We had news yesterday that a former Lib Dem parliamentary candidate has announced his defection to the Labour Party. So I think it only fair to provide a bit of balance: I joined the Lib Dems last week because I believe they offer the best opportunity for providing fair government.
I believe in democracy and I feel that the Lib Dems are the most democratic of the three major parties. The Lib Dem base is, by and large, ordinary people who want their voices heard, not big business and not the unions both of whom want their own agendas …
“Appalled and embarrassed” – that is how Liberal Democrat peer and Constitutional Affairs Spokesperson Paul Tyler described his reaction to the attitude and behaviour of some members of the House of Lords:
I have been appalled and embarrassed by the number of Peers, even including a few former Cabinet Ministers, who use the place as a convenient private club, with good parking and subsidised catering. They never speak or even ask a question, let alone contribute to a debate.
His comments were made when discussing the publication of the Consultation on Members Leaving the House, which looked as the views of peers as part of a review to identify options for allowing people to leave the House of Lords other than through death or misconduct.
As Paul pointed out, with the use of block capitals, underlining and an exclamation mark, there are 79 peers who did not turn up (let alone speak or vote) even once in the 2009-2010 Parliamentary session. There are some very rare cases where long-term non-attendance in justifiable, and in the past some peers have spoken out over the lack of an option to retire if their health is no longer up to attending. Yet the overall picture, especially when you extend the figures to include peers who almost never turn up or who turn up but do not participate, is of large numbers who do not carry out the role of being a Parliamentarian in even the most minimally reasonable way.
There are also practical problems about the sheer size of the Lords, as Paul also commented,
The case for reducing the number of Peers is compelling: increasing costs, not enough room for all to get into the Chamber or have desks, excessive size compared with the Commons and (most persuasively) “damage to the credibility of the House occasioned by the large number of members who take no active part in proceedings.”
Lovely dining club – with a Parliament attached
So with Lords reform in the air and promised in the Coalition agreement, you might expect peers to be thinking sensibly about how to leave behind the idea that the upper house is a lovely dining club, great car park and a mark of social distinction – with a Parliament attached.
Alas, not everyone – for the suggestions made by some of Paul’s fellow peers show how out of touch many of them are with the idea that Parliament is a place to work on holding the government to account and governing the country:
In the circumstances I cannot take seriously some of the suggested remedies to this serial non-attendance. Giving retiring Peers “dining rights”, let alone offering the opportunity to speak but not vote, seems totally inappropriate. As for the idea that they should be awarded an honour “on the lines of the armed services’ Long Service, Good Conduct medal”, or that their “life peerage might be converted into a hereditary peerage”, I can only suppose that somebody was taking the mickey.
Yes really: there was the suggestion that the ‘reward’ for not turning up and doing a job in the Lords should be to be given a medal. The Order of the Free Car Park perhaps?
Paul’s pugnacious attitude towards the views of other members of the Lords is very welcome, especially as there is a very strong rearguard action being fought by many members of the Lords against having democracy in the Lords. Or if there really must be democracy having it in as weak and diluted a form as possible – and certainly not moving any time soon to the idea that all members of the Lords should have to do a job of work there.
The political debate within Parliament and within the coalition on this is finely balanced at the moment. It may yet tip either way, as the report last week in the The Times illustrated when it talked of how:
A 300-strong mini Senate would replace the House of Lords under plans being drawn up by Nick Clegg. However, the Deputy Prime Minister is facing setbacks as he tries to deliver constitutional reform. He is having to surrender the Liberal Democrat ambition of a wholly elected Upper House amid stiff resistance from peers in all parties and will struggle to ensure that a reformed second chamber will be mainly elected.
Superficially that sounds a bad news story (and contrasts with the tone of The Times in August – “Absent peers face sack … The least active and least effective peers could be ejected at the end of each Parliament”). However a much smaller house would also up the pressure to only have minimal ‘grandfathering’ – that is letting existing members of the Lords continue in place without having to face elections – as otherwise it’d be a house dominated by the unelected.
As on so many other issues in the Coalition, it is not a simple case of Lib Dems versus Conservatives, because Cameron has no great love of many of the ranks of the Tory peers. In this case it is more a case of MPs versus peers, with honourable exceptions on the peers front including many Lib Dems such as Paul Tyler.
People such as Paul deserve our full support in those debates.
Because, you see, Labour MP and campaign coordinator Andy Burham has said that his party would not be working much for a Yes vote in the AV referendum as,
It would be a recipe for chaos and confusion if Labour candidates were also supporting AV in their literature.
Odd then that it wasn’t a recipe for chaos and confusion in London in 1998 when there was a referendum on the same day as other elections. And I’m sure that the fact that the 1998 referendum was introduced by a Labour government whilst the 2011 one …
“If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.” Barack Obama
“Our party has long prided itself on its commitment to education as the great leveller; the best way to create social mobility and equality of opportunity in society” – words written by Jo Swinson MP in her article yesterday.
