the owner has moved into hospital or to give or

…

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Mark Pack

Electoral Commission calls for local Council Tax referendums to be postponed

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd November 2011 - 7:47 am

The Electoral Commission has called on Parliament to modify the Localism Bill to delay the proposed start date for local referendums on Council Tax levels, neighbourhood development plans and local authority structures (e.g. elected Mayors) from Spring 2012 to Spring 2013.

It’s forthright message, headlined (in capital letters no less): “IMPORTANT RECOMMENDATION TO PARLIAMENT” is that with the legislation not yet passed by Parliament, there will simply not be enough time between it being passed and the proposed first possible local referendum date for the contests to be properly run. Instead, it says implementation should be delayed by a year in order to provide a sufficient gap between legislation and implementation.

This sort of warning by the Electoral Commission has become a regular feature of autumnal politics as governments of different political complexions have pushed through legislation ahead of the following spring. However, in this case their views are being expressed in a particularly strident manner.

That is no doubt due to the fact that the creation of local referendums raises far more issues of administrative organisation than the changes introduced by previous rounds of legislation. In theory, for example, some lucky voters could get to vote in five different referendums on the same day in the spring, with those different referendums taking place across differing organisational boundaries.

Localism Bill: Electoral Commission briefing for Lords Third Reading

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The Voice

Ming to head up Scottish Lib Dems’ Home Rule Commission

By The Voice | Wed 2nd November 2011 - 7:06 am

As the Scottish Lib Dems’ website announces:

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie MSP has announced that former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell MP will chair the Home Rule Commission, set up to develop a blueprint for Home Rule in Scotland. The party’s Scottish conference in Dunfermline last month voted to establish a Commission to look at a settled distribution of powers between London, Edinburgh and local councils. Sir Menzies will join other Liberal Democrats to set out a long-term vision for a strong Scotland within the UK and powerful local communities in every part of Scotland.

Here’s what …

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Alex Marsh

Opinion: Criminalising squatting

By Alex Marsh | Tue 1st November 2011 - 4:54 pm

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offender Bill has returned to the House of Commons this week. The problems with the Government’s proposed Legal Aid reforms have been apparent for a while. Some people will see their access to justice seriously curtailed, while the courts are likely to silt up with inexpert litigants-in-person. The chances of any money being saved – when considered in the round – are limited. In this context it is good to see reports that Liberal Democrat MPs Tom Brake and Mike Crockart are tabling amendments to seek to address some of the most …

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Dan Roper

Opinion: The future of Indeterminate Sentences – and why liberals should support them

By Dan Roper | Tue 1st November 2011 - 2:15 pm

The number of prisoners serving indeterminate sentences has rocketed since the 2003 Criminal Justice Act introduced the IPP (Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection). Within four years of its introduction, over 5,000 such sentences had been passed despite original government projections of just a few hundred.

To the horror of many liberals less than 2% of such prisoners have ever acheived parole and hardly any gained release at expiry of their sentence tariff. Most MPs will be familar with cases of constituents where IPP prisoners have served well in excess of their tariff and yet appear to have little prospect of release.

As a result many liberals will applaud the government announcement this week that the IPP sentence is to be replaced by a regime of Determinate Sentences and a “two strike” automatic life sentence reserved for the most serious offences.

At first sight this appears to be a victory for justice and a step towards reducing prison numbers. But the reality is less straightforward, and although the IPP has flaws these can be reformed — and if the sentence is made fit for purpose it has many advantages over the proposed reforms.

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The Voice

10 Lib Dems call for emergency recovery programme

By The Voice | Tue 1st November 2011 - 12:19 pm

From today’s Guardian:

We write to express broad support for the Compass Plan B proposals reported in the Observer (30 October). We are Liberal Democrat members who have campaigned hard for decades in national and local elections. We have also engaged in our party’s policymaking. For both reasons, we take seriously the policies on which we fought the last general election, in particular the belief that the Conservatives’ economic proposals would have dire consequences.

In May 2010, our party signed up, through the coalition agreement, to a series of policies against which it had recently campaigned. But out of responsibility to the …

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Adam Corlett

Opinion: “The first £10,000 you earn tax-free”? Not unless we act on National Insurance

By Adam Corlett | Tue 1st November 2011 - 10:55 am

At Conference, Danny Alexander repeated his view that the personal allowance for income tax should be raised beyond £10,000, saying:

In the next Parliament, I want us to go further; our aspiration should be that someone working full time on the minimum wage should pay no income tax at all. An income tax threshold of £12,500 – think what that would do to work incentives, think what it would mean for basic fairness. Let’s put that on the front page of our next manifesto.

