Mark Pack

What the future holds for Liberal Democrat tax policies

By Mark Pack | Tue 28th June 2011 - 10:25 am

More economically competent than Labour, fairer than the Conservatives – that’s what many at the top of the party hope the message will be come the next general election. If the economy is not doing well at the time of the next election . However, if it is then the party will need the right combination of economic policies to support that proposition.

That is why people such as Danny Alexander are starting to sketch out possible tax policies for the next general election which will involve giving tax cuts to the least well off, paid for by taxing the richest more.

That combination …

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Simon McGrath

Opinion: Liberal Democrats to hold inquiry into AV Referendum

By Simon McGrath | Tue 28th June 2011 - 9:29 am

The Guardian reports that the Party has decided to hold an inquiry, headed by James Gurling, into the Yes to AV campaign.

I wrote a piece for Lib Dem Voice back in May calling for an inquiry and since then more and more information has come to light about the shambolic and incompetent way the Yes campaign was run.

What does seem rather odd is that there has been no announcement to Party members and activists that this inquiry was taking place and asking for their input. I asked a couple of Lib Dems who had been highly active in …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 19 Comments
Mark Pack

Labour splits three ways in Parliamentary vote on carbon budget

By Mark Pack | Tue 28th June 2011 - 7:54 am

Labour MPs yesterday split three ways in a Commons vote on one of the government’s key environmental proposals

The committee vote came in the House of Commons on the statutory instrument (SI) for the fourth carbon budget, on whether or not to accept to accept the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations that total emissions in 2023-27 should be set at 1950 MtCO2 (a 50% reduction from 1990 levels).

Labour MPs Dennis Skinner and Geoffrey Robinson voted against, Nic Dakin and Ian Mearns abstained and the other Labour MPs voted in favour, as did all the Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Aside from …

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Mark Pack

Sheffield Labour drops Lib Dem policy of extra pay for the lowest paid

By Mark Pack | Mon 27th June 2011 - 10:01 pm

The Sheffield Star reports:

SHEFFIELD’S ruling Labour councillors have been attacked by Nick Clegg for ‘dropping’ a policy to give the authority’s lowest-paid staff an extra £250 each year.

The payment was made for staff paid below £21,000-a-year, under the old Lib Dem administration’s budget for 2011/12 – and Mr Clegg said it was supposed to happen on an annual basis.

But papers setting out the council’s financial plans for 2011/12 – including cuts of at least £48 million – do not include a pay rise next year.

Mr Clegg said: “I’ve had meetings with some of the country’s leading trade union representatives,

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

Resignation of Afghan central banker puts Western governments on the spot

By Mark Pack | Mon 27th June 2011 - 6:54 pm

The resignation and flight to the US of Abdul Qadeer Fitrat, chairman of Afghanistan’s Central Bank, has been accompanied by a wide-ranging set of allegations from him about corruption being behind the near collapse of Kabul Bank. That it itself is not a surprise, as corruption was already widely suspected, but he has also claimed that corruption investigations had been deliberately blocked and that he feared for his own personal safety.

It is credible that he would have detailed knowledge of such matters, though Abdul Qadeer Fitrat …

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Nick T

LibLink: Julian Astle – The alchemists of liberalism have left their parties behind

By Nick T | Mon 27th June 2011 - 6:54 pm

Over at the Guardian, former Paddy Ashdown advisor Julian Astle has an interesting (but controversial) piece in which he argues that there is a ‘secret club’ of cross-party, centrist, liberal-minded reformers at the heart of British politics, who have run the country for the 15 of the last 18 years.

Here’s a sample:

Consider the ease with which the Lib Dems and Conservative leaderships put together a radical coalition agreement. Or the extent to which that agreement builds on the agenda pursued by the Blairites in their second and third terms. “Reform” in welfare, schools, higher education funding

…

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Steve Shaw

Independent View: why we should all campaign for full recall

By Steve Shaw | Mon 27th June 2011 - 3:27 pm

For over six years now I have worked on Parliamentary campaigns such as the Sustainable Communities Act and the Climate Change Act. I have done this as an independent freelance, unaffiliated to any political party and always seeking cross party support.