I agree with her, and that’s why I disagree that a near tripling of fees meets that commitment. That’s why I will be lobbying MPs to vote down the measure in the House of Commons in December.
Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, Lib Dem MP for Birmingham Yardley John Hemming has penned a robust defence of the Coalition’s plans for higher education funding in England, taking as his starting point the IFS’s findings that more than half of students will pay 9% of income over £21,000 a year for 30 years: “In other words this new system is a graduate tax in all but name.” Here’s an excerpt:
It is, however, not an open-ended graduate tax as it has a cap. The cap works in such a way that graduates with higher earnings get to
Foreign Secretary William Hague apparently pledged on Thursday to alter Britain’s law on universal jurisdiction – a move which could again bring up the question of Liberal Democrat MPs voting against Government motions.
According to an Israeli Embassy official, Hague told Benjamin Netanyahu that the coalition will be moving as fast as it can to amend the universal jurisdiction law, with the aim being that a draft amendment will be put before parliament in the coming months.
The move comes on the back of Israel’s postponement of all strategic dialogue with Britain as a protest against the current law.
Labour MP Michael Meacher is facing the threat of legal action after he took to his blog at the weekend to repeat some of the allegations made by now disgraced Labour MP Phil Woolas despite the court ruling that they were false.
Michael Meacher represents the neighbouring seat of Oldham West and Royton and claimed on his blog on Saturday that, “In the course of the one-week election court proceedings it appears that Watkins himself admitted that he had spent some £200,000 on the election, which is 7 times above the maximum permitted limit.”
Yet the court judgement (which appeared before Michael …
The numbers of animals used in experiments has been rising steadily over the past few years; up to 3.6 million in 2009 (whilst the number of individual procedures is far higher). It represents the presence of a vast amount of suffering. In its Programme for Government the Coalition promised to ‘work to reduce the use of animals in scientific research’. Our work has been supported by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) who warmly welcome our pledge, which is undoubtedly overdue.
But how does the Coalition intend to turn aspiration …
The law gives very broad scope to contentious and aggressive claims, partly because – as Arthur Balfour succinctly put it when pushed to expand the law in 1905, “It is evidently not easy to go further, if only because of the difficulty of distinguishing between the mis-statements which are due to malice and those which are due to mere stupidity.”
The offence was introduced in 1895 with, until then, the only offence under election law regarding false statements about candidates being if you falsely claimed that someone had pulled out as a candidate.
It is worth considering what, however, would be the position if even this narrow legal offence did not exist. Imagine case, say, of a candidate campaigning to oust a Labour MP and making false claims about the Labour MP being a supporter of terrorism. The Labour MP loses, sues for libel and wins. During the court case it is revealed that the victorious candidate always knew the claims being made about the now ex-MP were false but even so deliberately decided to include them in leaflets distributed during the election.
Without the sort of offence for which Phil Woolas was found guilty the victorious candidate might have to pay up in libel damages but could continue as an MP. (Eagle-eyed readers will have noted by this point that there are some important difference between the Representation of the People Act 1983 and libel law, but they don’t affect this example.) They would be able to continue speaking and voting in Parliament, drawing a Parliamentary salary, accruing a Parliamentary pension and so on for the next few years. Would that be a satisfactory outcome?
Your answer to that determines whether or not the principle of provisions like those in the Representation of the People Act 1983 is right. I think it is – we should give very broad scope to the public getting to determine who wins and loses in elections, but that is not the same as saying that anything goes.
Those who argue otherwise are wrong and, in fairness to Labour, it should be pointed out that the vast majority of the online coverage from Labour bloggers has been to condemn what Phil Woolas did. I also had the experience of listening to Harriet Harman on the radio at the weekend and agreeing with her. She is right that what we know Phil Woolas did has no place in politics even if he manages a successful legal appeal. What puzzles me, however, is that very little new came out during the case. There have been some interesting details – such as the forged diary, the evidence of the Labour Party agent being called “not reliable” by the judges and the complaint about a cat. At heart, however, what we now know Phil Woolas did is what we always knew he did, which makes Ed Miliband’s decision to appoint him not merely a Shadow Minister but one for immigration, all the odder. Hopefully, however, that will soon become no more than a curious political footnote.