The idea certainly seems popular within the party. But remarkably absent from these discussions is any mention of National Insurance. The very first point in our 2010 manifesto was “the first £10,000 you earn tax-free” but, while it later clarified it meant income tax (IT), it’s hard to see why the parallel income tax that is National Insurance (NI) should be treated any differently.

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Mark Pack

Housing: six things that could be done

By Mark Pack | Tue 1st November 2011 - 8:46 am

As Tim Leunig pointed out last week, housing plays an important role in most people’s concept of social mobility, a point highlighted in Stephen Gilbert’s piece over the summer recounting his own personal circumstances:

Last year I was probably the only MP to be elected while still living with my parents. Of course, I’d moved out of home and, like many others, had to move back again. It’s a symptom of the fact that housing policy in the UK is in crisis. We have millions of people languishing on social housing waiting lists, first-time-buyers priced out of the market

…

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Helen Duffett

LDVideo: Nick Clegg visits Sheffield Forgemasters, launches £950m regional growth fund

By Helen Duffett | Mon 31st October 2011 - 6:53 pm

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Posted in Lib Dem TV and News | Tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Marc Oxley

Opinion: How to tackle over-population for the sake of our planet

By Marc Oxley | Mon 31st October 2011 - 5:15 pm

Monday, 31st October 2011, is ‘7 billion Day’, the day chosen by the UN to represent symbolically the world’s human population reaching 7,000,000,000.

In 1800, the world’s population was approximately 1 billion. We ‘achieved’ 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, by 1999 it had doubled to 6 billion, and it has taken 12 years to reach 7 billion. By the middle of the century the best estimates are that it will be around 10 billion. (You can find the UN’s figures here.)

Medical advances and public health measures have led to much lower infant mortality and much greater longevity. …

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Andrew Stunell MP

Andrew Stunell MP writes: Lib Dems should welcome localist reforms of Council Tax

By Andrew Stunell MP | Mon 31st October 2011 - 4:23 pm

Liberal Democrats have long called for reform to local government finance. No matter what alternative systems we’ve proposed, the key element has always been that the revenue was raised locally, and decisions about how to spend that money were taken locally. As you would expect of a Government with a Liberal Democrat influence, the Coalition is adopting that same approach. The consultation on the relocalisation of Business Rates has just ended, and today’s announcement by DCLG of the Technical Consultation on Council Tax contains a number of positive news stories for Liberal Democrats.

Take second homes for instance. You …

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Ed Maxfield

Opinion: Reassessing New Labour

By Ed Maxfield | Mon 31st October 2011 - 3:54 pm

It is worth buying Reassessing New Labour just to read James Purnell’s short preface. New Labour’s would-be philosopher king pretty much disappeared from view after Labour chose the wrong Miliband as leader. Purnell’s piece highlights perfectly the challenge Labour faces in coming to terms with its 2010 election defeat. It is brilliantly lucid in assessing why Labour lost. It is extremely limited in its analysis of how to recover. In particular it completely ignores the 500lb gorilla in the corner – the economy. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Diamond and Kenny’s book brings together a range of contributions …

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Helen Duffett

LibLink: Paddy Ashdown – ‘I used to think the party of Gladstone would end with Ashdown’

By Helen Duffett | Mon 31st October 2011 - 2:23 pm

Today’s Telegraph has an interview with Paddy Ashdown, timed to promote his new TV documentary The Most Courageous Raid of WWII.

From the BBC:

Lord Ashdown, a former special forces commando, tells the story of the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’, who led one of the most daring and audacious commando raids of World War II… Lord Ashdown recreates parts of the raid and explains how this experience was used in preparing for one of the greatest land invasions in history, D-day.

As well as the documentary, Lord Ashdown’s Telegraph interview covers Europe, the Liberal Democrats and the art of compromise:

When Ashdown became leader

…

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Mark Pack

Should the way members of federal committees vote be public?