This experience has given me a deep insight into our system of governance from the Ministers and senior civil servants at the top, whom I meet in Westminster and Whitehall, to communities at the bottom, whom I meet at campaign public meetings that I speak at across the country.

Our democratic system desperately needs reform. People increasingly feel disconnected …

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Martin Horwood

Martin Horwood MP writes: Facing up to human rights in China

By Martin Horwood | Mon 27th June 2011 - 1:53 pm

Premier Wen Jiabao of China arrived in Britain over the weekend for a series of events culminating in bilateral talks with the Prime Ministers today at Number Ten.

While the discussions will undoubtedly turn to the economy, trade agreements and further cooperation between our two countries, I hope the Prime Minister will also promote our greatest exports: our long held values of democracy, human rights and free speech.

These bilateral meetings offer the British government a chance to place human rights unambiguously on the agenda in our discussions with the Chinese. As William Hague wrote last year, “promoting human rights is …

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Tom Papworth

Opinion: Stephen Williams is right to support the criminalisation of squatting

By Tom Papworth | Mon 27th June 2011 - 12:57 pm

It’s always a pleasure to see a Liberal Democrat MP standing up for our core liberal values. And among the core principles of liberalism, private ownership of property is of huge importance.

So it’s truly gratifying to see that Stephen Williams, MP for Bristol West, is taking a stand to protect owners of property from being dispossessed. Stephen has given his support to legislation, to be brought before parliament by the government, to criminalise squatting.

This is highly welcome and long overdue. Squatting has for too long been portrayed as a victimless crime, a Robin Hood grab …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 34 Comments
Mark Pack

Ten ways to make your local party AGM better

By Mark Pack | Mon 27th June 2011 - 8:20 am

At the weekend Mark Valladares rightly pointed out that now is a good time for local parties to start thinking about their autumn AGMs. AGMs are important not only for their role in party democracy and accountability but also for the role in having a lively, healthy local party that does politics, campaigning and socialising.

Here are my ten top tips to make an AGM (or indeed pretty much any local party meeting or event) a success. Individually, each of them are pretty straight-forward but the collective impact can make a huge difference to how well a local party does …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 5 Comments
The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #227

By The Voice | Sun 26th June 2011 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 227th 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 (19-25 June, 2011), 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:

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Jon Stewart takes aim at Fox News and media sensationalism

By Stephen Tall | Sun 26th June 2011 - 2:15 pm

To US liberals, he’s something of a hero; to conservatives he’d be a bête noire if they could stomach the use of a foreign label. Jon Stewart’s satirical The Daily Show has become a cultural institution in America (and something of a cult hit here) because of the host’s pin-sharp riffs against politicians and the media.

And what better, more deserving, target could there be than News International’s conservative polemical shock-jock channel, Fox News? Jon Stewart recently agreed to go toe-to-toe with Chris Wallace, one of its more intelligent interviewers.

The result is a vigorous and surprisingly nuanced 15-minute debate, which touches on issues just as relevant to the UK — especially the 24×7 news media’s destructive sensationalising of issues needing balance, regardless of whether their agenda is driven by liberals or conservatives. In the light of this week’s Milly Dowler case, or the recent character assasination of Christopher Jefferies, it’s more important than ever.

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Stephen Tall

What can the Lib Dems do about the Coalition’s ‘Northern problem’?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 26th June 2011 - 11:50 am

Andrew Rawnsley in today’s Observer highlights a key issue for both Coalition partners, in particular — the Tories’ failure to make any kind of advance in the north, and the Lib Dems’ difficulties in retaining our popularity there.