As for political campaigning more generally, I don’t think the ruling will have a major impact – nor should it, because the law should only be for exceptional cases. Leafing through the advice I’ve co-authored for candidates on what you should or should not say in political literature (which was quoted in the court case and described by Phil Woolas as “naive”!), there does not look to be anything that needs changing based on this case. In that, there’s nothing new – for when the original provision was brought in by the 1895 act, the Liberal Party’s then election manual, Woodings, was updated to mention this new offence. It rightly noted it but did not make a song and dance about it for it was rightly considered then, as has been the case, to be a provision that only covers unusual and extreme cases. As the Judge put it in the 1911 case which hinged on this offence:
The primary protection of this statute was the protection of the constituency against acts which would be fatal to freedom of election. There would be no true freedom of election, no real expression of the opinion of the constituency, if votes were given in consequence of the dissemination of a false statement as to the personal character of conduct of a candidate.
The law has been in place for 115 years. That Phil Woolas is one of only a very small number to fall foul of it shows not that the law is too broad but that his behaviour was so awful.
Credit, by the way, to the judges for their understanding of how easy it is to find coverage of election candidates online – para 123 of the ruling shows a familiarity with the internet that counters some of the stereotypes about an out of touch judiciary.
The Independent’s Andrew Grice has spiced up the story of a Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate’s defection to Labour with the help of some figures – which turn out to be incorrect.
Andrew Lewin, who stood in Hertford and Stortford in May, has switched to Labour “in protest at his leader’s acceptance of Conservative policies and abandonment of key elements of his party’s programme.”
The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.
You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are three simple ways:
1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …
In recent months, LDV has been bringing its readers copies of our new MPs’ and Peers’ first words in Parliament, so that we can read what is being said and respond. You can find all of the speeches in this category with this link. Last week, Baron Allan of Hallam, of Ecclesall in the County of South Yorkshire (Richard Allan) made his maiden speech in the House of Lords, during a debate on the Comprehensive Spending Review. His words are reproduced below.
My Lords, I thank all those officials and Members who have helped our class of 2010
This month there has been an earthquake in the Wikio Political Blog Rankings Top 50; almost a third of the sites have moved by more than 20 places, and roughly another fifth by more than 10 places. There are plenty of new entrants, and quite a number of sites seem to have simply “tanked” in this list.
Mark Pack asked if there had been a change in the algorithm this month, so I’ve done this guest post. The answer is that yes, the algorithm has been “tweaked”, in Wikio’s words. The main tweak seems to …
The FT Blog is reporting that Labour beat the Coalition to yet another policy – this time it’s the IDS plan to make four weeks’ unpaid work part of the scheme to get the long-term unemployed back into the job market.
As Jim Pickard at the FT reports:
In case you thought the IDS scheme was familiar – forcing people to do 4 week’s labour for their benefits – that is because it already exists. Since last October anyone out of work and claiming jobseekers’ allowance for over a year (in most parts of the country) has to
If you had to guess which political party’s supporters were most in favour of sharing our aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons testing with the French, which would you go for?
According to a YouGov poll a few days ago, those who say they’ll vote for the traditionally internationalist and pro-European Lib Dems are clearly in favour (58-36) but – what’s this?
Even more in favour are Conservative voters, by nearly two to one (it’s 61-34 with 5% don’t knows).
I wrote a few days ago that whether we approve of a policy has far more than we’d like to admit to …
From the moment in 1999 when Kosovo with its mass burials and brutal imagery shocked the world – especially Europe, which had not had a war on its soil since the defeat of Hitler – the term ‘War Crimes’ has come back into the lexicon with a vengeance.
Until then, the words brought to mind the Japanese in Manchuria and Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but hardly anything closer in time.
Conflict in the Balkans brought with it a whole new dimension of war. Ugly new phrases like ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ appeared. Albanian Kosovar civilians, especially women, became …
Clifford Chance (CC) is set to repeat the first round of its senior partner elections due to a glitch in the firm’s partnership deed.
The unexpected voting re-run has arisen because the magic circle firm’s partnership deed does not state that the contender receiving the least amount of votes in the first round is obliged to withdraw from the race.
All three partners in the running – London finance partner Malcolm Sweeting, German corporate finance partner Daniela Weber-Rey and City tax partner Jonathan Elman – were all asked to reconsider their position after last week’s stalemate, but none chose to
Last year, my Voice colleague, Iain Roberts, reported the efforts of Lib Dem Cheadle MP Mark Hunter to ‘Save the Cheque‘, due to be phased out by October 2018.
Now his fellow Lib Dem MP David Ward (Bradford East) has joined the fray, this week introducing a 10 Minute Rule in the House of Commons to introduce a bill to save the cheque. You ca read the full text of his Commons speech here, and a brief excerpt here:
What have the Federation of Small Businesses, Age Concern, Help the Aged, Unite, Which?, Royal National Institute of Blind
By Prateek Buch
| Sat 6th November 2010 - 12:46 pm
You don’t usually raise an eyebrow when Lib Dems stand up for civil liberties – it’s what we do, it’s what we are. We even know that there are liberal-minded Tories (you, stop sniggering…) with whom the greatest common ground we share is on defending the freedoms, rights and liberties we enjoy; just look at the civil liberties paragraphs in the Coalition agreement.
