Nick T

LibLink: David Laws – Tax cuts for the rich can wait. Tax reform can’t

By Nick T | Mon 7th February 2011 - 5:25 pm

In today’s Times, David Laws, Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil and former Chief Secretary to the Treasury , argues that the coalition must live with increased taxes on the rich as part of its deficit-reduction programme, but that reforming Britain’s complex and unfair tax system must be undertaken in earnest. Here’s an excerpt:

Under the last Labour Government tax policy was characterised, in the words of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, by “drift, punctuated by poorly thought-out changes”. A 10p in the pound rate of income tax was introduced and abolished. National insurance changes were made for political, not economic, reasons.

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 29 Comments
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Richard Morris

Opinion: there are better adjectives for the Labour Party than ‘progressive’

By Richard Morris | Mon 7th February 2011 - 3:44 pm

I keep banging on about the fact that there’s a fairly obvious programme in place by the Labour Party to steal our natural positions, both philosophically and in policy (see my article on LDV or my recent blog post). Their latest moves to ‘own’ the term progressive are another case in point.

However, as a branding expert (and a Lib Dem) I do find the news that Ed Miliband is considering rebranding the party he leads as ‘The Progressive Labour Party’ pretty funny – and wrongheaded.

There are essentially three reasons why an organisation rebrands:

  1. Costs savings through economies of scale

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 59 Comments
Mark Pack

Knowsley Council axes its controversial Labour conference appearances

By Mark Pack | Mon 7th February 2011 - 1:25 pm

We’ve previously covered Labour-run Knowsley Council’s controversial payments of over £250,000 during the last dozen years for official presences at the Labour Party conference. During that period the council never paid for presences at other party conferences saying that, “Knowsley does not attend any other party political conference, it attends the Labour Party Annual Conference as the party in power.”

However, despite the change of government last autumn Knowsley Council continued with its payments for Labour’s autumn 2010 conference and did not make any appearance at the conferences of either of the two parties in power.

Knowsley Council has now said …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 27 Comments
Terry Scriven

Opinion: policy making is proving pointless

By Terry Scriven | Mon 7th February 2011 - 10:39 am

As the Federal Party prepares for the Spring Conference, in Nick Clegg’s homeland of Sheffield, Liberal Democrat policy making, now we are in Coalition Government, is proving pointless.

The award of a National Defence medal, to hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been prepared to put their life on the line to keep the Nation safe and secure, was the first policy motion approved by the Liberal Democrat Party since being in Coalition Government. A veteran’s medal fund ensures there is no cost to the public purse surrounding this policy.
A review of service medals was contained in …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 26 Comments
Mark Pack

Data sharing and electoral registration: there should be a second opt-out

By Mark Pack | Mon 7th February 2011 - 8:55 am

Over on the Open Rights Group blog, Jason Kitcat has recounted the recent meeting hosted by the Cabinet Office about the government’s plans to improve data sharing across the public sector in order to improve electoral registration, particularly as we shift to individual registration (the benefits of which I’ve blogged about here).

These plans could range from the helpful (such as giving people the option when, say, telling the TV Licensing Authority that they have moved also to have the information sent to update their electoral register entry) through to the very different (such as linking up tax records …

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Posted in Election law and News | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
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The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #207

By The Voice | Sun 6th February 2011 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 207th 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 (30th January -5th February, 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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Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment
Mark Pack

Chris Rennard to chair Acevo’s Big Society Commission

By Mark Pack | Sun 6th February 2011 - 10:55 am

ThirdSector reports:

After an all-night sitting in the Lords, Chris Rennard tells Third Sector how his group hopes to pin down some practical measures for building the big society…

The Liberal Democrat peer pours a strong coffee, sips it and perks up. He says electoral reform is one of his big interests because it is an important way of getting people to take an active interest in the issues that affect their local area.

He believes the same is true of the voluntary sector’s work, which is why he agreed to chair the Commission on the Big Society, set up by Acevo, the

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

Sharon Bowles named most influential Brit in global financial regulation

By Mark Pack | Sun 6th February 2011 - 8:55 am

Sharon Bowles, Liberal Democrat Euro-MP for South East England, is the highest placed British person in the GFS Power 50 list of the most influential figures in global financial regulation.