With the exception of William Hague, Eric Pickles and two Lib Dem Scots, the cabinet is a very southern English affair. This may not have been much noticed by the south, but it is very evident if you look through the other end of the telescope. Viewed from Leeds or Manchester or Newcastle, Westminster is more remote than ever. It also seems

…

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Stephen Tall

Anonymous Tory MP launches broadside against “hypocritical, immature, manipulative” David Cameron

By Stephen Tall | Sun 26th June 2011 - 10:15 am

There’s a quite extraordinary broadside against David Cameron’s leadership in today’s Mail – written it appears by a current Conservative MP who chooses to remain anonymous — accusing him of “cynically manipulating” the party’s candidates’ list to stuff its green benches with “friends who went to the same school or moved in the same social circle”.

Here’s a flavour:

Speeches Cameron made before the Election about a new politics gave us great hope. But before too long, the less appealing side to his character became clear as he displayed an immature tendency to poke fun at certain individuals or groups

…

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Stephen Tall

Forget about abolishing Labour’s shadow cabinet elections, Ed. That’s not the battle you need to win.

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th June 2011 - 5:45 pm

It’s been a tough few weeks for Labour leader Ed Miliband, with increasing mutterings internally and in the media with his performance, culminating in this week’s ICM poll showing him to be less popular than Nick Clegg.

On the upside, he’s starting to score points off David Cameron at PMQs, a crucible of irrelevance to actual politics but crucial in shaping personality-obsessed journos’ perceptions. And, with today’s interview in the Guardian, he’s proposed a ‘reform agenda’ to open up the Labour party — in his words, “in order to have a good conversation at party conference, you’ve …

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Stephen Tall

Clegg’s bailed-out banks’ shares give-away proposal triggers national debate

By Stephen Tall | Sat 25th June 2011 - 3:25 pm

Nick Clegg’s very public call for the British public to be given shares in the bailed-out banks — creating 46 million shareholders and allowing collective ownership of banks — has garnered acres of coverage the past couple of days.

It’s three months since Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams first proposed the privatisation of its 83% stake in RBS and 41% in Lloyds by distributing shares to the public. Here’s what my co-editor Mark Pack said about the idea at the time:

Giving everyone shares in the banks: Stephen Williams’s proposals examined (7th March, 2011)
Stephen Williams’s plan is to give shares

…

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Mark Valladares

Local parties should start early when it comes to AGMs

By Mark Valladares | Sat 25th June 2011 - 1:15 pm

Yes, I know that it’s only June, but have you given any thought to your Local Party’s AGM?

The Party’s Constitution specifies that it should take place between 1 October and 30 November, so it isn’t as far away as you might think. And there are things that can be done now that will help to make it more successful than might otherwise be the case.

Firstly, have you decided upon a date yet? Apart from the limitations on timing noted above, you don’t want to clash with your Regional Conference, so you might want to rule that out. Is a weekend …

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Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Equalities and Human Rights Commission fails to get its accounts right for third time in a row

By Mark Pack | Sat 25th June 2011 - 10:23 am

The news this week that for the third year in a row there are huge problems with financial control at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission raises questions not only about the future of its senior management but also about the paucity of political debate over its future.

There have only been three sets of annual accounts since the EHRC was formed – and each time the National Audit Office has refused to approve them so deep are the problems with the EHRC’s financial (non-)control.

It’s a perfect record: three sets of accounts, three sets of problems:

In 2008, a year after the

…

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Mark Pack

Police decide not to charge Liberal Democrat Assembly members

By Mark Pack | Sat 25th June 2011 - 7:54 am

The BBC reports:

Two Liberal Democrats who were disqualified from the Welsh assembly for being members of prohibited public bodies have been told they will not be charged.

Aled Roberts and John Dixon were told on Thursday that no action would be taken following a police inquiry.

The two were forced to give up their seats for being members of public bodies to which AMs cannot belong…

The party has blamed an “honest mistake”.