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st October 2011 - 12:57 pm

At the end of my post on the Federal Executive’s decision that the Liberal Democrats should (mostly) not fight police commissioner elections, a decision at odds with the views of party members we surveyed, I made reference to the fact that the details of such votes are not published and usually remain confidential. Sometimes news of who voted which way seeps out but, for example, you’re not officially meant to know that three members of the FE voted against that decision or who the three were.

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , and | 12 Comments
The Voice

What next for London’s airports?

By The Voice | Mon 31st October 2011 - 11:54 am

One of the first acts of the Coalition was to scrap plans for a third runway at Heathrow, whilst Boris Johnson’s plans for a new airport on an artifical island in the Thames Estuary have not been going anywhere much. So what next for the region’s airports?

This is what the BBC had to report:

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Posted in London | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Tom King

Opinion: The Liberal Democrats should contest Police Commissioner elections

By Tom King | Mon 31st October 2011 - 9:24 am

Ask many people what they think of the Lib Dems’ approach to law and order, and you’ll be told – erroneously – that we’re a soft touch. Our approach, traditionally evidence-based and less punitive than the populist authoritarian policies of Labour and the Tories, takes longer to explain. When we fail to do so, we risk being seen as the party that panders to criminals.

Of course, that isn’t the case. We believe in policy that actually works to reduce crime and recidivism, using all possible means to rehabilitate those who resort to illegality, while reiterating the importance of the …

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Mark Hofman

Opinion: Transport – time for a home-working revolution?

By Mark Hofman | Mon 31st October 2011 - 7:45 am

The weekend is often over in the blink of an eye, and come Monday morning it’s off to work for the masses. The daily commute, whether it be by any means of transport, is often chaotic, crowded and frankly rather unpleasant for many.

It is a self – evident truth that our transport network is overcrowded. Even now with unemployment rates not seen for a generation, many of us will struggle for hours every day to travel to our respective workplaces.

Can the government help?

The government could assist by offering business rate reductions for employers willing to facilitate their employees working from home.

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The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #245

By The Voice | Sun 30th October 2011 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 245th 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 (23-29 October, 2011), together with five hand-picked posts, 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:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 2 Comments
Jeremy Browne MP

Jeremy Browne writes… The London Conference on Cyberspace

By Jeremy Browne MP | Sun 30th October 2011 - 5:48 pm

In just over a decade, cyberspace has completely changed the way we live and work. Access has grown from 16 million internet users in 1995 to nearly 2 billion today, more than half of whom are in developing countries. On November 1st and 2nd, we will be hosting the London Conference on Cyberspace. The first of its kind, it will be a high profile event attended by the Foreign Secretary, Hillary Clinton, and high level delegates from over sixty countries.

The rapid development of a globally networked world offers enormous opportunities as well as challenges. When …

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Mark Pack

Campaign Corner: What campaigning books are worth reading?

By Mark Pack | Sun 30th October 2011 - 4:50 pm

The Campaign Corner series looks to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Do get in touch if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: I prefer learning by reading rather than by hearing people speak at training sessions. What campaigning books would you recommend?

Lots of possible answers, but in the spirit of Campaign Corner’s love of threes, here are just three, deliberately chosen as one each from the main party perspectives:

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Ewan Hoyle

Opinion: Pity the Scottish school-leavers when English fees rise

By Ewan Hoyle | Sun 30th October 2011 - 2:10 pm

I’m a candidate in a council by-election in the Hillhead ward in Glasgow. I’m a Liberal Democrat, and the ward has a big old university slap bang in the middle of it. You’d think I’d be bricking it, wouldn’t you? After the tuition fees betrayal, students hate the Liberal Democrats, don’t they? Well they might do, but I’d like to explain how the real villains in Scotland are the SNP.

The SNP are in fact imposing thousands of pounds of up-front fees on each and every Scottish student and their families. “But the SNP have preserved free tuition!” I hear …

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Posted in Op-eds and Scotland | Tagged , , and | 36 Comments
Neil Monnery

Campaigning for safer school crossings in Essex

By Neil Monnery | Sun 30th October 2011 - 9:24 am

Sometimes we can get caught up in the big issues and forget about the small every day reasons we get interested and involved in politics. Our position in Europe has been the big story nationally this week, but locally in Essex we have seen a schoolboy killed and a schoolgirl seriously injured outside schools this month.