It is right, however, to raise an eyebrow – possibly both – at the widely anticipated rebellion over whether to retain or rescind control orders for terrorist suspects; not just at the timing, coming so soon after …
Coalition: esp. in Politics. An alliance for combined action of distinct parties, persons, or states, without permanent incorporation into one body.
During the general election, if you asked my politics class who they would vote for if they could vote, the result was almost unanimously Liberal Democrat, with the occasional Conservative blip (but I’m fairly sure that those people merely said Conservative because they thought David Cameron was good looking. No comment.) Now? Now it’s a different story.
Take today, for example, discussing the peculiarities of the US political system. “I don’t understand how two parties can rule a country,” Classmate A …
Phil Woolas has vowed to fight on to keep his parliamentary seat of Oldham East and Saddleworth, following the ruling on Friday that voids his General Election victory and bans him from standing as an MP for three years.
He no right of appeal against the judges’ decision, but wants to take it to judicial review, though on what grounds isn’t clear.
Mr Woolas would like us to think that the judgement is not only wrong but fundamentally damaging to political discourse – that it will allow politicians to get away with all sorts whilst their opponents cower, unwilling to risk …
Stll deciding which way to vote in the contest for Lib Dem party president? As Mark Pack reminds us here, the deadline for returning your completed ballot paper is this coming Wednesday, 10th November.
To help those party members, who (like me) are finding it very hard to decide, here are links to all the posts published on Lib Dem Voice (starting with the most recent) in which the stalls of the two candidates, Tim Farron and Susan Kramer, are explored…
Chris Huhne, Lib Dem secretary of state for energy and climate change, earlier this week emailed party members with the following message, illustrating how the party is putting green policies at the heart of the Coaltion:
Today I am announcing details of the Green Deal, a new and radical way of making energy efficiency improvements available to all, whether people own or rent their properties. Through the Green Deal everyone will have a chance to save energy, cut their bills and tackle climate change, just as we promised in our manifesto.
Initially, over the next two years, we will almost double
So, another week, and more policies announced that are definitely not Liberal Democrat in origin. Particularly one close to my liberal heart on the issue of paying for University education. Now that debate will rumble on and on, but I want to look more closely at whether the Lib Dems did indeed “sell out” on their principles, or whether they …
If you remember, this is the opening frame of the party political broadcast the Lib Dems aired just a few days before standing for election in May. You may remember it: Nick Clegg wondered around what appeared to be the set of “I am Legend” on a day when the prevailing wind was coming from the foolscap factory wearing a jacket 8 sizes too big for him. The tagline, the message, indeed the point of the advert was “no more broken promises” – the …
Whenever I utter the phrase ‘free trade’ within those Liberal Democrat circles in which I am permitted to mix, the reaction is akin to that which I might get if I suggested making it compulsory for all party members to worship statues of me.
And that’s a pity (the reaction to the free trade, not the statues) because most people when they meet an advocate of free trade, mutter darkly about the effects of ‘light touch regulation’. But free trade and light touch regulation are not the same, indeed in many ways they are inimical to each other.
Labour’s shadow immigration minister, Phil Woolas, was ejected from parliament today after a court ruled he had breached election laws by falsely claiming his Liberal Democrat opponent had “wooed” extremist Muslims in the run-up to the 6 May poll.
For the first time in 99 years a specially convened election court has overturned the result of a parliamentary poll and ordered a rerun after two high court judges ruled the result of the Oldham East poll void. They upheld the claim by Elwyn Watkins that Woolas knowingly made false statements.
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 5th November 2010 - 11:57 am
At face value, the figures released by News International this week showing that The Times and Sunday Times had registered some 105,000 customer sales since its paywall was erected in July sounded like good news. As analysts attempted to decipher the company’s ‘fuzzy numbers‘, doubts began to creep in.
Understanding those paywall figures
The reality appears to be that roughly 50,000 individual users have subscribed to gain access to the newspapers’ content, whether online or through the iPad app or the Kindle edition. The other c.50,000 customer sales are for single-use or pay-as-you-go access to the website, and will …
Peter Wrigley Surely our defining issue must be the the preservation, improvement and extension of Liberal Democracy in this country and beyond. By all means support it with...
Chris Cory Community politics should not be a technique for winning elections. It should be about the redistribution of power to local people. It is not about all the thi...
Jana Burnham plans a National Care Service for England and electoral reform for the UK.
So what makes us distinctive for General Election 2029?...
David Warren We have been far too cautious for far too long. A bit like Thomas Tuchel in the last half hour of that World Cup semi-final against Argentina.
I fear that l...
Jana I agree with this but would add something I believe important: we need to address the idea that those seeking ‘a place of safety’ should be allowed to pass ...
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