The Assembly’s Commissioner for Standards, Gerard Elias QC, will prepare a report on the two men’s cases so AMs can decide whether they should be allowed to be seated

…

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Posted in Election law and Wales | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Welsh Local Government Boundary Commissioners sacked

By Mark Pack | Fri 24th June 2011 - 7:18 pm

Welsh Local Government and Communities Minister, Carl Sargeant, this week told the Welsh Assembly that,

In December 2010 I announced a decision to establish an independent review of the timetabling and quality issues associated with the electoral review programme by the Local Government Boundary Commission for Wales and to identify actions required to ensure the delivery of the reviews in good time for the 2016 elections …

I fully accept the findings of the report which contains lessons for all of us, including the Welsh Government, concerned with the process of electoral reviews.

The most concerning finding, however, is the conclusion reached

…

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Posted in Election law and Wales | Tagged | 1 Comment
The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 24 June 2011

By The Voice | Fri 24th June 2011 - 5:00 pm

It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

  1. Opinion: Taxpayer foots £6.7m NO 2 AV leaflet bill (26 comments) by Stuart Bonar
  2. Thank you EARS, but the VAN is coming (52 comments) by Iain Roberts
  3. “It was a virtuoso performance” – Viscount Astor on Lord Ashdown on Lords reform (14 comments) by Helen Duffett
  4. LibLink | Danny Alexander: Make no mistake: we will reform public sector pensions (52 comments) by Helen Duffett
  5. What’s the difference between Ryan Giggs and Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg tells all… (16 comments) by Stephen Tall

5 sample LDV Members’ Forum threads

  1. Circus animals defeat the Tories
  2. SLF conference. Did you go? What did you think?
  3. Assisted dying
  4. Answering your questions about the move to VAN
  5. Giving people shares in the nationalised banks

5 from the LDV archive

(24th June, 2007-10)

  1. At last…a Welsh Prime Minister (13 comments) by Iain Roberts, from 2010
  2. How solid is the Tories’ ‘extreme and ragbag’ Euro grouping? (8 comments) by Stephen Tall, from 2009
  3. Sir Cyril Smith on his 80th! (1 comment) by David Hennigan, from 2008
  4. Opinion: It’s deja vu all over again (0 comments) by Chris Keating, from 2007
  5. Harman beats Johnson to Labour Deputy spot (23 comments) by Richard Huzzey, from 2007

5 top reader search returns to get to LDV

(excluding Liberal Democrat Voice or its variants)

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Mark Pack

How coalition government means better government

By Mark Pack | Fri 24th June 2011 - 1:53 pm

Last night I headed over to Enfield to hear Nick Harvey talked to a packed restaurant of Liberal Democrats about his experiences of a minister. It was an impressive turnout from one of our smaller local parties in London and an impressive speech from Nick, who cut his political teeth in the borough.

One part was about how coalition government made for better government. Nick Harvey gave the example of how troops were deployed to Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

As a defence minister learning about one of the most important issues facing him and colleagues, he had wanted to get his head …

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Mark Pack

Conservative peer wishes for return to rule by hereditary peers

By Mark Pack | Fri 24th June 2011 - 12:24 pm

It appears Baroness D’Souza has a rival in the competition for the most implausibly anti-democratic statement by a member of the House of Lords seeking to argue against them having to win any votes in order to rule over us.

Her rival is Conservative peer Baroness Hooper not only said that the 1999 reforms, which including removing several hundred hereditary peers from the Lords, had not improved the Lords but also that she wished we could return to the having hundreds of hereditaries:

As far as I am concerned, the post-1999 House of Lords is no better, no more democratic … If

…

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Mike Tuffrey

Opinion: The postcode lottery – why freedom to be different is a good thing

By Mike Tuffrey | Fri 24th June 2011 - 10:23 am

Few things are more likely to generate a round of applause at a public meeting than condemning the so-called postcode lottery. And of course random unfairness in the quality of a service – the ‘lottery’ aspect – is a bad thing, especially if people are paying the same but getting worse outcomes.