Sharon BowlesThe list is voted on by readers of Global Financial Strategy, and Sharon Bowles came out twentieth due to her role as Chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. This committee of MEPs has an important role in debating and amending European-wide financial regulation, including new rules on bank capital and bankers’ bonuses.

Sharon Bowles came ahead …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , , , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Lord Oakeshott attacks Barclays over bonsues

By Mark Pack | Sat 5th February 2011 - 6:25 pm

The Guardian reports:

Barclays was tonight accused of making a mockery of attempts to call a truce with the government over “banker bashing” amid fresh expectations that its chief executive Bob Diamond would be awarded a bonus of at least £8m.

After months of talking with the banks, the coalition is yet to announce a deal, codenamed Merlin, under which the industry would to agree lending targets of up to £190bn and show restraint on bonuses in return for less criticism from the government.

The talks with the banks have been led by Diamond’s predecessor John Varley and tonight Lord Oakeshott, a Liberal

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Nick Clegg, economic growth and the Green Investment Bank

By Mark Pack | Sat 5th February 2011 - 3:57 pm

In a speech yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg outlined the government’s four-pronged approach to economic growth, setting out the measures that are being taken whilst also admitting that no government has an effective magic lever it can pull to guarantee growth.

The four prongs are a switch from deficit-fuelled growth to investment-fuelled growth, developing the nation’s ‘hard’ infrastructure such as transport links, supporting the ‘soft’ infrastructure such as a workforce with the skills business needs and achieving a better balance across the different regions of the country and sectors of the economy.

Nick Clegg said,

The outgoing Labour Chief Secretary to

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 17 Comments
Mark Valladares

Everything you ever wanted to know about… Policy and the Parliamentary Party (part 2)

By Mark Valladares | Sat 5th February 2011 - 11:55 am

(This is the third column from Lib Dem Voice’s Party Bureaucracy Columnist Mark Valladares – for Part 1 see here.)

Ah yes, the Federal Policy Committee, or FPC for short, a body of twenty-nine members, consisting of Nick Clegg, as Leader, one other MP elected by and from the Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons, one MP each elected by and from members of the Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons representing constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales respectively; one Peer elected by and from the Parliamentary Party in the House of Lords; one MEP elected by and …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

The weekend debate: Paying, or not paying, taxes

By Mark Pack | Sat 5th February 2011 - 8:55 am

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

Here’s an issue which often comes up when tax avoidance and evasion is talked about on this site. Is tax avoidance acceptable, i.e. is it morally acceptable to follow any and every legal means to avoid paying tax? And why (or why not)?

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 33 Comments
Mark Pack

Havering Council changes its rolling electoral registration policy, again

By Mark Pack | Fri 4th February 2011 - 5:55 pm

In the run-up to the general election, I wrote about Havering Council’s stated public policy of rejecting applications to join the electoral register from people if they were made on forms downloaded from the Electoral Commission’s own dedicated website. It was a policy that caused complaints from residents as well as raising questions about why a council would blanket reject applications from people using the Electoral Commission’s own nationally advertised website.

This policy arose from Havering Council’s reaction to a previous set of attempts to make false electoral register entries, which led it to decide that it would not accept …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

Unpaid Congestion Charge fees and fines by embassies set to break £50m barrier

By Mark Pack | Fri 4th February 2011 - 1:55 pm

As of yesterday, the total in unpaid Congestion Charges and penalties run by embassies in London was £49.4m and at the current rate of growth that figure will break the £50m barrier later this month.

Liberal Democrat London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon has said, “The amount in unpaid Congestion Charges and Penalty Charge Notices owed by embassies is now so large that it could pay for more than 260 new buses on London’s streets, or fund the significant expansion of the cycle hire scheme, or alternatively reduce fare rises.”

Or, as she didn’t say, £50m could pay for one Fernando Torres.

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Posted in London and News | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

What Labour’s manifesto actually said about electoral reform

By Mark Pack | Fri 4th February 2011 - 10:25 am

It’s become a bit of an urban myth in some (Labour) circles that Labour’s 2010 general election manifesto only promised a referendum on the alternative vote, but didn’t say anything about committing Labour MPs or the Labour Party to a yes vote. But that’s not actually what the manifesto said:

To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons.

To ensure means not only holding a referendum, but also voting Yes.