The branches of the local party are mobilising as any incident on our roads is one too many but a fatality is just terrible news. Local campaigner Chris Butler has set up an online petition for anyone to sign to get Essex County Council …

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Mark Pack

The Leadership Programme: the first 11

By Mark Pack | Sat 29th October 2011 - 4:53 pm

The all-member Liberal Democrat News currently in the post to party members includes this update on the party’s Leadership Programme, designed to support candidates from under-represented groups:

Of the first 11 candidates, five are women, three from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, three have disabilities. There is one LGBT candidate and five of the 11 come from low socio-economic backgrounds … we have four candidates on the Programme so far who are under 30.

The scheme is due to expand to support at least 30 people.

You can get a subscription to receive each weekly edition of Liberal Democrat News here.

Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Rebecca Taylor

Opinion: No political party should accept internships

By Rebecca Taylor | Sat 29th October 2011 - 2:23 pm

Nick Clegg has launched a national internship scheme to increase social mobility, end inbuilt disadvantage and conform with the minimum wage.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has been criticised this week by a leading national campaign, Graduate Fog, for recruiting unpaid interns.

The climate is changing – and yet seemingly not in our own house. I (and presumably some of the Lib Dem Voice readership) have applied for Lib Dem internships, and there seems to be no concerted effort to clean up our party in this regard. I am white and middle-class and was only able to apply for internships over …

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Mark Pack

Commonwealth governments agree to end sexism in Royal succession rules

By Mark Pack | Sat 29th October 2011 - 12:24 pm

From the BBC comes the news:

Sons and daughters of any future UK monarch will have equal right to the throne, after Commonwealth leaders agreed to change succession laws.

The leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries where the Queen is head of state unanimously approved the changes at a summit in Perth, Australia.

It means a first-born daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would take precedence over younger brothers.

The ban on the monarch being married to a Roman Catholic was also lifted.

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David Allen

Opinion: The Tories are downgrading democracy (and the Lib Dems are letting them do it!)

By David Allen | Sat 29th October 2011 - 11:53 am

On electoral reform and the Coalition, the Lib Dem narrative goes something like this: “Nick Clegg presented an inspiring, comprehensive reform agenda to make voting fairer. Then Cameron came along and cherry-picked it. He rejected some of our ideas, but accepted others, including fixed-term parliaments, Lords reform (in principle), and, er, the AV referendum. Taking our usual view that half a loaf is better than no bread, we signed up. What’s wrong with that?”

What’s wrong, I suggest, is that we didn’t stop to think about Cameron’s own agenda, and what the Tories actually aim to achieve from their “reforms”.

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Posted in Op-eds | 26 Comments
Carl Quilliam

The weekend debate: Would Mitt Romney make a better President than Barack Obama?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 29th October 2011 - 8:55 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

Over the last three years Obama has had to concede much of his programme to Republicans in Congress. His healthcare reforms had to be significantly watered down even before Republicans won back the House of Representatives in 2010. And the reforms themselves have since acted as a lightning rod for criticism of the President.

Obama is struggling to get the economy going again amid continued turbulence in the global economy and unemployment is staying stubbornly high despite the massive £800 billion stimulus package. …

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Posted in LDVUSA and Op-eds | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

How were the Scottish elections run?

By Mark Pack | Fri 28th October 2011 - 3:53 pm

The Electoral Commission’s report into May’s Scottish elections is now out and broadly paints a positive picture of how the elections were administered.

As is often the case in such reports, it is the apparently obvious recommendations that highlight how something, somewhere took a rather unfortunate turn. In the case of this report, one such recommendation is tucked way unobtrusively in the middle of p.8:

Following any boundary reviews ROs and EROs must make thorough checks with the relevant Boundary Commission to ensure they are able to precisely identify the exact boundaries that are set out in legislation.

Indeed.

(700 people in Glasgow were sent poll cards telling them to vote in the wrong place.)

On the big issue in many people’s minds ahead of the elections, the report rightly brings good news. The 2007 Scottish elections were marked by controversy over the much higher proportion of rejected ballot papers than for previous Scottish Parliament elections.

This time, aided in part by the use of different ballot paperwork, the rejection rates fell right back down to levels last seen in 1999.

Looking to the future, the paper echoes the Electoral Commission report on the AV referendum when it comes to following up invalid postal votes and also promises a discussion paper on the thorny issue of when elections should be counted.

Scottish Parliament Elections Report – Electoral Commission

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