But what about difference – where one part of the country or one neighbourhood does things differently compared to another? What if it’s not a lottery but a choice?

And if people have freedom to do things differently and better, can we accept the risk they’ll not succeed and things …

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Posted in Local government, London and Op-eds | Tagged and | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

Modernising community politics: creating communities

By Mark Pack | Fri 24th June 2011 - 8:43 am

At the recent Social Liberal Forum conference, I took part in the panel on the Big Society and community politics. Regular readers won’t be surprised about the views I expressed on either of them (see for example here and here), but one point that I’ve not talked about for a while came out in discussion following a very pertinent question from Hackney’s Mark Smulian.

Mark rightly pointed out that the concept of community in the area where he lives, with a large transient population, was very different from what worked when community politics was first being created. Mark if …

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Opinion: Liberal Youth promote intergenerational fairness for Bank Shares

By Tom Wood | Thu 23rd June 2011 - 3:52 pm

Nick Clegg’s innovative proposal to give the public shares in Lloyds and RBS is enthusiastically welcomed by Liberal Youth: but we believe that these reforms can go even further. Young people are bearing the brunt of the recession caused by the banks both in a lack of jobs and lost funding for education, and because it is the next generation that will be paying off the government’s debt for years to come. It is only right the government should give something back to them.

While Nick’s proposal represents exactly the kind of fairness that Liberal Democrats seek to bring to …

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Mark Pack

Benefit caps and central London: how many children will be moving school?

By Mark Pack | Thu 23rd June 2011 - 12:54 pm

Many Liberal Democrats I’ve spoken to have mixed feelings about the proposed benefit cap and some of the housing benefit changes. On the one hand, they have very little sympathy with the complaints of people such as Frank Dobson that rule changes means he wouldn’t be able to afford to stay in his council flat. Count me in the camp who doesn’t think council housing should be used to let ex-ministers with decades of salary earning that puts them amongst the best paid in the country and with membership of a decent pension scheme live in one of London’s most …

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Opinion: How to change everything forever in six months

By London Liberal | Thu 23rd June 2011 - 11:18 am

A little-noticed policy of the Coalition is that of throwing out the entire planning system and replacing it with about fifty pages of pro-development planning policies. This is called the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and is intended to be the entire amount of national planning policy governing development. When implemented it will change your community forever.

Given what it seeks to do, fifty pages is a tiny amount – by contrast, the current Planning Policy Statement (PPS) 1, which deals merely with Sustainable Development, is itself twenty-five pages long. And there are twenty-five of these PPS’s, reaching about …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 20 Comments
Mark Pack

Even left-wing politicians will be hoping Newt Gingrich turns out to be a role model

By Mark Pack | Thu 23rd June 2011 - 8:15 am

Newt Gingrich, a right-winger whose bid to become US President looks to be crashing and burning after many of his senior staff walked out on his campaign, is not an obvious role model for British politicians, especially those not on the right.

But at heart quite a few all across the political spectrum would, I suspect, be rather pleased if he ends up doing well. That’s because the cause of the falling out is Gingrich’s insistence on doing two things that will strike a chord with many politicians and a fear into many election agents.

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Posted in LDVUSA | Tagged | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Baroness D’Souza gives us an unusual definition of democracy

By Mark Pack | Wed 22nd June 2011 - 8:10 pm

It’s been a staple argument of despots and dictators for decades, even centuries. They’re not undemocratic you see. They’re actually far more democratic than those decadent people who rely on elections. Because democracy isn’t about elections after all, is it?

Such arguments, even when dressed up by sticking the word “democracy” into a country’s name, have rightly and widely been given short shrift. You’d have thought, therefore, that arguing that democracy doesn’t require elections would be an argument a Parliamentarian these days might steer clear of.

But no.

Step forward Baroness D’Souza:

I do not believe that elections are the only form of

…

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