Posted in News | Tagged | 64 Comments
Mark Pack

Economic statistic of the week

By Mark Pack | Fri 4th February 2011 - 8:55 am

From Sean O’Gray in The Independent:

December 2010 is the first month in – probably – history where the UK’s manufacturing sector had more money on deposit than it borrowed from the banks. Or, to put it another way, industry is lending money to the banks, rather than the other way around. Bizarre.

Posted in News | Tagged and | 5 Comments
Paul Walter

PMQs: The Pillsbury Doughboy takes on Motherhood and Apple pie – and loses

By Paul Walter | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 11:32 pm

For the second time in three weeks, a LibDem asked the first question at Prime Minister’s Question time. Bob Russell asked, first of all, for the PM to list his engagements for the day. As usual, there was the same response as there has been for virtually every week since Noah was in short trousers. “This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others and, in addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.” Same question, same answer, every blinking week. It is hard not to have a mite of sympathy with …

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Posted in PMQs | Tagged , , , , , , and | 33 Comments
Helen Duffett

MPs with mental illness will no longer be automatically disqualified

By Helen Duffett | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 7:48 pm

The government announced today the repeal of a law which automatically expels MPs from Parliament if they have a serious mental health condition.

This morning on Daybreak TV, Nick Clegg spoke about the abolition of Section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983:

Today we are announcing that we are repealing an old-fashioned outdated law which means that MPs at the moment are disqualified from being MPs if they have a mental health problem which goes on for more than six months.

We are scrapping that – it is a relatively symbolic thing because it has never been used – but

…

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Posted in Election law, News and Parliament | Tagged , , , and | 7 Comments
Tim Farron MP

New mental health strategy

By Tim Farron MP | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 2:55 pm

Mental illness has always been a somewhat taboo subject. Yet 1 in 4 of us will experience some sort of mental health problem in our lifetimes. The first rally I ever helped to organise as an MP in my constituency was to prevent the closure of our local mental health ward at Westmorland General Hospital. You would have thought, with the stigma that surrounds mental health, that turnout would have been fairly low, but on that day back in January 2006 as I marched to save our local mental health services I was joined by over 3000 people. …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Press Complaints Commission upholds MP’s complaint over expense reporting

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 1:55 pm

Here’s the main part of the ruling against the East Kilbride News:

The complaint was made by the MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, Michael McCann. The article related to his Parliamentary expenses, which had been published following the release of the figures by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA). Mr McCann argued that a claim made in the article – that his expenses “include £1150 in hotel bills to fund his trips to Westminster, while he also claims for a rented property in central London” – was misleading because it suggested that he had claimed for hotel rooms at

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

What the Welsh referendum is about: the official version

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 10:25 am

Here’s the official booklet from the Electoral Commission explaining what next month’s Welsh referendum is about and which is being sent to every household in Wales:

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Posted in News and Wales | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

The technical details of electoral reform matter: Philip Salmon on electoral reform

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 9:55 am

The central thesis of Philip Salmon’s Electoral Reform at Work: Local Politics and National Parties 1832-1841 is that the details of the 1832 Great Reform Act matter because they had large and significant effects on the development of national politics and the embryonic modern party system.

Salmon investigates and illustrates how usually over-looked provisions, such as the introduction of electoral registers, encouraged the formation of semi-permanent political organisations at a local level with resulting frequent party conflict over electoral registration as people tried to get their supporters on the register and their opponents knocked off it.

Though in the Houses of …

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Posted in Books | Tagged , , , and | 2 Comments
Terry Scriven

No health without mental health: a Forces view

By Terry Scriven | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 8:53 am

Society is rightly judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. But when it comes to caring for our ex-servicemen and women, it seems that this principle is all too quickly forgotten. As a former army colonel with nearly 40 years service I am well aware of the huge sacrifices, and the subsequent burdens, that are placed on our armed forces. None is greater, or harder to deal with, then the issue of mental health.

Injuries suffered in battle are completely different to those in normal day life and our brave men and women require special care. In the past there …

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Posted in News and Op-eds | 1 Comment
Sara Bedford

A personal view: ending the stigma and waste of mental illness

By Sara Bedford | Wed 2nd February 2011 - 7:07 pm

Less than two months after he was elected as leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg made a widely-reported speech at the Guardian Public Services Summit in St. Albans, on the subject of mental health. Nick pointed out that “One in four Britons suffers from a mental illness at some point in their lives. One in six is suffering at any given time. Mental health issues directly affect most of Britain’s families today.”

It was laudable and maybe surprising for Nick to use a keynote speech so early in his leadership to highlight such an unfashionable subject. For there is no doubt that mental health issues are seen by some as not really an illness, but some spiritual or character weakness on behalf of the sufferer. And yet most of us have either suffered with mental illness, or have a close family member who has done so.

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
The Voice

Ed Miliband’s Director of Strategy tells MPs: lay off Rupert Murdoch

By The Voice | Wed 2nd February 2011 - 6:40 pm

Via the New Statesman website:

An email, forwarded on behalf of Ed Miliband’s director of strategy, Tom Baldwin, to all shadow cabinet teams warns Labour spokespeople to avoid linking hacking with the BSkyB bid, to accept ministerial assurances that meetings with Rupert Murdoch are not influencing that process, and to ensure that complaints about tapping are made in a personal, not shadow ministerial, capacity…

It goes on: “Downing Street says that Cameron’s dinners with Murdoch will not affect Hunt’s judgement. We have to take them at their word.” …

The guidance concludes with the warning, “We must guard against anything which appears

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 9 Comments
Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler writes… Radicals and reactionaries on the red benches

By Paul Tyler | Wed 2nd February 2011 - 1:00 pm

Julian Glover, writing on the Guardian website, has called the situation in the House of Lords well today. “This is a ceasefire not an armistice,” he says.

As of midday today (Wednesday), Lord “Charlie” Falconer appears to have retreated from the undertakings he was giving earlier in the week to expedite the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies (PVSC) Bill. Labour Peers are apparently determined both delay and elongate the Report Stage, so making it impossible for the AV referendum to take place on May 5th. As Julian Glover says, “the behaviour of a gang of timeserving Labour …

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

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Charles Masterman

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd February 2011 - 10:25 am

Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures deserve their obscurity but others do not. Charles James Fox’s defence of civil liberties against a dominating government during wartime or Earl Grey’s leading of the party back into power and major constitutional reform are good examples of mostly forgotten figures who could …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

The AV referendum: state of play

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd February 2011 - 8:55 am

With attention understandably focusing on events in the Lords, the actual progress of the campaigns for the electoral reform referendum has had less coverage in the last few weeks. So here’s a quick score-card:

  • Funding: the No campaign has taken to the media to protest about “big money” funding the Yes campaign. Even as reported by the Telegraph the attacks are pretty thin going, but revealing in one respect. Many expected the No campaign to be well-funded by the sort of large donors who have heavily funded the Tories in the past (not to mention, possibly, trade union funding). However,

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 50 Comments
Stephen Tall

The Voice’s Alex Foster to feature on tonight’s Channel 4 Come Dine With Me

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st February 2011 - 6:33 pm

Long-time contributing editor to Lib Dem Voice, Alex Foster, is cooking up a storm on this week’s Come Dine With Me, the hit Channel 4 gourmet gameshow. And tonight, Tuesday, at 5pm is when viewers will be able to view his cooking episode, which is trailed thusly:

In Nottingham, local councillor Alex Foster hopes to impress with a fancy French menu and a spot of bell ringing. Sadly, Brian likens Alex’s starter to cat food, Janice tells him to tidy up his house, and Barry compares the cornichons to intimate body parts.

Which must surely count as must-watch telly, yes?

You can …

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Posted in Site news | Tagged | 5 Comments
Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert: Winning the battle on the Digital Economy Act

By Julian Huppert | Tue 1st February 2011 - 2:33 pm

In common with many Liberal Democrats, I have opposed the Digital Economy Act since its introduction as a Bill during the dog-days of the Labour government.

Along with Bridget Fox, Obhi Chatterjee and an army of activists online and offline, I helped to get an emergency motion passed almost unanimously at Spring Conference last year that condemned the Bill, in particular for its provisions on website-blocking.

The motion also called for a working group to be created to draw up policy papers on information technology and intellectual property. I now act as chair of that working group, and you can find details of its progress at www.makeitpolicy.org.uk, among other places.

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Posted in News and Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 9 Comments
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